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| Southeast Asia |
| Islamic extremism is a growing trend in Indonesia |
| 2005-12-06 |
| Aip Hidayat was a devout Muslim, but showed no signs of fanaticism. He did not force his younger sister to wear a headscarf, chastise friends for skipping prayers or get into fiery debates about the US war in Iraq. Yet the 21-year-old became the seventh person to carry out a suicide bombing in Indonesia, something many said was inconceivable just a few years ago. His mother says al-Qaeda-linked terrorists recruited her eldest son as a foot soldier for their "holy war," poisoning his views on Islam so he would take part in triple suicide bombings on Oct. 1 that killed 20 people in Bali. "They used him," Siti Rokayah, 40, said quietly, sitting on a straw mat in a cramped two-bedroom hut. Photographs of a smiling and carefree Hidayat were scattered before her. "I hope whoever did this to my son will be arrested and punished," she said. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but most people here practice a moderate form of the faith. Still, militant Islam appears to be gaining a strong foothold, with five deadly attacks targeting Western interests since 2002. More than 240 people have died, many of them Indonesians. The secular government has responded by launching its first-ever campaign against hardline interpretations of Islam -- something it shied away from doing in the past for fear of being seen as subservient to the US. "What is happening is that today we arrest 10 people, but the ideology continues and the extremists can recruit 50 more people," Vice President Yusuf Kalla said, calling on Islamic leaders and politicians to help change that. For emphasis, he showed the Islamic activists' videotaped confessions of Hidayat and the two other Bali bombers, some of them laughing and saying they expected to go to heaven the next day. "Not just me, but the clerics too were shocked," Kalla said. The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror network first emerged in the early 1990s with the goal of creating an Islamic state across Southeast Asia. But it has been reinvigorated by US foreign policy in Israel and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past the group relied heavily on a handful of Islamic high schools that are committed to jihadist principles. Now the group appears to be turning to people like Hidayat who, at least outwardly, showed no militant tendencies. "They see themselves as fighting a new world battle. ... They say, we can attack civilians anywhere, just as Americans attack Muslim civilians all over the world," said Nasir Abbas, a key JI operative until his arrest in 2003 on immigration charges. "Some of these young men don't have a deep knowledge of Islam and can easily be brainwashed into militancy," said Solahudin Wahid, vice chairman of Indonesia's largest Islamic organization Nadhlatul Ulama. "They are easily tantalized. Now it's our turn to teach them. Islam is not like that. Muslims are not allowed to attack if not attacked themselves," he said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |