July 1, 2002 Issue
Battle of
the Greens
The military and radical Muslims
square off once again in Indonesia, in a confrontation with
far-reaching consequences for the worldwide struggle against
Islamic extremism
By Melinda Liu and Joe Cochrane
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
July 1 issue — Indonesia has been viewed through a red lens
lately—the red and white of its flag, hoisted proudly over a
resurgent democracy; the red of the blood spilled in anger on
several of its 17,000 islands. The country has twisted uneasily
between those poles ever since the fall of Suharto in 1998. The
dictator’s ouster unleashed a whirlwind of pent-up civic
forces—politicians, journalists, activists, artists. It also
released less appealing spirits, the jinns that have fueled
communal riots in Ambon, ethnic killings in Borneo, atrocities
in East Timor.
INCREASINGLY, THOUGH, the battle for the soul of Indonesia looks
to be painted in shades of green—the flags of militant
Islamists versus the camouflage of the Army. “The
government’s weakness is breeding radicals,” says Ulil
Abshar-Abdalla, head of a moderate Muslim group. That’s true
on both sides: without effective civilian leadership, the debate
over which kind of country Indonesia should be is slowly being
ceded to fire-breathing fundamentalists and their opponents in
the military.
The two camps have been wary of each other since the early days
of the Indonesian republic. Now their relationship has taken on
a critical significance. With more than 85 percent of its 215
million people professing some form of Islam, the archipelago is
the world’s most populous Muslim nation. As during the Vietnam
War—when the country was seen as a key domino in the
anti-communist fight—Washington believes Indonesia occupies a
pivotal place in the struggle against Islamic extremism. “If
Jakarta can pull off this democratic transition successfully,
Indonesia will be a positive role model for the world’s
Muslims,” says U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
Of course, the picture of a spreading fundamentalism in
Indonesia is distorted by the magnifying glass of September 11.
As the United States began to bomb Afghanistan, a few spirited
crowds rallied in front of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
Firebrands like Laskar Jihad founder Jafar Umar Thalib denounced
America, and other militants launched recruitment drives for the
Taliban. Those looking for radical madrasas found one in the
town of Solo, where a cleric named Abu Bakar Bashir is accused
of leading a terrorist ring that had cells in Malaysia, the
Philippines and Singapore. (Even today students at his Al Mukmin
boarding school wear Osama bin Laden T shirts and insist that
Washington “has no proof” Al Qaeda was behind the September
11 attacks.) A good deal of the Islamic militancy on display
since last fall cannot be separated from hype and a broader
anti-Americanism.
Yet a more subtle shift is taking place as well. Since
independence Indonesian leaders have promoted a secular
nationalism—not religion—as the only glue that can hold
together their far-flung and dazzlingly diverse country. For his
three decades in power, Suharto brutally enforced allegiance to
the national mythology of pancasila —the “five principles”
of civility, national unity, democracy, social justice and
belief in one God. But Indonesia’s post-Suharto
presidents—the buffoonish B. J. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid,
the inscrutable Megawati Sukarnoputri—have proved a weak
bunch, more concerned with internal political squabbles than
able to articulate a broad new vision for Indonesia. Pancasila
has lost its luster partly out of disgust with civilian leaders
and partly because it “rekindles memories of the bad old days
of Suharto,” says former Defense minister Juwono Sudarsono.
That has allowed other forces to push their own agendas,
including, most recently, fundamentalist Muslim groups that had
typically not found much of an audience among the country’s
open-minded faithful. In a survey conducted by the Center for
International Cooperation last December, 58 percent of
respondents said they favored the implementation of Sharia
(Islamic law) throughout the country. Nearly three in four
supported making Indonesia an Islamic state, while 62 percent
said that Islamic fundamentalism was needed in a society that
had grown immoral. A mild form of Sharia is now practiced in the
province of Aceh, and has been or is being introduced in
districts in Java, West Sumatra and Sulawesi. Some Muslim
parties in Parliament are pushing to reinstate a clause in the
Constitution, known as the Jakarta Charter, that calls for
“Sharia law for religious followers.”
Much of the new religiosity stems from a desire for order amid
the apparent cha-os spread by Suharto’s downfall. When probed
more closely, most Indonesians say they do not approve of
draconian punishments like stoning adulterers to death or
amputating the hands of thieves. Instead their embrace of
religious law is a measure of widespread dismay at the failure
of civilian institutions. “The state apparatus is weak, and
the vacuum is filled by radical groups which are small but
vocal,” says Ahmad Syafii Maarif, the chairman of Muhammadiyah,
the country’s second largest moderate Muslim organization.
Groups like the Justice Party, which holds seven seats in
Parliament, have begun to provide social services in villages
ignored by the central government. Others have assigned to
themselves more controversial tasks, like fighting crime. In
some cities and towns, vigilante justice is dispensed by Muslim
radicals. The Java-based Islamic Defenders’ Front, which made
a name for itself by trashing discos and hunting for American
guests at local hotels, claims to have performed at least 100 of
its “sweeps” since September 11—the latest a raid on a
Chinese-owned warehouse found to contain 8,000 bottles of
alcohol. “It’s obvious the owner was out to destroy national
morality,” says Jafar Siddiq, who has led several such sweeps.
“Since the police are also fighting porn, prostitution,
gambling, alcohol and drugs, they’ve been kind to us. Our
goals are the same.”
Perhaps an even greater share of the popularity of radical Islam
has to do with more ephemeral issues of identity and
self-esteem. Indonesians, says Sudarsono, are seeking solace in
religion “because of the trials and tribulations of economic
displacement. There’s a fad with Islam.” Indeed, Muslim
symbology has become downright trendy over the last year.
Islamic music is newly popular. Muslim preachers appear on TV
with smartly produced, viewer-friendly sermons that sound like
self-help infomercials. Corporate managers have been flocking to
something called the “Emotional Spiritual Quotient Leadership
Center,” which provides Islam-based management-training
seminars.
Mainstream politicians have begun to take notice. Religiously
defined candidates have traditionally not done well in
Indonesian elections. In 1999, the most prominent Islamic
parties—the PPP, led by Vice President Hamzah Haz, and the
Crescent and Star Party—took only 11 percent of the seats in
Parliament; even the Justice Party, which claims to have been
the most successful new party in the 1999 polls, won only 1.4
percent of the vote. Yet Megawati and other secular leaders have
been painfully reluctant to criticize the more outspoken
fundamentalists. Mega, says one Western diplomat in Jakarta, is
“not even reactive, much less proactive” when it comes to
taking on the Islamists. That has allowed figures like Haz, who
is facing a leadership challenge within his own party, to stake
out extreme positions: in recent weeks he has visited Laskar’s
Thalib in detention, and Bashir at his madrasa in Solo. (“I
call on the authorities to arrest me first before arresting
them,” says Haz.) Secular and moderate Muslim
parties still dominate Parliament. But, says former president
Wahid, “Muslim hard-liners are better recognized and better
financed. They look like a threat.”
Indonesia has been here before. In the mid-1900s, another period
of rapid social change and economic turmoil, various Islamic
groups flourished in the anti-colonial struggle against the
Dutch. In the rocky early years after independence in 1949, when
Sukarno’s scattershot rule helped fuel separatist movements
across the archipelago, a Pan-Islamic organization called Darul
Islam, which envisaged an Islamic state encompassing Indonesia
and Malaysia, was ruthlessly suppressed by the Army. Bashir was
allegedly a member of the organization. The current Muslim
revival, says Sudarsono, represents a “cycle that repeats
itself every 40 years or so.”
What’s most worrying this time is not the plethora of
firebrands denouncing U.S. imperialism; if he were alive,
Sukarno would be Indonesia’s most eloquent anti-Western
spokesman. Instead it’s what these subtle changes say about
where the country is heading. Most Indonesians would call
themselves Abangan Muslims, who have fused a tolerant form of
Islam with the beliefs of Buddhism, Hinduism and Javanese
mysticism. Those who espouse a stricter interpretation of the
Qur’an are increasingly drawn from a younger, well-educated,
more tech-savvy generation. Amien Rais, former head of
Muhammadiyah, says that militant clerics “recruit followers
from campuses. Students in engineering and architecture are
particularly vulnerable... They want life to be exact, black and
white.” The Justice Party got its start in a Muslim Internet
forum, and most of its 300,000 members are between the ages of
20 and 35. Many of these believers are too young to have taken
part in the political system or been indoctrinated in pancasila.
They are turning to Islam at a time when the religion seems
better suited to expressing their frustrations than a more
inchoate nationalism.
The armed forces, on the other hand, are looking to turn back
the clock. Top brass argue that the Islamic threat demands an
all-too-familiar degree of military involvement. The generals
“fear the new radical [Muslim] leaders coming up in the next
10 to 20 years,” says a senior active-duty officer. “I fear
that nationalism is becoming weaker because of missteps in
building democracy in Indonesia. [It’s gone] too fast and too
far.” NEWSWEEK has learned that some officers have hatched a
secret plan to help rally moderate Muslim organizations to
challenge Islamic militants. Part of the strategy involves
attracting international funding—U.S. officials have
reportedly been briefed on the plan—to open madrasas that will
teach a more inclusive form of Islam. The echoes of the
military’s Suharto-era sway over domestic politics are clear
and a bit chilling. “It should be the job of the government,
not the armed forces, to take the lead in this sort of thing,”
says one Western diplomat in Jakarta.
With Peter Janssen and Natasha Tampubolon in Jakarta
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