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The Demonology of SE Asian Islamists

(Jerusalem Post) Michael Danby - As justification for their murderous acts in Bali, two of the known Indonesian perpetrators, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Imam Samudra, have focused their rhetoric on revenge "against the Jews," despite the fact that there are no Jews in Indonesia. Riduan Isamuddin ("Hambali") and Abu Bakr Bashir, the secular and spiritual masterminds of Jemaah Islamiah and that atrocity, also have a zealous hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. They are convinced that the Jews are plotting to take over Indonesia, and indeed the world, and subvert Islam. Throughout the recent trials of the Bali bombers, the salience of Jew-hatred in the demonology of the Islamic terrorists has been clearly and widely exposed by the bombers. Imam Samudra says the Bali bombing was designed "to carry out my responsibility to wage global jihad against Jews and Christians throughout the world." The Southeast Asian focus on the Jews is a new phenomenon. Most of the Indonesian archipelago was converted to Islam between the 12th and 16th centuries, but Islam rapidly adapted itself to Indonesian culture, absorbing many elements of its Buddhist, Hindu, and Animist past. Since Indonesians are not Arabs, Indonesian (Hanafi) Islam was unaffected by the waves of Islamic extremism which periodically flowed through the Arab Islamic world. Over the past 20 years, however, as Indonesians have become wealthier, better educated, and more travelled, they have become more aware of world events such as the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Islamic revolution in Iran. Poor Indonesian youth are attending religious schools (madrassas) and some of them are being indoctrinated by Wahhabist preachers funded from Saudi Arabia. The result has been to reconnect Indonesian Islam with the Islamist strand of the Arab world, with its prevalent strains of anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideology. As the Bali bombing showed, Australia has a lot at stake in the future direction of Indonesian Islam. Australia's Jewish community also has a lot at stake, for if a significant number of young Indonesians agree with the paranoid rantings of Amrozi and Imam Samudra, their anti-Semitic phobias might lead them to look for real Jews rather than imaginary ones to target next time. The writer, an MP for Melbourne Ports, is secretary of the Australia-Israel Parliamentary Friends of Israel.
2003-09-01 00:00:00
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