Posted on 08/31/2003 5:30:09 AM PDT by SJackson
When people talk about the root causes of terrorism, I think about Sue Malony and Donna Croxford, two victims of a terrorist attack in Bali, Indonesia, on October 12, 2002 that killed 202 people including 88 Australians.
Sue and Donna lived in Elwood and Port Melbourne respectively, suburbs in my constituency in Melbourne, where I serve as a federal member of parliament. Sue and Donna were killed whilst enjoying a holiday in Bali, and now Donna leaves behind a disabled four-year-old.
As justification for their murderous acts in Bali, two of the known perpetrators, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Imam Samudra, have focused their rhetoric on revenge "against the Jews," despite the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, 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. These Islamic terrorists live in Indonesia.
Their own declarations show them to be in the grip of an anti-Semitic paranoia every bit as fanatical as that which gripped Russia in the 19th century or Germany in the 1930s. They are convinced that the Jews are plotting to take over Indonesia, and indeed the world the Jews already control the United States and Australia, they insist and subvert Islam and, indeed, all religion.
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 through their burst into the media. Amrozi said the rationale for the Bali bombing was "because of the evil plan of the United States, the Jews and their allies to colonize [and] to destroy religions."
He also said that the bombing was aimed at "the evil plans of the Jews' dirty hands and their friends who always try in every way to prevent congregation by religious groups, especially Muslims Then these Jewish people and their friends will easily conquer and make [Indonesia] their possession."
Where European anti-Semites saw the Jews as the sworn enemies of Christianity, the Indonesian anti-Semites see the Jews and Christians as allies. Imam Samudra says the Bali bombing was designed "to carry out my responsibility to wage global jihad against Jews and Christians throughout the world." When Samudra was led from court on 26 June, he yelled: "Destroy Christians, destroy America, destroy Jews!"
On August 6, following the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta which killed 12 Indonesians, mostly humble taxi drivers and hotel workers, Samudra said: "If it's [the work of] Muslims, I'm happy. Especially if it was for Jews, hopefully [sic]."
THE SOUTH East Asian focus on the Jews is a new phenomenon, not surprisingly since most Indonesians neither knew nor cared about Jews until very recently. 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. Even today, nearly all Indonesian Muslims have an allegiance to moderate Islamic organizations such as Mummadiyah or Nahdlatul Ulama, whose leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, was briefly president of Indonesia following the downfall of the authoritarian Suharto regime.
Over the past 20 years, however, Indonesian Islam has undergone far-reaching changes. 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 Wahabist 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.
In recent years these elements of Islamist anti-Semitism have been deliberately spread in Indonesia by groups such as the Indonesian Committee for Solidarity with the Islamic World (KISDI) and extremist clerics like Abu Bakr Bashir.
In the past these anti-Semitic slogans would have meant nothing in Indonesia, a country without Jews, but today they can be linked to Israel and thus to the United States, Australia and the West in general, and also to Christianity, to create a new blend of Indonesian Islamist extremism, embodied in al-Qaida's local franchise, Jemaah Islamiah.
Unfortunately, Indonesia's welcome but uneasy transformation from authoritarianism to democracy has given militant Islam new opportunities. Older Indonesian Muslim leaders such as former president Wahid, have been challenged by figures such as the Council of Indonesian Islamic Scholars (MUI) and the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, led by Abu Bakr Bashir.
Wahid's successor as president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, is politically too weak to offer much resistance, while Vice-President Hamza Haz has actively dallied with the Islamists.
The shock of the October 2002 Bali bombing brought about a crisis for Indonesian Islam. Although ambitious politicians like Amien Rais are happy to exploit Islamist slogans, they have no desire to see the extremists come to power, nor to have their activities undermine Indonesia's fragile economic recovery. They also don't want to bring about a serious crisis in Indonesia's relations with the West.
Moderate Indonesian Muslim leaders need to fight back against the militants and their imported ideologies, which will be immensely harmful to Indonesia. There must be a reform of the madrassa to reduce the influence of Saudi Arabian "charity." There must be continued economic and political reform.
As the Bali bombing showed, Australia has a lot at stake in the future direction of Indonesian Islam. I might add that 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 next bomb could easily be planted in Sydney or Melbourne.
The writer, an MP for Melbourne Ports, is secretary of the Australia-Israel Parliamentary Friends of Israel.
Islam's bloody fanatical and ideological roots are deeply embedded in the world and for far too long.
Litmus test - by their fruit you shall know them.
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