Today's Jakarta Post reports on one of the 17,000 pesantren or Islamic schools in Indonesia.
Even in Indonesia, a mainly Muslim nation, the pesantren are viewed with suspicion. The vice-president, Yusuf Kalla announced in October that he would be inspecting these schools, to see if they promoted extremism. Despite the attempts of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) to make Kalla change his mind and water down his proposals, the vice president announced on December 9 that all 3.5 million pupils at these schools will be fingerprinted.
The report today features just one school, the Al Mukmin Islamic boarding school in Sukoharjo, Central Java. This school has gained some notoriety, as it is founded by the "Islamic scholar" and godfather of terrorism, Abu Bakar Bashir. Bashir, spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah (who carried out the two Bali attacks of 2002 and Oct 1 2005) and also the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, is currently imprisoned for his involvement in the 2002 Bali attack, which killed 202 people.
The Majelis Mujahideen, or Council of Holy Warriors, always send a posse of supporters to trials of Jemaah Islamiyah activists. Immediately after the last Bali bombing, they denied the involvement of Muslims in the attack. They see themselves as vigilantes of Islam. Yesterday we reported that the group threaten to prevent an Indonesian no-nudity version of Playboy to be sold in shops.
Bashir founded the Al Mukmin school over thirty years ago with the late Abdullah Sungkar, who fought in Afghanistan and was a founder of Jemaah Islamiyah, which aims through terror to establish a pan-national Islamic state in Southeast Asia, under Sharia rules. A report from 2001 by a former member of the school claimed that here are at least 5,000 potentially active cadres of Jemaah Islamiyah in several nations.
The current director of the school is Wahyuddin (pictured), who has said "Whenever a terrorist incident occurs, the world always points at us. We are constantly accused of training terrorists, while achievements of the school and students never get the attention of the media, including the national media."
The school, also called Ngruki, is currently trying to clean up its public image, and is holding a seminar on jihad and terrorism on the weekend falling on the 21st to 22 January. Thousands of former students will be expected to attend. 20 foreign embassies have been sent invitations to the seminar.
So far only Malaysia has said it would send a representative, while the Netherlands embassy asked for a complete schedule. A previous seminar was held in 2004, but only Germany and Japanese embassy staff attended.
An organiser, Ali Usman, said: "We will hold the seminar in the school complex so that the Western envoys, who have been suspicious of Ngruki thus far, can see first hand the real conditions at the school."
The Minister of Home Affarirs, Muhammad Ma'ruf, will open the seminar and give a keynote speech. Another speaker will be Ma'ruf Amin, who is Fatwa committee head at the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI).
Before one thinks it will be all hunky-dory, one should remember that the MUI in July announced an 11-point fatwa, or decree, which stated that all liberal interpretations of Islam, secularism and pluralism were un-Islamic, and therefore forbidden. This announcement appeared to give the green light to Islamist vigilantes, and attacks upon minorities, including Christians have increased.
These minorities included the Muslim sect called the Ahmiddiya, who number 200,000 in the nation. On September 20 a mob of 1000 Muslims attacked an Ahmiddiya community in Sukdana, West Java, damaging 70 houses and six mosques.
Ultimately the aims of these Islamist tuition centers are the same as the MUI and also the Jemaah Islamiyah, to establish Indonesia as an exclusively Islamic nation based not upon democracy, but on the rule of the Ulema.
The school will put on its show, and some may be taken in. A Sufi, Pir-O Murshid Inayat Khan once wrote: "That which begins in deception continues with deception and ends with deception." The same is true of terrorism.
The school was founded by an active terrorist and a spiritual "justifier" of terrorism. A report by the International Crisis Group claimed that more than 30 Islamist terrorists, currently convicted or indicted, had attended this school. To avoid more students becoming involved in future terror activities, the school should be closed. No amount of window-dressing can take away its history of militancy.
