Indonesia was a land following Hinduism and Buddhism. Still people have Hindu Names and Ramayana played IN SOME AREAS - WHICH COULD NOT BE CONVERTED BY ISLAMIC ZEALOTS, BREAKING TEMPLES TO MAKE MASJIDS or people still following Hinduism, Buddhism.
Today, Indonesia is the largest Muslim populated country. The trends are clear - Jihad and move towards Sharia.
All ashamed - please CONVERT TO ISLAM IMMEDIATELY, BUY BURQA FOR YOUR WIVES AND SISTERS, STOP SENDING GIRLS IN YOUR FAMILY TO SCHOOL, FOLLOW SHARIA AND POSSIBLY TRY TO HAVE FOUR WIVES
if you still have one - have dozen children (if you still have one or two), do not send them to school, teach jihad and to kill non-violent people like us.
Ashamed people have double standards - they do not shed even crocodile tears for people being killed in Kashmir or being forced to live as refugees in Delhi, Jammu but weep for Gujarat forgetting that it started with Godhara.....
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30296-2002May3.html
washingtonpost.com
Indonesian-Style Taliban Fights for Islamic Law
Radical Groups Challenge Secular Traditions
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 4, 2002; Page A01
TASIKMALAYA, Indonesia -- The Taliban Brigade stormed into the hotel lounge shortly before midnight, wielding rattan canes and screaming "God is great!"
As patrons cowered under the rickety wooden tables, and the leather-clad singer bolted off the stage, witnesses said, three dozen young men in flowing white robes swung their sticks at beer mugs and highball glasses. Then they charged into the kitchen to seize the hotel's liquor supply, carting off several cases of beer and two bottles of whiskey.
"This is a Muslim country," the leader of the mob shouted as his minions smashed everything in sight, according to a hotel employee. "We forbid you to drink alcohol."
The Taliban Brigade, whose connection with Afghanistan's erstwhile rulers is in ideology only, regards itself as a vanquisher of vice in this small city near the southern coast of Java island. Members raid nightclubs and cafes to stamp out drinking and gambling. They ransack shops suspected of selling pornographic video discs. And they sweep through hotels, rounding up prostitutes and shaving their heads.
The Taliban Brigade is part of a growing network of groups seeking to turn socially moderate Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago that is home to more Muslims than any other country, into a strict Islamic nation. Its members -- students and teachers from Islamic boarding schools -- want to abolish the country's secular legal system and replace it with a version of sharia, the Islamic law that would ban the sale of alcohol, require women to wear head scarves and permit courts to order the amputation of thieves' hands.
Although efforts to enact sharia nationwide remain the subject of much dispute and little progress, its advocates have become some of the most vocal players in Indonesia's nascent democracy. They also have employed stealth. Using a new law that gives localities more autonomy, they have quietly enacted parts of their agenda in cities and jurisdictions similar to counties without approval from the central government.
In Tasikmalaya, the Taliban and a coalition of conservative Muslim organizations have persuaded the district governor to issue a host of edicts, from barring vehicular traffic near the main mosque during midday prayers on Friday to requiring that elementary and high school students, no matter what religion, receive a certificate of proficiency in Islamic studies. The governor also has urged women to cover their hair, and he has called for public swimming pools to be segregated by.
The Taliban, whose weekly raids are condoned by the police, also has imposed and enforced local sharia regulations, declaring a zero-tolerance policy toward alcohol, gambling, pornography and prostitution.
"If we see it, we will destroy it or we will confiscate it," insisted Mohammed Zainal Mutaqqien Aziz, a religious teacher who heads the Taliban Brigade, which was formed in 1998 and takes its name from the Arabic word for student. "These sorts of sinful things are not fit for Tasikmalaya."
Unlike in much of the Muslim world, the growth of religious extremism in Indonesia has largely been an indigenous phenomenon, owing more to the country's helter-skelter transition to democracy than to funding from outside groups. With rising poverty and lawlessness, fueled by economic stagnation and political infighting, an increasing slice of the population has started to view radical Islam as a panacea.
Conservative Muslim leaders said they have been aided by the U.S. campaign against terrorism, which is seen by many in Indonesia as a fight against Islam. Membership in their groups has swelled in recent months, they said.
"America's actions have united Muslims," said Jafar Umar Thalib, the leader of Laskar Jihad, a hard-line militia that has fought to evict Christians and implement sharia elsewhere in Indonesia, primarily in the former Spice Islands.
Although the Taliban, the Laskar Jihad and other groups are on the fringes of politics and society, government officials and mainstream Muslim leaders worry that extremists are nudging the world's fourth-most-populous country away from its moderate traditions and secular roots.
"The radical groups may be small in number, but they're very strong in influence," said Ulil Abshar-Abdullah, director of the Liberal Islam Network, a coalition of moderate Muslim leaders. "They have enormous power to shape the agenda."
Diplomats said they believe fears of a backlash from fundamentalist organizations -- which make little secret of their admiration for Osama bin Laden and their abhorrence for America -- have stalled the government's pursuit of suspected terrorists. In the most notable example, Indonesian police recently opted not to arrest a prominent cleric alleged to be the ideological leader of an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that plotted to blow up several Western embassies in Singapore. Indonesian officials contend that attempting to do so without incontrovertible evidence, which they said they do not possess, would spark massive protests.
"The government is being held hostage by the extremists," said an Asian diplomat in Jakarta, the capital. "Nobody wants to take them on."
The rise of conservative Islam seems a clear trend in a country that has long prided itself in having the world's most liberal Muslims. In Jakarta, where billboards tout Bintang beer and feature scantily clad models, more young women are opting to wear head scarves, more men show up at mosques for Friday prayers and more families are fasting during Ramadan, according to Muslim leaders.
In a recent survey conducted by the State University of Islamic Studies, 58 percent of respondents across the country said they supported the idea of transforming Indonesia into an Islamic state run by Muslim clerics. More than 60 percent said the government should implement some form of sharia. But the survey also found that a sizable majority are opposed to other changes sought by suchgroups as the Taliban Brigade, including arresting Muslims who do not fast during Ramadan and having police ensure that Muslims pray five times a day.
Although President Megawati Sukarnoputri and most of parliament remain opposed to imposing sharia nationwide, the government has permitted local officials in Aceh, a province on the northern tip of Sumatra island, to adopt a limited form of sharia in an effort to wrest popular support from separatist rebels. As a first step, they ordered residents last month to follow a new dress code -- women have to cover all parts of their body except their face, hands and the soles of their feet. The officials said they were forming a religious police force to enforce the rules.
The question of how much sharia is enough, and how much is too much, is emerging as one of the most contentious issues in this young democracy of more than 220 million people.
Tasikmalaya, located about 150 miles southeast of Jakarta, provides a preview of the broader fight. Here, the debate over sharia already is wrenching politicians, religious leaders, business owners and ordinary people.
"This is the most important test for the future of this country," said Abshar-Abdullah lam Network. "It's a test of whether moderate or conservative Islam will prevail."
Democracy Vs. Sharia
Islam arrived in the islands that now Indonesia about 700 years ago, with traders from India and the Middle East schooled in the moderate Sufi branch of the religion. Because it was not imposed by conquerors, the new adherents were not compelled to renounce their Buddhist, Hindu and indigenous religious practices. The result was a hybrid form of Islam that coexisted with local traditions.
But by the end of the 19th century, as more Indonesian Muslims traveled to Arab countries and interacted with orthodox Muslims, a more conservative variety of Islam began to take hold. By 1945, when Indonesia won its independence from the Netherlands, liberal and conservative Muslims struggled for dominance. The conservatives demanded that the new constitution include a clause requiring Muslims to practice sharia. But moderate Muslim nationalists, led by the founding president, Sukarno, instead enacted an anti-sharia ideology called pancasila that accommodated five state-recognized religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Sukarno's successor, Suharto, was more aggressive in suppressing Muslim groups that were seen threatening the state. Advocacy of an Islamic state was deemed subversion. Hundreds of Muslim leaders were jailed and publications were banned. Muslim political parties had to pledge fealty to the government.
But when the Suharto dictatorship ended in 1998 after 32 years, and Indonesia embarked on a turbulent democratic transition, all those restrictions evaporated. Suddenly, clerics and political parties were free to renew their calls for sharia.
"Pancasila has been a disaster for our country," said Irfan S. Awwas, the leader of the Indonesian Mujahadeen Council. "We are the world's biggest Muslim country. It is our right to be governed by sharia."
Awwas spent 13 years in prison on subversion charges during Suharto's reign for promoting sharia. Now he holds pro-sharia rallies across the country.
The growth of the Mujahadeen Council and other conservative groups has been fueled in part by a feeling that radical Islam is the prescription to quell the poverty, crime and other social problems that have wracked Indonesia since Suharto's downfall.
"With him gone, we are supposedly in a period of reform, but it's not changing people's lives," said Ubaydillah Salman, the managing editor of Sabili, a Muslim magazine that has written glowing stories about the Taliban Brigade. "People are frustrated, and they see Islam as the answer to all their problems."
The Laskar Jihad, like fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the Arab world, has won new members because it has set up health clinics and schools in poor communities. Sharia supporters also say strict Islamic punishments will combat crime.
Political parties that support the implementation of sharia have made headway. The leader of the largest such party was elected vice president last year, and collectively, the parties control 24 percent of the seats in parliament. Still, most political leaders and the country's largest Muslim groups have refused to bend to demands to impose sharia.
"It's a simple-minded solution for our very complicated problems," said Ahmad Syafii Maarif, the chairman of Muhammadiyah, a Muslim social organization with 10 million members. "Adopting sharia will just divide our society further."
Activists promoting sharia have set their sights not on the national parliament in Jakarta but on smaller cities such as Tasikmalaya, which have recently been given expanded lawmaking powers by the central government. Last year, after being lobbied by a coalition of pro-sharia groups, the local legislature passed a five-year plan that calls for Tasikmalaya to develop as a center of Islamic values.
"Religious preaching and government policies should go hand in hand," said the governor of Tasikmalaya, Tatang F. Hakim. "It is our responsibility to follow the demands of the people."
But Abdul Fatah Syamsuddin, leader of the pro-sharia Islamic Youth Forum, said local police have been slow to enforce laws against prostitution and pornography. And, he said, the police have not cracked down on alcohol sales because a law banning liquor is still being debated by the legislature.
"That's why the Taliban Brigade is important," he said. "They are taking matters into their own hands."
A City Transformed
After expounding on the benefits of sharia for an hour in his living room, Zainal Mutaqqien, the Taliban Brigade leader, jumped out of his chair and unlocked a large wooden cabinet to the right of a poster of bin Laden.
Out came a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch whisky, followed by a jug of Burgundy, a flask of creme de cacao, some creme de menthe and a liter of Cointreau.
"This is what we've seized," he gushed. "This shouldn't be allowed in Tasikmalaya."
Sensing his boss's excitement, an aide rushed off to retrieve a plastic bag containing dozens of pornographic video discs, including volumes one through six of a compilation titled "American Hard-Core."
"Nobody should be watching this filth," he said.
The governor's edicts and exhortations, as well as the Taliban Brigade's raids, have transformed this city and the surrounding district, a lush farming region that is home to 2 million people. Women who used to walk through the market with their long hair waving in the wind now wear scarves. Karaoke parlors, theaters and cafes have shut down. The restaurant at the Mahkota Hotel, like almost every eatery here, has stopped offering liquor.
At the Sinta Cafe, only one table was occupied on a recent Friday night. The management stopped serving liquor six months ago after two Taliban Brigade warnings. Beer, said entertainment manager Deni Wardiana, was still available but was not on the menu.
"What's wrong with a drink?" he said. "It should be up to people to choose."
But several residents and business owners said they were unwilling to confront the Taliban Brigade or even talk to government officials.
"People are too scared," said Reni, a secretary who was sipping a beer with her daughter and son-in-law at the Sinta Cafe. "The Taliban have connections with the police."
During the day, Reni said, she wears loose clothes and a head scarf. At the cafe, however, she was dressed in a tight pink top, her coifed bob uncovered. "Not wearing a head scarf doesn't mean I don't love Allah," she noted.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
