Back in 2002, scrutiny was focused on a group of militants who have now receded somewhat. The article I wrote below was controversial at the time. It does not seem so controversial today.
I found the article in an Indian website (http://www.hvk.org/2003/0103/main.html, but it is cited in various publications, including here:
https://www.hudson.org/content/researchattachments/attachment/1150/20070302_elirazfinal.pdf
http://studylibid.com/doc/1204048/1-%E2%80%9Cislam-is-the-solution%E2%80%9D-dakwah-and-democracy-in
The Past Catches up
Author: Dini Djalal
Publication: Far Eastern Economic Review
Date: November 14, 2002
As The Hunt Steps Up for Islamic militants in Indonesia, much of the focus is likely to fall on a small but significant community with ancient ties to the Arabian Peninsula. This might seem unfair but is almost inevitable for the estimated 5 million Indonesians of Yemeni descent, whose forefathers came as traders and missionaries to the sprawling Indonesian archipelago over the past 6oo years.
That's partly because of signs of growing Islamic conservatism among a community known as the hadrami - dubbed locally "Arab Indonesians." But it's also due to their exposure to militancy in Yemen through the annual dispatch of hundreds of youths to religious schools in the republic, which is the ancestral home of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Moreover, four of the most prominent Islamic militants in Indonesia are hadrami, including Abu Bakar Bashir the alleged spiritual leader of the Al Qaeda linked Jemaah Islamiah network, which the United States and the United Nations have listed as a terrorist organization.
The U. S., which has long seen Yemen as a haven for Muslim extremists, has been piling the pressure on Indonesia to tackle terrorism at home since the deadly October 12 bomb blasts in the tourist resort of Bali. And the temptation to draw a link between Islamic militants in the two countries, through the hadrami connection, is great. Indeed, U.S. intelligence officials have claimed that five Yemeni nationals came to Indonesia on an aborted bombing mission against U.S. facilities last year and based them selves at a religious institution run by Arab Indonesians in East Java.
Reports that Arab Indonesian students have been sent home from Yemen for being "extremist" will not help either, says Azyumardi Azra of the State Islamic Studies Institute in Jakarta.
Yemen has been cooperating with U.S forces and has arrested dozens of alleged Al Qaeda operatives, but the threat remains. Six suspected Al Qaeda members were killed on November 3 when their vehicle was hit by a missile fired from an unmanned U.S. aircraft in Yemen's Marib oil-producing region. They included a suspect in the deadly attack two years ago on the U. S. destroyer Cole in the south Yemen port of Aden.
Jakarta, in contrast, has been reluctant to take on Indonesian militants, but the problem is now at the fore and the government risks losing overseas aid and investment through inaction. And this crunch comes at a time when many Indonesians are coming to question the role played by the hadrami in the growing radicalization of Islamic politics. That includes calls by hadrami moderates and radicals alike for the adoption of sharia, or Islamic law, even if they differ over how it should be implemented.
Many of the hadrami elite, including Islamic moderates and fundamentalists, are alumni of schools and colleges run by the Al Irsyad organization, which was set up by the hadrami almost a century ago. Abu Bakar Bashir, for example, was head of an Al Irsyad youth group in Solo, Central Java in the 1960s, says hadrami politician and former Al Irsyad chief Faisal Baasir, adding that the controversial cleric broke away to form a more hardline religious school of his own.
Baasir, a leading light in the Islam-based United Development Party, remembers another former faculty member now making headlines: Ja'far Umar Thalib. He heads the Laskar jihad, a Muslim militia accused of prolonging sectarian violence in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi and Maluku provinces. Thalib clashed with AI Irsyad administrators while he was a student, and again as a teacher in Central Java, where he settled after fighting against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the i98os. He left for the Middle East in 1991, where he studied Salafism, a school of Islam that advocates puritanism-if necessary through violence.
The emergence of leading Islamic radicals from among the hadrami community and its educational network indicates that Indonesia has "an Arab problem," says a prominent Javanese politician. But moderate hadramis say it is wrong to tar the whole community because of the radicalism of a minority.
"I don't feel that just because I am Arab, I have this mission. Many Arab youth are also wayward Muslims," says Baasir, dismissing a popular perception among Indonesians that hadramis feel a duty to correct Indonesia's syncretic brand of Islam. Hadramis have traditionally tended to be more conservative than most other Muslims in Indonesia and indigenous Indonesians regard the Arab clerics as more holy and their community as more versed in Islam.
But religious rifts have intensified in the hadrami community since the departure of former President Suharto, who kept the lid on religious fundamentalism during his 1965-98 rule. This is most clearly apparent in Al Irsyad, which was established in I9'3 in a bid to establish a more egalitarian Muslim society.
Over the years, the modernist Al Irsyad proved to be very influential, operating 140 missions and several hospitals nationwide. Its graduates are in the top echelons of national politics: Baasir is a popular candidate to replace Vice-President Hamzah Haz as head of the United Development Party, and Fuad Bawazier, a finance minister under Suharto, is a key political fund-raiser.
In its early years, the zeal among hadramis to expand Al Irsyad was considerable. This was due as much to its support of Islamic law, as to its egalitarian principles. But while an inherent conservatism was kept in check under Suharto, a chasm has developed in the past four years. Today the institution has effectively split into two organizations, with one run by fundamentalists eager to introduce an Islamic state and law, and the other by moderates. "The moderates failed to assert control. The moderates are just not vocal enough," laments human rights activist Munir, also a hadrami.
This is a cause of fundamental concern for many Indonesians, who are also alarmed at the growing links between hadramis and Yemen, despite claims by moderates such as Munir that most hadramis retain no family ties in the Arab state, from whose southern province of Hadhramaut they take their name.
But since the unification of Yemen in 1990 on the fall of a Marxist government in the former South Yemen, hundreds of Indonesians have travelled each year to study at religious schools in Yemen, many of them in rural communities. Radicalism, analysts believe, is honed in such independent communities. Indonesians are among some 3,000 students studying Salafism in the dusty northern Yemen village of Dammaj under Sheik Muqbel bin Hadi al-Wadie, reputedly a seminal influence on Osama bin Laden.
The movement of students, and potentially militants, between the two countries was boosted earlier this year by the airline Yemenia's decision to open a twice-weekly flight linking Sanaa and Jakarta. But dear signs are emerging that the Yemen government is beginning to take measures to try and prevent the de facto export of Islamic militancy.
YEMEN CRACKS DOWN
Habib Abdul Rahman Al Habsyi, a noted 61-year-old cleric, draws large numbers of young students to classes he runs at a mosque in Jakarta. He sends hundreds to Yemen every year for religious study and he also invites Yemeni clerics to teach in Indonesia. But Al Habsyi, whose family have been in Indonesia for 300 years, claims the land of his ancestors has started rejecting many of the visa applications from his students and he blames Washington. 'The U. S. is afraid that Indonesian students will become great teachers of Islam and return to make Indonesia into a great Muslim state. They want to wipe out Islam from Indonesia," he asserts.
Yemen's Ambassador to Indonesia, Ahmed Salem Saleh Al-Wahishi, will not elaborate on the deportations or visa limitations, saying only that there is increased cooperation between the two countries' education agencies. But Alwi Shihab, a hadrami and former foreign minister, insists that an Islamic education in Yemen does not equate with militancy. He points out that there are many more fundamentalist schools in Saudi Arabia, where Indonesians study, while the influence of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in Indonesia is also important.
Indeed, the problem of growing conservatism plagues nearly all Muslim groups in Indonesia. Fundamentalists often conceal their hardline beliefs because of the stigma attached, says Shihab. But others say the puritan movement is gaining strength.
"Perhaps the leadership of the mainstream Islamic organisations are not responsive enough in addressing the aspirations of the people," says analyst Hamid Basyaib of Jakarta's Aksara Foundation, referring to mainstream Muslim mass organisations such as the Muhamadiyah and the Nahdlatul Ulama. And he warns that they "should not be surprised if they are usurped by the hardliners."
