[ppi] [ppiindia] INDONESIA: Muslim moralists, or thugs in robes?

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INDONESIA: Muslim moralists, or thugs in robes?
Islamic Defenders Front in media spotlight for attacking Playboy offices

South China Morning Post
Saturday, April 22, 2006



Jakarta --- With its trademark white uniforms and noisy protests, the hardline 
Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) has become the highly visible face of radical 
Islam in Indonesia.

But critics charge its members are little more than thugs in robes.

Claiming a membership of several thousand, with links to various Muslim groups, 
the eight-year-old FPI made international headlines in 1999 when it launched 
violent anti-vice raids on bars and other venues deemed sinful.

It was in the media spotlight again last week when 300 members -- scandalised 
by the local debut of Playboy in Muslim-majority Indonesia -- attacked the 
magazine's editorial office, lobbing rocks at police officers and injuring two.

The magazine suspended operations on Thursday, with its editor saying security 
was taking precedence over the publishing of a second edition.

"Playboy is synonymous with pornography," FPI leader Muhammad Rizieq Shihab 
said last week. "The name itself means a man who likes to play around with 
women. Who can guarantee that they won't publish nudity in the future?"

Separate FPI protests have also forced a local tabloid to apologise for 
publishing the controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet and, with another 
Muslim group, the organisation has managed to close dozens of Christian 
churches.

The group also managed to close the main event on Jakarta's contemporary art 
calendar last September when it was outraged by a work depicting a nearly-nude 
male.

But commentators wonder whether a few hundred demonstrators should be able to 
impose their values on a country of 220 million.

In an editorial on Monday, The Jakarta Post railed against these "storm 
troopers of God and ideology", comparing the FPI and other militants to Italy's 
fascist Blackshirts.

"In a confused libertarian society such as ours, lawlessness is glorified and 
agents of chaos knighted as persons of authority," the editorial said.

Although 88 per cent of Indonesians are Muslims, most practise a tolerant form 
of the faith and do not appear to support FPI demands.

"It's part of the growing vocalism of conservatives. I'm not so sure that more 
noise represents more people," Bambang Harymurti, editor of Indonesia's leading 
investigative magazine, Tempo, said.

FPI members are rarely prosecuted for their attacks. By dressing in flowing 
Arabic robes and claiming to represent the Islamic community, the FPI and other 
hardline Muslim groups are able to take the moral high ground, analysts say.

"Police are seen to be corrupt by society, so they are a bit afraid of someone 
who does something for morality," Mr Harymurti said.

The Playboy demonstrations are largely seen as part of a push among 
conservatives for parliament to adopt a wide-ranging anti-pornography law that 
would ban kissing in public, observers say.

"It's a political hot potato," said Martin Hughes, a security analyst at 
Control Risks, a risk consultancy, referring to Playboy and the pornography 
debate.

"The pendulum of law and order has swung in the other direction [from when 
Indonesian police were notorious for their heavy-handedness].

"Police are a lot more image sensitive. If they were seen to crack down heavily 
on FPI then lots of people would think the police support Playboy."

Some fear the FPI is not just an activist group lobbying for their fellow 
Muslims but rather Islamic hardliners trying to convert multi-ethnic and 
religiously tolerant Indonesia into a fundamentalist state.

Date Posted: 4/22/2006


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