5 Jun
The FPI and Me
The unprovoked and vicious assault by the self-styled Islam Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam – FPI) on the National Alliance for the Freedom of Faith and Religion (Aliansi Kebangsaan untuk Kebebasan Berkeyakinan dan Beragama – AKKBB) on Sunday afternoon has rightly been condemned.
Rightly too, in my opinion, there are calls for the disbanding of FPI – which the government argues is difficult.
FPI has a history of thuggery, much of which I have commented on since I launched Jakartass in 2004. I’ve selected excerpts from these posts and put them in chronological order. Most of the links I had then are now inaccessible or offline; however much background information is readily available.
26th October 2004
Following the trashing of bars by the self-styled Islam Defenders Front (FPI), it was reported that the National Police had yet to ‘interrogate’ any of the thugs. A full eye-witness account of the intimidation and extortion that occurred on Friday night was posted by the Reveller on Jakarta BlokM.
21st January 2005
To be fair, the group that targeted drinking haunts in Jakarta during Ramadan, FPI, are currently searching for bodies in Aceh (post-Tsunami).
27th January 2005
According to reports, the leader of an anti-corruption watchdog devoted to exposing crimes by state officials has been arrested in Aceh province for improper handling of aid intended for tsunami victims.
Farid Faqih, chairman of Government Watch (GOWA), and three members of the radical Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) were arrested on yesterday evening on suspicion of violating procedures in the storage and use of aid. The four were reportedly arrested by Air Force officers at the Sultan Iskandar Muda Airbase and handed over to police for further investigation.
(NB. Something I didn’t comment on at the time were the FPI attacks on Christian aid organisations active in Aceh following the Tsunami. But if I had, I would also have severely criticised those organisations proselytising through their overt altruism.)
21st February 2005
The Indonesian government has rejected warnings in travel advisories issued over the weekend, (by the Australian and New Zealand governments) which said terrorists were planning attacks against foreign aid workers involved on relief efforts in areas stricken by the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami.
Any attacks would be provoked by Indonesia’s own Islamic loonies, the FPI and the MMI. These thugs are the vigilante groups which have stirred up inter-communal strife in Maluku, Sulawesi and the bars of BlokM and elsewhere in Jakarta.
3rd August 2005
Indonesia’s reputation as a bastion of moderate, tolerant Islam has been cast in doubt after the nation’s ulemas council (MUI) issued 11 fatwas banning liberal Islamic thought, religious pluralism, inter-faith marriage, inter-faith prayers led by non-Muslims and women leading prayers attended by men.
This, in itself, doesn’t bother me. Being in favour of a woman’s right to choose and the use of contraception I also ignore Catholic dogmatic claptrap.
What both religions have in common though is an assertion of their right to interfere in civil society by determining secular laws and here in Indonesia this is seemingly welcomed. There is a Ministry of Religious Affairs, currently under investigation for massive embezzlement of haj funds.
Yet the MUI is not a state institution. It can issue fatwa and orders to Muslims, but they are not binding and it does not have the authority to enforce them. Legal authorities in the government have no obligation to enforce the edicts while Muslims are not obliged to comply with them.
Because the MUI has no authority to enforce the controversial fatwa, it is the hard-line groups, like the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) who appear at the frontline to pressure the authorities to enforce them. If they believe the authorities have failed, they (the hard-line groups) could directly come to the field to enforce them.
The MUI , whose influence is strongest in poorly educated rural communities, believes liberal teachings – defined as those promoting rational rather than literal interpretations of religious texts – are “dangerous and misleading”.
In other words, we have a major Islamic organisation here in Indonesia whose teachings directly accord with the leanings of potential al-Qaeda recruits.
30th August 2005
This past month, Muslim fundamentalists, the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), have been attacking Christian ‘house churches’ in Bandung and forcing their closure. Before that, they attacked and forced the closure of a complex of a minor Islamic sect, Ahmadiyah, accusing it of heresy.
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The now defunct Laksamana.net aka Paras Indonesia focused on the news that Gus Dur, the president before last, has warned that Banser, the security task force of the nation’s largest Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), would be mobilized against FPI if the government fails to stop the radical group from attacking churches.
We’re still waiting, Gus.
That Xmas, and probably as a PR exercise, the FPI offered to guard churches.
7th February 2006
Following the Danish cartoons controversy, (which this week has seen a suicide bomber attack the Danish embassy in Pakistan), in Bandung, protest coordinator Asep Syarifuddin from the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) warned that the group would transport Danes to the airport to be repatriated.
So once again a few righteous thugs dictate to others.
SBY has declared that the government was constitutionally bound to protect freedom of religion and the right of all people to practice their faith.
“In this country, there is no such thing as religions that are recognized or not recognized by the state. The Constitution guarantees the freedom of every citizen to have a religion and to practice their faith. The state shall never interfere in any religious teachings. The duty of the state is to protect, serve and facilitate the building and maintenance of places of worship and to encourage citizens to become good followers of their religions.”
“…. to encourage citizens to become good followers of their religions.” ??
Surely it’s time for the government to clamp down on the FPI. Their actions would appear to be treasonable, yet if they can be encouraged to become good citizens, then they could yet become good followers of their faith, Islam.
16th March 2007
Playboy Editor in Indonesia Found Guilty
.… Protesters Call for Death Sentence.
Eh? The Indonesian edition of the magazine …. did not feature nudity and was not as risqué as other magazines on sale in Indonesia.
More than 150 members of the Indonesian People Forum (aka Islamic Defenders Front – FPI) said Erwin Arnada, the editor of Playboy Indonesia, should die for his crimes, chanting “hang him, hang him.”
So what would they shout if Playboy did have tit pictures?
“Hang, draw and quarter him”?
“Boil him in oil.”?
It’s surely time these FPI lot grew up and, at the very least, learnt how to masturbate preferably in private. They are just a bunch of wankers after all.
Aren’t there more important things to focus their energies on? Such as ….
3rd April 2007
Oigal set himself a task: to find Indonesia’s most liveable province/city/town/village. He set various “subjective” criteria, which are roughly what I would have chosen for myself.
I suggested Lubuk Sikaping in West Sumatra because, although a solid Muslim area, it is tolerant and FPI (and assorted other nutters) free. Probably.
Shortly after the Bali bombs went off, I was up there and the provincial chief of police told the town’s chief of police to look after Paul, the proprietor of Hotel Rimbo, and me ~ the only two westerners in town. He said, “There are no terrorists in my area.”
Footnote
In an interview for the Australian TV channel, ABCTV, Habib Rizieq, founder of FPI had this to say (translated from Indonesian): I felt called to work in the community because I saw all sorts of immorality there, such as ecstasy use, prostitution, gambling, not to mention thuggery, the way thugs in the street are standing over people, using force, intimidating people. They don’t hesitate to kidnap people, assault people. So I felt called to oppose all that.
A thug and a hypocrite?
these people don’t even understand a word of what they’re saying.
what an ironic bunch of hypocrites those Freaking Pitiful Imbeciles are….
Is it true that one time they were raiding some grill restaurant because the put a big sign of things like Thai Grill and American Grill, and FPI thought the restaurant was selling GIRLS? Can someone be more idiot than them?
as for the most liveable province in indonesia, i think all of them are safe. it’s not safe if you are against the mainstream thinking of the majority, but if you are all for it, then it should not be a problem.
This was also a topic of a conversation with a friend of mine recently.
the fpi are just puppets. the big question is who is yanking their strings? who gives them this protection?
the answer to that i guess is who has the most to gain from their actions?
someone with a lot of power out there is allowing these thugs to run free. some investigative journalism is called for methinks but it’s unlikely for obvious reasons.
Anita.
I think you’re giving FPI to much credit. Misreading girls and grills is one thing, but can they actually read anything other than Arabic script?
^ haha, J got the point there… perhaps the only English words they can spell correctly are those like “bomb” and “attack” or “America” and “Afghanistan”…
yeah
they have a bad temprament
but maybe sometimes we will need them
The eyewitness report is on the Blok M web site, and I was that witness. Here’s the link:
http://jakartablokm.com/updates/2004/update-oct-04.htm
Muslimaya.
How can you justify that “maybe sometimes we will need them“?
Who’s “we”?
And then let me ask, ‘when’?, ‘where’? and ‘why’?
Thanks, Rev.
I should have checked with you first. Anyway, it’s now on my post.
You do, of course, ask the question which is of most relevance, one asked above by mai pen rai (and it does matter mpr): Who’s the puppet master?
The assault on Sunday was carried out in full view of the police, who expected trouble and had so-warned the AKKBB. Yet the police did nothing to stop the mayhem “in case it inflamed tempers.”
Whilst not condoning violence, it’s worth noting that FPI offices in staunch Muslim areas such as East Java have been trashed by local residents.
FPI Yes!
I was driving past Monas as this was kicking off, me and the wife and kids had decided to visit Monas but given the huge PDI-P rally we decided to give the park a miss and go to Ancol instead, as we drove past Istiqlal Mosque (how did they get permission to rally there?) the FPI came streaming out in file, four abreast, about twelve hundred of them.
The police actually directed traffic to allow them to proceed straight to Monas so the cops knew damned well they were on the way, the cops also knew the ‘tolerance’ demonstrators were there too and indeed as J says they had actually warned the latter there could be aggro, but they didn’t do a damned thing to stop it.
Nor indeed did the 100,000 PDI-P demonstrators who vastly outnumbered the FPI fascists and who were ostensibly rallying in support of Pancasila but who decided that getting on the bus for home was of more importance than actually defending their supposedly cherished political principle.
What “cherished political principle”, Miko?
Apart from trying to grab as many positions of theoretical power – governors, regents etc. – often in coalition with opportunists from whichever political party will have them, I haven’t much of a clue as to what any of them purport to stand for.
At least FPI make their viewpoint very clear.
The principle of “Pancasila”, the PDI-P rally was called for last Sunday as it was the 63rd anniversary of the founding of that principle, all the marchers had t-shirts of Mega and her Da with “Indonesia” and “Pancasila” written on them.
To collect a hundred thousand people to demonstrate in support of a national ideal of tolerance and unity and then quietly walk away while a few hundred thugs beat up people demonstrating for tolerance is akin to having a mass rally against racism and ignoring fascists who are beating up black people in front of your very eyes.