Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yesterday warned that the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country was confronting a rising tide of Islamic radicalism, after a spate of hate crimes and bombings.
Yudhoyono said the archipelago’s reputation for tolerance and pluralism was under attack by extremists bent on turning the nation of 240 million people into a strict Islamic state.
The country — praised by US President Barack Obama in November as a “model” of tolerance for the world — has been shaken by bloody assaults on religious minorities and persistent attacks by homegrown terror groups.
“I have witnessed that there has been a radicalization movement in this nation with religious and ideological motives,” Yudhoyono said in a speech at a national development conference in Jakarta. “If we continue to let this happen, it will threaten the character of our nation and our people.”
Yudhoyono has allied himself with conservative Muslims in the government and has rarely spoken out against extremist violence, which often goes unpunished.
However, yesterday he said Islamic extremists, who make up a small but very vocal section of Indonesia’s 200 million Muslims, were encouraging young Indonesians to “love violence” and reject the law of the diverse country.
“In the long term ... if it continues, it will change the character of our communities which are tolerant and love harmony and peace,” he said.
“It must not happen, we should not be passive ... We have to take responsibility to save this nation and save its people and its future,” Yudhoyono said.
Thirty people were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque during Friday prayers in Cirebon, West Java, earlier this month.
Police also foiled a plot to blow up a church in Jakarta over Easter.
A suspicious package was found yesterday near the British consulate and an office building hosting international media organizations in Jakarta, police said.
Last month a series of parcel bombs were sent to liberal Muslims, a popular rock singer and a counter-terrorism official, but no one was killed.
Indonesia has won praise for rounding up hundreds of Islamist militants since it became a key battlefield in the “war on terror” in 2002 when local radicals detonated bombs on Bali, killing 202.
However, analysts say religious intolerance has grown under Yudhoyono’s rule and blame the authorities for tolerating and even cooperating with hardline elements.
They also say that while prominent terror networks have been contained, new threats are emerging from an array of loosely affiliated, independent militant cells.
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