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March 16, 2006
Indonesia: 10 Per Cent Of Muslims Support Suicide Bombings
A poll has recently been completed in all of Indonesia's 33 provinces, carried out by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI). The findings are reported in Reulters AlertNet, Australia's The Age and the Jakarta Post. The results are seen as a wake-up call for those policy makers who believe militancy is not popular in Indonesia.
The nation has a population of 220 million people, 85% of whom are Muslim. Indonesia's population comprises more Muslims than any other nation on earth. The survey was carried out in January this year, and is said by its authors to have an error margin of 2.9%.
With face to face to face interviews made with 1,173 respondents, the survey found that 11.2% of people thought that suicide bombings were justifiable on occasion and 0.5% said this method was always justifiable while defending Islam against its "enemies".
8% of respondents said they supported the actions of Noordin Mohammed Top, the Islamist financier and recruiter for Jemaah Islamiyah, who carried out the two bombings on Bali in 2002 and on October 1 last year. Top is the most wanted man in Indonesia, currently thought to be hiding out in rural parts of Java, main island in the archipelago which makes up Indonesia.
Religious radicalism, when it is translated into violent methods in the name of religion, has received enough support -- one in every 10 Muslims in Indonesia," LSI senior researcher Anies Baswedan said. "It seems small, but this is already quite a big support for extreme acts."
Almost half the respondents also believed in the punishment of stoning (to death) as a punishment for adultery. There were other significant signs of approval for sharia law, but the LSI said that these results may be misleading.
"Agreement to ideas based on sharia was quite high but this trend was not reflected in the support for political parties that fight for the imposition of sharia in Indonesia", stated Mr Baswedan. "Agreement does not equal to willingness to support (sharia) applications."
On political interests, the "moderate" outlooks of Nahdlatul Ulama is said to be supported by 70% of those polled. AMong minority groups, there was a higher tendency to support hardline conservative groups.
2.5% agreed with the Liberal Islam Network (JIL), but 11% agreed with the ideals of the Mujahidin Council of Holy Warriors (MMI) led by Abu Bakar Bashir (pictured, above), who is currently in jail for his involvement with "approving" the 2002 bombing on Bali, which killed 202 people. Bashir is the "spiritual leader" of Jemaah Islamiyah. MMI wishes to see Indonesia becoming an Islamic state. Bashir is due for release soon.
Currently, Indonesia is officially a secular democratic country, but following the downfall in 1998 of dictator Suharto, who forcefully repressed extreme Islamism, Islamic militants have proliferated and made encroachments into political affairs. The current government, elected in 2004, is oficially opposed to national implementation of sharia law, though it has been introduced in some provincial regions.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 16, 2006 8:35 PM
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