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March 31, 2006

Indonesia: Muslims Criticise Tony Blair's Policies

We wrote earlier that Tony Blair was going to have a brief visit to Indonesia, the first visit by a British premier to the nation since Margaret Thatcher met with the dictator Suharto in 1985.

The visit has now come to a close, and Blair should now have returned to British soil. But, according to the Independent, the China People's Daily, the Khaleej Times and the UK Times, Tony Blair was given a rough time by both Muslim leaders and Muslim students.

On Thursday morning, at the palace of the Indonesian President, Blair met Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the president, and also five other Muslim leaders. Here, he also met with leaders of five Muslim organisations. These included Hasyim Muzadi, who is head of the Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, which has 40 million members. He also saw Din Syamsuddin, chairman of the second largest group, the Muhammadiyah, which has 30 million members.

President Yudhoyono said later of his meeting: "We agreed to increase the efficiency in our efforts in fighting transnational crimes like terrorism." Blair spoke to him about the two nations working closely on methods of combatting international terrorism. Neither leader elucidated further on the nature of this future cooperation.

According to Din Syamsuddin, the meeting with the Muslim leaders was not so cordial. He said that the leaders had urged Blair to withdraw troops from Iraq and also to talk to the recently-elected Palestinian terrorist organisation, Hamas.

"He didn't respond specifically to our requests, but hopefully tonight he will wake up and realise our suggestions make good sense", Din Syamsuddin said.

"To us, the dialogue was positive. Different opinions must be settled through dialogue", DIn said.

After the visit to the Presidential Palace, Blair was then taken to the Pondok Pesantren Darunnajah, a Muslim boarding school which is, bizarrely, twinned with the Holy Family School in Keighley, West Yorkshire (constituency of Ann Cryer).

When he arrived, he was applauded by pupils, and entertained with displays of martial arts and dancing. He also heard the girls' school band singing John Lennon's Imagine, whose lyrics begin: "Imagine there's no heaven, no religion too..."

It was after this, when Blair engaged in a question and answer session that Blair received a tough grilling from the students.

The teenage students, addressing Blair as "his excelency" questioned him about their "brothers and sisters" in Palestine and Iraq.

The first question involved interrogating Blair about the case of the schoolgirl from Luton, Shabina Begum, who last week lost her fight to wear a head-to-toe garment, a jilbab while she had been a pupil at Denbigh High School. Begum had violated the school's dress code, and last March had won a ruling against her school. The recent case involving the girl, who is supported by Hizb ut-Tahrir, of which her brother is a member, was taken to the House of Lords. The lawyer for the girl, ironically, had been Cherie Booth Blair QC, Blair's wife. On March 22 the House of Lords ruled that the school had been within its rights to demand strict following of its uniform code, and Begum lost. Begum's parents are dead, and her Islamist brother has tried to make political capital out of the case. A further irony is that Blair is trying to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain.

Confronted with a question about this case, Blair replied: "We leave it up to the individual school. Some schools permit it, some do not, but we let the final decision be with the school. There are different views in my country about this."

Another student asked if Blair would be persuading his "best friend" George W Bush to end the "war" in Iraq. Blair relied on his usual defence of describing the situation under Saddam. Another student asked how he would feel if he had been an Iraqi civilian whose relatives had been killed in the conflict. Blair spoke of how people in Iraq and Afghanistan now had the ability to vote, and spoke of how the students had a view on America which he did not share.

Echoing the points raised by the five Muslim leaders in the morning, students questioned him about the Palestine issue and spoke of ending the war against their "brothers and sisters" on the Palestinian side.

Blair answered: "I agree with you. There’s no more important issue than to bring peace between Israel and Palestine. This has been difficult but I will try to do my best to ensure we can bring peace there."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 31, 2006 3:20 PM

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