Indonesia’s bid to root out Islamists throws spotlight on universities
NUSA DUA: When students at Indonesia’s prestigious Institute of Agricultural Studies swore an oath to support a caliphate in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country last year, a video of the event went viral and the government grew alarmed. Months later, Indonesian President Joko Widodo banned the decades-old hardline group Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), which organized the student pledge, and declared its goal to set up a caliphate was incompatible with the constitution and could threaten security.
Last month, under prodding from the government, thousands of students across the nation made an anti-radicalism pledge. It followed an unprecedented gathering in late September of some 3,000 academics in Bali, who also pledged to fight extremism and defend the secular constitution. The campaign against extremism in education comes amid a rise of a hardline, politicized Islam in Indonesia, which until recently had occupied the fringe of the nation’s politics. “Radical organizations can spread like a virus in universities,” said Professor Muhammad Sirozi, rector of the State Islamic University Raden Fatah in Palembang on Sumatra.
“These are not the organizations that students form themselves, but they are from outside,” he said at a briefing that outlined ways to help universities tackle radicalism following the Bali conference. The campaign to root out boosters of the caliphate is not just confined to schools. A document collated by Indonesia’s intelligence agency lists 1,300 HTI members in senior posts in the civil service, universities, the military and police. An intelligence source confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was reviewed by Reuters. Some of those on it declined to comment after being contacted, but HTI’s former spokesman Ismail Yusanto said it did include some of its members.
Suharto tactics
Illustrating how a politicized brand of Islam has gained traction, nearly 20 percent of high school and university students in Indonesia support the establishment of a caliphate, a survey showed last week. Moreover, around one in four of the 4,200 Muslim students in the survey by pollster Alvara said they were, to varying degrees, ready to wage jihad to achieve this. Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international organisation, established by a Palestinian Islamic scholar in 1953, has been banned in some Arab, Asian and European countries. One of its former members in Indonesia is Bahrun Naim, who went to fight for Islamic State in Syria and is accused of masterminding a series of attacks in Indonesia since early last year. An officially registered organization in Indonesia since 2000, HTI has sought a judicial review in the constitutional court over its disbanding. “They never gave us a chance to defend ourselves. Is it not an authoritarian and repressive action?” said HTI spokesman Yusanto, who likened the crackdown to the tactics used against opponents under former strongman President Suharto. —Reuters