COVER STORY Standing Up for Islam
Muslims are fighting back—not just against the West but also against the militancy in their midst. A TIME Special Report on the diversity of Islam in Asia
Poso, December 2001: They stamp into the bare room in heavy combat boots, three men dressed entirely in black, trailing the faint scent of smoke. These are the warriors of Laskar Jihad—the Army of Jihad—and their self-proclaimed mission is to protect their brothers in Islam. The men have come from a night spent burning nearby Christian villages and forcing their occupants to flee, all part of a concerted campaign of religious cleansing in the ravaged countryside surrounding the town of Poso on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Deputy commander Mohammad Ichsan, sweating heavily in a black turtleneck, is still thrumming with adrenaline.
Islam is a religion of peace, he asserts. But that doesn't mean Muslims stand by if attacked. "If one Muslim is killed by a Christian," he says, "we're going to chase him to his grave."
Muslim minorities often suffer in countries like India or the Philippines. But when they are the dominant group, Muslims also persecute minorities, usually when they feel that their fellow believers are under attack or their faith dishonored. In the past three years, thousands have died in religious clashes in Central Sulawesi, many from the minority Christian community. The bulk of the dead have been local villagers; most of the fighters on the Muslim side are from outside groups like Laskar Jihad, which is based in faraway Yogyakarta.
As men like Ichsan so grimly attest, the deep emotions roused by a perceived assault on the ummah (community of the Islamic faithful) can be terrible to behold—or control. "The West must understand," says Ahmad Suhelmi, an Islamic scholar at the University of Indonesia, "that the ummah is a unity that cannot be divided. It's like a human body—if you hurt even the little finger the whole body feels the pain." That certainly makes a potent rallying cry. And Indonesia has experienced the worst examples of organized vengeance by self-proclaimed guardians of Islam. In the country's other main battleground for Christians and Muslims, the Maluku Islands, some 10,000 have died in the past four years, including thousands of women and children, some of them tortured and mutilated. Militias such as Laskar Jihad helped keep the killings going, perpetuating and widening a conflict that might have been contained had it remained purely local. There has been almost no bloodshed in the Malukus since Laskar Jihad fighters abruptly withdrew in the wake of the Bali bombings last October.
Months before, when fighting was still raging in the Malukus and Sulawesi, a band of young boys raced through the grimy rooms of the Laskar Jihad headquarters in Poso. Some wore balaclavas and wielded machetes and air guns as they repeatedly—and incongruously—shouted the traditional Islamic greeting "Assalamu' alaikum [may peace be with you]." Non-Muslim minorities in Indonesia, and the world over, can only hope that boys like these grow up to follow their religion's gentle counsel rather than the deeds of their black-clad role models.
