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
After Bali
Asia—and the world—reels after a devastating attack (Oct. 28, 2002)
Indonesia's Rage Culture
Why does a moderate Islamic nation serve as a hotbed for religious extremists? (Oct. 28, 2002)
Taking the Hard Road
Indonesia's tough choice: crack down on extremists and risk backlash—or incur America's wrath (Sep. 30, 2002)
The Moderate Majority
Asia's progressive Islam can be a strong weapon against extremism (Oct. 28, 2002)
A Jihadi's Tale
What drives so many Muslims to find peace in a holy war? Andrew Marshall seeks to understand the path taken by an Indonesian cleric
KEMAL JUFRI/IMAJI PRESS FOR TIME
Long Road: Habib's spiritual journey converted him from playboy to cleric
Habib Abdurrahman bin Ismail serves coffee in tiny cups etched with Arabic blessings, coffee so strongly perfumed that perhaps it liberates a memory, because soon Habib is talking about his Afghan war and about how a man smells just before he dies. "It was the strangest thing," he says, recalling a bloody firefight at Mahmud-e-Raqi, a town northeast of Kabul. "If a Muslim brother was about to be martyred, even before the bullet hit him, he would smell wonderful, like dupa [an Indonesian incense]. Then we knew death was close."
"And after the bullet hit him?"
Habib's kohl-rimmed eyes fill abruptly with tears: "The smell grew stronger."
Today death is far away. Shaded by rambutan trees, Habib and I sit on the veranda of his neat, one-story house in Parung, a 90-minute drive from Jakarta. Habib, 42, who dresses in Middle Eastern robes and turban, with his straggly beard authoritatively flecked with gray, left his native Indonesia in 1986 to spend five years fighting with the Afghan mujahedin against Soviet forces. Jihad, he tells me, "is probably in my genes."
I had sought out Habib to better understand what propelled him down the turbulent path to radical Islam. In many ways his is not a typical jihadi's tale. Fundamentalists are born into poverty, we're told, or raised in strict religious environments, while Habib's background was neither. Habib was raised as a Muslim, yes, but he was also a son, a student, a businessman, a driver of fast cars and a fan of Western rock before experiencing an epiphany that sharpened his sense of his Islamic self and set him on the road to jihad. Now a cleric who preaches about obeying the Koran and following the Sunna, the customs of the Prophet Muhammad, Habib is secure in his belief that his Islam is the one and true faith. But beyond that, he does not see the world in the stark, apocalyptic terms we've come to associate with a jihadi; he is no longer waging a battle to the death against infidels. Yet Habib's peripatetic life helps explain the visceral appeal of jihad to some Asian Muslims—at a time when many Muslims perceive their faith to be under threat by the U.S.-led war on terror, and especially with another Gulf War looming. What was it that persuaded Habib, like so many Asian Muslims before and after him, to fight to defend Islam before he could call himself a true Muslim?
Certainly his pedigree is impeccable. Habib claims direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad himself by way of a Yemeni missionary who settled in Indonesia 13 generations ago. One of Habib's 17th century ancestors raised a 9,000-strong army of holy warriors to avenge Dutch colonial atrocities in the Maluku Islands. Family history repeated itself. At the end of the 20th century, Habib would also become the self-styled commander of his own paramilitary force, called Laskar Jundullah, or Army of Allah, with hundreds of troops recruited and trained personally by him to fight Christians—again, in the Malukus. (It is unrelated to the Sulawesi-based Laskar Jundullah whose alleged co-founder Agus Dwikarna, a convicted terrorist, is in jail in Manila for possessing explosives.)
Yet spending time with Habib can make him seem paradoxical about his faith—like when I tell him which Jakarta hotel I'm staying at. "That's near the Pink Panther Club," he remarks. "You know it?" I didn't, but he did, along with every other nightclub in Indonesia's notoriously hard-partying capital. That's how I find out that Habib Abdurrahman bin Ismail was once a big-time playboy. Later he produces a photo album that dramatically illustrates the before and the after. Its last pages show him standing with two of Indonesia's best-known Islamic extremists, one of whom served a 10-year jail sentence for the 1985 bombing of the Buddhist temple of Borobudur, and was now guarded by Habib's troops. Its opening pages hold a photo of a much younger Habib, with long hair and a rakish moustache, sprawling in T shirt and jeans across the hood of a large, red automobile. "Mercedes-Benz, a 1971 model," explains Habib fondly. "I love European cars."
What caused such a transformation? The son of a bureaucrat, Habib was studying business at a Jakarta university when, as he tells it, a "miracle" happened. But then those were miraculous times. Habib's formative student years coincided with the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, two hugely influential events that gave Muslims from Morocco to Mindanao a new sense of both power and victimization and signaled the birth of Islamic radicalism as we know it today.
Habib starts to tell the story of his journey into radical Islam, but first—another jarring note—his housekeeper arrives with his smokes. "Aha!" he cries, relishing my obvious surprise as he slowly peels the cellophane from a fresh packet of Marlboros. "You can write it all down in your little notebook: Habib ... smokes ... American ... cigarettes.'"
Then the jihadi lights up and, amid richly competing aromas—Arabian coffee and American tobacco—starts again.
