No subject

authorities and six years after the pesantren opened, Bashir and Sungkar were 
accused of subversion for advocating the creation of an Islamic state by then-
President Suharto's government. 

In 1982, he was put on trial and sentenced to nine years in prison. But he was 
granted an early release in 1985, when he fled to neighboring Malaysia. 

In Malaysia, he is believed to have recruited students who had studied in 
Pakistani madrassas on their way to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. But in 
1998, he returned to Indonesia after the fall of Suharto, when radical 
Islamists who were brutally suppressed by the Indonesian strongman resumed 
their public activities under the new era of democratic reformasi, or reforms. 

Ideological and Political Leadership 
According to Gunaratna, it wasn't until the early 1990s that al Qaeda made 
inroads into Jemaah Islamiyah along with other Southeast Asian Islamic networks 
in Malaysia and the Philippines.

"Al Qaeda co-opted the co-founders of JI — the late Abdullah Sungkar and Abu 
Bakar Bashir — and absorbed the organization by providing training and 
finance," says Gunaratna, "and a number of Islamists were trained in the camps 
in Afghanistan." 

Bashir's role, according to Gunaratna, is a bit like that of the blind Egyptian 
cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, now serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison 
for plotting to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and bomb New York 
City landmarks, including the United Nations and bridges and tunnels. He was 
also considered the spiritual leader of the men convicted in the 1993 bombing 
of the World Trade Center.

"Like Rahman, Abu Bakar Bashir provides ideological and political leadership 
for the JI," says Gunaratna. "Unlike Rahman though, he also has operational 
knowledge, although he definitely does not participate [in attacks]. But the 
real leader of the JI is Hambali, who holds JI and al Qaeda membership and 
serves on their shura [consultative] councils." 

The Osama Bin Laden of Southeast Asia 
Sometimes called "the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia," Riduan Isamuddin, or 
Hambali as he is popularly known, is a fugitive wanted by Indonesia, Malaysia, 
Singapore and the Philippines in connection with a series of bomb attacks in 
the last two years, although he has not been named a suspect in the Oct. 12 
Bali bombing.

According to The Associated Press, U.S. counterterrorism officials believe 
Hambali helped plan a failed plot to attack at least one U.S. Embassy in 
Southeast Asia to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 

Most of the information about Bashir's and Hambali's ties to Jemaah Islamiyah 
is believed to have come from Omar al-Farouq, a Kuwaiti man who was arrested in 
Indonesia in June and is now in U.S. custody. 

Groups on the Fringe 
In the past, Indonesia has rejected the notion that al Qaeda was a presence in 
the island nation, although experts have been warning about the growing 
influence of Wahabism, a hard-line Islamic creed funded by Saudi Arabia.

While stressing that most Indonesian Muslims do not support a hard-line, 
political Islam, Van Doorn-Harder says many Indonesians in recent years have 
been "looking for a new identity" in their personal lifestyle choices as well 
as in occasional public displays. 

Still, many Indonesian Muslims maintain that organizations like Jemaah 
Islamiyah are a fringe minority in the world's largest Muslim nation. 

"This is something new to me," says Lily Zakiyah Munir, a member of the 
Muslimat Nahdlatul Ulama, the women's wing of the Nahdlatul Ulama, one of 
Indonesia's largest Muslim organizations.

"These extremist groups are disciplined, organized and focused, while we, the 
moderates, are asleep. But," she adds, "we believe these groups don't have 
popularity in Indonesia. We have been traditionally practicing Islam in 
Indonesia for centuries in a very different way." 

Indeed, the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah, which together claim more 
than 70 million members — or one-third of the Indonesian population — have 
officially supported the government's new anti-terrorism measures passed after 
the Bali attacks. 

For many moderate Muslims, the Bali bombing was the last straw in an alarming 
rise in political and militant Islam in Indonesia that has seen paramilitary 
groups igniting ethnic and communal conflicts across the island nation since 
the fall of Suharto. 

And they hope the arrest of the frail cleric from Solo will somehow bring back 
the old days, when Western tourists flocked to Indonesian beaches and the 
country enjoyed a reputation for multicultural tolerance. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~