The Islamic Defenders Front plan to help guard churches at Christmas.

In a bizarre move the notorious FPI, or Islamic Defenders Front, long known as tormentors of restaurant, pub, brothel, and disco owners, staff, and patrons, has announced they will help the Jakarta police in guarding churches on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

The police had assigned about 17000 officers for the patrolling of the 700 odd churches, as well as two helicopters, 500 mobile brigade members, four tactical vehicles and five investigative dogs in the capital city of Indonesia, scene of a number of church bombings on Christmas Eve, 2000. These numbers will it seems now be swelled by the normally belligerent Muslim radicals of the FPI.

Said the Front’s media pointman, Alawi Usman,:

We will be involved in the deployment of our members to show that inter-religious relations in the city are good.

We have instructed our members to take off all their FPI insignias during the security deployment. But we ask them not to be totally involved to avoid a perception that FPI members are join in the Christmas celebration.

Alawi added that the FPI members would keep their distance from churches in order that police officers would not suspect them of mischief. He also said:

We urge the police to give more attention to small places of worship as for the big ones many officers will have been stationed there. Don’t miscalculate security there.

The Front Pembela Islam, to use the Indonesian name, has suffered a number of setbacks recently with arrests of their members for carrying weapons as well as, it seems, coming off second best in brawls with residents of Jakarta’s red light district, and this may be an attempt to restore their image and get back on better terms with the police.

Tags: Christianity, Churches, Islamic, Muslim, Radical, Religion, Terrorism