Mixing Sundanese disco music and Islam invites bigotry and later “mediation” in West Java, as Ross finds out.

Before I disappear off on my travels for a while, I feel another ration of railing is required with regard to the report in Saturday’s Jakarta Post (10th January) on the latest bout of Islamist bigotry.

It seems a house in Bandung was sealed off by one of those “spontaneous” demonstrations that emerged from the local mosque, one hundred fanatics marching up and demanding that a tiny sect called the “Aliran Kepercayaan Ilahi” be dissolved.

Gerakan Reformis Islam (Garis) members at the Amanah Keagungan Ilahi (AKI) house in Cangkuang, Bandung, 9th Jan.

Riot police arrived, but the goat-beards

demanded they allow them in to meet with the owner and other members of the AKI inside the house.

It was when I reached that paragraph that I felt a rail coming on. Who do these arrogant dolts think they are that they’re entitled to demand admission to somebody’s private property?

It seems a:

mediation session was later held between the police, military, district head, village head, the local branch of the MUI- Indonesian Ulemas Council and representatives of GARIS (Gerakan Reformis Islam), which is the association of mass Islamic organisations including the Islamic Defenders’ Front.

Interesting roll-call, surely? What have the military got to do with who worships where? Why were the thugs of the FPI not en route to fight in Palestine, as their leaders had promised? Did the MUI think the AKI were harbouring US products, which our wise old ulemas want to boycott? And why were the police participating in ‘mediation’ when it is their clear duty to protect the rights of citizens to go about their business unmolested by cretins, especially on their own premises?

Well, a partial answer to those questions came from a certain Bahrun Jamil Ahmed, former RW (neighbourhood head), who whined that

‘they never perfom sholat’

and

‘they sacrifice animals but distribute the meat only among themselves.’

Okay, so whose animals were they – his? If not, it’s none of his damned business!

More interestingly, Bahrun claimed that locals who joined the AKI

‘were unable to leave the at their own free will because they were forced to adhere to its teachings.’

If it were so, it were a grievous fault, and grievously did the AKi answer for it. But no details of this coercion were provided. Did the AKI keep its doubters chained up within the compound? Were they threatened? Were they told that the price of apostasy was death? If the latter, then yes, that is indeed the mark of a barbaric cult and such an assertion should be punished severely. Much as a similar assertion by a prominent FPI lout concerning Ahmadiyah brought similar punishment – like hell it did! That particular swine is still running loose, unless some quiet but effective police work has occurred without media attention recently.

Apparently only 40 -50 people take part in the AKI’s activities, so it is hardly a major menace to public order, and the fact that GARIS has spent over two years ‘investigating’ this tiny group says more about the worries GARIS nurtures on locals’ fidelity to Islam than it does about AKI.

‘if they want to establish a sect of their own, they should not use Islamic prayers as a basis’

said Suryana Nur Fatwa (an appropriate name, for sure). So he’s condoning apostasy? Surely not! But the next bit is really rich.

‘This is deviant and causes restlessness’.

To whom? Does Suyrana lie awake at nights unable to sleep because AKI won’t give him a slice of sacrificial mutton? Is he unable to concentrate on his Koranic studies because half a hundred people have their own way of feeling closer to God?
What an asinine gang these Islamists are.

‘They even perform prayers with their eyes shut, accompanied by Sundanese disco music.’

Well, it wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but it scarcely merits Suryana’s next comment.

‘This is complete harassment of Islam’.

Harassment? Do AKI acolytes rush into the nearest mosque and push and shove the worshippers? Do they rudely interrupt the cleric’s sermon? Do they steal hub-caps from devout Muslims’ cars? Seems unlikely. ‘Harassment’, in these primitives’ minds, is merely disagreeing with them and doing your own thing under your own roof.

Islamists cannot countenance freedom and it is high time the government cracked down on them. But rest assured this government won’t. Instead, the majesty of the Indonesian state, the military, the police, the MUI and the GARIS bigots, did not wind up their ‘mediation session’ until poor Kurnia Wahyu, the AKI leader, was

made to sign an agreement stating he would halt sect activities until there was a definite decision from the Pakem team regarding the matter.

Note, not ‘agreed to’ but ‘made to’.

For those who’ve forgotten, Pakem is the acronym for the Coordinating Board for Monitoring Mystical Beliefs. That any country purporting to be a modern democracy would even have a body of that sort is in itself ludicrous, but there you are. And it was Pakem which promulgated the suspension of Ahmadiyahs’s religious freedom last year. God help the AKI and God save Indonesia!