The Great Irony

Articles like this remind me of one of today's great ironies. Hollywood liberals and their academic cohorts (the Intelligensia) look at the Global War on Terrorism as some sort of Big Oil conspiracy and make every attempt to coddle terrorists. They'd openly spit on troops returning from the warzone if they could get away with it (much like the anti-establishment radicals of the 1960s did to my father, a Vietnam veteran).

The thing they just don't seem to get is that the terrorists and the institutions that train them object mostly to the garbage we export out of Hollywood with its moral relativism. The radical elements of the Islamic world object to "Westerners flaunting their liberal values," which is quite easy to understand if you've ever been outside of the United States.

American culture has a global reach. It has for years. You can't escape American music, movies, and television in today's world. I've seen our media throughout Europe and in Asia. While deployed to Iraq, it was pretty easy to keep up with recent movies: you could purchase and watch bootleg DVDs of new movies for three or four dollars.

Americans get annoyed and offended by the Jehovah's Witness knocking at the door. You can slam the door and go back to your life, but your average Muslim is constantly bombarded by our ideas, our culture, and our viewpoints -- without the ability to slam the door and escape.

School that nurtured the Islamic call to arms

Radicalism is popular among the poor, writes Simon Kearney
10oct05

IT is just on dusk at the Al-Islam boarding school, or pesantren, and the place is bustling. Earlier in the day, it might as well have been deserted, but with the call to evening prayers, the students have emerged, eager to break their Ramadan fast and chatter among themselves.The Islamic school in Tenggulun has some of the most notorious alumni in the world, having been a place of learning, preaching and refuge to many of the key protagonists in the October 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people.

Today, it has 150 students from all over the far-reaching archipelago and, according to its founder Muhammed Khozin, he teaches his students to do with words what his brothers chose to do with bombs.

The students The Australian met there yesterday quizzed this reporter about his religious beliefs and debated the issue of whether the holy trinity in Christianity was false. They muttered among themselves about whether I was really a reporter or an Australian intelligence agent.

They are used to being treated with suspicion by the media and receiving visits from police. But after a while, they relax and behave largely like high school students anywhere.
Welcome to the breeding ground of radical Islam in Indonesia. It started with Jemaah Islamiah spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir's Ngruki school in Solo, Central Java, and has spread into other pesantren across the country.

The schools are popular with poor families for their discipline and thorough religious curriculums. For the price of a cheap meal out in Australia, a family can send their son to this pesantren for a year. A boy from the island of Flores told The Australian his tuition cost 300,000 rupiah, about $40.

For poor villagers, some of whom live on subsistence rice farming and have annual earnings of just a few hundred dollars, it gives them the opportunity for their children to aspire to a better life, Airlangga University of Surabaya Associate Professor of Indonesian Culture, Kacung Marijan, said.

Al-Islam is on the outskirts of the village of Tenggulun, a two-hour drive west of Surabaya in East Java.

Khozin, as well as being one of the school's founders, is the brother of three of the 2002 Bali bombers, Ali Gufron, known as Mukhlas, Amrozi and Ali Imron, who all attended and taught at the school.

As head of one of Indonesia's most notorious families, he is keen to distance his community from the second Bali bombings, which he says are "different" to the first. His brand of Islam, he says, is different. He says the community has moved on and does not want to be linked to the new "tragedy".

But to Khozin, there is no difference in his ideology and his brothers'. The difference is in how they chose to act on their anger at Westerners flaunting their liberal values. He refers to the non-Muslim community as Kaffir Dhimmi, the name the prophet Mohammed gave to the non-Muslim communities. He says it is the responsibility of Muslims to fight this group by convincing them to behave with respect towards their Muslim neighbours.

He says the fight should not be "physical" but a fight with words.

Khozin does not believe that Westerners and Muslims can live side by side while Westerners continue to believe, for example, in allowing women to wear bikinis at the beach and to drink alcohol.

© The Australian