Paul Keenan
Christian fears have increased with the Jakarta attacks, writes Paul Keenan
Despite the shocked tones of media coverage on the morning of January 14, the gun and bomb attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, did not come as a surprise locally.
When four jihadist gunmen (since claimed by a jubilant ISIS) unleashed their assault on the city’s central business district, the wave of explosions and gunfire represented the culmination of a plan to kill and maim that security services had expected for some time.
As far back as the beginning of December, the authorities had been warning of the very real possibility of an Islamist outrage, stating outright that it was a question of “when and not if”.
Such was the level of intelligence as to an expected plot that intelligence services were quickly able to lay the blame for Jakarta at the feet of Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian extremist now based in Syria with Islamic State, from where he continues to coordinate those jihadis and their groupings who have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Events
No less surprised by events have been members of Indonesia’s Christian community (36 million of a total 206 million citizens), which exists very much in the shadow of the jihadist threat at the heart of the world’s most populace Muslim nation.
The authorities’ pre-Christmas warning could not have felt anything but personal to the community.
Christian Masses through the Christmas period in Indonesia have long taken place under stepped-up police and army protection; security personnel have been a daily feature of Advent for over a decade since a wave of deadly Christmas Eve bombings aimed at churches in 2000, in which 19 people died.
The attacks were backed by al Qaeda’s local affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah (which also carried out the Bali bombings of 2002).
Since December 2013, security services in the country have been keenly aware of a desire by radicals to again disrupt Christmas services.
Separately, 2014 was a year of increased intolerance against the Christian community, marked by multiple attempts to block the construction of new churches and obstructing worshippers from attending services, actions very much at odds with Indonesia’s founding principle of ‘Unity in Diversity’.
In such a milieu, it is a sad irony that Christmas is the time of year when Indonesian Christians feel most afraid.
Christians are not the only targets for a seemingly endless list of radicals operating under one banner or another, however. With the creeping influence of Islamic State, police have been working to offer protection to and thwart attacks against Buddhist temples and the Ahmadi Muslim community (especially reviled by Islamist fundamentalists as heretics).
Just as in the West, Islamic State videos aimed at potential jihadists in Indonesia have encouraged them to stage home-grown attacks rather than travel to the so-called caliphate in Syria. (Just before Christmas, nine suspected jihadists were arrested in Java, together with the seizure of bomb components.)
Ominously, the Jakarta attack is now being viewed by local security as part of a wider ‘marketing war’ between the struggling al Qaeda and the emergent ISIS, with each vying to outdo the other in terms of ‘spectaculars’ in order to attract jihadis to their respective flags. Bahrum Naim’s desire to unite all jihadist groups across South East Asia to claim the region for the caliphate is well known.
(Worryingly, when one gets to the forensic level of the Jakarta investigation, the alarm bells for the wider South East Asian region begin to ring. While some of the Jakarta attackers were native-born radicals, others were from neighbouring Malaysia.
Meanwhile, the weapons employed in the attacks were smuggled in from the Philippines.
Separately, at the beginning of December, in addition to Indonesia and Malaysia, Singapore issued its own warning to citizens of possible Islamist attacks across that month.)
A terrible vista is thus presented to minority groupings such as Christians as divergent jihadists are attracted to the idea of hitting them hard in a perverse recruiting strategy.
But a little balance is warranted, made possible by a bit of digging beyond the immediacy demanded of ‘breaking news’ headlines.
Without downplaying the threat posed to Christians, some other factors are worth highlighting, beginning with Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo.
Himself a Muslim, Mr Widodo has shown himself as a politician who recognises the plight of minority communities.
As Mayor of Surakarta in central Java from 2005 to 2012, he actively fostered good relations between Christians and Muslims through inter-religious meetings so as to reduce tensions apparent during that period.
And, as president, he delivered Christmas greetings to the nation’s Christians last month.
More forcefully, and at the risk of alienating Indonesians sympathetic to the aims of the jihadis, President Widodo has unleashed the security services in the wake of Jakarta with instructions to hunt down jihadis (12 arrests so far); the nation’s Communications Ministry has moved to shut down 11 websites containing poisonous jihadist messages – adding to the 22 closed down in 2015 for attempting to radicalise Indonesian youth to the ideology of ISIS.
Christian communities have been quick to respond to Mr Widodo’s example, with a spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops of Indonesia stating: “We have to work hand in hand to protect our people, particularly our young people, from any ideology that can harm society.”
Protestant churches locally, meanwhile, issued a joint statement in which they insisted: “We must not surrender to all provocative actions that damages harmonious life.”
There is every reason to believe that such harmony can endure the worst.
Growth
During events in Jakarta last August to mark Indonesia’s 70th Independence Day, the nation’s largest Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, declared its intention to tackle the growth of radical Islam through a nationwide championing of Islam Nusantara (Islam of the Archipelago), a system of majority Muslim rule that is simultaneously moderate and supportive of religious tolerance.
Now set Nahdlatul Ulama’s 40 million members against a security estimate of about 1,000 local radical Islamists, and there is every reason to hope, without surrendering to complacency in dangerous times, that Indonesia’s Christians have a better future.