THE AUSTRALIAN: INDONESIA will continue to live with the threat of terror attacks unless its government cracks down on the militant Islamic schools and religious zealots who espouse worldwide jihad.
Last Friday's hotel bombings in Jakarta have focused attention yet again on a network of radical Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia that continues to espouse the cause of violent jihad and churn out eager young zealots willing to die in its name. Four days after the bombings, investigators have linked them to two Islamic schools that are well known to the Indonesian authorities but have neither been shut down nor had their activities or teachings curtailed.
The first of these is the now notorious Al Mukmin pesantren (boarding house) at Ngruki in Solo, Central Java, where the Marriott suicide bomber is reported to have been schooled.
The second is a smaller school at Cilacap in Central Java, where a bomb identical to the hotel bombs used in Jakarta was found in July, and which is believed to have provided shelter to suspected mastermind Noordin Top.
A Muslim leader in Jakarta yesterday identified the man who detonated a backpack and case full of explosives inside the Marriott restaurant as Nur Hasbi, who is believed to have graduated from the Ngruki school in 1995. Thus the school continues to live up to its reputation as "a crucible for the formation of cadres of mujahidin", and its mission, "to nurture zeal for jihad so that love for jihad and martyrdom grow in the soul of the mujahidin", in the words of its co-founder, Jemaah Islamiah leader, Abu Bakar Bashir.
Nur Hasbi was no doubt inspired by his reported classmate, Asmar Latin Sani, who carried out the previous attack on the Marriott in 2003, after which his severed head was found on the fifth floor of the smashed hotel.
The connection is no coincidence. >>> Sally Neighbour | Tuesday, July 21, 2009
