26-May-17: With Ramadan starting tonight, the Indonesians sense where their problems are coming from

Indonesian police spokesman shows materials collected as evidence
from the bombing site, during press conference in Jakarta
on May 25, 2017 [Image Source]

The world's largest Moslem nation is reeling after a pair of human bombs exploded near a bus station in the capital.

Aljazeera says the explosions went off minutes apart this past Wednesday night around 9:00 pm at Jakarta's Kampung Melayu terminal. They killed three police officers and injured at least 10 others - five of them police, five civilians.

"This is the biggest attack in the capital since last year," Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen said, reporting from Jakarta. "Police say they were on high alert after the attack in Manchester and they were expecting something. They only didn't know what was going to happen and where." ...Authorities in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation are increasingly worried about a surge in "radicalism", driven in part by a new generation of fighters inspired by ISIL. Indonesia has long been fighting armed groups but in recent years hundreds have flocked to fight for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq... [A]uthorities believe about 400 Indonesians have gone to join the group in Syria, and could pose a more lethal threat if they come home. [Aljazeera, May 25, 2017]

Reuters adds that an anti-terrorism unit carried out a raid the following day (Thursday) at the home of one of the suspected human bombs. It quotes a statement by President Joko Widodo: "We must continue to keep calm... keep cool...  Muslims are preparing to enter the month of Ramadan for fasting".

Ramadan runs for a month starting tonight (Friday). The Indonesians evidently understand that the passions it arouses have a deeply worrying impact on already feverish Islamist terrorist minds. They probably wonder about the good sense of people like the leader of a Moslem Cultural Center in south-western England who, reflecting on the atrocity in Manchester, is quoted yesterday in a local newspaper saying

“We stand united with Manchester, the British people in general and people all over the world who suffer at the hands of the small yet dangerous minority of murderous extremists and remind people that terrorism has no religion and despite their claim, the terrorists have nothing to do with Islam..." ["Terrorists have nothing to do with Islam", Wiltshire Times UK, May 25, 2017]

Considerably more sense emanated from the Archbishop of Canterbury when he said publicly half a year ago:

Society should no longer say the atrocities of Isis have “nothing to do with Islam” because the approach restricts efforts to fight extremism, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. The Most Rev Justin Welby has called on all religious leaders to “stand up and take responsibility” for the actions of extremists who claim to be following the strictures of their faith... ["Justin Welby: It's time to stop saying Isis has ‘nothing to do with Islam’", Independent UK, November 19, 2016] 

And a timely alert from a year-old New York Times article:

As the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approached, jihadist propagandists told their followers that it was a good time to kill people. The spokesman for the Islamic State said in late May that jihadists should “make it, with God’s permission, a month of pain for infidels everywhere.” Another extremist distributed a manual for using poisons, adding, in poor English: “Dont forget Ramadan is close, the month of victories.” A bloody month it has been [remember - 2016], with terrorist attacks killing and wounding hundreds of people in Orlando, Fla.; Istanbul; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and now Baghdad, where a bomb killed more than 140 people early Sunday in a shopping area full of families who had just broken their Ramadan fasts.
For the vast majority of the world’s Muslims, violence is completely dissonant with the holy month, which in addition to fasting is a time for spiritual renewal, prayer and visits with friends and family.
It is widely believed that the rewards earned for noble acts are greater during Ramadan, which culminates in the Eid holiday this week. Jihadists have perverted this belief to serve their own ends, analysts said. In short: If one believes it is good to kill those who are considered infidels, all the better to do so during Ramadan..." Many large attacks occurred during Ramadan last year [2015], too, hitting a Tunisian beach resort, a Shiite mosque in Kuwait, a Kurdish town in northern Syria and African Union troops in Somalia. ["ISIS Uses Ramadan as Calling for New Terrorist Attacks", New York Times, July 3, 2016]

14-Jan-16: In Indonesia's capital, a mall and a Starbucks now under terror attack

From Australia's Channel 9 News:

A massive police operation is now underway in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta following a series of deadly explosions that has left at least seven dead. Several blasts rocked the area around a popular shopping centre, the Sarinah at the crossroads of Thamrin Road and Wahid Haysim Street, as suicide bombers and gunmen carried out attacks on a Starbucks café and a nearby police post about 10.30am local time (2.30pm AEDT). Jakarta police spokesman Colonel Muhammad Iqbal said the explosions had killed seven people, including four of the attackers.
Video from the scene shows at least one attacker detonating a suicide vest near the shopping centre, exploding as he approaches the building. Indonesian media has reported that three suicide bombers targeted the Starbucks in the shopping centre, while two gunmen attacked the police station, triggering a gunfight.
It is understood some of the attackers are now holed up in a nearby building, with police surrounding them. There has been at least one fresh explosion nearby as dozens of counter terrorism police moved in on the building. Counter terrorism police are searching several nearby buildings, including a McDonald’s, and occasional gunshots are still ringing out. Local authorities have confirmed a police officer died during the attacks.

Police crouch outside the Starbucks an hour ago [Image Source]

It's summer in the southern hemisphere and Australians travel in large numbers to holiday in Indonesia. Over at The Age (Melbourne), they are reporting on

at least seven explosions... in Central Jakarta on Thursday, including two suicide bombings... Explosions occurred near Sarinah, a shopping mall in Central Jakarta, near office buildings and fast food outlets... There are other unconfirmed reports of similar explosions in Cikini (Central Jakarta), Kuningan (South Jakarta), Simatupang (South Jakarta) and Slipi (South Jakarta), as well as reports of gunshots in the area of Palmerah (West Jakarta). 

CNN are quoting

one analyst (who) likened the timed attacks to the Paris massacre where ISIS struck several locations at the same time.

The disingenuous BBC, caught up as usual in a bout of self-muting corporate bashfulness about calling this attack what it is and what everyone knows it is, is currently confining itself to such purely-functional descriptors as "series of bomb blasts", "further explosions", "gunfire", "suspected attackers" (because you wouldn't want to prejudice the potential legal case against the men hurling the bombs and firing the automatic rifles by making assumptions, Heaven forbid). The editors at the BBC leave it to a local political figure, the Indonesian president Joko Widodo, to extract them from their politically-correct know-nothingness by providing a quote, naturally inside a pair of quotation marks, that this is an "act of terror". Thank you, Mr Widodo, and good luck in the challenging days undoubtedly lying ahead.

(Some of our previous Indonesia-focused blog posts are here.)

22-Jun-12: Only twenty years prison because he expressed remorse... but not really

The devastation on the morning after the Bali terrorist attack.
The bomb maker got twenty years prison, and not death, because of
his "remorse" [Image Source]

A court in Indonesia yesterday convicted an Indonesian "militant" - in reality, an Islamist terrorist - on all charges relating to the making of the bombs that killed 202 people in the October 12, 2002 Bali resort island attacks. 

TIME Magazine points out the defendant, Umar Patek, is a leading member of Jemaah Islamiyah, meaning "Islamic Congregation". Generally regarded as the Southeast Asian branch of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group acts to create "a Daulah Islamiyah" or regional Islamic caliphate throughout Southeast Asia. His sentence was 20 years in prison. His conviction brings to an end the trials that resulted from the Kuta Beach massacre.

The five judges found Patek played a key role in building the explosives as well as in the Jakarta church attacks on Christmas Eve in 2000 that killed 19 more innocents. Now here's the interesting part, in TIME Magazine's words:

Some felt the sentence was too light, but were encouraged by the remorse Patek expressed during the trial. “We will use him to influence other militants to not carry out terrorism acts,” said Harry Purwanto, deputy chairman of Indonesia’s counter terrorism agency. “Our aim is not only to jail them, but to change their platform to be law-abiding citizens.”

The central idea here is remorse. We wrote about this particular Islamist killer three weeks ago - see "31-May-12: Highly effective terrorist, now on trial, is really sorry. Not." We pointed out that while the man had indeed expressed a kind of remorse, it did not sound all that welcome to our ears. We wrote that:

It's a fairly conditional kind of "sorry" from the terrorist who is on trial for his life. Reuters and others choose not to report that Patek said his role was "small" but it is "Jewish slander'' that has made it seem larger [source]. His real goal had been to "retaliate" for "the killing of Muslims in Palestine". He questioned why this should be done in Bali. After all, he said, "Jihad should be carried out in Palestine instead. But they said they did not know how to get to Palestine" [source].

This having taken place in Indonesia, it's also worth reflecting on comments made two years ago by that country's minister of justice. Patrialis Akbar was caught on video telling Al Jazeera that he would like the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists to go to Israel instead and bomb civilians there. His country's government would even give them some practical help. [Elder of Ziyon reported on this in 2010, and we reported it here.]