OPINION: Aussies doing their best to upset key neighbour

Abbott's emphasis on the 'Anglosphere' as the focus of Oz's foreign policy confirmed suspicions that Australia saw itself as a Western colonial outpost in the Asia-Pacific. 

Indonesia has withdrawn its ambassador from Canberra following revelations that Australian intelligence operatives bugged the phones of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), his wife and a number of senior ministers in August 2009. Details have only been released recently by the Guardian newspaper and Australia's public broadcaster ABC. It was part of the intelligence information revealed by Edward Snowden, former contractor to America's NSA.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is publicly downplaying the issue. But surely he knows just what a huge diplomatic disaster this is. Indonesia is Australia's closest neighbour, and two-way trade between the two countries last year amounted to A$15 billion ($16.9 billion). In Parliament, Abbott some days back described Indonesia as an "emerging democratic superpower in Asia" (perhaps distinguishing Indonesia from the not-so-democratic China). Abbott also described SBY as "one of the best friends that we have anywhere in the world".

Abbott's stated respect for Indonesia has not, however, been reflected in Australia's recent dealings involving asylum seekers which have largely been driven by partisan domestic political considerations. The Abbott asylum policy, reflected in the simplistic formula of "stop the boats", could only ever work with the co-operation of Indonesia.

The policy is being treated as a military operation, as if 50 dishevelled asylum seekers on a boat somehow represent a security threat requiring a 3-star general. The secretive implementation of this policy, with the Immigration Minister and the general providing vague weekly briefings to journalists, reached such heights of stupidity that Australian journalists found more information about the policy from their Indonesian colleagues at the Jakarta Post than from their own Government.

Time and again, Indonesian officials expressed frustration with Australia's unilateral approach to the issue of asylum seekers which affected both countries. Abbott's policy included the Australian Navy turning back tiny fishing boats carrying asylum seekers "when it is safe to do so". The fishing boats would then return to Indonesia. Abbott insisted that Indonesia would co-operate, ignoring Indonesian concerns about both the human rights implications and of the immense social pressures this would have on the more crowded and poorer nation.

It was as if Indonesia was at Australia's beck and call. Tony Abbott's emphasis on the "Anglosphere" as the focus of Australia's foreign policy confirmed commonly held Asian suspicions that Australia saw itself as a Western colonial outpost in the Asia-Pacific region, as the deputy sheriff of the United States.

Australian politicians of all political stripes are so focused on the West that they forget their own geographical location. Understanding of Asian cultures in Australia is poor. Indonesian language instruction, once a primary feature in Australian secondary schools, has all but disappeared. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade does an excellent job running cultural and other exchange programmes, but these are to build person to person contacts, not replace the bilateral policy process.

Some in Jakarta are quite happy to attack Tony Abbott's domestic standing by undermining his efforts to stop the boats. At the time of writing, a member of the House of Representatives' Commission on defence, foreign affairs and information had told the Jakarta Post:

We are in a better position than Australia. This issue [boat people] could be utilised as a bargaining chip in demanding an apology from Prime Minister Abbott. 

Abbott's response has been to virtually scoff at any suggestion of an apology.

Every government gathers information and every government knows every other government gathers information. 

True, but not everyone gets caught. When it comes to such spying methods, Indonesia is hardly in a position to cast the first stone. As News Limited points out:

When he retired in 2004 Indonesian spymaster General Abdullah Mahmud Hendropriyono revealed his agency had not only tapped Australian civil and military communications and politicians' phone calls during the 1999 East Timor crisis, but had also unsuccessfully attempted to recruit Australian officials as double agents.

The official Australian response at the time was muted.

All this fracas coincides with a visit to Jakarta by Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Indonesians don't exactly have fond memories of Dutch colonisation which began in the 16th century. Following Japanese occupation during World War II, Dutch forces attempted to re-establish colonial rule. Most Western countries supported Dutch claims. Australia's Labor government under Prime Minister Ben Chifley openly supported the nascent Indonesian nationalist movement.

Why did Australian leaders at the time support Indonesia, even going to the extent of criticising their closest ally, the US, for supplying material and moral aid to Dutch forces in the archipelago? Simply because Australia realised that its security and its national interest lay in an independent, strong and proud neighbour. Indonesian independence reinforced Australian independence.

There are still some in Canberra who see Indonesia as a potential threat. Which is all the more reason to keep Indonesia on side. You keep your friends close and your potential enemies closer.

• Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and an award-winning Australian author. This article was first published in the NZ Herald on Friday 22 November 2013.

Stupid Australian tourist.

OPINION: Refugee Hysteria Suggests Aussies Have Forgotten Their Own Ancestors

YOU can always tell when Australia has entered election mode. Suddenly the really big issues come to the fore - issues that affect the economy, national security, indeed Australia's very survival. Issues like the occasional arrival of a handful of desperate boat people from Afghanistan, Iraq or Sri Lanka via Indonesia.

On Sunday, March 28, Rupert Murdoch's tabloids across Australia ran the front-page story of a mass invasion of asylum seekers. In Brisbane, the headline was THEY'RE HERE.

And who were they? The paper reported that 2000 asylum seekers had made it to Christmas Island, while 425 people were being housed on the mainland. But the real nightmare was seven adults and three children going shopping in Brisbane. They spent an hour and a quarter in a shopping centre, the paper howled.

The group returned with two shopping trolleys loaded with grocery bags. Their purchases included Home Brand Hawaiian pizza, Smith's potato chips and cartons of Coca-Cola.

How selfish of seven adults to share pizza, chips and soft drink. And to think these people claim to be desperate refugees!

Anyway, back to the world of sanity. Readers with even a basic knowledge of Australian history will find the current immigration hysteria ironic. For some reason, non-European illegal immigrants seem to bring out the worst indignation in white Australia. It's as if Aussies have forgotten their own ancestors came here from mother England on boats. And many were here as a result of being sentenced for the kinds of offences for which our migration laws today would bar them from leaving Sydney airport.

Australians are all too quick to forget the key historical role people from Afghanistan played during the mid-19th century. For 60 years, these men and their camels were the only transportation available through the centre of Australia, servicing distant mines and sheep stations as well as being involved in Australia's first overland telegraph line.

With troops fighting in Afghanistan, Australia has an obligation under international law to restore order. Australia and its coalition and Nato partners have singularly failed to do this. Hence, when it comes to accepting Afghan refugees, Australia has a major responsibility. Sadly it is the conservatives, self-declared protectors of Australia's Christian heritage, who show the least Christian attitude towards refugees.

The prejudice in Australia's popular media toward anyone deemed a Middle Eastern migrant is so endemic that one can only hope God in his good sense doesn't send the Son of Man to Australia for the Second Coming.

IN AUGUST last year, on an ABC television chat show, Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop reminded viewers of the perils posed to Australia by an increase in the number of people arriving by boat.

She shared the panel with conservative American humorist P J O'Rourke. He found all this hysteria about boat people in Australia and some parts of the EU rather amusing.

You know, we in the States have much, much more experience with being all wrong about immigration than you do. I mean, 36,000 you said in Italy? We laugh. That's a day in the United States. And we are so wrong about it. I mean, build a fence on the border with Mexico, give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry, you know ...

Ms Bishop tried to rescue her conservative credentials after being showed up by O'Rourke. She recited the usual Liberal Party mantra about people smugglers.

O'Rourke's response?

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. You know, if you open your borders, you don't have people smugglers ...

These people are assets. One or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later. Oh, I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do.

The Rudd Labor Government is not much better. Australia's immigration minister recently announced that the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan would be suspended. The government says circumstances have changed in both countries such that it is now safe enough for asylum applicants to return.

That being the case, one can expect Australian troops in Afghanistan to prepare for their imminent return. Yet the reality is that the US is getting ready to send 17,000 more troops into the country and has requested its allies (including Australia) to increase their troop presence. Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay has told Nato and other allies that the military alliance cannot take its foot off the gas in Afghanistan, simply because the US is about to send 17,000 more troops.

And so we have all this fuss over 4500 boat people. Meanwhile, there is little fuss over 50,000 illegal immigrants from Britain and the US.

In the Australian psyche, illegal immigrants must necessarily be non-European and non-white. Either that or some illegal immigrants are more illegal than others.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. This article was first published in the Dominion-Post in Wellington, New Zealand.

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OPINION: Rising trend of fearmongering on refugees and passports ...

Coalition rhetoric now appears to slipping back to the worst practices of the Howard era, IRFAN YUSUF writes ...

Tony Abbott wasn’t exactly born into the Liberal establishment. His political mentor was none other than Bob Santamaria, the ultraconservative Catholic activist who founded the National Civic Council and who was more concerned with ridding trade unions of communism than supporting what he described as Menzies’ "party of capital".

In his book Battlelines, published shortly before his accession to the Liberal leadership, Abbott affectionately refers to his mentor as "Santa". He admits that Santamaria (who died in 1998) had some concerns about the young Abbott joining the Liberals. Santamaria apparently had a

... prejudice that serious Catholics couldn’t advance in the Liberal Party.

In recent times, followers of other non-Protestant faiths must be wondering whether the same applies to them. Recent comments about asylum seekers, burqas and passport forgeries must surely make us wonder whether the Australian electorate would be ready for "Captain Catholic" to rule over a country where Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are the fastest growing faiths.

Many wondered during the mid-1990s whether John Howard, the man who suggested that Asian migrants may not make a neat cultural fit, could one day become prime minister of a country located closer to Kuala Lumpur than London.

Coalition rhetoric on these issues today seems a mere continuation of the worst of the Howard era. Former Liberal prime minister (and now former party member) Malcolm Fraser described the party as being more about"fear and reaction".

The recent "real action" advertisement shows the origin of illegal immigrants to Australia. Five red arrows are shown emerging from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia respectively. The words "Stop illegals now" are shown in the top left corner of the screen.



No red arrow was shown emerging from Britain, even though it provides one of the largest proportions of illegal immigrants in Australia, certainly larger than any of the five Asian and Middle Eastern nations shown in the Liberal advertisement.

Presumably the Coalition strategists regard white-skinned English-speaking Brits as less scary than dark-skinned English-speaking Tamils or olive-complexioned Iraqi Christians.

The Coalition has also announced a return to some form of Pacific solution. This will involve the offshore processing of any asylum seekers arriving “illegally”. We will also see a return to Temporary Protection Visas under a future Coalition government. Yet, as Bernard Keane notes in Crikey, there was "a 50 per cent surge in asylum seekers coming by boat after TPVs were introduced in 1999" by the Howard government.

Furthermore, most TPV holders were eventually granted refugee status. The TPV regime is hardly incentive for “illegals” to avoid boats altogether. Hence the Liberals could once again become the people smugglers’ best friends.

Yet the irony is that so much of the fear-mongering runs directly contrary to Australia’s best interests, let alone liberal and/or conservative fundamentals and common sense. At times, the Howard government showed a complete disdain for Australian citizenship, all the while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising campaigns encouraging permanent residents to take up citizenship.

The complete disdain Howard and his ministers showed to Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, unlawfully detained by the United States, was just one example of how fear-mongering was used to evade the government’s responsibilities to its own citizens.

Recent comments by Julie Bishop show an even greater disdain for the rights of Australian citizens whose passports have been fraudulently used to carry out a terrorist act. Some may baulk at the suggestion that the murder of a Hamas leader could be deemed a terrorist act given that the deceased was himself responsible for acts of terror. Hamas, they will say, was a murderous organisation with a history of bloody retaliation.

And now Hamas will have a large number of Australian passport holders on their retaliation list.

To make matters worse, Bishop indicated (and hastily retracted) that Australian governments had forged other countries’ passports for use by our intelligence services.

One wonders whether Bishop was part of such a government and privy to such a decision, or, if such forgeries existed, whether they were used in assassinations or other forms of terrorism.

Indeed, can Abbott promise that a future Coalition government will not forge overseas passports, including those of permanent residents and citizens? Will he be prepared to put this in writing?

The Coalition has again been caught out placing the interests of foreign countries (albeit allies) above the safety and security of Australian citizens. In government they allowed two Australian citizens to languish in an illegal US prison camp in Cuba at the insistence of the US. Now, in Opposition, the Coalition is showing effective disdain to the security of Australian citizens to protect the sentiments of a nuclear-powered Middle Eastern government that used Australian passports to carry out an assassination.

And to think Bishop was accusing her opponents of appeasing an overseas lobby.

■ Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, a former federal Liberal candidate and author of Once Were Radicals. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Friday 28 May 2010.

UPDATE I: Neil James of the self-styled Australian Defence Association wrote this delightful letter to the newspaper.

In what again seems to skate closely to an apologia for Islamist terrorism, and among other polemical claims too numerous to refute, Irfan Yusuf ("Rising trend of fear-mongering on refugees and passports," May 28, p13) incorrectly claims that David Hicks was "unlawfully detained by the United States'' in an "illegal prison camp".

Under the Geneva Convention, as a Taliban combatant captured by the opposite side in a war he chose to fight in, David Hicks was not detained illegally for a single minute at least, perhaps, until his later separate criminal trial and prison sentence by US Military Commission. He was only detained by the US for so long because the war continued, and our then inadequate treachery laws meant he could not be released on prison of war-type parole for criminal trial in Australia (as the US was willing to do).

Fortunately this long-standing and disgraceful legal loophole has been closed so a future Wilfred Burchett or David Hicks can have his day in court. Rightly, since the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world now commits treason if he or she (among other things):

*intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth;

*intentionally assists, by ''any means whatsoever'', another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force; or

*forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

In a liberal democracy ruled by law we owe no less to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force. Irfan Yusuf should be prepared to acknowledge this.

Neil James, executive director, Australia Defence Association

What can I say? Unlike you, Mr James, I don't consider myself an expert in public international law. But I find your suggestion that our men and women overseas are fighting and dying so that our liberties can be curtailed by draconian laws you and the small minority of similar mind boast of to be utterly ridiculous and an insult to our armed forces.

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INDONESIA: Tabloid expert declares terrorists poised to take over ...

Daily Telegraph resident blogger Tim Blair is worried about Indonesia being on the verge of taken over by the likes of Noordin Top. Apparently there are Noordin Tops in schools across Indonesia.

Understanding the cultures of non-Western countries and non-white peoples isn't one of Blair's strengths. So it's not surprising that Blair can't notice it's highly unlikely that Indonesian boarding schools are filled with Malaysians.

And what of these boarding schools? Well, Blair describes Indonesia's pesantren as ...

... these terror-breeding fundo-pods ...

... and after noting that there are 45,000 of these, states ...

The scale of the problem becomes clear. It’s broad-based rather than Top-down, you could say.

Yes, that was quite amusing. What's even more amusing is Blair's refusal to do some basic elementary research on indigenous Indonesian boarding schools and their role in Indonesian society, instead of writing them all off as terror factories.

And we all know about these nasty Indonesian schools. Blair's ideological compatriots in the US were busy during the last US Presidential Election trying to prove that US President Obama attended an Indonesian pesantran.

If Indonesian boarding schools were such terror factories, surely the biggest terrorist on the planet is this bloke. Still, Blair isn't the only "expert" to pontificate on pesantren.

REVIEW: Ambitious cultural journey loses its way ...

A Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands
By Aatish Taseer
Text Publishing, 323pp, $34.95

WE all inhabit the same planet, yet so often we hear phrases such as "the Muslim world" and "the Western world". Do such discrete entities indeed exist? Perhaps those best equipped to answer this question are those with one foot on either side of the divide.

Aatish Taseer, a 29-year-old freelance journalist and the son of an Indian Sikh mother and a Pakistani Muslim father, should have been such a person. That he isn't so is not entirely hisfault.

The two sides of Taseer's family share the culture and language of Punjab, a region in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent shared by India and Pakistan. Islam and Sikhism have inhabited Punjab's geographical and cultural space for centuries. Sikhism is indigenous to Punjab, while Punjabi Islam has adopted the cultural symbols of the land.

My background is a mixture of Indian and Pakistani. Having been reared in a small South Asian community in Sydney, I found it almost impossible to tell Muslims and Sikhs apart. To this day it is easy for me to confuse a mosque and gurudwara (Sikh temple) until the saffron flags of the latter become apparent.

But there is a huge difference between my upbringing and that of Taseer, whose parents' relationship was kept largely secret.

Taseer's father, Salmaan Taseer, became a senior figure in the Pakistan People's Party, at present the governing party of Pakistan. He is a businessman, media magnate and governor of Pakistan's Punjab province.

Aatish's parents met in India in 1980, where Salmaan Taseer was promoting a biography he'd written of his political mentor and former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Aatish's mother, respected Indian journalist Tavleen Singh, was then a young reporter.

At the time of his parents' brief affair, which lasted hardly a week, Salmaan Taseer was already married with three children.

After his parents' separation, Aatish was reared in his mother's Sikh household in Delhi, under the wing of his loving maternal grandfather. The grandfather had grown up in what is now Pakistan and still corresponded with his best friend from across the border.

Like other Sikhs, the Singhs had to flee their ancestral lands in what became Pakistan during the 1947 Partition, which still leaves some members of the family bitter and resentful towards Pakistan and Muslims in general. To his credit, the maternal grandfather wasn't affected by these sentiments.

'A human being,' my grandfather always asserted, when people asked whether I was being brought up as a Sikh or a Muslim. 'He's being brought up to be a human being.'

It wasn't until 1980, when he was 21, that the author met his father again. Taseer's interest in travelling through Muslim-majority states was sparked after he wrote a story on the July 7, 2005, London bombings for British magazine Prospect. Taseer's father wrote an angry letter ...

... accus[ing] me of prejudice, of lacking even 'superficial knowledge' of the Pakistani ethos. 'Do you really think you're doing the Taseer name a service by spreading this kind of invidious anti-Muslim propaganda?

Taseer was upset by his father's letter, an irreligious Pakistani politician who hardly embodied religious values.

Yet Taseer's language when describing his father is always restrained, consistent with the elegant and often hauntingly beautiful prose of the book, sadly spoiled by serious factual errors exhibiting not prejudice, which would have been understandable, but some elementary research.

In setting the stage for his travels, Taseer writes that the whole Islamic world ...

... stretched between my father [Lahore] and the place where I read his letter [London].

How does Taseer expect his reader to take his understanding of the Muslim world seriously when he excludes from it the world's largest Muslim majority state, Indonesia?

He claims his father's Pakistani Islam emphasises rejection of Hinduism. But this is hardly pan-Islam, as I discovered during a visit to the Javanese cultural capital of Yogyakarta in 2006.

There I saw Muslim artists perform the Hindu Ramayana ballet before Muslim audiences in one of Southeast Asia's oldest Hindu temples. Not all Muslims share the religious chauvinism of some Pakistanis.

Taseer's book covers his travels in Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia (including a visit to the pilgrimage centre of Mecca), Iran and Pakistan. In each country he provides us with tremendously detailed portraits of scenery, but when it comes to people our encounters are limited to the devout yet chauvinistic on the one hand or the irreligious and resentful on the other.

Are we to believe that only an insignificant unrepresentative minority exists between these two poles?

Most unfortunate for Taseer is that his paradigm for understanding pan-Islamic sentiment emerges largely from Hassan Butt, a young British man who for years claimed to have recruited British Muslims for al-Qa'ida.

Taseer brought Butt to prominence in the article that prompted his father's wrathful letter. Yet in December last year Butt admitted to a British court that he was a professional liar who had told journalists (including, presumably, Taseer) stories the media wanted to hear.

It's a shame such an elegant piece of writing is spoiled in a way that may make some dismiss it altogether.

Sadly for Taseer, this book, the product of months of travel and a lifetime of anguish, may vindicate at least some of his absent father's criticisms. It is not a vindication well-deserved.

Irfan Yusuf is author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist (Allen & Unwin). This review was first published in The Australian on 27 June 2009


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COMMENT: Border Insecurity ...

The letters section of the Daily Telegraph of Friday 24 April 2009 has two typical examples of uninformed hysteria concerning the issue of "border security" and asylum seekers. I'm in no way suggesting the Tele shouldn'y be publishing these letters. Everyone's voice should be heard, and it's useful to know just what some people are thinking about such sensitive issues.

The first letter is from one P Cummins. It starts like this ...

The reason we now have a swag of boat people trying to get into Australia is because the Rudd Government last year loosened our border security laws ...

This might possibly be true in the case of Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers, but the fact is that the conflict in Sri Lanka has only recently escalated to the extent that many Tamil civilians are fleeing directly from Sri Lanka as opposed to via Indonesia.

They need to be tightened for the protection of the citizens of this country, an obligation the Government has to its people.

So Australian citizens need to be protected from weak malnourished asylum seekers fleeing persecution. And what will these poor people bring with them? WMD? Nuclear weapons?

One has to ask why all of these asylum seekers come down to Australia? There are dozens of Muslim countries near Iraq and Afghanistan that are wealthy and not at war, where other Muslims and their families would fit right in and be comfortable.

There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living in Syria, which is struggling to accommodate them. Syria is itself not a terribly wealthy nation. Hazara Afghans fleeing the Taliban would hardly want to stick around in Pakistan where elements of the same Taliban have taken over large areas of the country. And using your reasoning, I'm not sure which Muslim-majority country Tamil Sri Lankans will go to given that they're a mixture of Hindu and Christian. In any event, it isn't just about religion. People's identities are not limited to religion. If our identity was solely determined by religion, we should have seen Kevin Rudd and/or Malcolm Turnbull and not John Safran being nailed to a cross in the Philippines. After all, the Philippines is a Catholic country, and both Rudd and Turnbull are Catholic.

So why come many thousands of miles down to Australia, a basically British culture and a Christian country? These are the questions we should be asking.

In that case, I'm sure quite a few of these people would happily convert to Christianity if it meant they and their families would be safe. After all, quite a few asylum seekers such as Kashmiri Peter Qasim converted to Christianity. However, that didn't stop him from being kept in detention by the Howard government even though it drove him into severe depression. And I guess we shouldn't have any problem accepting Tamil Christian asylum seekers. As for being British, I don't think indogenous Aussies were eating with knives and forks 40,000 years ago. Then again, neither were the Poms for that matter.

But why should we be asking such questions? After all, our immigration system does not discriminate on the basis of religion. And anyway, how can we really tell what religion a person subscribes to? Or is it someone we determine based on their racial background? So we assume that an Iraqi must be Muslim because he is Iraqi and has an Arabic-sounding name, even if he could well be a Chaldean or Yazidi or Assyrian Orthodox?

Then there is a letter from one Lynne Cole whose arguments make a similar degree of (non)sense.

The recent boatload of asylum seekers were all male, presumably some of them are or were married, perhaps with children. So they left family behind to cope with the Taliban on their own.

Your point being? That these men just callously left their families behind and left without so much as a goodbye? That their families had no say in the matter? That their family members don't wish to see even one person flee to safety? Or are you saying that their families are all in Afghanistan or Pakistan and not in Indonesia? That the Taliban have made it to Jakarta?

How will the families of the five dead survive?

Are you suggesting you're really concerned about their welfare and would support their migrating to Australia?

Why aren't these brave men standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our young soldiers who are in Afghanistan trying to improve the lot of the Afghan people?

Maybe for the same reason the vast majority of young Australian men and women aren't there - they're not professional soldiers. And maybe because it isn't nice staying in a place where you could be kicked out of your property and/or be murdered at anytime and where you've already seen family members slaughtered. And from a strategic perspective, the last thing Coalition forces and the Afghan National Army needs is severely traumatised people fighting on their side.

Our young men are killed or injured while these people choose to try for an easy life in Australia.

It's so easy being away from one's family and only hearing their voices on the other end of a phone (presuming you can even contact them). It's a piece of cake surviving in a new country where you aren't allowed to work and cannot access any social security and are forced to rely on charity to make some kind of a living. And on top of that, having to deal with the trauma of having just survived life in a warzone and mourning alone over your dead relatives, presuming that you even know that they are dead.

Those we have already admitted no doubt tell those back home that what a soft touch we are.

Pfft. Are you suggesting, Lynne, that we start behaving like al-Qaeda and Taliban and LTTE and the Sri Lankan Army just so that you feel protected from nasty dark-skinned refugees? I'm glad we are a soft touch. If you want to experience a not-so-soft touch, feel free to go join our brave men and women fighting in Afghanistan.

OPINION: Appreciating Australia's indigenous heritage ...

When I was growing up, some of my Indo-Pakistani aunties expressed some extraordinary views. One was particularly scathing of Indo-Pakistani doctors who married gori (Hindi/Urdu for "white-skinned" ) women. "These gori women are all cheap. They just take our men's money and then leave them for some handsome white fellow!"

It wasn't just the auntie's implication that men of Indo-Pakistani origin could not be good-looking that offended me. It was also the idea that women with white skin were necessarily selfish, money-hungry and incapable of maintaining stable relationships with wealthy tanned medical practitioners. This particular auntie often boasted of being highly educated herself. Apparently she had completed a Masters degree in Indian literature from some university whose name I could never pronounce and won't even try spelling.

However, having a quality tertiary education doesn't inoculate one from making absurd generalisations about entire groups of people. Back in May 2006, I found myself seething with anger and disgust having read an article in a certain newspaper which contained this startling claim: "Traditional Aboriginal society was always harsh on women".

Indeed, I was so disgusted to read this that I put fingers to keyboard and sent the following e-mail to the opinion editor:

It reflects poorly on your newspaper that it could [publish a] piece... Claiming that Aboriginal cultures are characterised by abuse toward women and children is a gross insult to our nation's cultural heritage. Would you publish an article if the writer to make such claims about Jewish cultures? Or about Catholic or English-speaking cultures?

The editor's response spoke volumes.

I think it reflects poorly on you that you can't even think outside your narrow ideological box. What is wrong with competing ideas, esp[ecially] , given that the 30-year orthodoxy of self determination has disadvantaged so many indigenous Australians in the outback.

Whether indigenous Australians should be stopped from living anywhere in what is essentially their country is a debate I'd rather avoid. My concern is this strange obsession some allegedly conservative people have with proving that their culture is somehow superior to everyone else's. And even more strangely, that they somehow have the right to issue black cheque fatwas about the cultures and histories of entire races.

The Australian recently published some important observations of Major-General Dave Chalmers , who has just completed an 18 month stint running the Northern Territory Intervention. Chalmers is convinced indigenous Australians can only secure a better future by preserving their culture. And this can only be done if we as a broader Australian community learn to respect indigenous cultures.

Over time, we as a society have undervalued indigenous culture and in many places it's been lost... And where it's been lost, people have lost their compass, they've lost their framework of life. It's not being replaced by a mainstream Australian framework, and people are in limbo. We need to be paying a lot more attention to traditional healers and traditional lawmakers, the role they played, and play, in people's lives.

Genuine conservatives show genuine respect and reverence to our 40,000 year indigenous cultural status quo at least as much as they will to our 220-odd year European status quo. That involves recognising the sophistication of indigenous communities. In her 2007 book The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia's Indigenous-Asian Story Peta Stephenson tells just some of the stories of trade and cultural interaction (and indeed intermarriage) between indigenous tribes and Makassar trepang fishermen from Sulawesi (going back at least a century before Captain Phillip landed in Botany Bay) and Chinese indentured labourers.

Stephenson shows that these interactions were suppressed by colonial and Australian authorities, with members of culturally mixed families torn apart. Her nook should convince even the most hardened monoculturalist the Indigenous Australia wasn't some isolated monolithic horde of noble savages waiting for the Poms to civilise them. Before and after Europeans settled and plundered, non-European peoples interacted with indigenous peoples on more equal terms, respecting their laws and customs.

We've all heard of Cathy Freeman's indigenous heritage. But how many of us are aware that Freeman is also part-Chinese? Her great-great grandfather moved from China in the late 19th century to work on sugarcane farms in northern Queensland. Stephenson writes that Freeman actively supported Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics, and Chinese-language newspapers openly celebrate her Chinese heritage even if mainstream newspapers ignore it.

And who could forget the 1988 bicentennial celebrations, including the re-enactment of the Endeavour landing in Sydney? Our Territorian cousins up north had their own celebration, with the landing of the Hati Marege (meaning "Heart of Arnhem Land" in Indonesian) on the Arnhem Land coast. Stephenson provides evidence of Makassar fisherman from Sulawesi making annual voyages to fish for trepang (sea cucumbers) and to trade with the local Yolngu people since as early as the 17th century. This mutually beneficial trading relationship was banned by the South Australian government in 1906-07, ensuring the local Aboriginal people became isolated and insular. Mixed Makassan and indigenous families were torn apart, some only reunited recently after 80 years.

Indigenous Australians entered into complex and sophisticated trade relations with numerous non-European peoples both before and after colonisation and dispossession. They didn't need Europeans to teach them how to interact with outsiders. It's about time we learned more about these aspects of indigenous history so that we can enjoy the same healthy respect and admiration for the first Australians as Major-General Chalmers.

First published on the ABC Unleashed website on Wednesday 03 December 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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OPINION: What do Aussies really know about Indonesia?

Indonesia is our closest neighbour. It also happens to be the largest Muslim-majority state in the world. Yet just how much do Australians know about Indonesia? At one time Indonesian was almost as commonly taught in high schools as French and German. My Grade 5 Social Studies exam in 1980 included a question on Pancasila, the 5 principles of Indonesian civic life. But today, for many Australians, Indonesia is represented not by its shadow puppetry or its batik artistry. Instead, we view Indonesians as smiling replicas of Amrozi, the convicted Bali bomber facing execution.

But what do ordinary Indonesians think of groups like Jemaah Islamiyah? Estimates of JI’s membership vary from just under 100 to several thousand. Compare this to Nahdhatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim religious organisation, whose youth wing alone has over 10 million members.

I personally never realised just how much ordinary Indonesians hated the Bali bombers until I actually went there in January 2006. I was part of a delegation on an exchange program organised by the Australia-Indonesia Institute (AII) and funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade.

Before leaving for Indonesia, our delegation was given a briefing by AII experts about Indonesia, its history, politics and its unique approach to religiosity. Once we reached Jakarta, we visited the Australian Embassy where we were advised by embassy staff to tome down our Aussie-style brashness when meeting with ordinary Indonesians, who rarely engage in blunt or deliberately controversial discourse even when the strongly disagree with each other.

Our AII tour was no sheltered workshop with visits limited to groups on friendly terms with the Australian embassy. We were politely grilled by Indonesian journalists, many of whom saw Australia as being defined by Pauline Hanson and the Cronulla riots. We were also exposed to every kind of Indonesian Islam you could imagine – from firebrand charismatic Salafis to ecumenical interfaith activists of Interfidei to youth reps of Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatul Ulama (Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisations) to students at a traditional pesantren or religious boarding school.

At a university in Jogjakarta, I met a Balinese student researching the impact of the Bali bombings on the economy of not just Bali but also nearby islands and even eastern and central Java, Indonesia’s economic and cultural heartland. A year later in Sydney, I met another Balinese chap in Australia visiting on an AII exchange program. This fellow requested me to take him to Cronulla Beach. I assumed it was to see the scene of the 2005 race riots. It was only when I saw him reciting traditional Muslim prayers reserved for one’s deceased relatives at the memorial for Bali victims that I realised why he really wanted to be there.

Many Australians died in the Bali bombings, but so did many Indonesians. Thousands of Indonesian families and communities had suffered loss of livelihood and severe poverty thanks to the terrorist attacks in Bali. Mentioning Amrozi and other Bali bombers exhibits the kind of uncharacteristically brutal response we was told Indonesians only rarely exhibit. If more Australians understood just how unpopular the Bali bombers are in their own country and just how many ordinary Indonesians’ livelihoods have been destroyed, we would understand exactly why Amrozi smiles so much.

When Indonesians smile or chuckle, it’s often out of embarrassment or shame. It’s possible Amrozi’s smile is of this kind. His words may be defiant but Amrozi knows millions of Indonesians are looking forward to his execution.

Most Indonesians are Muslim, but their Islam doesn’t fit popular stereotypes. My AII delegation stayed in the hostel of a popular Muslim televangelist known to his followers as Aa Gym and who once had millions of young urban Indonesian followers. His message of Manajemen Qulbu (literally "heart management") has proven far more popular than the rants of Abu Bakar Bashir.
Aa Gym’s sex scandal spoiled his popularity. Admittedly, this was no ordinary televangelist sex scandal. With the permission of his existing wife, Aa Gym took on a second wife. Almost overnight, he went from being religious rockstar to social outcast. His followers were seen tearing up his posters on national TV.

Indonesians may have little tolerance for polygamy, but they have even less tolerance for extremist violence. The bombs of Amrozi and Imam Samudra don’t discriminate on the basis of religion, even if their sick demented political theology does.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and research associate at the Australian Homeland Security Research Centre. An edited version of this article appeared in the Herald Sun on Monday 6 October 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

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CRIKEY: Shame - the secret behind Amrozi's smile ...

I never realised just how much ordinary Indonesians hated the Bali bombers until I actually went there. It was January 2006, and I was on an exchange program organised by the Australia-Indonesia Institute. Before going, the AII gave is a briefing about Indonesia, its history, politics and its unique approach to religiosity. Indonesians are gentle, polite and quiet-spoken people.

Our delegation was further briefed in Jakarta by an awesome professional at the Embassy. We were advised to tome down our Aussie-style polemic. Apart from the odd dingo cartoon, Indonesians rarely engage in blunt or deliberately controversial discourse, let alone the sort of crass moronic ad hominem nonsense we've become accustomed to in this country.

During our trip, we were exposed to every kind of Indonesian Islam you could imagine -- from firebrand charismatic Salafis to ecumenical interfaith activists of Interfidei to youth reps of Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatul Ulama (Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisations) to students at a traditional pesantren (the kind of religious boarding school Barack Obama never attended outside Jakarta.

At the Gadjah Mada University in Jogjakarta, I met a Balinese postgrad doing his thesis on the impact of the Bali bombings on the economy of not just Bali but also nearby islands and even eastern and central Java, the island that forms Indonesia’s economic and cultural powerhouse. A year later in Sydney, I met another Balinese chap in Australia visiting on an AII exchange program. Both told me about how their families and communities had suffered thanks to the terrorist attacks in Bali, not to mention how so many locals as well as foreigners were killed and wounded.

(This fellow requested me to take him to Cronulla Beach. I assumed it was to see the scene of the 2005 race riots. It was only when I saw him reciting traditional Muslim prayers reserved for one’s deceased relatives at the memorial for Bali victims that I realised why he really wanted to be there.)

Mentioning Amrozi and other Bali bombers exhibits the kind of uncharacteristically brutal response I was told Indonesians only rarely exhibit. If more Australians understood just how unpopular the Bali bombers are in their own country and just how many ordinary Indonesians’ livelihoods have been destroyed, we would understand exactly why Amrozi smiles so much.

When Indonesians smile or chuckle, it’s often because they are embarrassed or ashamed about something they’ve said or done. Amrozi’s smile, referred to in today’s Age, is more likely one of shame or embarrassment. Notwithstanding his defiant words, Amrozi knows millions of Indonesians are looking forward to his execution. The bombs of Amrozi and Imam Samudra don’t discriminate on the basis of religion, even if their sick demented political theology does.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for 2 October 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

UPDATE: Even more stuff published elsewhere ...

The delightful people at ABC Unleashed have run this piece on the campaign to discredit Barack Obama by focussing on his cultural and religious heritage. Apparently "Barry" (as he was known in Indonesia) Obama used to wear a sarong, and wearing a sarong is a sign that one is a Muslim. I guess that makes my mum a non-Muslim as she prefers to wear a sari.



The situation in Pakistan is becoming quite scary. I really hope the new civilian Pakistani government and the US can find a way to fight the scourge of terrorism together. However, the signs aren't terribly positive this far. Here are some of my thoughts in NewMatilda.

Less scary is the situation of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. You can find my take on the change in leadership here.



In case you don't read far-Right blogs, The Canberra Times and I issued an apology to Mr Daniel Pipes. Yes, I have joined the ever-growing group of illustrous and sensible people to have been threatened by Mr Pipes with some kind of action. I now hope he will answer my prayers and declare me an "Islamist" in the same manner as he has declared such learned gentlemen as Hamza Yusuf Hanson and Professor Khaled Abou el-Fadl. The original article remains on this blog, albeit in edited format. The lesson I have learned from this incident is that the best way to expose Mr Pipes is to quote exactly what he says. His own words provide his numerous critics with sufficient ammunition.

Speaking of which, watch Mr Pipes oppose a Middle East peace plan proposed by President George W Bush, accusing the President of rewarding terrorism.



Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Downer laughs at water-boarding and other "pretty fascinating" stuff ...

Well, it's great to see Alexander Downer having a good laugh in his retirement:

*Laughing at the use of waterboarding and other torture methods by our American allies in the "War on Terror";

*Laughing at the almost certain torture and mistreatment of two Australian citizens at Guantanamo Bay ("We did precisely the right thing. I think it was important we were tough");

*Laughing at Mamdouh Habib's further torture as part of the US policy of outsourcing torture (known as exclusive rendition);

*Laughing at how woefully the war in Iraq is going.

It's all part of a period Downer describes to John Lyons in The Australian today as ...

... that pretty fascinating period of my life.

On a slightly less-than-laughing matter, Downer alleges that the Hawke government had allowed our external spy agency ASIS to be run down to the extent that we weren't able to detect emerging threats such as the transformation of Jemaah Islamiyah into a full-blown terror outfit. He might have a point.

Yet he also acknowledges that ASIS didn't have any substantial intelligence on Iraq's WMD prior to the 2003 invasion. His excuse?

Yeah, but I mean we are obviously not main intelligence gatherers in Iraq, if I can be so indiscreet as to say that.

So Mr Downer sent other people's sons and daughters (but not his own) to fight a war based on the dubious intelligence of others agencies. At least Hawke waited for a clear UN mandate before committing Aussie troops in the 1990 invasion.

Downer barely acknowledges what ASIO's head recently told a Senate Hearing, ie that Australia knew full well of Mamdouh Habib being sent to Egypt for torture. Instead, Downer's response to suggestions America tortures terror suspects in secret locations was "a spirited laugh".

Indeed, Downer's FoxNews-type record on foreign affairs would be worth laughing at if it didn't have such potentially serious consequences for our international reputation and national security.

Downer's successor in the federal Seat of Mayo clearly couldn't find much to laugh about over the weekend, having received almost as big an electoral fright as Downer himself received in the 1998 Federal Election at the hands of a certain well-known folk singer.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Tuesday 9 September 2008.

CRIKEY: Oz government sort of, but not really, opposes the death penalty ...

The Herald Sun reports that Foreign Minister Stephen Smith reckons there is no contradiction between pleading clemency for Australian drug smugglers but not for convicted terrorists. I guess that’s one way of putting it.

A more accurate way is to say that the Australian government openly opposes the death penalty, but at the same time doesn’t oppose it. It really depends on who is doing the dying.

If you’re a convicted terrorist, you should die. You have killed ordinary Australians and other innocent civilians, and have brought misery to their families. But if you are a convicted drug smuggler, you clearly haven’t brought misery to anyone.

Drug smugglers and the drugs they carry don’t kill anyone. Drug smugglers and the drugs they carry don’t cause misery to families. Illicit drugs clearly aren’t as dangerous as terrorist bombs.

Let’s face facts. 88 Australians died in the 2002 Bali bombings. Meanwhile, one South Australian study shows that in 1999 in Adelaide alone, ambulance workers responded to a total of 2,990 overdoses. Of these, 424 were caused only by a narcotic drug or a cocktail of narcotics.

A more recent national study conducted by the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 1,705 deaths across Australia were attributable to the use of illicit drugs in 2003. Further, during 2003-4, the number of accidental opioid overdose deaths for Australians aged 15-54 was 357. Opioid substances include heroin, morphine and other similar substances. Then, of course, there are HIV and other STD-related deaths.

As for affects on families, just ask someone who has cared for a relative with a narcotic-induced mental illness what it’s like. Go to pp38-9 of the AIHW report to find out the prevalence of mental illness among illicit drug users.

If Stephen Smith expects us to believe that terrorists and their weapons destroy more Aussie lives than drug pushers and their merchandise, he seriously must be taking something illicit himself.

Of course, we all know that we fight those blasted terrorists to defend our freedom, our values and our way of life. Strangely enough, in practice this means we ourselves attack our freedom, our values and our way of life with our own hands. It's much more fun committing collective civilisational suicide. That way, the terrorists will never get us. A good place to start the collective hari kari is our attitude to capital punishment.

If we don’t respect our values enough to apply them consistently, we can’t expect terrorists and those they seek to recruit to take us terribly seriously.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Monday 11 August 2008.

EVENT: Indonesian Festival @ Queanbeyan ...

You and family are cordially invited to an Indonesian Cultural Festival to celebrate the first anniversary of the Indonesian Community of Queanbeyan Association. This special event has also aimed to provide an opportunity to showcase Indonesian culture to the whole communities in surrounding Queanbeyan and the ACT. The Indonesian Cultural Festival will be held:

Venue : Queanbeyan Conference Centre
Crawford Street, Queanbeyan
Date: Sunday, 18th May 2008
Time: 11.00am to 02.00pm
RSVP by Friday 9th May 2008
To Mrs Titha Febritasari (email: tant_01@yahoo.com)

The festival will present diversity of traditional foods, handicrafts, and dances from all parts of Indonesia. A special short talk on the topic of ‘The journey of Islam in Java’ will be delivered by Dr George Quinn, an Indonesia’s specialist and senior lecturer from the Australian National University (ANU). In addition, there will be an auction of Indonesian handicrafts from our sponsors in the festival, and it is also anticipated that about 500 people will attend this performance. The admission is a gold coin donation.

This event would be an important opportunity for wider communities in Queanbeyan and the ACT to learn more about Indonesian culture.

On behalf of the Indonesian Community of Queanbeyan Association, we look forward to seeing you at the festival.

Queanbeyan, 22nd April 2008

Yours sincerely,
Mrs Ida Palaloi Suhadj
Chairperson


(Thanks to SJH for sending me this info.)

COMMENT: The Oz hatchets work of research student ...

The Australian carried a disturbing story today about a sermon delivered by Abubakar Basyir, widely regarded as the spiritual head of the Jemaah Islamiya terrorist network.

Basyir allegedly told a group of young people in a sermon that they should start assaulting tourists and shoukd be prepared to die as martyrs.

The Oz quotes Basyir's speech extensively. It then cites selft-declared terrorism expert Ronan Gunaratna on the implications of the speech. The Oz report is based on a video taken by Nathan Franklin, an Australian PhD student from Charles Darwin University.

However, we need to keep the following issues in mind:

1. I'm not sure what other languages Basyir or his audience speak, but I doubt their English language abilities are terribly strong. This raises the question: who translated the speech for The Oz?

2. I know he speaks fairly good Sinhalese (though his English is atrocious), but does Gunaratna speak any Bahasa Indonesia? If so, did Gunaratna get to see the entire video? Or indeed, did Gunaratna get to see any of the video?

3. If Basyir's descriptions of "[w]orms, snakes, maggots - those are animals that crawl" were to apply to all non-Muslims (as Natasha Robinson's report seems to suggest), and if Basyir really was as influential as claimed, how on earth did why did Franklin manage to openly film the sermon without himself getting beaten up for being a "snake" or "maggot"?

4. The Oz reports that "[t]he sermon was organised by the youth group Persatuan Pemuda Islam Pantura (Java North Coast Islamic Youth Group) and delivered on October 22 last year". We are also told that around 300 people attended the seminar. Who is the Java North Islamic Youth Group? Who are they affiliated with? And how is this current news when the sermon was delivered some 5 months ago and only 300 people attended?

Basyir's comments, if correctly translated, are disturbing. However, they also reflect the resentment which many Indonesians feel toward a minority of foreign tourists who use their holiday in Bali and other places as an opportunity to buy, sell and consume narcotics and engage in acts which even most Australians would class as sexual deviancy.

We should also remember that the film was taken by an Australian PhD student currently in Indonesia researching religious boarding schools. Here's an excerpt from a report prepared by his university in November 2006 ...

Charles Darwin University research student Nathan Franklin’s political studies will take him on a journey into the heart of Islam next year.

The 23-year-old political science student whose honours thesis was on Schapelle Corby will spend up to eight months living in an Indonesian pesantren, an Islamic boarding school for students aged from 12 to 18.

Nathan will spend three or four months at two quite different pesantren, both of them in Lamongan, about two hours journey from Surabaya in East Java.

One of the schools has a boarding population of about 8000 students, while the other has an enrolment of about 2500 – with the mix of the sexes roughly half and half in each school ...

So these are Javanese schools from one province of Indonesia. They may or may not reflect developments across Indonesia.

Pesantren have received adverse publicity in the West in the post-September era after the media identified some of them as training grounds for terrorists. In the Middle East and Pakistan the Islamic boarding schools are more commonly known by the name Madrasah.

However, Nathan says that most of the pesantren are peaceful, tolerant and conservative places that have been unfairly tagged as the incubators of terrorism.

‘There are about 16,000 pesantren in Indonesia but only about four of them have ever been identified as giving training linked to acts of terrorism,’ he said ...

Yep, that's right. A total of four (4). Out of 16,000. That means around 0.025% of Indonesian religious schools could be described as terrorist training camps.

He begins his boarding school life in early December, 2006, staying at first at an 8000-enrolment school run by the moderate Islamic organisation known as Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s biggest Islamic organisation with a membership of about 40-million adherents, most of them in remote and rural areas.

He will then swap its crowded corridors for a 2500-student school run by the Muhammadiyah, a reformist organisation that wants to take Islam back to its ‘golden age’ roots along the lines of Shariah based values. Muhammadiyah is also a large Islamic organisation with about 30 million members.

So The Oz ignores this part of Nathan's research. Little wonder they are more interested in what 300 people attending Basyir's one-off lecture hear as opposed to what 10,500 students in boarding schools run by the two largest Islamic organisations in the world are being taught each day.

‘There is an ongoing debate where some of those in the Muhammadiyah organisation want Indonesian society to become a caliphate, or a religious state,’ says Nathan. ‘But both types of schools renounce terrorism.’

Yes, people can have a debate about caliphate without supporting extremist violence. Yet even more interesting is Nathan's perspective on why religious boarding schools are so popular in Indonesia.

He says pesantren have become more popular in recent times since the Indonesian education system recognised their curriculum.

'They are popular with parents because they offer a high level of discipline, they are cheaper than state schools, and students receive a good education as well as becoming inculcated with Islamic religious values,’ says Nathan. ...

In fact, boarding schools are playing a key role in the pos-Suharto democratic Indonesia. And this fact goes to the heart of Franklin's research.

For his PhD Nathan seeks to examine the extent to which pesantren and its leaders are influencing politics in Indonesia since the transition from the authoritarian regime of President Suharto to a democracy. He says Australia must understand the internal dynamics of this important regional neighbour.

'A contemporary study of this nature is vital to achieving better relations with Indonesia,’ he says.

It seems at least one newspaper may not share Nathan's vision.

UPDATE I: Some far-Right wacko from Queensland has mentioned my post here on his online bog. Read this and wonder if modern medicine can find a cure for someone so ill.

Words © Irfan Yusuf 2008

OPINION: Suharto no angel, but still mourned ...

During the late 1990s, I worked for a lawyer who spent his spare time making documentaries. A decade earlier, he produced a documentary about East Timor. He interviewed an Indonesian general who, as a young man, had taken part in the purge of presumed communists during the mid-1960s. When asked how he recognised complete strangers as communists, the general responded: "I can tell by the share of white in their eyes".

Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians, many having no communist links, were murdered during these purges. Many Western leaders knew but kept silent in much the same manner as they are silent today about atrocities and human rights abuses committed by dictatorships across the nominally Islamic world against anyone deemed extremist.

The man who orchestrated these massacres was another Indonesian general who is (to be fair, quite rightly) praised for leading his nation through a period of industrialisation and economic development.

The front page story of The Jakarta Post yesterday speaks of Suharto

"[v]enerated for much of his 32-year tenure as the liberator he appeared to be after more than two decades of authoritarian rule under his predecessor Sukarno, and vilified near its end for his authoritarian rule and for the corruption he appeared to condone in his later years in office."

It went on to describe Suharto's period of leadership as one which saw political and economic stability at the expense of freedom and human rights. Such words could never have been written in a major Indonesian newspaper before Suharto's 1998 resignation. At least this is what I was told by an Indonesian postgraduate student when I visited the country in 2006.

Within three months of my arrival in January, a popular Indonesian tabloid, Rakyat Merdeka, (perhaps the closest thing to an Islamist Daily Telegraph) published an article critical of Australia's involvement in West Papua. This wasn't unusual but what was new was a cartoon (which would have offended the paper's devout Muslim readers) showing one dingo with the head of former prime minister John Howard from behind another dingo with the head of former foreign minister Alexander Downer.

The cartoon was deemed too risque even for a certain former shadow foreign minister named Kevin Rudd, who described it as

... not passing any standard of taste anywhere in the world ...

and even hinting at the Indonesian Government using any

... powers it had over Indonesian newspapers in terms of decency standards.

Suharto will be given a state funeral in his home town of Surakarta. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has declared a week of mourning. Suharto's coffin was draped in the Indonesian flag when turned over by his family to the military. Tens of thousands lined the streets from the Suharto family's Jakarta residence to an air force base as the coffin was driven to be transported for the funeral.

The man whose New Order regime dominated Indonesian public life for over three decades ironically had humble beginnings. He was born in June 1921. At age 19, he entered a military school in Gambong. During the Japanese occupation, he spent some time in the Japanese-sponsored police force in Yogyakarta.

Following independence in 1945 and until his accession to the presidency in 1968, Suharto went through the ranks of the Indonesian armed forces. That period saw an ongoing struggle against the Indonesian Communist Party.

Suharto's presidency was characterised by strong economic development and he was proclaimed the Father of Development. At the same time, he brutally suppressed dissent. In January 1978, he ordered the closure of a number of influential newspapers and sent Indonesian troops on to university campuses.

Yet it was the 1975 invasion and subsequent occupation of East Timor, believed to be a hotbed of communist activism under Fretilin, for which many Australians will remember him. Today, independent East Timor is a tiny nation at war with itself. No doubt in his last days, Suharto and many Indonesians who supported his intervention would have been whispering under their breaths, "We told you so".

Islamic theology teaches that if God intended to make men perfect, he would have created them as angels. The man who ruled over the world's largest Islamic nation for over 30 years certainly was not perfect. But today Indonesians enjoy freedoms which their co-religionists in other parts of the nominally Islamic world yearn for. Had Suharto not led his nation to relative prosperity, one wonders if its present democracy could thrive as it does.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and associate editor of AltMuslim.com. A version of this article was first published in the Canberra Times on 29 January 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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RELIGION/COMMENT: Religious festivals back-to-back

This year, 2 major festivals of 2 major world religions will coincide.

Over the weekend, Hindus will commemorate the Festival of Lights, otherwise known as Divali (or Dipavali in southern India) commemorating the reunion of Lord Rama with his bride Sita (known in Indonesia as “Cinta”).

The story of Rama and Sita is found in the ancient Hindu epic called the Ramayana. In India, the birthplace of Rama (the north Indian city of Ayodhya) has become a warzone, Hindu militants destroying a medieval mosque in 1992 leading to religious riots in which tens of thousands have been killed across northern India.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Muslim actors regularly perform the Ramayana ballet to largely Muslim audiences. In January, I was fortunate enough to see a traditional Ramayana ballet performed in Yogyakarta. The ballet was performed in the shadow of one of the oldest Hindu temples on earth.

But what made the performance amazing was not the music, the instruments or costumes. It was that this ballet was being performed as a cultural performance in the world’s largest Muslim country. Indonesian Muslims take their Hindu heritage seriously.

Speaking of Muslims, this morning most Muslims across Australia conclude their fasting month of Ramadan with prayers and a feast. The festival (called Eid by Arabs, Bayram by Turks and Hari Raya by Malays and Indonesians) is traditionally a time for visiting families as well as praying for the souls of departed loved ones.

Not all Muslims will be celebrating the end of the fasting month tomorrow. I realise some people out there believe imams and other Muslims are part of a huge conspiracy to destroy Western civilisation, plotting and planning our downfall through violence and terror.

The reality is that imams cannot even agree on how to determine the precise dates of major festivals! In November, three Muslim comics from North America will be performing their Allah Made Me Funny comedy show in Sydney and Melbourne. One of their number, Chicago lawyer Azhar Usman, tells of one of his colleagues telling him: “Listen, Azhar, I have absolutely no interest in organised religion.”

Azhar’s response? “Well, then, become a Muslim. We are the most disorganised religion on earth!”

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf