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Ngruki:
It is school for Islam or terrorism?
Noor Huda Ismail, Jakarta
The Jakarta Post on Feb. 28, 2005 released a report on a
Ngruki alumni involved in terrorism activity. As a graduate
of that school, I understand how such people think. In this
brief report, I would like to share my experiences studying
there and investigate why a fringe of Ngruki alumni are
involved in terrorism activities but the majority are not.
From age 12 to 17 I attended the now-famous Islamic boarding
school. A simple plastic mattress served as my bed in a
dingy student dormitory together with about 20 other students
and a volunteer resident assistant named Fadlullah Hasan,
who was three years older than me. Hasan had a perpetual
blue bruise on his forehead from bowing his head to the
floor as the result of his five prayers per day.
Despite his zealous attitude and my more moderate beliefs,
Hasan and I developed a tight bond, mostly rooted in the
fact that we both hailed from the outskirts of Yogyakarta,
a two-hour bus ride from Ngruki.
At 4.am. Hasan habitually rose without an alarm clock and
promptly woke us up by gently tapping our backs. After morning
prayers in the adjacent mosque, we read the Koran and consumed
Hasan's encouraging words that reminded us to study and
to proselytize Islam.
After two months at Ngruki I realized Hasan used an alias.
Like many Ngruki students, Hasan rejected his given name,
Utomo Pamungkas, because it sounded too Javanese, and not
Islamic enough. Hasan, as I always called him, vanished
from Ngruki the following year, and I wouldn't learn his
whereabouts until we had a rather ironic encounter 15 years
later.
Ngruki wasn't always famous. It is merely one of thousands
of Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia. But it has
emerged as the most notorious of such schools because dozens
of convicted Bali bombers are Ngruki alumni and its co-founder
is Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. Security analysts and police investigators
insist Ngruki's activities are linked with the three major
bombings in Indonesia, and at least two dozen smaller explosions,
mostly targeting churches.
Sidney Jones, the director of the Indonesian branch of the
International Crisis Group, has dubbed Ngruki the "Ivy
League" of JI members who are recruited clandestinely.
Jones has a point. Days before my graduation, Ngruki's faith
teacher, Abdurrohim alias Abu Husna, called me and five
other students -- all of whom had high academic achievements
or zealous attitudes -- into his poorly-lit home. He said,
"A Muslim should join the Islamic group called Jamaah
Islamiyah," he said. He explained how this movement
aimed to establish an Islamic state.
I was a 17-year-old, and wise enough to refuse his proposal.
In fact, my days at Ngruki were a misfit from the beginning.
My secular father worked as a parole officer who was mainly
responsible for handling Islamic militants that opposed
former president and dictator Soeharto. As a means for him
to find out more about the group, he enrolled me in Ngruki.
"You make it easy for me to enter and observe the school,"
my father told me.
One of his targets of observation was Ngruki's co-founder,
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, an alleged terrorist leader who I interviewed
for my current job as a reporter for The Washington Post,
just a few days before an Indonesian prosecutor reopened
the case against him. In a 65-page indictment, the prosecutor
charged him for being the amir, or leader, of Jamaah Islamiyah
(JI) and declared him responsible for the Marriott Hotel
and Bali bombings.
Abu Bakar Basyir, 65, approached me in the crowded and poorly
maintained jail hall wearing a white shirt, a white, boxed
Islamic cap, and faded white-framed eyeglasses. The stocky
prisoner by his side was convicted of blowing up the residence
of the Philippines ambassador in 2000. His unofficial job
was to coordinate six prisoners who provide Baasyir daily
assistance with food and laundry.
Baasyir, a self-proclaimed admirer of Osama bin Laden, spewed
out his usual rhetoric, portraying himself as a victim of
the infidel Bush's America. Then he quoted the Koran "The
infidels will never stop fighting us until we follow their
way."
I know this verse all too well because various teachers
drilled it into my brain by day and night some 14 years
ago, when I studied in the sweltering classrooms that taught
nothing but Islam. The only music blasting from Ngruki's
speakers was Nasyid, an Arabic song about Jihad. Painted
Arabic calligraphy covered the dormitory walls. One of them
read "Die as a noble man or die as a martyr."
Inside Ngruki's brick walls, anti-Semitism was rampant.
On Thursday night public speaking classes, the most popular
topic was the threats facing Islam. Global Jewish power
and Indonesia's Christian-controlled economy fueled our
fears. We, the students, delivered impassioned speeches
quoting the verse of the Koran that reads "the infidels
and Jews will never stop fighting us until we follow their
religion." I was no different, and my words received
warm praise and injected me with pride and genuine satisfaction.
There is no doubt that all the teachers were fiercely for
an Islamic state and the implementation of sharia law. They
regarded the existing secular national law as illegitimate.
They refused the fly Indonesia's red and white flag, and
shunned Pancasila -- Indonesia's national philosophy. Their
motivation was once again a Koranic verse that reads, "Whoever
doesn't follow God's law is an infidel."
This anti-nationalism led Ngruki's co-founders, Ba'asyir
and Abdullah Sungkar, to flee into exile in neighboring
Malaysia, where they avoided imprisonment for subversion
by Soeharto.
My father did, in fact, find out a lot about life in Ngruki.
He learned that Ngruki, despite its radical slant, produced
a handful of moderate Indonesian Muslims like me. I pray
five times a day, study the Koran and wish to visit Mecca.
I work for the American media, host Jewish-American friends
in my home, and spend Friday nights at a local bar. Most
of my fellow graduates may not be open-minded by Western
standards, but they don't support violence in the name of
Islam either. And despite their occasional narrow vision,
many are likely to have succeeded in the secular, business
world.
Why did only some Ngruki alumni take the road to terrorism?
Ngruki teachings proved unrealistic in the real world, especially
the emphasis on the strict interpretation of Islam that
was at complete odds with the environment where we ended
up working. After graduation, I had to obtain a personal
ID card from the government, the same government I was taught
to disregard. I choose to further my study at two government-run
universities, where I had to sing the national anthem and
respect the national flag. All of this was necessary to
start a successful career.
According to my interviews in Arabic and Indonesian with
convinced terrorists from Ngruki, most received military
academy training in the Dar Al Ittihad Al Islamy camp in
Afghanistan or in Camp Hudaibiyah in Moro, the Philippines.
They went in the name of JI and candidly discussed how they
killed in the name of God. They justified their jihad as
a revenge for the butchering of Muslims by infidels such
as the U.S. and its allies.
Hasan was among them. When I met with him again last year,
the setting was not a run-down dormitory, but instead an
equally dilapidated Jakarta jail. Hasan's jaw nearly dropped
to the floor when he first saw me. It looked like he wanted
to hug me, but he hesitated and awkwardly opted for a handshake.
Other prisoners must have informed him that his long-lost
roommate was now a special correspondent for the Washington
Post journalist, a position he would deem an extension of
the infidels. Hasan is now a convict, jailed for his involvement
in the Bali blast.
We engaged in small talk in Arabic until his comfort level
increased. However, took many meetings spanning two months
for us to return to our previous rapport.
Hasan is the fifth of seven children from a simple peasant
family in a remote Java village. His father sent him to
Ngruki from 1986 to 1989 expecting him to become his village's
religious teacher.
"I have disappointed my father," he said in a
solemn voice. "Instead of being a religious teacher,
I'm a terrorist. Now, I am locked here."
In 1990, under the influence of the emir of JI, Abdullah
Sungkar, he went to Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and
the Philippines to study a radical strain of Islam and to
wage Jihad as a missionary in Malaysia and Indonesia. Hasan
met Sungkar at Ngruki before Sungkar fled to Malaysia. "He
was like a father to me," said Hasan, who later became
a senior JI member.
He was instructed to establish the Hudaibiyah Camp and train
Moro Independent Liberation Front members and JI members.
Sitting cross-legged on his black mattress, Hasan talked
sadly about his wife and his two children who live in an
Islamic boarding school in East Java.
"Each time I think of them, I feel so sad," he
said. Hasan also lived in this school in 2000, and it was
there that he met the Bali bombers, most of whom were Ngruki
graduates from different years. But Hasan sensed the police
on his tail, and he fled on a two-day boat ride to faraway
Kalimantan.
Hasan wasn't in jail alone -- he was with other former Ngruki
students; Muhammad Saefudin and Muhammad Rais. Along with
Saefudin and Rais, he met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan
in 2001.
Rais relayed Osama bin Laden's message to Ba'asyir and was
arrested for storing explosive materials used for the Marriott
Hotel bombing, while Saefudin was groomed by JI as its future
leader.
I wondered. If it weren't for my secular roots, would I
too have been with my former classmates behind bars?
The writer is a journalsit and can be reached at noorhudaismail@yahoo.com.
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