With Hard-Liners Increasingly Cornered, All That Is Needed Is a Little More Rope
Bramantyo Prijosusilo, Jakarta Globe:
As calls for the disbandment of organizations that use religion as a mask to justify their violent actions subside, the very same groups have consolidated in the capital to produce ever more violent rhetoric.
Although violent statements coming from the leadership of the Islamic Defenders Front are nothing new, the recent calls against the Liberal Islam Network are even more disturbing than the call by the Front’s Sobri Lubis to kill Ahmadiyah followers in February 2008.
If four years ago Lubis urged people to “Kill, kill, kill Ahmadiyah,” in a recent gathering, the preferred method of killing was specified: hunt down and burn authors of liberal Islam books. In the same gathering, a spokesman for the Front known as the FPI, Munarman, also called for people to “hunt down ‘liberals’ in their neighborhoods, to beat on their doors and expel them.”