Could Aung San Suu Kyi face Rohingya genocide charges?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Justin Rowlatt

South Asia correspondent

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, is determined that the perpetrators of the horrors committed against the Rohingya face justice.

He’s the head of the UN’s watchdog for human rights across the world, so his opinions carry weight.

It could go right to the top – he doesn’t rule out the possibility that civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the head of the armed forces Gen Aung Min Hlaing, could find themselves in the dock on genocide charges some time in the future.

Earlier this month, Mr Zeid told the UN Human Rights Council that the widespread and systematic nature of the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar (also called Burma) meant that genocide could not be ruled out.

“Given the scale of the military operation, clearly these would have to be decisions taken at a high level,” said the high commissioner, when we met at the UN headquarters in Geneva for BBC Panorama.

That said, genocide is one of those words that gets bandied about a lot. It sounds terrible – the so-called “crime of crimes”. Very few people have ever been convicted of it.

The crime was defined after the Holocaust. Member countries of the newly founded United Nations signed a convention, defining genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy a particular group.

It is not Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein’s job to prove acts of genocide have been committed – only a court can do that. But he has called for an international criminal investigation into the perpetrators of what he has called the “shockingly brutal attacks” against the Muslim ethnic group who are mainly from northern Rakhine in Myanmar.

But the high commissioner recognised it would be a tough case to make: “For obvious reasons, if you’re planning to commit genocide you don’t commit it to paper and you don’t provide instructions.”

“The thresholds for proof are high,” he said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me in the future if a court were to make such a finding on the basis of what we see.”

By the beginning of December, nearly 650,000 Rohingya – around two thirds of the entire population – had fled Myanmar after a wave of attacks led by the army that began in late August.

Hundreds of villages were burned and thousands are reported to have been killed.

There is evidence of terrible atrocities being committed: massacres, murders and mass rapes – as I heard myself when I was in the refugee camps as this crisis began.

What clearly rankles the UN human rights chief is that he had urged Ms Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, to take action to protect the Rohingya six months before the explosion of violence in August.

He said he spoke to her on the telephone when his office published a report in February documenting appalling atrocities committed during an episode of violence that began in October 2016.

“I appealed to her to bring these military operations to an end,” he told me. “I appealed to her emotional standing… to do whatever she could to bring this to a close, and to my great regret it did not seem to happen.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rohingya Muslims displaced from Tula Toli village in Rakhine State gave disturbing accounts

Ms Suu Kyi’s power over the army is limited, but Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein believes she should have done more to try and stop the military campaign.

He criticised her for failing to use the term “Rohingya”. “To strip their name from them is dehumanising to the point where you begin to believe that anything is possible,” he said – powerful language for a top UN official.

He thought Myanmar’s military was emboldened when the international community took no action against them after the violence in 2016. “I suppose that they then drew a conclusion that they could continue without fear,” he said.

“What we began to sense was that this was really well thought out and planned,” he told me.

The Myanmar government has said the military action was a response to terrorist attacks in August which killed 12 members of the security forces.

But BBC Panorama has gathered evidence that shows that preparations for the continued assault on the Rohingya began well before that.

We show that Myanmar had been training and arming local Buddhists. Within weeks of last year’s violence the government made an offer: “Every Rakhine national wishing to protect their state will have the chance to become part of the local armed police.”

“This was a decision made to effectively perpetrate atrocity crimes against the civilian population,” said Matthew Smith, chief executive of the human rights organisation Fortify Rights which has been investigating the build-up to this year’s violence.

That view is borne out by refugees in the vast camps in Myanmar who saw these volunteers in action, attacking their Rohingya neighbours and burning down their homes.

“They were just like the army, they had the same kind of weapons”, said Mohammed Rafique, who ran a successful business in Myanmar. “They were local boys, we knew them. When the army was burning our houses, torturing us, they were there.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who is burning down Rohingya villages?

Meanwhile the Rohingya were getting more vulnerable in other ways.

By the summer food shortages were widespread in north Rakhine – and the government tightened the screws. The programme has learnt that from mid-August the authorities had cut off virtually all food and other aid to north Rakhine.

And the army brought in reinforcements. On 10 August, two weeks before the militant attacks, it was reported that a battalion had been flown in.

The UN human rights representative for Myanmar was so concerned she issued a public warning, urging restraint from the Myanmar authorities.

But when Rohingya militants launched attacks on 30 police posts and an army base, the military response was huge, systematic and devastating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rohingya refugees tell the BBC of “house by house” killings

The BBC asked Aung San Suu Kyi and the head of the Myanmar armed forces for a response. But neither of them has replied.

Almost four months on from those attacks and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is concerned the repercussions of the violence are not yet over. He fears this “could just be the opening phases of something much worse”.

He worries jihadi groups could form in the huge refugee camps in Bangladesh and launch attacks in Myanmar, perhaps even targeting Buddhist temples. The result could be what he called a “confessional confrontation” – between Buddhists and Muslims.

It is a frightening thought, as the high commissioner acknowledged, but one he believes Myanmar isn’t taking seriously enough.

“I mean the stakes are so enormous,” he said. “This sort of flippant manner by which they respond to the serious concerns of the international community is really alarming.”

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42335018

The Religion and Cultural Fundamentalist Issues in BERDAYA Program

/0 Comments/in , /by

One of the challenges of BERDAYA program is that the purpose of this activity can contradict with religious and cultural fundamentalists who consider child marriage to be their domain.

Religious fundamentalism is both a religious as well as an ideology that believes that the best way to save people from destruction on earth is to “return to the basic dogma.” Methodologically they invite to return to the understanding of the text of Scripture (Qur’an and hadith). But its way of understanding uses the literalist basis. This literalist argumentation rejects the results of ijtihad and the classical law argumentation that have been codified by scholars who develop Islamic thought contextually for centuries through the process of culture-civilization to Islam in accordance with the times. This reinvigorated effort of textual teaching eliminates the essence of humanity within it. This literalist view makes the religious view stalled, static and consequently Islam evolving backward so that religious views become rigid and incapable of adapting to the modern age, this condition creates an antipathic view of the modern civilization itself.

Ideologically, this view of fundamentalism is one level below radicalism, while radicalism is a belief or action with the imposition of views and attitudes through violence and terrorism. Fundamentalism is the embryo of the birth of radicalism even to the level of terrorism if there is no process that prevents it. Cultural fundamentalism is also similar to the condition of religious fundamentalism, both of them refers to the basic guidelines of an ideology, one a religious ideology, while another is a cultural ideology. Cultural fundamentalism will give rise to a rigid and absolute view of treating traditions. Religious and cultural fundamentalism are equally harmful to women because they consider the existence of women to be a measure of change, so control over the women is important to keep their ideology. Child marriage is one of the things that they maintain because it is in accordance with the religious fundamentalism that is believed.

Child marriage is happening at an alarming rate across the US

/0 Comments/in /by

By Fraidy Reiss

Fraidy Reiss is the founder/executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit that helps women and girls in the United States to escape forced marriages, and works to end forced and child marriage in America. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN)People are looking in shocked disgust at the defenders of Roy Moore. How can so many Alabamans throw their support behind Moore, the Republican nominee for a United States Senate seat there, who is accused of pursuing or sexually abusing teens — including a 14 year-old — back when he was in his 30s? Moore denies the allegations, and is threatening to sue the Washington Post, where the report appeared last week.

Americans are appalled, unable to account for the bizarre responses of, for example, the state auditor, who likened Moore’s situation to the biblical story of Joseph and Mary, or the parade of citizen supporters defending Moore and doubting his accusers, or even an elementary school principal, who seemed to dismiss the allegations: “This all happened many years ago, correct? I honestly think we’re paying too much attention to it.” (She later said she didn’t mean for her comment to come out that way.)

How can such thinking persist anywhere in America in 2017? How can anyone not be horrified that a grown man could allegedly attempt sexual relations with a minor?

I must point out an awkward truth.

Child marriage — which often is legalized child rape — is happening at an alarming rate across the United States today. Clerks and judges openly give marriage licenses to adult men who are marrying young girls, granting the men a “get out of jail free” card that in many cases allows what would otherwise be against the law.

 

Moore’s alleged sexual encounters more than 30 years ago, as described by his accusers, were surreptitious, the actions of a man who knew he might get punished if he were caught. These adult husbands’ sexual encounters with child wives, on the other hand, are brazen, the actions of men who know they will not get punished because the government has sanctioned their misconduct and is complicit in it.

While most states set 18 as the marriage age, legal loopholes — such as judicial approval — in all 50 states allow marriage before 18. Laws in 25 states do not specify any minimum age for marriage.

Ironically, though Alabama’s child marriage laws are on their face abysmal, as they permit marriage before 18, they are relatively “strong” compared with other states across the nation: At least Alabama specifies that no child under 16 may marry.

 

In 2015, Unchained At Last — a nonprofit I founded in 2011 to fight forced marriage — collected marriage license data in the United States from 2000 to 2010, the time period for which the highest number of states had marriage age data available.

In just the 38 US states that track marriage ages, according to the available data, more than 167,000 children, some as young as 10, were married between 2000 and 2010. In all 50 states, Unchained At Last estimated that 248,000 children — or those under age 18 — were married in America in that decade. (Twelve states and Washington, DC, could not provide sufficient data on child marriage. For them, Unchained used a statistical model to estimate the number of children wed, based on the strong correlation Unchained identified between population and child marriage.)

Almost all the children married were girls wed to adult men, according to the data. In many cases, because of the age of the child or the spousal age difference, sex between the two would constitute statutory rape under that state’s laws.

This is happening in state after state, not only in Alabama. Since 1995, judges in my home state of New Jersey, for example, have handed marriage licenses to more than 105 men who instead should have been investigated for statutory rape under state law: The men were four or more years older than their child bride, who was between the ages of 13 and 15.

Horrifyingly, statutory rape within marriage is not considered a crime in many states. New Jersey is not one of those states. Thus, while those 105+ marriages are legal, every time those couples have sex, the husband could theoretically be charged with sexual assault.

Child marriage is an outrage not only when it legalizes or ignores statutory rape. Child marriage also is often forced marriage — imposed on minors who have little recourse. Before children become adults, which typically happens at age 18, they cannot easily leave home, enter a domestic violence shelter, retain an attorney or bring a legal action. They are nearly powerless to protect themselves if their parents or others try to force them into marriage.

I see the horrors of forced child marriage regularly through Unchained At Last. It means rape for the child on the wedding night and thereafter. It usually means the child is pulled out of middle school or high school, with all her or his hopes for the future destroyed. It means lifelong trauma.

Further, whether it is forced or not, child marriage devastates girls’ health, education and economic opportunities and significantly increases their risk of being beaten by their spouse. The US State Department considers marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse.”

Solving America’s child marriage problem should be simple. Every state can start by passing commonsense legislation I have helped to write to eliminate the archaic loopholes that permit marriage before 18, or before the age of adulthood, whichever is higher. Strong legislation to this effect is pending in Florida, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

But the same legislation has failed recently in other states. Gov. Chris Christie conditionally vetoed the bill that passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support in New Jersey. New Hampshire legislators voted no, and Maryland legislators let the bill die, twice. Legislators in New York, Virginia, Texas and Connecticut passed weaker bills that still allow marriage before 18.

Sure, let’s be outraged about Moore’s alleged actions to prey on five teenage girls.

But let’s not forget the ongoing outrage of child marriage, happening legally right now in courthouses and clerks’ offices across America.

 

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/15/opinions/moore-case-spotlights-risk-to-young-girls-reiss/index.html

 

The Art of Making a Jihadist

/2 Comments/in /by

By: Andrew Anthony

We know about jihadists’ dedication to violence, but that’s not the whole story, says expert Thomas Hegghammer. There’s a hidden culture of poetry, music and storytelling that sustains their ideology
_______________

WHEN Jihadi John, the Islamist terrorist who gloried in decapitating hostages, was exposed as Mohammed Emwazi, a spokesman from Cage recalled the west Londoner bringing “posh baklava” to the advocacy group’s offices. He described the knife-wielding murderer and gloating torturer as “a beautiful young man… extremely kind, gentle and soft-spoken, the most humble young person I knew”.

One of the people who inspired Emwazi was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, renowned for leading the group that beheaded and tortured many western hostages in Iraq, including the British engineer Kenneth Bigley. Zarqawi was known as the Sheikh of the Slaughterers, but he was also referred to as He Who Weeps A Lot, for his habit of crying during prayer.

A baklava-dispensing gentleman and lachrymose devotee who both happen to be sadistic killers? There’s something jarring about these portraits, because with good reason we tend to think of jihadists like Emwazi and al-Zarqawi as murderous automatons, singularly dedicated to the most terrifying violence. But as the Norwegian academic Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on jihadism, argues, that’s not the whole story. Even jihadists have their downtime. The question is, what do they do in it?

After a decade of studying the subject, around 2010 Hegghammer came to a realisation. Jihadists did a lot of things seemingly at odds with their brutal image: weeping, writing and reciting poetry, singing, recalling and interpreting dreams, perfecting their manners and taking an inordinate interest in their appearance.

In the language of behavioural economics, they weren’t rational actors because they were acting in ways that often ran counter to their stated interests. That may not seem like a profound insight about people whose military USP is a pronounced willingness to blow themselves up. Still, Hegghammer thought it was one worth exploring and, given the ongoing draw of jihadism, it’s perhaps one that the authorities should also consider.

Jihadism, in the sense that Hegghammer is concerned with, is a relatively new phenomenon. He dates it to the Afghan war against the USSR in the 1980s. Since then it has taken many forms in places as diverse as Chechnya, Bosnia, Nigeria and Somalia.

Most recently hundreds of young men, and some young women too, have gone to Syria from the UK, and thousands from across Europe as a whole. With the attacks in London and Manchester, and the vicious battles to retake the cities of Mosul and Raqqa from Isis in Iraq and Syria, the bloody reality of global jihad has been a prominent news story for some time. Yet we know little of jihadists’ lives beyond their obsession with death.

What Hegghammer came to see in looking closer at the background activities that gained little attention was a pattern of behaviour that amounted to a distinct and living culture. The result is a book Hegghammer has edited entitled “Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists.”

I meet Hegghammer at a pub on the banks of the river Cherwell, not far from the spot where the city of Oxford surrendered to Oliver Cromwell, that English religious Puritan who, like the jihadists, believed God guided his military campaigns.

Hegghammer is senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo. In 2001, having left Oxford with degrees in Middle East Studies, he got a summer internship at the establishment working on a tiny unit that was then known as the “Bin Laden network”. A couple of months later 9/11 happened and he became completely absorbed in a phenomenon that, he says, has been “a passion” ever since.

A youthful-looking 40-year-old, Hegghammer is quietly spoken and carefully reflective. I ask him if he was worried that his book might be misconceived as an apology for, or even glorification of, jihadism.

“To be perfectly honest it didn’t occur to me in the beginning, perhaps because I and the people I work with take it for granted that there’s no need to normatively condemn jihadism in every sentence.” However, after he published an op-ed piece in the New York Times, the comments section “exploded” with outrage. “So I think some people see it as a little controversial,” he acknowledges, “but once I can explain what it’s about, people understand.”

Militancy, Hegghammer writes, “is about more than bombs and doctrines. It is also about rituals, customs and dress codes. It is about music, films and storytelling. It is about sports, jokes, and food.”

The book argues that jihadis have a “rich aesthetic culture that is essential for understanding their mindset and worldview”. “Rich” is an unusual choice of word to describe a culture that is primarily concerned with prohibition: of expression, imagery, literature, sexuality, sensuality, and a huge range of human activities that fall outside a very strict interpretation of the seventh-century religious guide to living a pious life that is the Qur’an.

Perhaps a more fitting word is “kitsch”, for much of jihadi poetry and artwork presented in the book is sentimental and self-glorifying. Indeed the imagery displayed in a chapter called The Visual Culture of Jihad is replete with heavenly representations that wouldn’t look out of place hanging on the fence of Kensington Gardens, alongside paintings of cute cats and doe-eyed children.

“It’s a very romantic culture,” says Hegghammer, “insofar as they see themselves as historical heroes, knights in shining armour, every one of them. And they can be very pompous. Humour is unevenly distributed in the movement – some of them can be quite funny and self-ironic, but the average level of self-irony is very low. It’s a movement that takes itself very seriously.”

But aesthetic judgments about rich or kitsch are beside the point. What really matters, from a sociological viewpoint, is the time jihadists devote to pastimes that do not appear to tally with their central preoccupation.

“We should expect them to spend all their time honing their bomb-making skills, raising funds, or studying the enemy’s weakness,” Hegghammer writes. “Yet they ‘waste’ time on poetry recitation, hymn singing, and other activities that serve no apparent strategic purpose.”

Except, as Hegghammer argues, what initially seems superfluous to the cause is in fact all part of its dissemination. New recruits, for example, tend to listen to jihadi music and watch jihadi videos long before they understand the doctrine or take part in any fighting. This suggests that the culture underpinning Islamist militancy acts as a kind of gateway to the ideology, rather than vice versa.

If this is so, then it’s a significant finding in terms of shaping counterterrorism initiatives. The problem, though, is that jihadi culture shares a great deal with Salafi (fundamentalist Islam) culture and even mainstream Islamic culture.

“The culture the jihadis offer is recognisable to many,” Hegghammer explains. “It’s not a break aesthetically speaking, especially compared to non-jihad radicalism. If you take skinhead culture, it’s a radical break with the mainstream. They’re not claiming that people were using Dr Martens with red shoelaces 1,300 years ago. Whereas the jihadis are presenting something with an aura of authenticity in which each element has some historical precedent.”

Hence, of course, the style of dress and behaviour that jihadists believe to be modelled on the prophet and his companions. But this emphasis on the past is one of the areas in which jihadism must encounter a strange kind of cognitive dissonance because it’s a movement that, in several other respects, is also rushing to embrace modernity.

One of the great successes of jihadism has been its use of social media and online applications such as YouTube and chatrooms. Rather than worry about whether Twitter is haram or halal, the jihadis have rushed to embrace all forms of new media for its international propaganda capability, with Isis producing a series of slick online magazines and videos.

“They’ve become more pragmatic in their cultural appropriation,” explains Hegghammer. “In the 80s you had a bunch of jihadi magazines being published in Peshawar in Pakistan and about half of them had images in them and half did not, because some believed that photography should be banned. And you’ve gone from that to this big light and sound show that is jihadi propaganda today.”

But perhaps the area of jihadist culture that’s most fraught with contradiction is that which speaks of human suffering, a recurring theme in its poetry, song, and cinematography. Simply put, jihadists are prone to romanticise their own adversity and overlook that which they bring to others. That’s a trait shared with many other fighting forces, of course, but it’s a particularly conspicuous one in this case.

One of the main creative forms – one of the few acceptable creative forms – in jihadist culture is what’s called nashid, a kind of sung poem that often focuses on the pain and suffering of the occupied and the oppressed. Typically it lists grievances and calls upon righteous Muslims to overthrow the oppressor. The style is grandiose and sentimental and, as Hegghammer’s book documents, jihadists often weep at the tales told in various anashid (the plural form). Yet the thought of killing Yazidis, enslaving their women, and running people off their land inspires nothing but celebration. In other words, for all their readiness to get in touch with their sensitive sides and have a good sob, jihadists are not upset by oppression or suffering, unless it’s their own.

There are no anashid from the point of view of jihadists’ victims. When Isis issued a ruling permitting fighters to have sex with prepubescent prisoners, it occasioned no tear-soaked poems or hymns.

I ask Hegghammer what makes it possible to show empathy in communal crying jags and yet remain indifferent to the pain inflicted on defenceless victims.

“I think these processes don’t always happen in the brain, but in the heart,” he says. “And they are often about the short term, the immediate emotional rewards they’re getting, the enjoyment of the situation there and then. They don’t stop and think about what’s going on. They go with the flow, and the flow is strong and deep.”

That flow, like it or not, is religious in nature. One of the most important aspects of Hegghammer’s and his co-authors’ research is that it establishes just how much religion plays a part in the jihadist’s worldview.

It has become common practice to dismiss terrorists’ pretensions to religiosity. “They’re not real Muslims” is now a set response to any atrocity committed in Islam’s name. It’s an understandable, perhaps even commendable impulse, but it suffers from the great disadvantage of being factually wrong.

“I think their religiosity needs to be taken very seriously,” says Hegghammer. “There’s a big and ongoing debate about how knowledgeable jihadis are about religion, which is not very helpful because you have to distinguish between depth of knowledge and intensity of belief.”

The signs are that the large majority of jihadists pray a lot, fast, don’t drink, and closely follow the rules of Islam, at least in their own interpretation.

If belief in the afterlife is one of several aspects of faith common to most Muslims (and indeed practising Christians) it is critical to jihadism. If the jihadist credo could be condensed into one sentence, it would be the often quoted statement: “We love death as you love life”. After all, suicide bombing, that jihadist speciality, trades on a desire to relinquish life for the eternal paradise of heaven.

“Where the jihadists will disagree with other afterlife-believing Muslims is about who gets there,” says Hegghammer. “The jihadists say that if you don’t fight you go to hell.”

Whereas those who fight and are killed are reserved a special place – famously filled with compliant virgins – in heaven.

This picture of religious conviction has been serially undermined by the backstories of many European jihadists, who have spent years drinking, taking drugs and having casual sexual relationships. It has created what Hegghammer calls a “tabloid narrative”, in which non-religious types have a religious awakening and atone for their sins with jihad.

“There’s an unspoken assumption there that they were more or less atheist before. I think that’s wrong. Even when they were in youth gangs, drinking and taking drugs, they defined themselves as Muslim and were aware of the ethical system.”

So the attempts to dismiss jihadists as just misguided criminal delinquents are, believes Hegghammer, misconceived. They may be confused, a mess of contradictions and conflicting identities, but they are often seeking to reconnect with a latent sense of religious belief.

Within that belief system, dream interpretation enjoys a history that far predates Freudianism. As the prophet Muhammad is thought to have received his divine revelations in “visions”, dreams occupy a special place in Islamic theology. In a fascinating chapter on The Islamic Dream Tradition and Jihadi Militancy, Iain Edgar and Gwynned de Looijer examine how jihadists search for meaning in their dreams.

Mullah Omar, the former head of the Taliban, was said to get his strategic warfare guidance in his dreams. And Osama bin Laden is on record as deriving reassurance the same way. When, a year before 9/11, one of his factotums mentioned a dream he had in which jihadists dressed as pilots played football against Americans, Bin Laden decided that as the dreamer was ignorant of the terror plot, it had to be an omen for its eventual success.

Robert Fowler, a Canadian hostage of jihadists in Africa, wrote about one of his captors who constantly inquired of his dreams “to exercise his training in interpretation”. And many jihadists in Syria report joining the cause as a consequence of a dream.

So much for the sleeping dreams, what of their waking ones? What world do jihadists want to create? It’s notable that so much of the descriptive work of jihadi films, poetry and artwork is fixated on two things: the base evil of the enemy and the sensual indulgence of heaven. What it seldom attempts to do is to describe the idyll of jihadi life on Earth.

I recall speaking to Anjem Choudary, the now imprisoned militant activist who is thought to have inspired scores of jihadists at home and abroad. I asked him to describe how he wanted life to be in his ideal world. He painted a bleak picture of crucifixions, no freedom of expression, enforced segregation, gay people and apostates put to death, no alcohol, no theatre, no concerts, and countless other prohibitions.

Is that it? I asked.

“We have a laugh,” he protested. “I could sing an Islamic song to you.”

No doubt many of the jihadists who set out for Syria with visions of a promised land encountered instead a harsh way of life for which no amount of poetry, dream interpretation and Islamic song could compensate.

But now that Mosul is once more under Iraqi control and Isis looks set to be ejected from Raqqa, the caliphate, of which Choudary strongly approved, appears to be nearing collapse. Will that destroy the allure of jihadism?

No, says Hegghammer, firmly.

“We’ll see IS flip into a lost caliphate narrative. They will say we had this amazing society and they came along and broke it again. You’ll get caliphate nostalgia just like you get communism nostalgia in eastern Europe. In five or 10 years’ time 17-year-olds will look at pictures of the Islamic State and want to fight against the people who destroyed it.

“I think that’s a very powerful narrative. And the culture is a glue that has kept lots of different groups together in the past and I see no reason why it shouldn’t in the future.”

But now that Mosul is once more under Iraqi control and Isis looks set to be ejected from Raqqa, the caliphate, of which Choudary strongly approved, appears to be nearing collapse. Will that destroy the allure of jihadism?

No, says Hegghammer, firmly.

“We’ll see IS flip into a lost caliphate narrative. They will say we had this amazing society and they came along and broke it again. You’ll get caliphate nostalgia just like you get communism nostalgia in eastern Europe. In five or 10 years’ time 17-year-olds will look at pictures of the Islamic State and want to fight against the people who destroyed it.

“I think that’s a very powerful narrative. And the culture is a glue that has kept lots of different groups together in the past and I see no reason why it shouldn’t in the future.”

It’s a perfect English summer’s evening when we finish talking, with children playing on the lawn and people arriving for a cold glass of something, one of those scenes of bucolic peacefulness in which it’s hard to imagine a more pleasant way of life.

But that’s just a particular perspective, a cultural disposition, even, perhaps, a subjective illusion. For jihadists, as Hegghammer’s and his co-writers’ compelling book makes clear, the struggle for a very different kind of world is set to continue.

Extract: Poetry in Jihadi Culture

Poetry is central to the self-fashioning and self-presentation of the jihadis; it lies at the core of their identity as well as their ideology, and it represents their most sophisticated cultural product. Most militant leaders and ideologues, including Osama bin Laden, have written poems of their own and make a point of reciting these, as well as verse by others, in social settings and in propaganda communiques. The jihadis’ poetry is not aesthetically innovative, and it does not try to be. Instead, it highlights the poets’ rootedness in tradition, presenting itself as an “authentic” expression of Muslim identity in a world that has perverted true Islamic principles.

Analysts have generally ignored these texts, as if poetry were a colourful but ultimately distracting by-product of jihad. Perhaps this is because they are linguistically difficult or because their purpose appears both alien and obscure. But this dismissal is a mistake. It is impossible to understand jihadism – its aims, its appeal to outsiders, and its durability – without looking into its culture. This culture comes in a number of forms, including anthems, documentary videos, and polemical essays, but poetry is arguably at its centre. And unlike the slickly produced videos of beheadings and burnings, which are made primarily for foreign consumption, poetry provides a window on to the movement talking to itself, as well as to potential recruits. It is in their verse that militants most clearly articulate the fantasy life of jihad.

When the militants’ literary interests are noted, the result is often amused incomprehension. The raid in May 2011 on the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden also uncovered a trove of correspondence. In one letter, written on 6 August 2010, Bin Laden asks a key lieutenant to recommend someone to lead “a big operation inside America”. In the following sentence he writes: “If there are any brothers with you who know about poetic metre, please inform me, and if you have any books on classical prosody, please send them to me.” Commentating for Foreign Affairs on this exchange, an analyst remarked: “Because after a long day of planning to strike fear into the hearts of the infidels, sometimes a guy just wants to take a relaxing bubble bath and read some Emily Dickinson.”

It is indeed curious that so many militants, who are some of the most wanted men in the world, should take the time to study prosody and write poems in monorhyme – one rhyme for what is sometimes many dozens of lines of verse. This is far easier to do in Arabic than in English, but it still takes practice. And it is not only jihadi leaders who engage in such activities. On the contrary, poetry is widely practised in militant circles, and judging by the posts in discussion forums it is also widely appreciated. Certain members of the rank-and-file have been recognised for their literary abilities, earning sobriquets such as “the Poet of al-Quaida” or “the Poet of Jihad”. One of these is a young woman whose verse has made her a cultural celebrity among the militants.

The above is extracted from an essay by Robyn Cresswell and Bernard Haykel in Jihadi Culture

Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/23/the-culture-that-makes-a-jihadi-thomas-hegghammer-interview-poetry-militancy#img-1

Ignoring Women Jihadis in The Ranks of Asia’s Islamic State a Fatal Mistake

/0 Comments/in /by

By: Ardi Wirdana

Despite a clear willingness by radical groups to use women for their terrorist goals, authorities still do not see them as an important threat, experts say
___________________

When the local media reported the story of eight Indonesian women who managed to flee Syria last month having decided to join the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria just over a year earlier, the public was yet again served a gentle reminder of the powerful appeal the radical group has for women in Indonesia.

Just a few months earlier, the Indonesian police foiled IS-inspired suicide bomb attacks by Dian Yulia Novi in Jakarta on December 10, 2016, and Ika Puspitasari in Bali just a few days after. Before their arrests, the two had been set to become Indonesia’s first female suicide bombers.

In neighbouring Singapore, a woman has been detained recently for allegedly attempting to fly to Syria to join IS.

While the presence of women in radical groups is not something new, there has been a notable change in their roles and level of involvement. This change, according to women’s rights activist and gender researcher Lies Marcoes, is “frightening”.

When it comes to women and radicalisation, her words are to be noted. Through an organisation she leads called Rumah Kita Bersama, Lies has followed and interviewed 20 women who are or have been involved with “clear-cut” fundamentalist groups. “Independent”, “educated” and “well-referenced” are just some of the words she uses to describe these “new generations of women jihadis”.

“They want to be visible. They want to be seen. It is clear that they want to take part in the movements,” Lies told This Week in Asia.

She explained that traditionally female jihadis were content with performing “soft jihad”, which was limited to carrying out their reproductive functions such as bearing and rearing children, especially boys, to grow up to become fighters. A prime example of this is Farhana Maute, the mother of the Maute family in the Philippines, whose six sons are all involved in the firefights to seize a number of Philippine towns and cities on behalf of IS.

Some of the younger generation, however, want to break free from the gender stereotype. Lies says that they carry some feminist ideas that look to challenge the patriarchal nature of the jihadist movement and its organisations. The best way of doing this is by duplicating how men show courage by carrying out acts like bank robberies, bomb-making and bomb attacks.

Online engagement

According to the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (Ipac), the increase in women activists is linked to the rise of IS in Iraq in Syria and its global appeal as a “pure” Islamic state which has been facilitated by the use of social media platforms.

A recent report by Ipac titled “Mothers to Bombers: The Evolution of Indonesian Women Extremists” suggests that the prevalence of social media and encrypted chat apps has led to a small but growing number of professional women and Indonesian maids working overseas to become interested in IS.

Dian Yulia, Indonesia’s first would-be suicide bomber, was working as a maid in Taiwan when she first became connected with an IS sympathiser on Facebook who later led her to being acquainted with Indonesia’s leading IS recruiter Bahrun Naim. Likewise, 22 year-old Syaikhah Izzah Al Ansari who became the first Singaporean woman to be detained for suspected Islamic radicalism, was radicalised by online propaganda. She also shared pro-IS material on social media.

In Izzah’s case, the information she received on social media did not only sell her the idea of salvation, but also the prospect of getting married to a militant husband. This idea of a better life presented on social media clearly sells, with women often willing buyers.

Leefa and Nur, two out of the eight Indonesian women that fled from ISIS soon after joining them, said that they had been promised ticket reimbursements, free health treatment and jobs by an IS representative over the internet. But upon their arrival, they found that the situation was different than they had expected, leaving them disappointed and wanting to leave.

Heedless authorities

As a women’s rights activist, Lies said that she was obviously concerned. But the source of her worries is not so much the development of women jihadis, but rather how little is being done to combat the problem.

“There are government institutions and academicians that deal with this issue, but they do not see women as an important part of radical movements,” she said.

Lies says that radicalised women have been the “victims and agents” of Islamic fundamentalism, and a failure to deal with them using a gender analysis approach could prove costly.

Terror analyst Sidney Jones agrees. She believes that the Indonesian intelligence agencies have not paid particular attention to women, despite the fact that women have played key roles.

Continuing to overlook the threat of women jihadis as main actors of terrorist attacks can prove fatal, Sidney said, as extremist groups are turning to women to carry out their big attacks.

“Bahrun Naim wanted female operatives because he saw women carrying backpacks as less likely to be suspected than men. Women suicide bombers are no different than men in the damage they can inflict, as cases in Palestine, Iraq and Chechnya have shown,” she said.[]

Adi Safri *)

/0 Comments/in /by

Home and Away

According to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who is outside their country of origin, have a fear based around reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, and because of this fear, they cannot or are unwilling to return to their country.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that at the end of February this year, about 152,570 refugees and asylum seekers are in Malaysia. They include about 141,570 from Myanmar, 3970 from Sri Lanka, 1200 from Pakistan, 1100 from Somalia, 960 from Syria, 850 from Iraq, 550 from Iran, 430 from Palestine and others.

What made me interested to doing this project is that I want to know about their lives deeper, by knowing what valuable and memorable items they have brought with them during the journey to Malaysia to seek refuge.

The main challenge I faced was how to get closer to them. I needed to spend time with them so that they will feel comfortable with me and share their lives and begin to show their belongings to me. Another challenge is to identify the location of their settlements and the limited communication is a bit complicated to progress my project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salimah Gafu, ethnic of Rakhine, 36 years old with her 9 years old daughter cloth. Her daughter lives in Myanmar with her relative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somali women, Filsan Jama Muse holding her son. During her escape, she was pregnant with her son and gave birth in Malaysia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laila Amiruddin, 17 years old, ethnic Rohingya, Myanmar with her school bag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Osman Bilal, 31 years old, ethnic of Rakhine, Myanmar, with his engagement picture (second from right is his fiancee). His fiancee is now living in Myanmar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tawhidah Mohd Ghafar, 18 years old, ethnic Rakhine, Myanmar, holding a plate of Thanaka (a traditional herb talc) that she brought from Myanmar and is for the used for the whole family before she came to Malaysia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abdul Basik, 18 years old, with his slingshot. This is his favorite slingshot he brought from Myanmar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Osman Mohamad, 37 years old, ethnic of Rohingya, holding a Hadith book (collections of texts purported to quote what the prophet Muhammad said verbatim on any matter). He brought from Myanmar and always with him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mohd Ghafar Malik, 39 years old, ethnic of Rakhine, Myanmar, holding a picture of his kids. One of his sons is now in Myanmar and taken care of by his aunt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mohamad Haniff Hussain, Ethnic of Rakhine, Myanmar holding his last 200 Kyat note when he arrived in Malaysia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somali boy, Bishar Abdisalam, 12, holding his shoes given by his father. Until now his father is believed to be lost due to the war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Somali boy, Ali Abdisalam, 15 years old, wearing ‘Goa Shall’, a traditional Somali cloth. This cloth was giving by his father. Until now his father is believed to be lost due to war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Somali child, Khafid Ahmed Khaif, 4 years old holding a toy that was taken by her mother during the escape to Malaysia. This toy is the only thing he loved, brought here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somali women, Hawo Mohamed Abubakari, 32 years old, with her son, her only child.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shaban Amiruddin, 18 years old, ethnic of Rohingya, Myanmar with her slippers that she woreear to escape to Malaysia

 

 

 

Adi Safri is a photographer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He studied Photography at a local University before working at a local newspaper and production house. He has covered a range of stories on Malaysian festivals and events. He currently works at The New Straits Times Press as an entertainment photographer.

Adi is took part in Exposure+5 and was mentored by Snow Ng.

*) Sumber: https://exposureplus..com/2015/07/06/adi-safri/

Indonesia Enlists Female Clerics in the Fight Against Extremism *)

/3 Comments/in /by

Written By: Priyanka Borpujari

As more women become involved in violent extremism, Indonesia has embraced a new weapon in the fight against radicalization: its first recognized cohort of female Muslim clerics.
_______

JAKARTA, INDONESIA – “Who was washing the underpants of men who had joined fundamentalist groups when they were on the run? It was the wife!” So observes Lies Marcoes, a Muslim feminist and researcher in Indonesia, who is training women to help prevent violent extremism.

She says it’s time to explore the role of women in violent extremism in Indonesia, both in fomenting and preventing it.

In recent years, Indonesia has seen a number of men join radical Islamist groups, declaring themselves to be jihadists. Some have traveled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), many with the support of the women in their lives.

Women are also joining the fight more directly. Since August 2015, several Indonesian women have been arrested for their roles in spreading jihadism and their intent to carry out terrorist acts. Dian Yulia Novi was arrested in December 2016, the night before she intended to blow herself up at Indonesia’s presidential palace. Another woman, Ika Puspitasari, was picked up a few days later in the ensuing investigation for planning a suicide attack in Bali. Indonesian women have also acted as fundraisers and online network organizers for ISIS.

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and prides itself on its secularism. As the threat of violent extremism has drawn more and more attention over recent years, new ideas have flourished about how to counter it. One of these is using female Islamic clerics to spread the message.

Now may be the best time to do so. Until recently, the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) refused to recognize women as clerics, or “ulama,” a position conferred based on a person’s knowledge of the Quran and the Book of Hadith, a collection of the Prophet Mohammad’s teachings. But that changed last month, when women ulama from across Indonesia gathered to assert their erudition and advance women’s rights through a renewed interpretation of the religious texts.

Ideologies held by women are crucial to understanding the actions of men. Many young women join extremist movements – or support their husbands in joining – because they care deeply about inequality and injustice.

Nor Rofiah, a lecturer at Institute of Koranic Studies in Jakarta and an ulama, says women often get involved in extremism because of skewed gender relations within families. “Women are expected to obey the male authority within their families; they are expected to be subservient to the husband.”

“Any disobedience is seen as not being a good Muslim, and radicalism is targeting this feeling of not being Muslim enough,” she says.

A report from the Indonesia-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict recently argued women in Indonesia who marry ISIS fighters do so in order to “reinforce social hierarchies [and] satisfy the ‘biological needs’ of prisoners.” But women also see opportunities in radicalization that allow them to break out of these hierarchies.

In 2014, Marcoes’ research organization Rumah Kita Bersama interviewed 20 Indonesian women who were in, or had been involved with, fundamentalist groups.

She found they had a wide range of reasons for joining fundamentalist groups, but one stand-out was the need to feel recognized as equal human beings on par with men, beyond their mere reproductive roles. “They want to learn to make a bomb, and put to use their intelligence,” she says.

In both cases, Rofiah and Marcoes assert that women ulama have an advantage that their male counterparts don’t: the experience of being a woman, trying to establish herself in a patriarchal world. Used right, this common thread of subjugation can be the catalyst in changing the narrative to counter radicalism.

The Asian Muslims Action Network in Indonesia is currently working to identify women ulama who would be able to speak to their communities about the devastating impacts of extremism, in the name of Islam.

Dwi Rubiyanti Kholifah is the network’s country director for Indonesia. “Not all women ulama are comfortable discussing this issue, as it seems sensitive,” she says.

“We have to start with what they are comfortable with: the Quran and the Hadiths, and understanding the concept of jihad. We need to emphasize that radicalism is not something that is taking place elsewhere,” she explains.

Marcoes, who has been a mentor to women ulama like Rofiah on gender issues, argues that clerics need to be given an understanding of violent extremism from the perspective of those behind it, and plans to do so through Rumah Kita Bersama.

“We will select women ulama from areas where men have been arrested for their radical links,” she says.

“We will develop a curriculum so that they are later able to work with the families of those whose male members are in jail,” she explains.

A key factor, adds Kholifah, is to ensure that the next generation of men is not consumed by revenge when they see their fathers are arrested for extremism.

While for some women, dedicating their wombs and their roles as wives and mothers to “soldiers of God” is their identity, the same idea can be flipped towards convincing women to use that same role to prevent the men in their lives from taking up arms.

“Women ulama have their religious knowledge, and agency over the communities,” Marcoes says.

“Violent extremism is not just in a man’s world.”

*) https://www.newsdeeply.com/womenandgirls/articles/2017/06/14/indonesia-enlists-female-clerics-in-the-fight-against-extremism

Female Ulama voice a vision for Indonesia’s future *)

/1 Comment/in /by

By: Kathryn Robinson **)

Islam, the religion of the vast majority of Indonesian citizens, is a site of contestation in envisioning Indonesia’s future. Gender equity as a democratic value has been a strong claim since the fall of Suharto. Recent international focus has been on the Jakarta gubernatorial elections and the campaign against Chinese background Christian governor Ahok by hard-line Islamists, ending in his blasphemy trial and conviction (and electoral loss). While his Islamist opponents—apparently allied with crony capitalists—have seized media attention, their vision of Indonesia’s future under sharia law is not uncontested.

In April, Indonesian religious scholars and activists hosted a world first: a convention of female religious authorities (ulama). The conference title, KUPI (Kongres Ulama Perempuan Indonesia), played with a dual meaning: female religious authorities, and scholars (male and female) whose interpretations of the Qur’an and Hadith proclaim gender equity (kesetaraan jender) as a fundamental principle of Islam. Over three days, speakers and delegates discussed the history of female religious authority in Indonesia—a claim that is highly contentious to hard line groups who argue that male authority, as prayer leaders and hence as political leaders, is a fundamental Islamic principle. They also discussed the more abstract concepts of social justice and human rights, as fundamental Islamic values focusing on issues like sexual and domestic violence and child marriage.

Day one was an international seminar (pictured above) where female speakers from other majority Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, The Sudan and Kenya (which has a substantial Muslim minority) joined leading Indonesian female ulama. Many of the international speakers commented that it would be unthinkable to have such a convention in their countries, and in particular they would not get official support, as this convention did. A representative of the Minister of Religious Affairs (which regulates Islamic affairs including education and marriage) and the local district head (bupati) both spoke at the opening ceremony, and the Minister of Religious Affairs, Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, closed the conference on the third day. The first day ended in a pageant where seven women ulama from across the country enacted the sources that would be used in developing the fatwa that would outline the main findings of the conference: these included the Qur’an; Hadith (Prophet traditions); Kitab Kuning (‘Yellow Books’—the books of religious instruction used in Islamic schools [pesantren]); the Indonesian Constitution and international instruments like the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

The mention of the constitution as a source of principles for Indonesia’s Muslims is a direct challenge to the Islamist desire to have sharia law as the basis of Indonesia’s legal system. Further, the emphasis on international instruments challenges the attack by hardliners on what they see as ‘alien’ and ‘liberal’ values. The women also held up small trees representing the environment, indicating the role of Islamic values in stopping rapacious destruction of the environment as another key issue.

The international speakers outlined that while gender equity is a struggle in all the countries represented, in many places they face struggles already won by women in Indonesia. For example, the speaker from Saudi Arabia discussed the campaign ‘I am my own wali’ (guardian): Saudi women need their male guardians’ permission to marry (and travel abroad or have medical treatment) whereas for Indonesian women, the issue is the discrepancy in the minimum age of free choice of marriage for female Indonesian citizens between different legal instruments. The speakers from Pakistan, The Sudan and Nigeria discussed the sensitive issue of how women educators combat radicalism through working with young people and with mothers of radicalised youth.

Siti Ruhaini Dzuhayatin, a notable Indonesian female cleric who currently heads the Independent Human Rights Commission of Organization of Islamic Co-operation (IOC) was another international speaker. She argued for Islamic values protecting human rights and that the Qur’an basically pushes for monogamy, accommodating and humanising polygamy which was a pre-Islamic practice and not part of Islamic teaching. Another instance of international co-operation in promoting women-friendly Islamic values was reported by Zainah Anwar, a founder of Sisters in Islam in 1998 which has now developed an international organisation Musawah, a ‘global movement for justice and equity in the Muslim family’. She praised Indonesia’s record on gender equity, while acknowledging the challenges still to be faced.

The congress attracted nearly 2000 registrants—more women than men, and a mix of scholars and activists, of all ages. There were delegates from all over Indonesia. It was held at the State Islamic Institute and also on the campus of the pesantren (religious boarding school) Kebon Jambu Al-Islamy in Cirebon, West Java, which is headed by a woman scholar, Nyai Hj. Masriyah Amva. The congress site had a carnivalesque atmosphere, with small stalls selling clothes and food, banners lining the entrance road, a tent erected for the opening ceremony and some plenary discussions, and cultural and music performances, including many performances of Shalawat Keadilan, or joyous songs in praise of the Prophet with a theme of equity. These popular renderings of Islamic values have been promoted by the groups that organised the congress as a way of bringing their interpretation to a wide audience.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Violence against women and women’s rights within marriage and the family were key issues. The Cirebon cleric Kiyai Haji Hussein Muhammad, who has been a pioneer of interpretations of the Qur’an that promote gender equity, and who has served in the National Commission on Violence against women (Komnas Perempuan), is well known for problematising polygamy as an Islamic practice. Hussein has been a leading figure arguing against textualism (interpretations of the Qur’an and Hadith that do not take account of social and cultural context), which is seen as a source of hard line Islam.

The Kiyai received a rousing cheer from the audience when the session chair identified him from the podium. Polygyny (poligami) has long been contentious in Indonesia, with the 1974 marriage law restricting it and putting it under the authority of the religious courts with strict rules for approval. One judicial challenge to the polygamy restriction on the grounds that it is a restriction on religious freedom was unsuccessful, but another is in preparation.

The second day of the conference began with the women ulama meeting to discuss the doctrinal issues related to the three core issues of the congress: sexual violence against women, child marriage and environmental protection as a gender issue. These topics were picked up in workshops in the afternoon, to discuss the religious textual foundation, social research, and action to combat the identified problems.

I attended the workshop on child marriage, another issue that has recently been highlighted through the practices of emerging hardline groups. Supporters of legal reform challenge to the minimum age of marriage for girls in the marriage law (16) had mounted a judicial challenge in the Constitutional Court. They argued that it was at variance with the age of marriage specified in the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child to which Indonesia is a signatory. The Constitutional Court rejected the appeal, and used Islamic texts in its decision. The workshop, led by several young male kiyai, reviewed the textual justifications for banning child marriage, arguing the focus of the Court decision had been too narrow. From the textual basis they moved to report on research on practices and impact of child marriage while working on strategies, including a further legal challenge that would present a broader set of texts, and the research results.

The vision of Indonesia’s Islamic future that the convention presented was that associated with Indonesia’s major mass organisation, NU (Nahdlatul Ulama). This promotes the view of Indonesian Islam as tolerant, fundamentally democratic and supportive of religious harmony; and promotes what Islamic scholar Azyumadi Azra calls Indonesia‘s ‘colourful’ Islam as variable and adaptive to local cultures. The movement for women-friendly interpretation of Islam has been occurring since the 1990s, especially associated with Kiyai Hussein and the groups Rahima and Fahima, that were instrumental in organising this congress. It was supported by women’s organisations of the major Islamic movements in Indonesia, NU and Muhammadiyah, both of whose members number in the millions. By contrast, the women’s wings of the emergent Islamist groups, such as Hizbut Tahrir, oppose gender equity on the grounds that it is a Western, liberal, agenda and support the regulation of gender relations through conservative application of sharia.

The congress ended with a declaration of three fatwa, reinforcing the value of female religious authority. The first fatwa argued for a minimum age of marriage of 18; the second, that sexual violence against women, including within marriage, is haram (forbidden). The third fatwa picked up the theme of environmental protection: environmental destruction is haram as it can trigger social and economic imbalances and place burdens on women. The congress called on the government to stop allowing the destruction of natural resources for ‘development’. Congress attendees have strong links into the community, and the organisers hold significant institutional positions, respect and support from government. This movement has been slowly building for a long time and is a significant voice in defining the future of Indonesia.[]
___________________________________________

*) http://www.newmandala.org/female-ulama-voice-vision-indonesias-future/

**) Kathryn Robinson is Emeritus Professor in the School of Culture, History & Language, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.

Interview with Ms. Lies Marcoes: Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Perspective in Research for Development

/2 Comments/in /by

Ms. Lies Marcoes is one of Indonesia’s foremost experts in Islam and gender. She has played a pioneering role in the Indonesian gender equality movement by bridging the divide between Muslim and secular feminists and encouraging feminists to work within Islam to promote gender equality. I had a chance to interview her on December 2016 to get her insights about Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Perspective in Research for Development.
______________________________

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your background?

A: I graduated from IAIN/UIN Jakarta, from the Islamic Theology Faculty, with a Religious Comparison Major. After more than 15 years as an activist in the reproductive health area, including as a program manager at the Association of Islamic School Development and Community (P3M), I received a scholarship from the Ford Foundation for my Masters program in the field of Health Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.

I have also been a researcher and activist in the women’s movement in Indonesia. These are two roles that, in a number of cases, are not always linked to each other and not always played by one person. Usually, people choose to become activists by using the research outcomes of another institution as the basis for their cause, or they only become a researcher without advocating their research outcomes.

I may be a bit unique, in that I do both. I love the research world, especially research on religious social anthropology. This issue gave my life color and meaning. I love to go to the field; finding out, asking questions, listening to stories, and writing them up with a specific discipline and theory, particularly feminism. By doing this, I can explain a phenomenon by using a critical perspective related to the relationship (authority) between men and women, a perspective that can dismantle gender prejudice and bias, and the resulting discrimination.

I also love to write. I love writing research outcomes. I often write an extract of my research outcome in the opinion section in media such as Kompas, the Jakarta Post, or on social media by using popular and easy to understand language. When I am writing all of these, I feel that I am conducting advocacy to change perspectives or policies.

In the context of time, I think my momentum was timely, even though any time can be used as momentum for anyone to experience changes in their lives. I was going through life in the era of mid-New Order, which at the time was very arrogant towards people.

The political engine of the New Order, namely the Golkar party and civil servants, became the most effective backbone in supporting the regime. Meanwhile, others of us, NGOs, the student movement and the press, must work under a shadowy pressure – invincible but frightening. Speaking on women’s rights at the time, we had to point out the mistakes of the Family Planning (FP) program for example, a program that has been proven to support development by significantly reducing the birth rate. We had to explain that a program, even with its positive impact, must still be questioned if, in its implementation, it takes away individual basic rights of women controlling their own bodies and violates the principles of democracy by forcing their will without any room for negotiation. We know that at the time, FP was done coercively, using military means, systemic threats, using the approach of shame for those who did not follow the State’s will, and did not leave room to question or refuse the program. These methods, according to us activists, violated the basic principles of freedom and jeopardized the program itself. People were following FP because of force, not because of their own awareness, but through mobilization. Now, we can see the result, we have found the evidence that FP has been rejected for reasons that should have been discussed in the past–reasons related to its objectives, benefits, methods and origins. And this comes from a domain that should have been discussed first, such as religious or demographic political perspectives.

I used to speak about reproductive health in the face of state coercion, now my research and advocacy remains on reproductive health issues. The difference is that we used to face the coercive force of the State, now we are facing another shadowy force from the religious perspective, which also feels entitled to have power and control over a woman’s body.

Q: Can you explain how feminism is made operational in your research?

A: In researching any theme, I always want to critically observe the power relationship, including the gender power relationship. With this gender analysis and feminism, I can also see the agency of women: how they provide meaning, either by being compliant or fighting against the patriarchal will that is making them suffer, but it requires a critical awareness to realize this. For example, when I researched the radical movements in Indonesia, I read several research outcomes on this issue. I am baffled as to how a religious movement in Indonesia can ignore the involvement of women. How can something so real and visible manage to be skipped in the research framework. For example, the wanted terrorist Noordin M. Top can survive because he is camouflaged by forming a regular and normal family. Don’t we want to know who the wife is, whether she is afraid or not, how did they know each other, what is the wife’s view of her husband’s cause? In short, don’t we want to know how the terrorist moves from one city to another, who washes his underwear? I am very surprised that research on a religious movement in Indonesia can fail to question the women’s position. At that point, I assume there is a huge gender bias. Terrorism is considered a masculine world, the world of men. But this bias is lost in the research.

Based on this curiosity, I designed research on women and fundamentalism. I tried to observe it in a round way, not directly at the heart of the research on radicalism. I agree with the opinion of Ihsan Ali Fauzie from PUSAD Paramadina, who concluded that fundamentalism is a way to radicalism. Together with a researcher of Rumah Kita Bersama Foundation (Rumah KitaB), we intensively interviewed 20 women on what can connect women to a fundamentalist point of view and movement in Indonesia. The outcome was very interesting. In each woman we interviewed, there is an agency to fight and engage in a jihad to defend her religion. The women attached a very personal meaning to jihad. Of course, this concept was received through their involvement in their fundamentalist group. Here, there is an agency role of women, namely as ‘servants’, both in providing meaning or even criticizing the organization or their fundamentalist group.

A more interesting thing is how women attach meaning to their jihad. Fundamentalist groups place jihad in two categories. One is major jihad (jihad kabir), namely jihad that puts your life on the line in the battlefield/conflict area. Meanwhile, small jihad (jihad saghir) is a jihad related to the role of women to give birth, especially to boys, that will become the actors of major jihad, and being patient while their husbands go on jihad. However, women from younger generations are not satisfied by this social role. They negotiate to participate in major jihad, for example by becoming bomb carriers. This is an interesting fact. But it is the researcher’s job to question this fact in a deeper way.

In my research, because I used gender analysis and feminism, I raised the question of why women feel dissatisfied with their traditional roles in performing small jihads. This question brought me to a more interesting finding. It would seem that the social position of women within fundamentalist groups is very low. They are unappreciated, unseen and unrecognized as something that provides meaning to jihad. These young women are desperate to prove their bravery, even being braver than men. They want their role to be seen and recognized. The only way to prove this is by sacrificing their lives (as the bomb carrier). In the theological concept, actors of jihad are incentivized by receiving angels in the next world, but what is in it for the women? The concept is not as bright and clear as for men. Despite this, women still want to prove that they are willing to put their lives at risk. With this, they are ‘respected’ and their presence and existence are accepted. We can then understand why some women are willing to blow themselves up by carrying a bomb and thinking of this as a jihad (read the publication of Rumah KitaB entitled the Testimony of the Servants: A Study about Women and Fundamentalism in Indonesia, red.).

Q: Violence against women is a long-standing phenomenon. How does your research bring to light data and information on the facts of violence, and thus, become evidence for policy change and social justice?

A: This is an interesting question. This explains my two working arenas – research, and writing for advocacy. I wrote an article in Kompas to respond to the statement of the Minister of Education and Culture, Mohammad Nuh, (he was in power from 22 October 2009 to 27 October 2014, red). At the time there was a rape of a Junior High School student in Depok, committed by her senior. The school refused the victim’s right to go to school after the rape. The minister said that this was not sexual violence, but consensual sex. So, instead of finding a solution on the discriminatory action of the school, the minister condoned it in the name of protecting more students.

In this article, I explained that sexual violence against teenagers is similar to violence in dating. The point is rape can occur in a relationship initially built on a consensual basis, but at one point there is a coercion using the power relationship in the name of love. There is a gender difference that must be understood on the perception of teen boys and girls on the expression of love, the power relationship, and the meaning of a sexual relationship. This difference needs correct understanding that is not biased and not based on male assumptions.

Another example is the research of Rumah KitaB that I am leading on child marriage (there are 14 research titles that can be viewed on https://rumahkitab.com/project-list/karya/). Attempting to step out of the focus that sees child marriage as a result of poverty, we tried to further explore the root of such poverty. Child marriage has become a phenomenon that can be found almost anywhere in Indonesia, both in rural and urban areas. Data shows that one in five Indonesian women were married when they were under age, and two thirds of these marriages ended in divorce. Indonesia is in the top ten countries with the highest child marriage rates in the world. We tried to observe the root of the poverty, namely the changing living space in rural areas as a result of change of land ownership and its conversion. When men and community figures lose their access to land, they become more picky in dealing with public moral problems, including their teenagers. They tend to be more conservative and at least let child marriage slide. By doing this, they show their power politics role and receive economic benefits by becoming a regulation broker. At the analysis level, this research demonstrated how child marriage is actually a form of violence by adults to children. To make matters even more frightening, this violence is agreed upon between adults. Not one adult is challenging it. They often state moral reasoning, in the best interests of the child, covering up shame or resolving immoral conduct. This is contradictory, because marriage of a child is clearly immoral. They drop out of school, stop expressing themselves, and stop playing, which are their rights.

Among the institutions that we observed in the context of this research, there were ‘vague’ institutions. There were neither formal nor informal institutions, but they were extraordinarily effective in promoting child marriage practices.

Q: How do you, along with other researchers, advocate a policy change that is not reactive and does not target the issue on this ‘vague power at work’?

A: We see that child marriage is promoted not only by formal institutions, but by other institutions accommodating this practice. Emergency door regulations, such as dispensation to get married when under age from the Religious Court after the Religious Office has refused because it violated the Marriage Law is one of the accommodative formal institutions. Or, people take advantage of informal institutions, where a community figure is involved in approving a child marriage by conducting an under-handed marriage, which is illegal from the State’s point of view, but legal from a religious standpoint.

Between these two institutions, there is a very powerful situation encouraging child marriage practices, neither by formal nor informal institutions. We call it a ‘vague institution’, namely decisions taken by unknown figures. It may be the mother, father, relative, a big family or the community. The point is marriage is done to cover up shame and resolve the anxiety of adults surrounding the child. This is particularly true when the child is pregnant, or is considered to have disturbed the family stability by the way the child expresses his or her sexuality. They are considered flirtatious, unable to control themselves, and so forth. This shame has plenty of power, but its bearer is so vague. That is what we mean by vague power at work.

The research on child marriage that we conducted has produced new theories that still need to undergo some testing, for example, the phenomenon of social orphans, where the child does not have a father and mother as a place for them to seek protection and help. Their parents have lost their social roles as parents due to severe and systemic poverty.

Q: What kind of progressive maneuver would you like to create through your research to improve the gap in the power relationship between women and men in Indonesia?

A: Our research on FP (publication entitled Religious Perspective Map on Family Planning, red.), fundamentalism, women in radical movements, or child marriage basically shows how religious views and institutions can take a larger role in protecting women. We do this by contrasting text and reality when text is used blindly as a tool to justify or legitimise violence against women. We show facts on this violence and face it with the normative, ideal teachings brought by religion. If we believe religion is a blessing for all humanity, why are only some people enjoying it? If religion teaches us good things, why does it result in bad treatment of women? Certainly, it is not about the religion, but how people interpret it in a biased and incomplete way. In the niche between the fact of bad treatment suffered by women and the normative ideal value of religion, we have the opportunity to build an alignment to women. The feminism analysis knife to me is a way to grow critical thinking and methodology to build alignment, namely thinking and action to address oppression.

Q: What trend do you want to see in the next generation of researchers and analysts that want to promote policy change for social justice?

A: A while ago, I saw a documentary video of a poet, Agam Wispi, an Indonesian exile poet staying in Amsterdam. He was a poet for the People’s Cultural Institution (Lekra) from Medan, North Sumatera in the late 1930s. He was the most influential Lekra poet during 1950-1960s, before joining the navy and being stuck abroad during the 1965 incident. According to the records of the Literature Encyclopaedia developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture, his poetry contained reform never seen before, such as language, expression and emotional word choices. I was very impressed with his work because it contained anger about the social situation that he considered to be unfair for the poor.

In the 1980s, he was invited to Jakarta and he met young poets and writers in Indonesia. He was very impressed with how active these youths were. According to him, their work was very creative and they were acting to fight the oppressive regime.

Inspired by this interview, I see that a critical young generation is the most important element in social change. Issues of environment, labour and specific issues on the oppression of women are mobilized by activists. They are not just conducting research, but also consistently and persistently taking action to move and resist a bad situation. The methods may be different than during my years. The actions today are done through fun methods, out of the standard organizational boxes, but they produce very good results. Social media and technology are clearly helping them, while back in my era cell phones did not even exist.

I see the use of social media as an advocacy tool being a trend that will develop in the future. Infographics, short videos and short movies will become inevitable smart choices in this digital era to advocate policies from research outcomes. This is the era of youth in a fast-paced global era.

However, there are two things that can pose a threat. The first is ethics. The truth of social media news is very hard to trace, from research methodology and knowledge management perspectives. How the research was conducted is not explained, all we get is the outcome. We really must uphold ethics, if not, there will be research outcomes that cannot be academically accounted for, making it no different from hoax news. If false information is used for advocacy material, that is truly frightening and clearly wrong.

The second issue, and I feel that this is a crisis, is organization at the grass roots level. It is there that the real fight for humanity issues lies. Who do we want to defend? Surely the oppressed people. To find them and build their resistance to oppression in the social or gender structure, they need friends. Who is currently working at the village level to organize the people? Political parties do not go that low, instead we have religious communal groups. A number of villages are lucky to be selected for NGO work. Beyond that, we expect the awareness to come from the villagers themselves, who regretfully, have not learned to truly organize themselves for more than 40 or 50 years. Existing organizations are established by the State through agents (village officials). Village elites become small kings who are currently managing their own funds, such as the village fund allocation. In my observation, this is an important facility to conduct advocacy for change. However, the institutional and organizational aspects at the lower level are very fragile. Village discussions become a technocratic mechanism where the voice of the marginalized, including women, is rarely heard. I feel that the trend of change should come from there, but who is over there? Without any critical people, without organizations based on the essence of democracy and public space free from primordial interests, we will let democracy die from its most basic core: representation at the village level.

So if you ask me what do I want to see in the future, I want people’s education at the village level. Not only Qur’an recital. Not only about livelihoods. I want a community organization growing at the community level, the village. It is not enough through organizations managed by the village or recital/religious groups, but a critical people’s organization, where people are aware of their rights, within which are elements of marginalized villagers who have the same opportunity to voice their opinions. Efforts toward this have clearly been done, but again, who is over there? I left the village a while ago. I am only looking from afar and am powerless to raise the awareness of my own village people. This is ironic for many activists of social movement and GESI justice movement.

Q: Within the next five years, how do you see the ‘GESI perspective in research for development’ helping to create and support a wider and more robust knowledge sector in Indonesia?

A: At the knowledge production level, we have to be able to prove that without GESI, just like the examples I put forward from several researches above, the research outcomes are not only inaccurate, but also lost. Lost here means that the knowledge production cannot fulfill the expectation, which should be the basis of policies. When the research is wrong, how can the recommendations be right? At the communication level, we need creative ways, just as activists do through media, but they must be very GESI-sensitive. Not for the sake of GESI itself, but so that knowledge can really be effective and knowledge can be easily read by policy makers.

I feel that issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) must be prioritized. There are 17 targets that need robust knowledge production. This will also help policy makers to budget and plan a policy. A simple example is how many contraceptives are needed in this country? We cannot simply give up to the drug industry producers. Knowledge production must be able to complement the State with correct data, so that the State can meet the reach of contraceptives, thus meeting the rights of women.

SGD targets need good databases. The GESI perspective is important to be brought forward, especially for data on targets that seem to be neutral on GESI, for example, the target to eradicate malnutrition and famine, or targets on water and sanitation. Without using GESI, the target to eradicate malnutrition, stunting, famine, or to make clean water available will not be achieved. There needs to be an understanding of how the power relationship works and influences access and control of nutrition and clean water. The power relationship can be based on ethnicity, race, physical condition, or geographical condition, within which there should be the reality of the gender and age relationship.[]

Gus Dur and Civil Society Movement

/0 Comments/in /by

CIVIL society Abdurrahman Wahid or Gus Dur was born when facing the New Order authoritarianism. New Order so strong nails digging power so that the people had almost no control and bargaining power against the state (government). People under the control and supervision of the state. The both relationships are so lame. The imbalance that led to the dominance of the state is so strong. Civil society movements want to change this situation. The relationship between the two (state/society) should be balanced. Society must be able to do a check and balance to the whole policy of the state.

New Order government reflects the militaristic government form. Often the name of the country’s stability and development, community aspirations muzzled exhausted. In the New Order era almost all elements of civil society, such as NGOs, CBOs, Press Institute, political parties-all of them stuck paralyzed by the state.

How does actually the relationship between society and the state along the New Order government today? Nur Syam in his paper “Gus Dur and Civil Society Movement” divide three typology or mapping based on the specified period.

First, the relationship is very unbalanced. This happened during the period 1970s to 1980s. At that time the country was so powerful. States control over everything. At least, according to Nur Syam, it marked three things: (1). Fusion of political parties. The era of multi-party during the Old Order is terminated by merging (fusion) into a three-party only: Golkar, PPP and PDI. Three of the party is a fusion of the 10 parties. Through this merger, the government wanted to Golkar became a single majority. Meanwhile, two other parties are just a partner, not a political contestant; (2). Negaranisasi process systemically, ie all the forces of society are represented in the social and religious institutions sucked into the power of the state government through political parties. In this era in villages mobilization of Kyai, community leaders, government officials are keen to sign Golkar done, even through coercion and violence; (3). Strengthening government positioning through single principle for all elements of civil society organizations, political and religious. Government pressure was so strong even in these years NU should accept Pancasila.

Second, the era is not balanced, ie the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s. In this era has emerged awareness of the need for balance between state power and the strength of the community. Gus Dur founded the Democracy Forum (FORDEM) and among young people appears People’s Democratic Party (PRD). In this period marked the rise of political violence by the state.

Third, the era is quite balanced in the mid-1990s to the 2000s. This era marked the strengthening of civil society through the reform movement of 1998. In the 1999 elections the multiparty reappear. People dare to express their aspirations through demonstrations; press freedom was wide open, many emerging new NGOs, etc.

Fourth, the balance era. It started in the 2000s until now. In this era, people’s position is as strong as a country. There are checks and balances of the people against the government, so that the state cannot do arbitrary and self as good as it was under the control of the people. Something that did not occur in the New Order era occurred in the present era.

The emergence of the power of civil society is not separated from the services of Gus Dur. In the New Order era where the state is so strong, Abdurrahman had gained establishing FORDEM as a rival (counter hegemony) to the power of the state gigantic and powerful.

Islam and Civil Society

Gus Dur brings Islam into the movement of civil society through socio-cultural approach. According to Gus Dur, socio-political approach to Islam only cause bridal or coopted Islam and the state will only be a source of legitimacy of the state. As a result, religion will only be part of the status quo.

According to Gus Dur, socio-political lines altogether unsuitable and positioned to project democratization and empowerment (civil society). Because it already contains terminus contradiction in it.

Therefore, said Gus Dur, struggles toward democracy and the empowerment of civil society can be achieved when using the instrument in creating a moral right political orientation through community institutions are independent and autonomous. This instrument serves to embed moral values of democracy and an attempt to achieve the life of the nation.

Islamic organization, said Gus Dur, should select and use the instrument as a means of moral purpose, grounding, and the ideals of the struggle.

Morality is meant here is the morality that supports the realization of a society justice, daulat legal fortune, openly (open society), and accept and appreciate the difference.

According to Gus Dur in essence of Islam is not so interested in political power in the sense of country institutions. Islam is more focused on moral politics. Therefore, there is no strange, if there is no fixed rule in Islam concerning the country system. In al-Qur`an themselves, word “al-Dawlah” which means the state was never mentioned. Which is precisely the explicit mention is the word “Baldah” which means nation or community. Thus, since the beginning of Islam is more interested in civil society movements, rather than build a country.

Well, to realize the civil society based on the values of Islam, the first of all need to change the paradigm of moral right in Muslims itself. Because, said Gus Dur, Muslims currently plagued with disease “double morality”. This disease causes to be a dichotomy between worldly matters and ukhrawiyah.

The most obvious example of this double morality disease is the pride and excitement of some Muslims to build a mosque or maintain any religious rites, but at the same time not so concerned about the issues of poverty, human rights abuses, or corruption.

These days double morality is also shown by the majority of Muslims are quick to react to issues of religion, such as the defamation of religion, but not uncomfortable against the eviction of the houses of the poor, land grabs by the state, public officials or politicians of corruption, terrorism, and others are considered not to have a correlation with religion.

According to Gus Dur, the morality that must be built is a morality that has the main character in the form of involvement in the struggles of the poor to earn a decent living at the same time respect their rights.

By placing the moral paradigm for civil society movements, indirectly Gus Dur provides a foundation for the development of theological and strategic thinking and civil society movements in Indonesia. So no exaggeration if one says that the main drivers of the rise of civil society in Indonesia are the thinking and various activism of Gus Dur. Wallahu a’lam bi al-shawab.