‘Morality racketeering’ is Australian academic Dr Ian Wilson’s shorthand for Indonesian white-clad mobsters who dress themselves in religious righteousness to terrorise their animus-du-jour. Last century it was vice. More recently it’s been blasphemers. Now it’s the government of President Joko Widodo.
An Australian supporter of the ultra-nationalist group
Front Pembela Islam (FPI – Islamic Defenders’ Front) explained to TV news this month why he and a few friends were backing the FPI leader Rizieq Shihab, 55, a man who’s no Santa Claus.
They said Widodo had neutered opposition through political alliances.
This left the FPI and its incendiary preacher as the only voice offering alternative policies.
Unfortunately that voice is hate-filled.
If there are plans worthy of being called policies, they’re rooted in sinophobia.
The signs are subtle, more dog whistles than shouts according to another Australian scholar, Dr Quinton Temby based at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Key words in the FPI’s rhetoric include naga, the symbol of a dragon,
cacing (worm) and zalim (aka zulm) Arabic for cruelty, exploitation and oppression.
All are linked to China and Communism.
Readers who remember Vietnam War propaganda would recognise the images – a loathsome red creepy-crawly, jaws agape, slithering towards the motherland.
Shihab likes to strike demagogue poses and call himself the
Imam Besar (Grand Cleric) descended from the Prophet Muhammad through his ancestors who brought Islam to Indonesia.
Critics have publicly called him a thug, but his claims suggest the man’s also a charlatan.
The Prophet, who died in 632 is supposed to have had 13 wives but only two children.
Islam arrived in Java in the 14th century, popularly through the Walisongo, or nine saints of Islam.
As there are few written records Shihab’s ancestry can’t be proved, but as Donald Trump knows, the more outrageous the notion the more likely to be accepted by the gullible.
How many believers is hard to know.
Temby has taken a stab at 200,000 which is big by Australian standards but tiny in the Republic. The mainstream Islamic organisations
Nahdlatul Ulama and
Muhammadiyah
together claim a membership of 120 million.
As we know, one determined zealot can still do enormous damage, though the FPI’s energies are currently directed to social media manipulation rather than bomb making.
The FPI made a major mistake when it switched targets from boozing foreigners and the unwed in bed to the government.
This enemy has a police force with lots of guns which were used to kill six of Shihab’s ten ‘bodyguards’ on a capital toll road in the early hours of 7 December.
The police said they had to defend themselves against armed men, but Shihab says his supporters had no weapons.
Guns are rare in Indonesia’s underworld.
So far no independent witnesses have come forward, but the cops’ version looks suspect.
The government has certainly sent a late no-tolerance message, reinforced by the arrest of Shihab for allegedly breaching coronavirus rules on wearing masks and social distancing.
When the preacher returned to Jakarta from three years self exile in Saudi Arabia on 10 November he was met by a huge mob which ignored lockdown laws.
The crowds caught the Widodo government by surprise.
How could ministers not have known about the flight and planned welcome? Either the State’s ‘intelligence’ service was dozing, or they knew and wanted the FPI to incriminate itself.
Widodo sacked two senior cops and their replacements are cracking knuckles.
Another sinister theory going the rounds is that Shihab’s return was arranged by the FPI’s political paymasters playing a long game to discredit Widodo. Like Trump’s election fraud accusations, no one is
producing evidence.
Naturally the FPI is playing victim and promoting the six dead men as martyrs who died for the cause of ‘moral revolution’.
This sounds fine unless a definition is sought.
For the FPI it means making the population live under sharia (Islamic law) and the suppression of ‘minorities’.
This is another code for ethnic Chinese. Most are Christian and probably total less than ten million.
That’s about one in every 30 citizens, though their economic clout is far greater.
Some families have been in the archipelago for three centuries and helped fight Communism after the 1965 coup.
But that doesn’t disturb the radicals who only see foreigners taking local jobs on Widodo’s infrastructure projects powered by Chinese loans. Jakarta’s debt to Beijing exceeds AUD 23.5 billion.
Its vaccine diplomacy should ensure millions get protected with the Sinovac jab.
Doses are already in the country and will be delivered free if approved.
That should encourage citizens to think favourably towards the donor – but few forget they’re also atheists persecuting Uyghur Muslims.
The FPI has called for citizens to boycott Chinese shops and goods.
If that happened the populace would go hungry, have to quit fags and buying smartphones.
So far China hasn’t retaliated.
Instead coal exports have been increased to replace imports from Australia.
But if its citizens are physically attacked it could withdraw its engineers and throw the massive road and rail upgrades into chaos.
Widodo’s government is in a bind.
Sinophobia is always bubbling beneath the surface.
The last big outbreak of violence in 1998 took the lives of more than a 1,000 shopkeepers and looters.
Anyone offering a sane commentary runs the risk of being painted Red – a straight lift from George W Bush’s ‘for us or agin us’ reductionist lunacy as the ideology has been banned for the past 55 years
and shows no sign of germinating.
It’s difficult to know if the FPI is affiliated with the extremist
Jemaah Islamiah (Islamic congregation).
The government is trying to persuade citizens that Shihab’s mob is a terrorist group and should be black-listed for spruiking violence – including the beheading of blasphemers.
Human rights activists are also conflicted fearing a ban on one outfit threatening the government will lead to further action against peaceful and rational critics – which is already happening.
The police say they’ve recently arrested 23 JI members including two prize targets –
Taufik Bulaga and Zulkarnaen – suspects in the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 died, including 88 Australians. The men were also allegedly involved in
the 2004 one-tonne suicide bomb hit on the Australian embassy.
Nine died – all Indonesians. About 150 were injured.
This Christmas and New Year the police are expected to be ramping patrols around churches, a standard precaution every twelvemonth.
Any outrage during the season of goodwill is likely to further frighten the Western investors Widodo so badly needs to balance the
Renminbi‘s influence.
Duncan Graham is an Australian journalist writing from Indonesia.
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press). He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia.
Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.
Comments
20 responses to “Sinophobia as a political weapon”
The 23.5 billion AUD Indonesia debt to China. What currency is the debt actualy nominated in?
Thanks, Peter. Most debt still in US $, but China reportedly pushing for greater use of renminbi.
Thanks Duncan. Surely that is risky on both counts. As Indonesia is a currency issuing nation with a Central Bank why wouldn’t Indonesia like the Australian Government, only issue debt in it’s own currency? -Or like any other similiar country.
A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.
Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the new Nazis of today,
The author didnt mention the 1965 western orchestrated genocide …
https://web.archive.org/web/20101108060411/http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/us-and-british-complicity-in-the-1965-slaughters-in-indonesia/
Marshall coup master Green
https://monthlyreview.org/2015/12/01/the-united-states-and-the-19651966-mass-murders-in-indonesia/
Add Vincent Blevins’ ‘The Jakarta Method’. Widodo’s faced with a very serious problem, and it is largely due to being unsuccessful in getting out from under the ‘Method’.
The author might also benefit from reading the work of the late Andre Vltchek, who in mid-’19 produced solid evidence that Uighurs are being sent to Indonesia, as well as Syria, Libya, the Balkans, Afghanistan and, recently, Azerbaijan – all in the interests of providing as much chaos as possible, and not just to disrupt ‘Chinese influence’.
Uighurs are Turkmen, and Erdy Gerdy Man really does fancy himself as the new Osman.
The author didnt mention the army
instigated mass rapes in 1998 either…
The man implicated in that pogrom
against ethnic Chinese 1998, Gen
Prabowo, is the current minister of
defence, gunning for the prez’s throne, prolly with a helping hand from his mentor in Washington…
that epicenter of international terrorism.
https://www.allannairn.org/2014/07/prabowo-part-3-nsa-militia-terror-aceh.html
Unfortunately, all too true.
In a related ‘campaign’, try Channel 7 using Molan to beat the drums of war with the Chinamen.
7 News twitter feed, 10.20 last night, and being ripped to shreds by people who don’t much fancy being taken for f’wits.
War crim loving media proprietor uses actual war crim (Fallujah, joint command with Mad Dog Matthis, depleted uranium tipped munitions used to produce an after effect measured as ‘worse than Hiroshima’) to pump up further acquisition of foreign supplied ‘dump worthy only’ killing gear.
True patriotism!
Jasminder Singh, a senior analyst with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies recently confirmed Uighur terrorists had fled to Mindanao. The Marawi atrocities were perpetrated by Uighur terrorists among other groups.
Uncle sham has been a professional arsonist all his life.
He’d start a fire, came back in fireman’s garb….to pour more kerosene on the flame !
Exhibit A.
CIA had this decades old ‘Xinjiang proj‘ on how to find the right spark to make China pop its cork. !
https://rense.com/political/uofhprof.htm
Fuller’s lawyer, Anthony Locricchio, said in an interview. “Now, the CIA and the university appear to be continuing to conspire against him to try to undermine his credibility.”
On that, I note “Kill the Messenger” was SBS World Movies very recently – it, of course, being an abridged version of the story of Gary Webb, and how he was undermined by the State/CIA and their attending media, once he’d uncovered the CIA’s facilitation of the Contra’s flooding of Sth L.A. (mainly) with ‘crackable’ coke.
Top notch undermining, that was, given Webb suicided by shooting himself in the head – twice.
Everybody knows, I hope, that
Al Qaeda was made in USA,
Ever heard of Penny Lane ?
Where they re-programmed
anti-US jihadists into Chinese hunting death squads !
https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/tehreek-e-taliban-pakistanguantanamo/
Firstly, cheers for that.
Seems to me that’s the ‘rebranding’ and extension of what was furthered with OBL in Afghanistan and, from there, to ‘the former Yugoslavia’, and Chechnya. It was the later 2 of those 3 that led the chaps in Moscow to say; ‘Enough!’ That had much to do with a certain smallish chap being elevated by Boris Y., because he woke up – albeit very late, that he’d been conned, to take over the reins.
Ground staked out in 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, and today we find ourselves coming to grips with the news that the smallish chaps’ chaps have ‘hacked American minds’.
Which, naturally, has the burdened beast calling for all manner of retribution, but without having a clue exactly what’s been hacked, when it occurred (March seems the best guess), and what’s been lost since entry. Most government departments and agencies seem to have been got, as do around 18,000 commercial enterprises.
In an interview with NBC, former US Ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, in response to a question about ‘retribution’, said;
“Russia is way more powerful today than it was 20 years ago, and it’s way more powerful today than it was four years ago,”
That was the plan!
Islamic, indeed, all terrorism, is usually useful to governments.
Genuine movements in Indonesia are crushed quickly: Sukarno and then the great strategic mistake by the USA of Aceh, the destruction of rebels on ceasefire….
Creating terror movements or taking control of them is not hard. Stalin and the rest were all through the mill of the Czar before taking control, due to careful work by outsiders.
Thank you so much for this extremely valuable article. These terrorists pose a threat to Mindanao also.
Interesting, thanks Duncan, especially the point about atheist Chinese and Muslim Indonesians. Tricky for Australian diplomacy. We could easily get out of our depth.
Sinophobia in Indonesia and Australia is not based on the same concept. In Indonesia, the Chinese immigrant out-perform the locals durng the Dutch colonial days and local political leaders uses this economic imbalance to stir up the locals to get rid of the Chinese (same MO in Malaysia). Whilst in Australia, sinophobia is a racist reaction similar to the Yellow Peril syndrome – the White feels superior. These countries used the sinophobia card to play domesic politics and for short term gains. If we changed our ways because China is getting stronger and can retaliate, then we change for the wrong reasons. We changed our ways because it is a wiser decision to make for peaceful and mutualy co-existence in this plantet where everyone is of equal standing on the planet.
Hi Anthony,
I pointed out some time ago that racism comes at a price. When Singapore was booted out of Malaysia, the Malaysians had the advantage of all the natural resources at their disposal. Now, Singapore has a per capita income six times that of Malaysia.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
And Australia, as represented by the LNP and most of the Labour Party, has amply demonstrated that it too, like the Malays and the Javanese, is prepared to pay the price of racism. How else do you interpret the dog whistling “We will not trade our values…”? This is but an updated version of John Howard’s “Terrorists hate us for who we are”. John Howard did not want to know WHY Islamic terrorists had a beef with Australia’s actions in the Middle East. Similarly, Morrison does not want to know WHY the Chinese are upset with Australia. No no no, there is no need for that. That is because… psst… we are BETTER than they are!!
Dear Mr Ti, I agree with you. Many years ago, I learned about affirmative action that has no expiry date and went on to destroy the group of people benefitting from it, ie. the Manchus . I also remembered that the Manchus who regretted trading horses for sedan chairs (carried by the Han people) and they also realised that they have had it! The Qing empire did well after there were reconcilliations bw Han and the Manchus. (Man Han Yie Qia)
I need help with a Senate inquiry urgently, can you please contact me on this email: tonypun@hotmail.com. Many thanks -Tony