Former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Hendropriyono says the government should move to stop inflamatory  sermons or risk worsening extremism and terrorism.

“It’s a big mistake for the government to turn a deaf ear to the provocative sermons that preach hatred toward citizens of different religious faiths,” Hendropriyono told The Jakarta Post.

He said that stern action is justified because Indonesia has an anti-terror law that allows it.

He said that terrorism and fundamentalism is like a tree. “Terrorism is analogous to the stem and the leaves while the fundamentalism is the root, which should be removed.”

Otherwise, he added, terrorism would grow healthily on the strong base of fundamentalism.

Hendropriyono won notoriety with a raid on an Islamic fundamentalist group  in 1989 when he headed the Lampung military command.

Meanwhile, Din Syamsuddin, chairman of the country’s second largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, said without the presence of such mainstream Islamic organizations as Muhammadiyah and the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), even more Indonesian Muslims would be turning to terrorism.

“It is not true that NU’s and Muhammadiyah’s propagations have not reached the grassroots level. In fact we carry out propagations at mosques in towns and villages.

“As a result, the majority of Muslim communities are well guarded from  terrorist ideology,” Din, who was in Frankfurt, told  The Jakarta Post by SMS.

He added it was not easy to reach out to members of terrorist groups, as they usually avoided events run by organizations outside of their circles, such as NU and Muhammadiyah.

The role of large Muslim organizations such as Muhammadiyah and NU, which together claim to have over 60 million followers nationwide, has been questioned after the continuing terrorist threat.

To the surprise of many, terrorists are present amid the unsuspecting community.

NU deputy chairman Masdar Farid Mas’udi said this could be attributed to larger Muslim organizations rather than the ordinary people.

“Our organizational structure should also exist at the neighborhood level… We will discuss this issue, among others, in our upcoming congress from March 22-27,” Masdar told the Post.

Meanwhile, noted Muslim scholar Azyumardi Azra said Islamic organizations should not be blamed for not noticing terrorist activities within their neighborhood.

He said the terror group’s activities in Pamulang, for example, would normally go unnoticed despite the area’s crowded neighborhood because the inhabitants are working people who leave home early in the morning and return at night, and generally don’t know each other well enough.

“Of course everyone should be responsible for what happens around them in one way or another, the government that should take the most responsibility,” Azyumardi said.

“Organizations such as NU and Muhammadiyah may be responsible to reach out to the grassroots level, including potential terrorism, but they’re not equipped to do so.

“It is the government’s duty to provide these resources,” he added.

Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) deputy chairman Amidhan said the police’s recent discovery of terrorist activities in Pamulang, Banten, and Aceh did not indicate the larger Muslim communities’ failure to monitor and curb such activities.

“There’s nothing unusual with one or two people being influenced by terrorist groups. The general public is not as keen as security officers in detecting terrorist activity,” Amidhan said.

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