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strong>March 21, Online

Hot on the heels of its campaign against the dissolution of Ahmadiyah, the hard-line Muslim group the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) is now setting its eyes on underground music, which its members believe carry messages that would lead young Muslims astray.

In a public lecture at FPI headquarters in Petamburan, Central Jakarta, senior FPI member and purported Islamic music “expert” Farid Budi Fahri alleged there had been concerted efforts to turn young people away from Islamic teachings through a variety of underground music.

“There has been a conspiracy. A war launched by the underground community [against mainstream Islamic teaching],” he told FPI members who came to the talk last week.

Farid traced the roots of underground music to a Zionist movement.

He said that a group of people adhering to Zionist ideology has used the medium to conceal their objectives of world domination.

Your comments:

Well, it’s not surprising to see a bunch of losers and politician wannabes pretend they have the power to regulate peoples’ lives.

What’s surprising is the Indonesian people let them run their lives. Understandably the FPI uses violence and intimidation, but are the Indonesian people such cowards that nobody stands against them?

Richard
Jakarta

During Friday prayers I will give
a sermon to do a sweeping of all radicals in Indonesia. We are 150 million strong.

Abudul Malik
Jakarta

The more you oppress people, the more you try to control their lives, beat, mutilate and degrade them, the more you squeeze them.

Wizard
Australia

Nowadays much underground music talks about the peace of Islam like the infamous Muslim rapper Thufail al Ghifari, “Islamic metal” bands like Tengkorak, Purgatory and Garis Keras 57, and “Metal Satu Jari” movement.

So, please FPI, please check the contents first before judging and labeling things “haram”.

Januar Kevin
Bandung

You can’t kill the Metal!

Stephanie
The US

The musical notes Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do, Re are based on Arabic Quranic words Mim, Fa, Sol, La, Shin, Do, Ro.

The idea came from the seven layers of Hell, seven layers of Heaven, seven layers of sky and seven times turning around the Holy Kaaba.

These musical notes teach us that no matter how far you go, you will go back to Allah (read: death). Based on this fact, music definitely has something to do with the Islamic creation of knowledge.

I truly believe that this is a political maneuver to divert people’s attention from something that is not good in our government.

Isn’t it strange that periodically certain issues emerge in an effort to say goodbye to the corruption issues?

Didiet Hidayat
Jakarta

I always laugh at what any FPI members say. Once they burned the book Das Kapital, and when asked what the reason was they replied that Das Kapital teaches young people to be capitalists.

It is obvious that they don’t understand what they are doing. So if now they charge underground music as Zionist to divide Muslims in the world, I just want to ask: Where were you while The Da Vinci Code was being hyped in cinemas?

Jack Daniel
Jakarta

The FPI is a group that has gotten twisted by their own paranoia that the world is full of conspiracies to bring down Islam, that there is a need to “purify” Islam in the way they see fit, much like what Hitler attempted in World War II.

If the government is still as complacent in dealing with them as it is now, it is only a matter of time before the FPI will step on a sensitive issue and provoke an all-out confrontation between them and society. I don’t know the beliefs of members of the FPI, but as a Muslim I believe it is not Islam.

Noe
Surabaya

I really laughed when reading this. They should be sent to Libya to get a real sense of war there.

Rohnya Sadam Husein
Bandung

The song “Imagine” by John Lennon has no connection to Zionism.

Zionism is a nationalist Jewish movement that stole Palestinian land. It is based on Judaism — a religion.

John Lennon’s song is about imagining a world without anything but a brotherhood of man.

I hope the President of Indonesia will chastise this group and perhaps outlaw them.

They are vigilantes and promote anarchy. Let the Indonesian police do their job.

Paul
Jakarta