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COMMENTARY: Muslims a target, not merely collateral damage
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Police officers cordon off the road in front of the Faletehan mosque in the vicinity of National Police headquarters in South Jakarta on Friday night following an attack launched by an unidentified man on two police officers. (JP/Ricky Yudhistira)
T
he latest terrorist attack on Indonesian soil has sent a clear and chilling message to Indonesian Muslims: no matter how devout you are, you could easily be classified as infidels by extremists and therefore regarded as legitimate targets.
Adj. Comr. Dede Suhatmi and First Brig. M. Syaiful Bakhtiar had just finished their evening prayers at Falatehan Mosque across from the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta on Friday, when a man shouting “Thogut!” attacked them with a knife bayonet.
The officers are not members of the National Police’s Densus 88 counterterrorism squad, which is directly involved in the bloody war against local militants. They are just ordinary Muslims who were carrying out their religious duty. But that did not stop the suspect, identified as 26-year-old Mulyadi, from attacking them.
The officers survived the attack and the assailant was shot dead.
Police personnel have been targeted by Islamic militants for years. On May 24, two suicide bombers killed three police officers on duty in Kampung Melayu, East Jakarta; even on Idul Fitri on June 25, a policeman was stabbed to death in Medan, North Sumatra.
Muslims were among those who perished in previous terror attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali bombings and the Sarinah attack last year in Central Jakarta. But beyond being collateral damage in attacks targeting foreign “infidels” or an infidel government, any “infidel” Muslim can now become a target.
The incident at Falatehan Mosque, where Muslims including police officers pray, was the first terror attack near the National Police headquarters. In 2011 a suicide bomb attack during Friday prayers at the mosque of the Cirebon Police headquarters in West Java injured several policemen. Such attacks are a clear manifestation of the violent ideology espoused by terrorist groups like the Islamic State (IS), known among counterterrorism scholars as takfirism, which have targeted Indonesian Muslims.
