Indonesia’s secular character is the real target
With Thursday's attack in Jakarta, the spectre of Islamist terror has returned to haunt the world's most populous Muslim nation. Indonesia is no stranger to this phenomenon, having suffered several such strikes through the first decade of this century. It started with church bombings in 2000, which was followed by the carnage in Bali in 2002, then the Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta in 2003, the bombing outside the Australian embassy in 2004, the suicide attacks in Bali in 2005 — and finally there were the hotel bombings in Jakarta in 2009. But in the six years since, there have been no major incidents. The Government has been reasonably successful in keeping the bloodthirsty at bay and, in fact, foiled terror plots last month, as a result of which the country was on high alert during the new year celebrations. However, as Thursday's attack shows, there is no scope for complacency. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility, and Indonesian authorities have confirmed that the attack was carried out by a local outfit affiliated to the Syria-based terror group. This has again raised the dilemma we have faced in the aftermath of previous terror attacks, be they in Afghanistan or Nigeria or France, about the role and reach of the Islamic State. Though the group has little to no operational presence outside its battlefields in Syria and Iraq, it nonetheless has external influence — through its foreign recruits who have returned home and through online propaganda. Experts are still debating the scope and quality of this influence, but it’s clear from a tactical point of view that there's a new template for executing such attacks. This template — wherein gunmen swarm across a densely populated urban centre, attack high value targets and inflict as much damage as possible within a short period of time until they are neutralised by security forces — was introduced in Mumbai in 2008, perfected in Paris last year, and now re-applied in Jakarta.
But even as Indonesian authorities investigate the latest attack, the optics of the Islamic State targeting the world's most populous Muslim nation is hard to ignore. In this context, the change in the country's religious profile is important to understand. Traditionally, Indonesia has followed its own version of ‘archipelago' Islam that is more tolerant than the Wahhabi version peddled from the deserts of Arabia; even today, Indonesia is a secular republic. However, in recent decades, a more conservative strand of Islam has taken root. Religious minorities have come under attack, Western events and entities are frowned upon (remember the 2013 Miss World contest), one Indonesian Province already has Sharia'h law, and the Government is contemplating bans on alcohol and gambling. Up to 200 Indonesians are reportedly fighting for the Islamic State in Syria. It is not a big number compared to the many hundreds that have gone from European nations with smaller Muslim populations, but is still worrisome.