Why Bali?

Once again, the resort island of Bali is hit. Three suicide bombers, taking with them the lives of 36 people. Police are hunting Noordin Mohamed Top, a Malaysian Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) operative and elsewhere, Vice President Yusuf Kalla urges Muslim leaders to condemn terrorism that is worked on Indonesian soil. He says:

“Suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq are perhaps understandable because there is an ‘opponent’ there…”

I must confess. Yusuf Kalla’s statement makes absolutely no sense. First of all, Afghanistan has seen very little suicide bombings and the almost weekly suicide bombings in Iraq have killed more Muslim civilians (albeit Shia) than Americans, whom I presume are Yusuf Kalla’s real opponents. Yusuf Kalla himself makes for a remarkable study, but I’ll leave him for another time.

From the outset, suicide bombing gravitates toward a specific kind of target. Proximity to the victim, coupled with the aim to inflict maximum damage almost ensures that the target will not be military, but a civilian one; what is known today as a soft target. Doing the math, terrorists know that between a military and a civilian target, the latter is entirely predictable and can always be relied on to produce a devastating result.

Unlike the medieval holy warrior or assassin, who was willing to face certain death at the hands of his enemies or captors, the new suicide terrorist dies by his own hand. This raises an important question of Islamic teaching. Islamic law books are very clear on the subject of suicide. It is a major sin and is punished by eternal damnation in the form of endless repetition of the act by which the suicide killed himself [1].

A sahih (authentic) hadith narrated by Abu Hurarira strikes right into the heart of the matter:

"We witnessed along with Allah’s Apostle the Khaibar (campaign). Allah’s Apostle told his companions about a man who claimed to be a Muslim, "This man is from the people of the Fire." When the battle started, the man fought very bravely and received a great number of wounds and got crippled. On that, a man from among the companions of the Prophet came and said, "O Allah’s Apostle! Do you know what the man you described as of the people of the Fire has done? He has fought very bravely for Allah’s Cause and he has received many wounds." The Prophet said, "But he is indeed one of the people of the Fire." Some of the Muslims were about to have some doubt about that statement. So while the man was in that state, the pain caused by the wounds troubled him so much that he put his hand into his quiver and took out an arrow and committed suicide with it. Off went some men from among the Muslims to Allah’s Apostle and said, "O Allah’s Apostle! Allah has made your statement true. So-and-so has committed suicide."

Obviously, Muslims who try to justify suicide bombings in the light of either Islam or jihad tread a virtually non-existent line, since the real face of suicide bombing, unmasked in places as diverse as Iraq, Israel and Indonesia, is its perverse taste for unwitting women, children and the elderly. The latter are categories of people that the Prophet Muhammad steadfastly forbade his followers from molesting, even in the fever-pitch of battle.

The Malaysian press’ use of the label pengebom berani mati (or men who are brave enough to die) to describe suicide bombers, especially in Bali’s context, seems especially sadistic. The journalists lament that they don’t have another apt term for it; one that properly highlights the bomber’s cause.

What eludes them is that these acrobatics; the reluctance to use the far more accurate Malay word, pengebom bunuh diri (men who kill themselves) leads directly to justifying the act itself, and hence the deaths of its victims. Or perhaps, that is the deal all along. Suicide, after all, is clearly condemned in Islam. Thus, if a linguistic loophole is available, exploit it.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s quick characterization of the Bali bombings as terrorist acts is to be commended. His government had received reports of an impending attack on Jakarta, so had only made security arrangements for the capital. However, if the President had attended to
regional analyses of JI, he’d have known that a split had emerged within its fecund ranks. The 2002 Bali and Marriot bombings, in which JI members had been implicated, had killed a lot of Muslims. This had sickened many, including JI members.

Sidney Jones, from the International Crisis Group, said JI could be moving back towards its vision of setting up an Islamic state, distancing itself from the hardline pro-bombing faction led by Malaysians Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Top.

Sadly, if this had been taken into account, President Yudhoyono would have quickly realized that in the terrorists’ minds, the demographics of islands like Bali, Bintan and Irian Jaya (where ‘disbelievers’ outnumber Muslims) make them succulent targets. In killing non-Muslims, the terrorists seek perhaps to reach a compromise with their war-weary brothers and sisters. This isn’t far-fetched at all, since the terrorists’ core audience remain the Muslim community itself. Al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri clearly grasps this reality in a recent letter to the terrorist organization’s Iraqi front-man. In it, he flatly warns Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that his brutal tactics might serve to alienate the wider Muslim population.

The question that should have been asked is “Why not Bali?

[1] The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis

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