Nutty Muslim Cleric -- Snooker

Snooker,

The following article in todays Courier Mail, shows what a nutter Abu Bakar Bashir really is.

It's chilling to know that this lunatic has made several teaching (recruiting?) trips to Australia.




Look to the Koran, cleric tells families
Chris McCall
18oct02

ISLAMIC cleric Abu Bakar Bashir said yesterday that he did not fear arrest and called on families of the Bali bomb victims to look to the Koran for guidance.


Denying he was behind the deadly blast, Mr Bashir repeated his allegation that US intelligence had carried it out. Bashir has been accused by Singapore and Malaysia of leading an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist ring called Jemaah Islamiyah.

This organisation has been accused of trying to blow up targets in Singapore and has been named by analysts as one of those most likely to have carried out Satu*day's deadly bombing in Kuta.

But according to Bashir, Jemaah Islamiyah does not exist.

Nor does Al-Qaeda, he said. US intelligence arranged the bombing, precisely to prove that Al-Qaeda was operating in Indonesia, he said. It is a theme which has been taken up by many other Indonesians, and some major newspapers.

"My message to the victims is to go back to the teachings of the Koran. If they are angry, be angry at America and the Jews," Bashir said.

"My organisation is the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, not Jemaah Islamiyah. It is like Al-Qaeda, it has never existed."

Asked about the possibility of arrest, he said: "I do not think like that because I do not think I have any problems."

His comments follow the abrupt winding up of another militant Islamic organisation, Laskar Jihad, and the brief arrest of another leading Islamic hardliner, Islamic Defenders Front chief Habib Rizieq Syihab. Bashir also said he was not afraid of arrest and was willing to undergo interrogation as long as the law was followed correctly.

Associates of Bashir say the name Jemaah Islamiyah was coined by the Indonesian intelligence services, who used it in the 1980s as a label for Islamic activists they thought threatened the rule of former president Suharto.

Some of these were associates of Bashir. Around that time, he spent four years in jail for subversion, eventually fleeing to Malaysia and returning to Indonesia only when Suharto fell in 1998.

The Indonesian Mujahidin Council was founded in 2000 as a vehicle to push for Islamic law in all matters in Indonesia. It is an umbrella group for dozens of smaller militia-like organisations. The white-bearded Bashir is its amir or commander, and normally operates from the Al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school in Ngruki, just outside the Central Java town of Solo.

Many of the council's senior figures are former political prisoners and associates of Bashir's with ties dating back to the 1970s in many cases.

Bashir admitted that the Bali bombing was cruel and said cruelty was the hallmark of Jews.

He advised Australia not to follow the US line in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"Don't let Australia follow the advice of America," the 64-year-old cleric said.

ends