•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

A hero’s burial accorded by hard-line Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir for two suspected terrorists shot dead in a recent police raid was dismissed by many observers as not reflecting the sentiments of the vast majority of Indonesians.

Bashir, once alleged to have been the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network, led the funeral for the two men — Air Setiawan and Eko Joko Sarjono— at the “Khusus Orang Shalat’’ (“Only for People Who Pray”) cemetery in Sragen near Solo in Central Java.

Respected Muslim intellectual Azyumardi Azra said what happened there was unique to the Solo region and would not have happened in other regions in the country because the terror attacks had filled the majority of Indonesians with anger.

“I think this is unique to Solo, as Abu Bakar Bashir is there, with his Islamic boarding schools.

“We know this is a more hard-line area. The funeral is hardly surprising,” said Azyumardi, who is also a professor at a state Islamic university in Jakarta.

He was referring to the Al Mukmin Islamic Boarding School in Ngruki, Sukoharjo, Central Java, co-founded by Bashir.

The school has had several of its alumni involved in bombing attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombing, which was responsible for the deaths of more than two hundred people.

“The burial in Solo is an anomaly,” Azyumardi said.

He said the demographics of the region, home to various groups of Muslims, including hard-liners and fundamentalists, made such an event possible.

Anies Baswedan, another Muslim intellectual and chancellor of the Paramadina University in Jakarta, said the burial in Solo was not reflective of the situation elsewhere.

He said many of those present at the funeral were there simply because they were curious, not because they condoned terrorism or supported the burial.

“People flocked to see the burial mainly out of curiosity, just to see what it’s like,” Anies said, adding that “I actually feel that the level of anger across the nation against terrorism is now higher than it was several years ago.”

Anies pointed out that the home village of Ibrahim, a man accused of active involvement in the twin Jakarta hotel bombings who was shot dead in a raid over the weekend on a house in Temanggung, Central Java, had refused to have his body buried there.

His family also shunned the burial, later held at a public cemetery in Jakarta where the unknown and unclaimed are usually buried.

Residents around the cemetery in Sragen had also opposed Bashir’s funeral service.

After the bodies were lowered into the graves, those burying the bodies could not find hoes or shovels and had to fill the pits using their hands and feet.

“Rejecting a burial is something quite extraordinary,” Anies said, especially given it was a collective action.

Syafi’i Maarif, a former chairman of the country’s second largest Islamic movement, Muhammadiyah, agreed with Anies, saying the majority of Indonesians were deeply upset at what terrorism had done to their country.

He said those who still admired terrorists “needed enlightenment,” adding that although those people “feel they are on the right path, in reality, they are misguided.”

Air and Eko were shot dead on Saturday during a police raid on a house in Bogor, where 500 kilograms of explosives were found.

During the burial, interspersed with yells of “Allah Akbar” from the crowd of more than 100, Bashir urged the police to repent and apologize to the families of the victims.

“They were not terrorists, they were Mujahideen who died in the path of Allah,” Bashir said in his oration at the cemetery.

Near the house of Air and Eko in Solo, 20 kilometers away, a large banner said “Welcome Islamic Martyrs … Jihad still continues.”

Municipal law and order officials were later involved in a scuffle with locals after they attempted to take down the banner.