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Jakarta governor contender Anies Baswedan under fire for meeting Islamic hardliners
Sydney Morning Herald - January 3, 2017
Analysts say Anies Baswedan's reputation as a moderate Muslim has been tarnished after he gave a speech on Sunday to the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).
The hardline group, once considered a bunch of fringe radicals known for raids on bars during Ramadan, has sprung to national prominence after spearheading three mass rallies calling for the Christian governor to be jailed for blasphemy.
Anies' visit comes as the governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, universally known as Ahok, returned to court on Tuesday where he is facing blasphemy charges for complaining his political foes took a Koranic verse out of context.
The FPI's firebrand leader, Habib Rizieq, is pictured gazing adoringly at Anies in photos published on the group's social media accounts.
"Will this picture be remembered as the day moderates die?" tweeted Evan Laksmana, an analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Indonesia. "Anies Baswedan, once known as a global voice of moderate Islam, campaigned at FPI HQ."
Mr Laksmana later told Fairfax Media that Anies may be trying to regain some of the conservative votes that had gone to his rival Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in the last two months.
"But to legitimise FPI in the process... simply means Anies is just another politician, not the inspiring, progressive and pluralist statesman he always said he aims to be," he said.
One of Anies' campaign spokesmen, Anggawira, said Anies attended meetings with different groups every few days. "People know where he stands on Islam, it's not something created in one day or visit. His position is well known by everybody, it's clear in the media, he was an activist as a student ... he's an educator."
Mr Anggawira said the whole thing had been blown out of proportion because it was the FPI. "We understand that."
Anies denied in his speech rumours he was a follower of Shiite, a Muslim minority often persecuted in Sunni-majority Indonesia, ultra-conservative Wahhabism or Liberal Islam. He also spoke of rejecting a proposal to hold LGBT classes when he was rector of Paramadina University.
And Anies reiterated FPI figures suggesting 7.8 million people had attended the December 2 rally, a figure that is much higher than the 500,000 estimated by police.
Anies, a former education minister in the Jokowi government, was widely regarded as a pioneering educator and Muslim scholar.
In 2008 he was quoted in the Jakarta Post saying Indonesia's two largest civil Islamic groups should take the lead in preventing several Muslim individuals or groups from taking violent actions in the name of Islam.
His comments at the time came after the government issued a decree against Jamaah Ahmadiya, a minority Muslim sect, after intense pressure from extremist groups including the FPI. The FPI had also staged an attack on activists at a rally for religious tolerance.
Australian National University associate professor Marcus Mietzner said the visit to the FPI headquarters highlighted Habib Rizieq's growing political status after the December 2 demonstration, which positioned him as a leader with significant mass support and someone to whom election candidates had to pay tribute.
"For Anies, that support was apparently so important that he disavowed his own liberal legacy while leading Paramadina University," Dr Mietzner said.
"Instead of drawing from his reformist credentials built up there, he proudly told Rizieq that he banned gay themed lectures on campus. Anies' public destruction of his liberal image says a lot about where the wind is blowing ideologically in contemporary Indonesia."
The FPI says its mission is to implement Sharia law and rioted when Ahok became the first openly ethnically Chinese Christian governor of Jakarta in 2014, arguing that an infidel should not be appointed leader.
"God's law is above everything, that holy verses are above the constitution's," Habib Rizieq said in a sermon during the December 2 anti-Ahok rally last year.
President Joko Widodo joined Habib Rizieq on stage for a short speech at the rally, which may have helped defuse political tensions, but also, many argue, reinforced the FPI's newfound status as a leader of political Islam in Indonesia.
Emboldened by the success of the rally, FPI members visited several shopping malls in Surabaya last month to ensure a non-legally binding fatwa banning Muslims from wearing Christmas apparel such as Santa hats was being upheld.
Habib Rizieq has also been reported to police for blasphemy after he allegedly said: "If Jesus is the son of God, who is the midwife?" during a sermon on Christmas Day. (With Amilia Rosa)
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