Pious Saudis engage in temporary marriages with Indonesian women

Temporary marriages with Indonesian women on rise
P.K. Abdul Ghafour | Arab News

JEDDAH: A large number of Saudis are engaging in temporary marriages with Indonesian women with the intention of divorcing them.

“Such marriages are likely to increase if Islamic scholars fail to give a clear ruling prohibiting them,” said Khaled Al-Arrak, director of Saudi affairs at the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta.

He said most Saudis were engaged in such marriages without realizing their consequences. “Some poor Indonesians marry off their girls to Saudis hoping it would put an end to their poverty and miseries. If the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars does not ban this type of marriages, things will go out of control,” Al-Arrak warned.

There are so many offices in Indonesia that facilitate such marriages, Al-Watan Arabic daily said. The marriage takes place in the presence of witnesses and a man posing as the father of the bride.

These women do not know that their marriages would end within a few days and that they would have to bear children of people who would abandon them.

Last year, the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta received 82 calls regarding children of Saudis who had married Indonesian women and then abandoned them. “We have received 18 such calls from abandoned Indonesian wives of Saudis and their children this year so far,” Al-Arrak said.

The Saudi Embassy official said that the cases registered with the embassy accounted for only 20 percent of such marriages that have actually taken place.

Aysha Noor, 22, an Indonesian woman from Sikka Bhumi, 160 km east of Jakarta, said her parents married her to a young Saudi man when she was 16, thinking it would be a blessing for the family and end their poverty.

“We in Indonesia consider people of Makkah and Madinah as blessed ones. The man gave me a dowry of six million Indonesian rupiahs (SR2,024). The dowry helped us to solve some of our economic problems. My family did not know that the man was intending to have a temporary marriage.”

She adds: “After a few days he paid us the remaining amount of three million rupiahs (SR1,011) and left the country.” Noor said she later had a similar marriage with another Saudi before finding a job at a nightclub as a singer and dancer.

There are many women in Indonesia who have similar stories to tell. Some of them find it difficult to look after their children from Saudi husbands. The Saudi Embassy in Jakarta registers such Saudi children and helps them travel to the Kingdom to recognize their fathers but many refuse to accept them.

The embassy also receives visa requests for marriages, particularly for people of special needs and elderly who want to marry Indonesian women. These marriages often fail because the Saudi society treats them as maids and they cannot merge with the society primarily because of language barrier. Such marriages cost between SR5,000 and SR10,000.

S.P. Dharmakirty, consul for information at the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah, confirmed that temporary marriages involving Saudis were taking place in his country.

“Indonesian authorities have taken appropriate measures to curb this practice,” he told Arab News, adding that some people involved in such illegal marriages have been detained.

The consul also pointed out that the marriage of some Indonesian women with elderly and handicapped Saudis was not legal.

“We face many problems because such marriages are not registered and the women coming from Indonesia use visa for maids to come to the Kingdom,” he said. “Some of them later come to consulate to seek advice,” he added.

Singaporean Islamic terrorist planned to crash plane into Changi Airport

Jan 14, 2009
S’porean on terror charges
Planned attack on Changi
http://www.straitstimes.com
JI man Fajar Taslim shows no remorse when questioned by ST
By Salim Osman, Indonesia Correspondent

JAKARTA – SINGAPOREAN terror suspect Mohammad Hassan Saynudin has admitted that he and fugitive Jemaah Islamiah (JI) leader Mas Selamat Kastari had planned to hijack a plane in Bangkok and crash it into Changi Airport about six years ago.

‘We wanted to do it out of anger with Singapore for being an ally of the United States for what it did in Afghanistan,’ he told The Straits Times in an interview from a court lock-up yesterday.

But the plan was aborted after Thai security authorities came to know about it.

‘We abandoned the plan. We had no other plans to attack Singapore,’ he said.

This is the first time a JI member has admitted publicly to the plans to attack Changi Airport.

Mas Selamat was arrested in Indonesia and deported to Singapore in 2006, but escaped from custody last February.

Yesterday, Mohammad Hassan, 35, who goes by his alias Fajar Taslim, appeared in the South Jakarta District Court to face terrorism charges that could lead him to the gallows if he is convicted.

The terror suspect, who escaped Singapore’s security dragnet in 2001, however, remained unremorseful about his alleged involvement in terrorism.

‘What I was trying to do was to defend Islam and Muslims,’ he told The Straits Times.

The Singaporean and nine other men – all Indonesians – were nabbed in raids by Indonesian anti-terror squads in Palembang in June and July last year.

Yesterday, Fajar Taslim and two of them – Ali Masyhudi, 26, a farmer, and Wahyudi, 35, a caretaker – were charged with plotting attacks against foreigners and Christian priests in Indonesia.

A procedural snag delayed the filing of charges against the other seven suspects; that is now expected to take place next week.

All of them belong to a terrorist cell dubbed Jemaah Palembang, which had links to JI.

According to a White Paper published by the Singapore Government in 2003, the Singapore chapter of the regional terror network had since the mid-1990s eyed various potential targets in Singapore. They included the water pipes at the Causeway, Yishun MRT station and US naval installations.

According to the charges, the group also killed Christian teacher Dago Simamora for insulting Islam and preventing Muslim schoolgirls from wearing headscarves. The cell had also planned to bomb a backpacker cafe in the tourist town of Bukit Tinggi, West Sumatra, and shoot Chinese gold shop owners in Lampung, South Sumatra.

In the raids, police found 20 improvised bombs and a safe house in Palembang containing 18 computer hard drives.

Fajar Taslim said that JI’s bomb expert Azahari Husin – who was killed in a raid on his hideout in East Java in 2005 – had told him to buy the items described by police as accessories for bomb-making. He did not say when he bought them, however, nor what they were for.

‘I went to Sim Lim Tower in Singapore to buy many switches and other electronic parts,’ he said.

In the interview conducted while waiting to appear in court, Fajar Taslim said that his only regret was not being able to take care of his elderly parents and his four children from his first marriage in Singapore.

He had fled to Indonesia in 2001 after being warned that the authorities were after him, crossing into Johor and Thailand by road before crossing to Sumatra by sea from Penang. Accompanying him were his leader Mas Selamat and three others, but they split up in central Java later.

‘I survived seven years on the run. It’s like hijrah, or migration. Allah will give you sustenance,’ he added.

He said he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden while undergoing military training in Afghanistan. He shrugged off queries about the bombs found in the raid, saying: ‘They are just fireworks or firecrackers, not explosives that were more powerful than the ones that hit Bali.’

salim@sph.com.sg

Executed Bali Islamic terrorists praised as martyrs, to inspire 1001 jehadis in Indonesia

Watch Bali bombing video here Another great example of Islam – the peace religion in action

‘1001 jihadis to take place of Bali bombers’

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Tenggulun, East Java | November 11, 2008
Article from:  The Australian
THE delighted family and spiritual adviser of executed Bali bombers Amrozi and Mukhlas have hailed their martyrdom, claiming the brothers died with smiles on their faces and that there will be 1001 jihadis to take their place.

Abdul Rohim, son of Muslim preacher Abu Bakar Bashir who set the bombers on their path of mass murder, said he had examined the pair’s faces after they were shot by firing squads early on Sunday.

“They were smiling, and the perfume of the bodies was not from the soap used to clean them; it was an extraordinary perfume,” Mr Rohim told The Australian.

Mr Rohim warned that the executions could now unleash 1001 jihadis.

“The Government thinks that by executing them it can stop the jihad,” Mr Rohim said.

“But the point is that this will not extinguish the jihad.

“It’s not possible to extinguish the light of Allah. The jihad will always continue.” The boasts came as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Australia continued to receive credible threats of attacks after Sunday’s execution of the terrorists.

“Regrettably, we continue to receive credible information that Bali remains an attractive target for terrorist activity,” Mr Smith told parliament.

However, the Foreign Minister said there had been no change to the threat level cited in Australian Government travel advice.

It remained at the second-highest level – “reconsider your need to travel” – the level it has been pegged at since the attack on October 12, 2002, in which 202 people, 88 of them Australians, were killed.

The statement came as recently installed Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika – the former local police chief who headed the investigation into the terrorist atrocity – warned against violent retaliation for the executions.

Indonesian authorities also revealed they continued to be at a high level of alert after several bomb threats over the past week, including on Australia’s Jakarta embassy.

“I hope the people will regard (the executions) as a normal thing, and not react excessively,” Mr Pastika said.

He attempted to pour cold water on the claims of holiness being made by the families of Imam Samudra and the bin Nurhasyim brothers.

Hundreds of supporters briefly clashed with police as the bodies of Mukhlas and Amrozi – the latter dubbed the “smiling assassin” for his courtroom antics – arrived by helicopter at their village of Tenggulun, in east Java, on Sunday.

Bashir, who responded to the two brothers’ final wishes by praying over their bodies shortly before they were interred had yesterday morning resumed his schedule of preaching jihad in Muslim boarding schools across Indonesia.

Bashir, the co-founder of Jemaah Islamiah, was jailed on a conspiracy charge related to the bombings before being released in 2006.

Female members of the family visited the brothers’ grave site to tidy up and pray, having been denied access to the area during Sunday’s burial ceremony according to strict Muslim funeral rules. Yasyrifah binti Nurhasyim, the sister aged in between Amrozi – who was 46, and Mukhlas, who was 48 – was praying at the graves with her daughter, Aulia Sahida.

A defiant Yasyrifah said the family was proud of her brothers’ “achievement”. “We’re relieved, because they’ve become martyrs,” she said.

She added that the graves, which are set apart from the main cemetery in Tenggulun village, would be kept simple.

“A fence will be put around the graves,” she said. “But no sort of shrine will be built. We’re worried it could become an altar (for ancestor worship).”

Muslim leaders in Java often struggle with trying to keep the faithful from following the older syncretic aspects of the religion that are holdovers from a pre-Islamic past in Indonesia – such as ancestor worship.

Family and hardline followers such as Abdul Rohim were busy yesterday offering interpretations of the arrival of three large birds of prey over Tenggulun village on Sunday, moments before the bodies of Amrozi and Mukhlas arrived. The birds wheeled high in the air for several minutes and then separated, two flying in one direction and the third flying separately in another.

Followers are interpreting this as a sign that the brothers and their co-conspirator, Imam Samudra, were taken straight to heaven after their deaths.

Bali bomber feels ‘beautiful’ facing end: Showed no remorse for killings of 202

Bali bomber feels ‘beautiful’ facing end: Showed no remorse for killings
Lindsay Murdoch in Jakarta
January 5, 2008

ONE of the Bali bombers has written from his Indonesian jail that he feels so “beautiful” on the eve of his execution that “no words can describe how good the feeling is”.

Mukhlas, the elder brother of the so-called smiling assassin Amrozi, posted a 10-page statement on the internet exhorting Muslims to show their support for him by turning out in mass numbers for his burial.

An Islamic militant’s website is carrying the statement, fuelling fears the execution of the three bombers could ignite violence and arouse public sympathy for their cause in the world’s biggest Muslim nation.

The controversial Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir warned last month of a “big disaster” in Indonesia if the executions were carried out. He made the comments after visiting the bombers in jail. But the Jakarta security expert Sidney Jones says that while the executions are likely to generate anger and retaliation against Indonesian government installations or personnel, “careful security arrangements should be able to prevent any incident”.

Mukhlas, a father of six who is also known as Ali Gufron, titled his jail writings The Right And Good Dreams.

“Please read my writing,” he urged Muslims in the internet statement, which he called his “last will and testament”.

“I would not trade how I am feeling now with anything else in the world,” he said. Mukhlas claimed that Amrozi and the third bomber, Imam Samudra, are also writing books in their cells in a high-security jail on Nusakambangan Island, off Central Java.

A former Islamic preacher in his late 40s, Mukhlas has showed no remorse for helping to organise the 2002 bombings in Bali’s Kuta tourist district, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. Many of the victims were Muslims. He claimed on the internet he has sympathy “from all Muslims in the world” for what he did as well as the “blessings of God”. Earlier, the three bombers said in a signed statement smuggled from jail that their deaths would make them heroes to God and that being “thrown out of the country” would be “an adventure” and “a sightseeing trip”.

“If we are executed, then our drops of blood that flow – with God’s permission – will become light for those good Muslims and will become hell burning fire for those who are not Muslims and the hypocrites,” they wrote.

A countdown for the bombers to face a firing squad has begun after prosecutors visited the bombers on Wednesday and told them they had 30 days to lodge an application for clemency or the executions would be carried out. Lawyers for the men will seek final instructions when they go to the jail, expected within days. But the bombers have said repeatedly they will not seek clemency from the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who would be highly unlikely to grant it for extremists who carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesia’s history.

Ms Jones, of the International Crisis Group, said fears of more terrorist attacks in Indonesia had fallen and the risk of more Bali-style bombings was low.

“Most extremist groups here have concluded that indiscriminate attacks on civilians are counterproductive but they have not given up on local targets, even if their capacity to go after them is weak,” she wrote in The Jakarta Post.

The militant group Jemaah Islamiah “is trying to sterilise and consolidate its ranks” after the arrest of a number of its leaders this year, Ms Jones said. Other militant groups were “reaching out to disgruntled members of other organisations and new groups are emerging and recruiting members, particularly in Java”.

Ms Jones said the biggest danger to Indonesia “lies not in terrorism, separatism, election disputes or any external threat but in poorly managed communal tensions that have the potential to fray this country’s social fabric”.

Indonesia executes three Muslim Bali bombers who killed 202 people

Indonesia executes three Bali bombers
DPA  | Sunday, 09 November, 2008

Jakarta: Indonesia early Sunday executed three Muslim militants convicted for their roles in the 2002 bombings in Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners, media reports said

Imam Samudra, 38 and brothers Amrozi, 46, and Ali Ghufron, alias Mukhlas, 48, were executed simultaneously by firing squads shortly after midnight on Saturday, Jasman Panjaitan, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office said.

Landslides and floods in Java kill 101

The execution took place on Nusakambangan Island off the southern coast of Java where the men were being held, the TvOne channel said, citing an anonymous source.

The Detik.com online news service reported from the port town of Cilacap near Nusakambangan island that the bodies of the three men were brought to nearby clinic for autopsy after they were confirmed dead by doctors supervising the execution.

The report quoted an unnamed source as saying the bodies would be flown in by helicopter to the mens’ hometowns for burial.

The three convicts have been on death row since 2003, when a Bali court sentenced them to death for their roles in the bombing of nightclubs in tourist Kuta district.

None of the bombers has shown any remorse for the attacks.

In the hometowns of the Ghufrons in east Java district of Lamongan, as well as at Samudra’s residence in west Java’s Serang district town, dozens of their supporters shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Great), witnesses said.

Hours before the execution, Ali Fauzi – the Ghufrons’ brother, arrived on Nusakambangan to take care of his brothers’ bodies.

Indonesian authorities repeatedly postponed plans to execute the three while their attorneys filed repeated legal appeals, including demands for a judicial review in a bid to delay their execution.

The three were members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a regional terrorist network responsible for several bombings across Indonesia.

These included simultaneous church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000, bombings on Bali in 2002 and 2005, the bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2004 and an attack on the Australian embassy in 2005.

Bali bomber feels ‘beautiful’ facing end: Showed no remorse for killings