© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
While the United States government spends billions fighting Islamic terrorism worldwide, it has offered Indonesia $157 million dollars for use by state-owned and Muslim schools.
Indonesian minister Jusuf Kalla announced the U.S. assistance yesterday following a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph Boyce.
"The assistance will be used to improve the quality of human resources and infrastructure of government-owned schools and religious schools [Islamic boarding schools]," the Jakarta Post quotes the minister as saying.
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, with more than 180 million.
According to the paper, allocation of the U.S. funds will be decided by Kalla, the coordinating minister for People's Welfare, in cooperation with the religious affairs minister and the education minister.
Boyce said the U.S. assistance is purely aimed at improving education, to make the quality and capability of government-owned schools and Islamic boarding schools equal, reports the Jakarta Post.
He stressed the money would not interfere in the curriculum of Indonesian schools.
The U.S. aid was initially pledged Oct. 22 by President George W. Bush in a joint press conference with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri at the Bali International Airport.
"The success of Indonesia as a pluralistic and democratic state is essential to the peace and prosperity of this region," said Bush. "Terrorists who claim Islam as their inspiration defile one of the world's great faiths. Murder has no place in any religious tradition, must find no home in Indonesia.
"The United States strongly supports a healthy democracy in Indonesia, for the sake of your own people and for the sake of peace," Bush continued. "We'll also support Indonesia's efforts to build an education system that teaches values and discourages extremism."
Muslim schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other Muslim countries, and even France are often cited as hotbeds of Islamic extremism.
According to the International Crisis Group, a British think tank, a network of Muslim boarding schools in Indonesia called Pesantren teaches the message of jihad and has become an easy recruiting ground for the al-Qaida-linked terror group Jemaah Islamiah. The group was formed in the 1980s by two Indonesian clerics with the goal of creating a pan-Islamic state.
Students at these Muslim schools are taught they have an obligation to try to make the dream of an Islamic state come true, according to Salahudin Wahid, a vice-chairman of Indonesia's largest moderate Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama.
"Some of them then come to think the ends justify the means, even violence. But they forget that Islam is a peaceful religion. It is very clearly stated in the Quran that we cannot kill people, not even ourselves," Wahid told the BBC.
Indonesia isn't immune to the fallout of the jihadism taught at these boarding schools, but has itself suffered terrorist attacks. A double bombing at a busy nightclub frequented by American tourists on the island of Bali killed 202 people in October 2002. In August, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed van into the front entrance of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, killing 14 people and injuring nearly 150 others. And last month, a dozen or more Christians in Poso, Indonesia, were murdered and hundreds forced to flee their homes following attacks by Muslim extremists.
The Bali and Marriott Hotel attacks have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiah. Three brothers who taught at and attended an Islamic school in Tenggulun, a small village near the coast of East Javabeen, were convicted as the key players involved in the Bali bombings. Investigators believe one of the brothers, called Mukhlas, is a senior member of Jemaah Islamiah.
