The Jakarta Globe, June 02, 2012
A high-level member of the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) said on Saturday that the organization was having a difficult time controlling some of its “wayward members,” some of whom were thugs that went against the principles of group.
Habib Salim, head of the FPI’s Jakarta chapter, told BeritaSatu that the FPI denounced practices like demanding “haram levies” from nightclubs, even though some of its members were known to do such things. The FPI actually considered those practices as haram, or forbidden under Islamic law.
“We have many such people in the FPI,” Salim said. “We’ve had problems dealing with them because we have so many members.”
If any of these people claimed they were acting on behalf of FPI chairman Habib Rizieq, he said, it wasn’t true.
“Across Jakarta there are wayward members who abuse the big name of FPI,” he said.
Salim attributed the problem to the fact that many members were indeed former criminals who had supposedly repented their past behavior.
“We’ve guided them to the right way,” he said. “But apparently, in the middle of the way they’ve gone astray again. We must work hard to take them back to the right way.”
The FPI had kicked out some of its members who had tried to get levies from nightclubs, he said.
“Since I was appointed the head of the Jakarta chapter, I have fired dozens of FPI clerics,” Salim said.
BeritaSatu/JG
( a case of the wolf crying wolf, or window dressing? siK.)
za 2 jun 2012 - 20:46
