Jakarta (AsiaNews) - For the first time in nine years in power, the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has openly criticized the Islamic Defender Front (FPI), an extremist group that seeks to achieve the introduction of sharia (Islamic law) throughout the country. The Muslim faith, he said at a dinner with the orphans of the capital, "does not allow its followers to carry out attacks and violence against other people or against their property.
Indonesian civil society has always accused the president of being "unable" to stop the violence against religious minorities perpetrated by the FPI. Yudhoyono's words followed the latest case which involved the group: "Islam is not a religion based on violence, it does not allow its members to be violent and does not allow its followers to take the law into their own hands. "
In recent days, a group of FPI militants was forced to seek refuge in a mosque in Patehan after the people - angry for their constant provocations and for a car accident caused by fundamentalists in which a woman died - mobilized to drive them out by force. Only the intervention of the police prevented a lynching.
The president's declaration has not convinced social media. Internet users have called Yudhoyono's words "instrumental to his political career, an attempt to manipulate events to his own benefit and advantage" and pointed to the politician that a similar intervention "should have been pronounced years ago."