Abu Bakar Bashir, the well known spiritual leader of militant Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiya, has now joined forces with Indonesia's largest environmental organisation, WALHI, to protest against US-based mining corporation Newmont.
from http://richardness.org/blog/walhisstrangebedfellows.php
I've previously written about the Buyat Bay saga - where Richard Ness and Newmont were accused of having polluted a fishing village and its fringing coral reef with mine tailings.
You may remember that the story made the front page of The New York Times and that five miners, including Australian Phil Turner, were arrested and thrown into a Jakarta jail in September 2004. Richard’s son Eric runs a blog on the saga entitled ‘Watching My Dad’s Trial’.
When the claims of pollution where investigated by The World Health Organisation and CSIRO they were found to be bogus - a hoax. You can read a summary of the saga in my latest piece for the IPA Review entitled Politics and the Environment in Indonesia. There are copies of both reports’ at Eric’s website.
Richard Ness and Newmont were cleared of all charges in April this year, but the finding has been appealed.
In her journalism master's thesis entitled 'Tall Tailings: Truth and Friction in the Buyat Mining Scandal' Canadian Kendyl Salcito suggested some of the key protagonists in the saga are members of the Islamic organisation known as Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Muhammad Al Khaththah, the leader of the Indonesian chapter of Hizb-ut Tahrir, appears in the above photograph with Abu Bakar Bashir.
It is perhaps not surprising that militant environmental and Islamic organisations are joining forces, they both believe that issues of poverty and corruption are a consequence of capitalism and the exploitation of people and natural resources by large multinational corporations. As a consequence many Islamic and environmental activists want to close down mining in Indonesia – at least the most efficient, high tec, modern systems of mining. Interestingly they are supported by activists from countries like Australia and Canada – countries that continue to enjoy a high standard of living as a consequence, at least in part, of capitalism and mining.
These environmental groups should be ashamed of them selfs for even associating them selfs with these Islamic Extremists. These are the same people-(animals) who kill hundreds of Australians at Bali, These environmental groups say they are all about saving the world but then they go and join forces with a Islamic extremist group that is all about doing the opposite. Wake up to your selfs do you really think that these extremists main priority is saving the planet, No its more like killing innocent men,woman and children so called infidel's.
These environmental groups naive, they are being used by the Islamic extremist groups for recruitment drives thats the only reason they associate with them and to get some positive publicity.
What was happening in Lebanon this time last year? That's right, the Jews are playing victim again Schiller. Where's that mirror?
Before we get howls of 'neocon ning nong' and worse, I will state again that I am a long standing (five decades) greeny, in the landscape sense. Also, I was brought up by my father to respect Islam, indeed all major religions. He worked in Egypt in the 1930s, spoke Arabic, and had many good Muslim friends.
Jen,
Perhaps there was a need for pruning above, but I think the issue of extreme Islam joining forces with 'environmentalism' is real, despite seeming remote to some.
All extremists are psychologically similar, and birds of a feather flock together. I have mentioned before the 'beefsteaks' of Nazi Germany, brown outside, and red inside. Former red shirted communists became enthusiastic brown shirted stormtroopers. The idea of green environmentalists joining forces with green flagged Muslim extremists is not so daft. We may note the support of some green politicians for abandonment of Iraq, and curtailing of police powers in Australia with respect to suspected terrorists.
It may be argued that there are deep religious differences. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is well known for its monotheistic belief. Religious 'environmentalism' is essentially a return to polytheistic nature worship of trees, rivers, rocks etc.
Yet, despite bitter argument in the past, physicists now mostly agree that wave and quantum theory are both correct. They are just different ways of looking at the same thing, one seeing many phenomena, and the other only one. So Muslim theorists may have no problem with viewing religious noumena in the same way. Allah is one, but Allah contains many. Venn diagrams help in the thinking.
So we may well see attempts by Muslim extremists to recruit extreme environmentalists, and provide funding for their more disruptive activities.
I don't know if any Muslims read this blog, but if they do, I would be interested in their comments.
P.S. The Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) was indeed, very fond of cats. Middle Eastern people have long been aware of the important ecological role of cats in keeping mice down near granaries.