INDONESIA A NEWS

The problems began shortly after Tajul Muluk, a Shiite cleric, opened a boarding school in 2004. The school, in a predominantly Sunni Muslim part of East Java, raised local tensions, and in 2006 it was attacked by thousands of villagers. When a mob set fire to the school and several homes last December, many Shiites saw it as just the latest episode in a simmering sectarian conflict — one that they say has been ignored by the police and exploited by Islamists purporting to preserve the purity of the Muslim faith.   Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has long been considered a place where different religious and ethnic groups can live in harmony and where Islam can work with democracy.   But that perception has been repeatedly brought into question lately. In East Java, Sunni leaders are pushing the provincial government to adopt a regulation limiting the spread of Shiite Islam. It would prevent the country’s two major Shiite organizations from organizin

I'm almost packed and about to get on the plane for the Middle East, so I've been thinking a lot about Hizbullah. No, not the Shiite militia and political party that runs much of Lebanon; the Hizbullah here, in Indonesia.   It was a Muslim militia created by the Japanese to fight the Allies in World War II. Now, you're probably familiar with the thread winding from al-Qaeda's attacks on America in 2001, back to the CIA's (Central Intelligence Agency) funding for the Mujahedeen who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. But that's just part of a broader story about outsiders oppressing, fostering and flirting with local Muslim forces. And it stretches from the battle scarred streets of Beirut and Baghdad, across the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, all the way to Bali. The most important name in this Indonesian chapter of the story is Kartosuwiryo. He was an Islamist leader who first got involved in politics in the 1920s and, to this day, he's an

A SENIOR Indonesian official has confirmed Indonesia would object strongly to the Coalition's policy of forcing asylum boats back into Indonesian waters.  ''It's exactly like you going to someone else's house and throwing dirt there,'' the official said, on the condition of anonymity.  ''Why would we take something that is not our property?'' There are also practical problems with the turn-around policy, the official said. Unless the boats were to be abandoned on the high seas, or handed over to the Indonesian navy mid-ocean, they would need to be towed to land.  But there is no safe port on Java's southern shore because the seas are too high and dangerous. This would mean the Australian navy towing an asylum boat to Tanjung Priok, Jakarta's commercial and military port, which is many hours' sail away on Java's northern shore.  The source said the Australian navy would never be given permission for this kind of