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| Southeast Asia |
| Forgiveness, from Muslim to Muslim |
| 2004-08-06 |
| Febby Firmansyah's face is scarred, his arms disfigured from the bomb explosion at Jakarta's Marriott Hotel a year ago. But he told two militants on trial for the attack that he forgave them, and then confronted them - Muslim to Muslim - on the error of their ways. "I asked them what they were thinking," Firmansyah said of his emotional meeting with the defendants at police headquarters earlier this year. "There is nothing in the Quran that tells people to kill other believers." Firmansyah is 27, an oil company worker at an office near the hotel. Last Aug. 5, a suicide bomber from the militant group Jemaah Islamiyah drove a vehicle packed with explosives, gasoline and nails up to the lobby doors of the Marriott and blew it up. Firmansyah suffered second-degree burns across more than half his body and spent three months in the hospital, much of it in isolation to protect his raw flesh from infection. Firmansyah said he wanted to meet the men, known by the single names Tohir and Ismail, who are on trial for allegedly planning the bombing. He wanted to let them "know the effect of their actions," he said. "When they saw me, they cried and hugged me and got down on their knees and asked for forgiveness. They said they were sorry and that they will pray for me," Firmansyah said. "They said they did it for jihad ... to cleanse ... [Indonesia] of Americans. I said jihad is not like that." Firmansyah's willingness to take on the attackers is unusual in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Authorities have arrested and convicted scores of militants since 2001, but religious leaders and many senior politicians are unwilling to outlaw Jemaah Islamiyah or acknowledge that Muslims are often the victims of militant terrorism. Jemaah Islamiyah also was accused in the 2002 attacks on the island of Bali that killed 202 people, mainly tourists. The bombers of the Marriott attacked at lunchtime to cause maximum casualties, succeeding in killing 12 people and wounding more than 100. All but one of those who died and the vast majority of the wounded were Indonesians, most of them Muslims. The high Muslim death toll caused a split within Jemaah Islamiyah - a loose collection of radicals across Southeast Asia - over the morality of attacking soft targets such as shopping malls and hotels, some analysts have said. A year after the hotel attack, security is tighter throughout Jakarta, and no further such attacks have occurred. But Firmansyah, like the bombing's other victims, struggles with the consequences. He goes to a physical therapist three or four times a week hoping to regain the use of his right hand. He will need skin grafts on his arms in coming months. He's back at work in an office overlooking the hotel, which reopened a month after the blast. "I felt being in the Marriott was my destiny," he said. "And now God has given me a second chance to live." |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 "There is nothing in the Quran that tells people to kill other believers." And that's about the only limit it places on killing, isn't it? You sick, twisted f*cks. *spit* |
| Posted by: BH 2004-08-06 10:09:40 AM |
| #1 When they saw me, they cried and hugged me and got down on their knees and asked for forgiveness. Yes, yes. Of course. They've "repented". Think they'd blow you up again if they had the chance? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-08-06 9:30:21 AM |