JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesian's president on Thursday warned that the world's most populous Muslim-majority country was confronting a rising tide of Islamic radicalism, after a spate of hate crimes and bombings.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the sprawling archipelago's cherished reputation for tolerance and pluralism was under attack by extremists bent on turning the nation of 240 million people into a strict Islamic state.
The country -- praised by US President Barack Obama in November as a "model" of tolerance for the world -- has been shaken by bloody assaults on religious minorities and persistent attacks by homegrown terror groups.
"I have witnessed that there has been a radicalisation movement in this nation with religious and ideological motives," Yudhoyono said in a speech at a national development conference in Jakarta.
"If we continue to let this happen, it will threaten the character of our nation and our people."
Yudhoyono has allied his party with conservative Muslims in the ruling coalition and rarely speaks out against extremist violence, which often goes unpunished.
But on Thursday he said Islamic extremists, who make up a small but very vocal section of Indonesia's 200 million Muslims, were encouraging young Indonesians to "love violence" and reject the law of the diverse country.
"In the long term... if it continues, it will change the character of our communities which are tolerant and love harmony and peace.
"It must not happen, we should not be passive... We have to take responsibility to save this nation and save its people and its future."
Thirty people were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque at a police compound during Friday prayers in Cirebon, West Java, earlier this month.
Police also foiled a plot to blow up a church in Jakarta over Easter, after a detainee told them the whereabouts of five bombs.
A suspicious package was found Thursday near the British consulate and an office building hosting international media organisations in central Jakarta, police said. Bomb experts were called to the scene but it was a false alarm.
Last month a series of parcel bombs were sent to liberal Muslims, a popular rock singer and a counter-terrorism official, but no one was killed.
Indonesia has won praise for rounding up hundreds of Islamist militants since it became a key battlefield in the "war on terror" in 2002 when local radicals detonated bombs on Bali island, killing 202 people, mainly Westerners.
But analysts say religious intolerance has grown under Yudhoyono's rule and blame the authorities for failing to crack down on violent vigilante groups that advocate Taliban-style Islamic laws.
Extremists convicted of serious crimes under anti-terror legislation frequently receive lenient sentences and are allowed to preach jihad or "holy war" to other inmates in prison, turning jails into recruiting grounds.
Analysts say a de-radicalisation programme trumpeted by the government in the wake of the Bali bombings has been a total failure, with recidivism common among convicted terrorists who are released after a few years in jail.
They also say that while prominent terror networks like Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for the Bali attacks, have been contained, new threats are emerging from an array of loosely affiliated or independent militant cells.
Yudhoyono urged civil servants in his audience to take such threats seriously. But he offered no new policy initiatives and made no mention of how he intended to tackle the problem.
"Everybody must take responsibility. We have to take precautionary steps as early as possible," he said, without elaborating.
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