University of terror: The Jihadi school on Australia’s doorstep funded by Donald Trump’s friend Saudi Arabia
NOT far from Australian shores, Saudi Arabia is funding an Islamic university that has produced a long list of radicals.
DONALD Trump’s best friend in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia — is promoting radical Islam via a university right on Australia’s doorstep.
The Saudi Arabia-funded Institute for the Study of Islam and Arabic in Jakarta has produced some of Indonesia’s terrorist leaders.
Established by Saudi royal family decree, it offers free university degrees to poor students in the world’s largest Muslim country.
Known as LIPIA, an acronym of its local name Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Arab Indonesia, the university segregates female from male students.
It enforces strict dress codes for both men and women and forbids music, television, wearing jeans and “loud laughter”.
The hard line Islam taught at LIPIA approves of death for homosexual people and blasphemers, stoning for adulterers and the amputation of hands for thieves, reports Voice of America.
Located in a glittering building in a university district in south Jakarta, the university teaches Islam and sharia law in classes conducted in Arabic by predominately Saudi lecturers.
It was established in 1980 by Saudi Arabian royal decree under the late King Khalid.
He was the half brother of the current Saudi king King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who last month hosted President Donald Trump’s visit.
The Boston Globe reports that LIPIA is the centre of Saudi Arabia’s campaign to convert Indonesians to Wahhabi Islam and the Salafi movement.
Wahhabiism is the ultraconservative or fundamentalist form of Islam and a branch of Salfai, Sunni Islam’s extremist movement.
It is the anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic brand of religious militancy followed by Saudi Arabian 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden.
All LIPIA students learn the teachings of Ibn Tamiyah, the 14th century Muslim reformer.
His iconoclastic medieval texts are said to be the dominant influence on al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups.
As the families of those who died in the 2002 Bali bombings know, homegrown terrorism is nothing new in Indonesia.
The Indonesian branch of al-Qaeda called Jemaah Islamiah perpetrated the bombings which killed 202 people including 88 Australians.
Indonesia’s Muslim population — 202 million of its 258 million total, and including a 2.5 million Shia minority — were once regarded as largely tolerant and open-minded.
However fundamentalist Islam is on the rise, reports the Boston Globe, fuelled and funded by mega rich Saudi Arabia.
As well as the LIPIA university, Saudi Arabia has financially supported dozens of boarding schools and built 150 mosques.
The schools have included jihadi breeding grounds like Al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school in Solo, Central Java.
Jamaah Islamiyah’s spiritual godfather Abu Bakar Bashir opened the school in 1972.
Thirty years later he conspired with the Bali bombers Imam Samudra and brothers Muklas, Ali Imron and Amrozi to detonate car bombs in the popular western tourist enclave at Kuta Beach, Bali.
Ali Imron and Mukhlas were teachers at Al Islam boarding school in eastern Java, which was notorious as a production line for Jemaah Islamiah terrorists.
The same school went on to teach Wildan Mukhollad, who went to the Middle East to fight for ISIS and became a suicide bomber, dying in Iraq in 2014.
LIPIA university has produced its own alumni of violent, racial Islamic extremists.
Since the university opened, LIPIA graduates have created Sunni Islam groups in Indonesia connected to Saudi Arabian Wahhabi Islam.
The Salafi Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam or FPI) sends members dressed in white robes and turbans with wooden clubs out to attack nightclubs and restaurants that serve alcohol.
Modelled on the Saudi religious police, FPI’s founder is LIPIA alumnus Habib Rizieq.
Like all of LIPIA’s best students, Rizieq was granted a Saudi Government scholarship to continue his studies in Riyadh.
Fellow LIPIA graduate Jafar Umar Thalib founded Indonesian Salafi Warriors of Jihad.
Known as Laskar Jihad or LJ, they fought Christians on the Moluccan Islands while dressed in Saudi-style uniforms.
Several pro-Salafi and Wahhabi activists in Indonesia are also LIPIA alumni.
In March this year, King Salman took an entourage of 1500 on a tour of Indonesia.
The 25th son of Saudi founder Ibn Saud, King Salman was the first Saudi king in almost 50 years to visit the country.
Naked statues at the Bogor presidential palace in Java were covered for the king’s trip.
Up to 150 chefs were hired to cook for the king’s party and a VIP toilet was specially built at a major mosque he planned to visit.
President Joko Widodo greeted the 81-year-old king among cheering crowds.
Salman agreed to allow more than 200,000 Indonesians make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in western Saudi Arabia, more than any other country.
The hajj quota is hard won and precarious, and the Indonesian Government is reportedly reluctant to jeopardise the prize by interfering with the Saudis’ local influence.
The Boston Globe describes Saudi Arabia’s in roads into Indonesia as part of a “long campaign to pull the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims back to the 7th century”.
“Successive American presidents have assured us that Saudi Arabia is our friend and wishes us well,” the Globe wrote.
“By refusing to protest or even officially acknowledge this far-reaching project, we finance our own assassins — and global terror.”
Just three weeks ago, Mr Trump and First Lady Melania were special guests of King Salman in Riyadh.
A five-storey image of Mr Trump’s face was projected on the exterior of the Ritz Carlton hotel where he stayed.
Billboards of Mr Trump and King Salman with the words “together we will prevail” lined the highway from the airport.
At the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, the king presented his country’s highest civilian honour, the Collar of Abdulaziz Al Saud.
Mr Trump bent down to accept the gold medallion, igniting debate about whether he had bowed to the king.
Mr Trump addressed the leaders of 50 Muslim-majority countries with a speech about the “battle between good and evil”.
He urged Arab leaders to “drive out the terrorists from your places of worship”.
During his Riyadh visit, Mr Trump agreed to a $100 billion arms deal.
Oddly, this arrangement has given hope to the families of the victims who died in the 9/11 terror attacks.
Earlier this year, New York lawyer Jim Kreindler, who represents 9/11 families filed a highly controversial lawsuit against Saudi Arabia on behalf of 850 people killed in 9/11 and 1500 who were injured.
“9/11 could not have happened without Saudi Arabia’s support for al-Qaeda,” Mr Kreindler said.
Following the president’s trip, Mr Kreindler said he was more confident about the legal action.
“If they are going to make billions of dollars out of infrastructure deals and the Royal family is preserved, maybe some wise person is going to say ‘we have to get out of this 9/11 mess’. Because it’s not going away.”
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