Rumors emerged last night that Rizieq Shihab, the infamous leader of the hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) who is currently living in Saudi Arabia while the subject of a number of criminal investigations her in Indonesia, had been arrested in the Middle Eastern kingdom for overstaying his visa.
Inquiries by Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the Saudi government revealed that Rizieq had not actually been arrested but had indeed been investigated by local authorities over a very different matter: reports that he was displaying the flag of the terrorist organization ISIS at his home.
“From the search results, it was confirmed that the [Rizieq] was questioned by Saudi security forces in Mecca on the basis of reports of Saudi citizens who saw a flag allegedly similar to the ISIS flag installed in front of [Rizieq’s] house in Mecca,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said in a written statement released today and picked up by Detik.
Arrmanatha said the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah had provided consular assistance to Rizieq concerning the matter, as would be done for any Indonesian citizen facing legal issues abroad.
Rizieq’s questioning by Saudi authorities is somewhat ironic given that he had recently called upon his fellow FPI members and supporters to display flags similar to the one he was questioned over featuring the tauhid, the core of the Islamic faith, expressing belief in Allah as the one and only God.
The reason he did so was because of the recent controversy over the burning of a flag representing the banned Islamist organization Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI). Many hardline groups, including FPI, protested the burning as blasphemous because the flag contained the sacred tauhid and those groups held a large protest rally in Jakarta last Friday to “defend” the tauhid (even though authorities had already arrested the flag burners).
According to Kapitra Ampera, who claims to be Rizieq’s lawyer (despite now being a member of Jokowi’s PDI-P party — yeah it’s complicated), the flag hung outside Rizieq’s residence in Mecca contained the tauhid but was not representative of HTI or any other organization. He also insists that the flag was not hung by Rizieq but some other mysterious actor.
At any rate, Rizieq was apparently reported to Saudi authorities because the flag appeared very similar to the banner of ISIS, support for which is strictly banned in Saudi Arabia (as it is in Indonesia). According to the Foreign Ministry inquiry, Saudi authorities took him to a police station for questioning but he was released and returned to his home a few hours later.
In late September, the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh did report that Rizieq had been questioned by Saudi authorities for overstaying his visa and while he obviously hasn’t been deported from the country he is also reportedly still not allowed to leave voluntarily either and had been barred from taking a planned trip to Malaysia.
Rizieq is still considered one of the more influential political and religious figures in Indonesia after he helped spearhead the hardliner-led 212 protest movement that led to former Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama losing the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial race and being imprisoned for blasphemy, but the FPI leader has been living in Saudi Arabia since May 2017, shortly after he was implicated in an embarrassing high-profile pornography case. Police dropped his suspect status in that case but he is still facing a number of other legal problems in his home country.
