Leadership Quote by Abu Bakar Bashir

“Westernised,” “co-opted,” “look good” - the line is built like an indictment and a sorting mechanism. Bashir isn’t merely criticizing political strategy; he’s policing belonging. The real target is not “the West” as a geopolitical force but Muslim leaders portrayed as spiritually compromised, cosmetically pious, and dependent on external validation. By framing weakness as a product of image-management, he recasts diplomacy, pluralism, or reform as cowardice dressed up as modernity.

The rhetoric works because it flips a common postcolonial anxiety into a purity test: if a leader engages Western institutions, media, or norms, that engagement becomes evidence of capture. “Co-opted” does heavy lifting here - it implies corruption without needing proof, a kind of moral preemptive strike. “Western media” functions as both courtroom and executioner: an omnipresent judge whose approval is treated as the ultimate betrayal. The subtext is that legitimacy should flow from an internal religious constituency, not global audiences; any leader who seems to care about how they’re perceived abroad is, by definition, untrustworthy at home.

Context matters. Bashir, known for hardline Islamist activism in Indonesia and linked in public discourse to militant networks, speaks from an oppositional posture where state-aligned clerics and politicians are competitors for authority. This framing turns political disagreement into religious treason, sharpening polarization and justifying rejection of “moderate” leadership as not merely wrong, but counterfeit. It’s an argument designed to delegitimize rivals and harden an us-versus-them worldview by making compromise itself the crime.