Australian News reports this morning that the massive tsunami-relief staged by the "stingy" Western nations has had a profound effect on victims. Many in the heavily-Muslim Indonesian areas most affected by the killer waves now see the US, Australia, and other Western nations in a much more positive light. This has caused dismay in predictable circles:

THE spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah says he is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Aceh's tsunami survivors because of the humanitarian assistance from Australian and US military forces.

A spokesman for Abu Bakar Bashir said the Indonesian cleric, who is on trial for terrorism, regarded the relief operations by Australian and US military personnel as a dangerous development, overshadowing the role of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI).

"We are suspicious of the presence of foreign soldiers and their show of force and the minimum publicity given to assistance from Arab states," said Fauzan Al Anshari, a spokesman for Bashir's militant Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia group.

"It's dangerous, this idea by Acehnese that US and Australian forces are their guardian angels - more popular than the TNI."

At the beginning of the tsunami relief efforts, I warned that while the aid should primarily be seen as a humanitarian effort, the implications on the war on terror should not be minimized. Mostly, though, my concern centered on the opening that the disaster gave to Islamofascist organizations to establish themselves in Aceh and surrounding areas if they were allowed to beat us to delivering water, food, and medicine to the region. I didn't believe that any American effort would result in much significant positive impact on the Muslim mindset of Indonesians.

I'm happy to see that I underestimated the impact of the aid. While I still don't think that the gratitude will be permanent, especially at this level, it helps in the short run. It also serves to discredit much of the propaganda of the Islamofascists in the region, a development that Bashir laments in his statement. That also indicates how little of the Islamofascist energy really goes to helping Muslims, as groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Hamas (and countries like Saudi Arabia) have had slow to non-existent responses to the humanitarian need of their own within in the ummah.

The Indonesians may now understand that these groups offer nothing but human sacrifice and blood-drinking murder to appease their conception of Allah, unrecognizable by any others. And the Islamofascists might now have to confront their own emptiness before ever gaining back any credibility outside of the serial-killer lunatic fringe among them. (via Michelle Malkin)

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