Delegitimizing global jihadi ideology in Southeast Asia.

• Author: Ramakrishna, Kumar

Introduction

On 9 September 2004, two days away from the third anniversary of the September 11 al-Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington, DC, a terrorist bomb went off just outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Nine people were killed and more than 180 injured. Most of these were ordinary Indonesians (Pereira 2004). Immediately after the attack, a statement, allegedly emanating from the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network, was issued, claiming responsibility and justifying why the strike had occurred. The statement clearly showed that the JI was motivated by what we may call a "global jihadi" ideology, characterized by a globally oriented, violently anti-Western animus:

We (in the Jama'ah al-Islamiah) have sent many messages to the Christian government in Australia regarding its participation in the war against our brothers in Iraq. However it didn't respond positively to our request; therefore we have decided to punish it as we considered it the fiercest enemy of Allah and the Islamic religion. Thanks to Allah who supported us in punishing [the Australians] in Jakarta when a brother successfully carried out a martyrdom operation using an explosive-laden car in the Australian Embassy. Many were killed and injured besides the great damage to the embassy. This is only one response in a series of many coming responses, God willing. Therefore we advise all the Australians to leave Indonesia otherwise we will make it a grave for them. We also advise the Australian government to withdraw its troops from Iraq otherwise we are going to carry many painful attacks against them. Cars bombs will not stop and [our] list contains many who are ready to die as martyrs. The hands that attacked them in Bali are the same hands that carried out the attack in Jakarta. Our attacks and our jihad will not stop until we liberate all the lands of the Muslims. (1) This essay proceeds from the premise that defeating radical jihadi terrorism in Southeast Asia requires action on two tracks. The first, the counter-terrorist track that seeks to render terrorist leaders, militants, and their funding and logistics networks "inoperative", is of course essential to deal with the real-time threat (Raman 2003). However, in order to effectively neutralize the global jihadi threat in Southeast Asia over the medium-to-longer term, it would be necessary to move beyond short-term counter-terrorist measures and engage in longer-term counter-terrorism elements. In contrast to counter-terrorist elements that have a more identifiable end-result, namely, the elimination of real-time terrorist threats and their infrastructural support, the effectiveness of a counter-terrorism thrust is harder to evaluate as the end-result: a diminution of popular support for nihilistic global jihadi ideology--and a commensurate rise in support for relatively more progressive forms of Islamism--is not readily measurable. Nevertheless, this essay fully embraces the old Clausewitzian dictum that what is not easily quantifiable does not make it less important. It posits that a theatre strategy for defeating global jihadi ideology in Southeast Asia must combine both counter-terrorist and the arguably more crucial counter-terrorism elements (Ramakrishna and Tan 2003, pp. 305-37). In particular, enduring success in the war on terror in the region will not be achieved until and unless the ideological basis of the likes of the JI is effectively undercut. In other words, only when the global jihadi capacity to regenerate by attracting recruits and sympathizers to its cause is severely weakened, and more crucially, its cause is regarded by Southeast Asian Muslim communities as discredited, can one begin to seriously talk about success. The pathway to the counter-terrorism goal of rendering global jihadi ideology irrelevant is in fact indirect in the sense that military and "hard" law enforcement measures cannot be the main tools of the counter-terrorism approach. Rather, as we shall see, the truly effective instruments in delegitimizing global jihadi ideology in Southeast Asia have to be "soft": ideological, macropolitical, and micropolitical.

Historical and Local Pathways to Global Jihadi Ideology in Southeast Asia

It seems fair to assert that at the time of writing, elements associated with the JI constitute the main repository of global jihadi ideology in Southeast Asia--and hence the key transnational terrorist threat in the region. Both the JI community, if you like, and the animating worldview of its constituents, however, are not mere alien imports from outside the region. The transnational terrorist threat in Southeast Asia is the product of both extra-regional and thoroughly local forces. (2) Beginning around the fourteenth century Islam came to Southeast Asia by way of West and Central Asian traders who took pains to ensure that religious considerations were not permitted to get in the way of commercial exchange. Over time, Islam, in especially the rural hinterlands of Southeast Asia, accommodated existing traditions deriving from other faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism. In this way unique Southeast Asian varieties of Islam emerged, which Azyumardi Azra, a leading Indonesian Islamic scholar, considers to be "basically, tolerant, peaceful, and smiling" (Azra 2001). This is not to imply, however, that Southeast Asian Islam has been without its harder-line fundamentalist strains. From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, much intellectual cross-fertilization took place between Haramayn-based clerics and Malay-Indonesian students and ulama, and one result of this interaction was the emergence, in the late eighteenth century, of the so-called Padri movement in West Sumatra in Indonesia. The Padris were a reform movement that emphasized a return to the "pure and pristine Islam as practised by the Prophet Muhammad and his companions (the salaf)". Significantly, the Padris were quite willing to resort to forceful methods, including jihad, to compel fellow Muslims to return to the so-called fundamentals of Islam. This was a significant development in Southeast Asian Islam at the time. In fact it has been suggested that the Padri movement bore striking similarities to the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia (Azra 2003, pp. 46-47).

Perhaps the most important reformist current emanated from Cairo: "modernist Islam" or "Islamic modernism", which began appearing in Indonesia in the early twentieth century. The modernists thought in pan-Islamic terms, and ultimately sought to revitalize Islamic civilization in the face of global Western Christian ascendancy. Modernists like the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh "admired Europe" for its "strength", "technology", and "ideals of freedom, justice and equality", and sought to emulate these achievements by developing an authentically Islamic basis for "educational, legal, political and social reform" that would lead to a restoration of the Islamic world's "past power and glory" (Esposito 2002, pp. 78-79). To this end, within Southeast Asia, the modernists tried to "purify" Islam of the traditional beliefs, customs, and Sufi-inspired practices that had been absorbed over the previous centuries (Desker 2004). Like their ideological counterparts in the Middle East, moreover, the Southeast Asian modernists sought an accommodation between Islamic revival and modern science and technology (Symonds 2003). Modernist Islam spawned Indonesian Muslim mass organizations such as Muhammadiyah in 1912 and Al-Irsyad a year later (Azra 2003, p. 43). Muhammadiyah, for instance, "advocated the purification of Islam through the literal adoption of the lifestyle and teachings of the Prophet and the analytical application of the Koran and the Sunnah to contemporary problems" (Desker 2004). However, over the decades Muhammadiyah has been "domesticated" and today accommodates "local concerns, including the adoption of Sufi practices" (Desker 2004). This is not to say, however, that rigid, literalist elements do not persist within Muhammadiyah ranks. This is why some observers have commented on the "schizophrenic" nature of Indonesia's second-largest Muslim mass organization (Abuza 2004, p. 48). Other bodies, moreover, are much more explicit about their harder-edged interpretations of Islamic modernism: the Islamic Union (Persis) emerged in East Java in 1923 and has focused most of its energy and resources into propagating "correct" doctrine and practice. Persis has been described as by far the most "puritan" of Indonesian reform movements (Azra 2003, p. 43; van Bruinessen 2004).

After World War II, Masjumi (Council of Indonesian Muslim Associations) emerged as the main Islamic modernist political party. Its key leaders such as Mohammad Natsir and A. Hassan were linked with Persis. In fact, Persis formed the "backbone" of Masjumi throughout its existence (Laksamana.Net 2004). Throughout the 1950s, Masjumi leaders locked horns politically with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and President Soekarno, a secular nationalist who opposed attempts to make Islamic or shariah law the basis of the Indonesian constitution. Soekarno banned Masjumi at the end of the 1950s, following the involvement of some of its leaders in a short-lived US-backed rebel government in Sumatra (Symonds 2003). While Masjumi was dissolved and its leaders incarcerated for alleged political misdeeds in the early 1960s (ibid.), the Masjumi/Persis ethos did not disappear. It persisted in the form of the Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII) and in the parallel Darul Islam (DI) movement. The DDII was set up in February 1967 by a Masjumi/Persis clique of activists led by Mohammad Natsir. Rather than seeking political power outright like Masjumi, DDII switched strategy: Natsir apparently declared in this regard: "Before we used politics as a way to preach, now we use preaching as a way to engage in politics" (International Crisis Group 2004). To this end, DDII set up a network...