Jihadists Assemble: The Rise of Militant Islamism in Southeast Asia

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States and the Bali bombings in Indonesia the following year, Southeast Asia came under scrutiny for its role in the rise of militant Islamism. Generally, scholarship on militant Islamism in Southeast Asia branched into two approaches: terrorism experts tended to see the problem through the prism of al- Qaeda, with Southeast Asian jihadists following orders from their leaders outside the region; Indonesia specialists, meanwhile, countered this al-Qaeda-centric approach by emphasising the local Indonesian factors driving Southeast Asian jihadism. In this thesis, by contrast, I focus on the regional scale. I find that Southeast Asia, for a time, emerged as one of the most important places in the world for the mobilization of global jihadist attacks against the West due to a historical and geographical process unique to the region. Drawing on the emerging field of assemblage theory, I argue that over time a regional jihadist assemblage formed in Southeast Asia—a cross-border constellation of networks, groups, and material elements—and that it was the mobilization opportunities presented by this assemblage that made Southeast Asia so attractive to global jihadists. Analysing a wealth of original interview and documentary material, I trace the gradual development of this regional assemblage over time and space, from its origins in the cycles of conflict between jihadists and the state in Indonesia in the late 1940s to the crucial role played by Southeast Asians in the attacks of 9/11

‘NOT A RELIGIOUS STATE’ A study of three Indonesian religious leaders on the relation of state and religion

This article explores the concept of a ‘secular state’ offered by three Indonesian religious leaders: a Catholic priest, Nicolaus Driyarkara (1913–1967), and two Muslim intellectuals who were also state officials, Mukti Ali (1923–2004) and Munawir Sjadzali (1925–2004). All three, who represented the immediate generation after the revolution for Indonesian independence from the Dutch (1945), defended the legitimacy of a secular state for Indonesia based on the state ideology Pancasila (Five Principles of Indonesia). In doing so, they argued that a religious state, for example an Islamic state, is incompatible with a plural nation that has diverse cultures, faiths, and ethnicities. The three also argued that the state should remain neutral about its citizens’ faith and should not be dominated by a single religion, i.e. Islam. Instead, the state is obliged to protect all religions embraced by Indonesians. This argument becomes a vital foundation in the establishment of Indonesia’s trajectory of unique ‘secularisation’. Whilst these three intellectuals opposed the idea of establishing a religious or Islamic state in Indonesia, it was not because they envisioned the decline of the role of religion in politics and the public domain but rather that they regarded religiosity in Indonesia as vital in nation building within a multi-religious society. In particular, the two Muslim leaders used religious legitimacy to sustain the New Order’s political stability, and harnessed state authority to modernise the Indonesian Islamic community

Imagining an Islamic State in Indonesia: From Darul Islam to Jemaah Islamiyah

Page range: 1-36This article contends that Darul Islam is not so much a movement as a backward-looking community whose members regard themselves as citizens of the Islamic State of Indonesia, a nation continuous with the state proclaimed by Kartosoewirjo, the leader of an Islamic rebellion, in 1949. The concept of the Islamic State survived underground during Suharto’s New Order regime, during which Darul Islam underwent a revival under the auspices of Suharto’s intelligence czar, Ali Moertopo. This revival indirectly led to the emergence of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah