The release last week of documents captured from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad has generated a flurry of interest in the press and blogosphere.  Yet a question has arisen as to whether the release was wise, since the documents are intelligence assets that could give the enemy valuable information regarding what we know about them.  We argue that the release makes sense from a strategic communication perspective, given what al-Qaeda has become.­

The controversy was raised by James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation in an op ed in Friday’s New York Post. Asking “why would the government publish these documents in the first place,” Carafano concluded that it was an act of election-year “preening” by the White House, and said:

The first rule of intelligence is this: Don’t tell the enemy anything if you don’t have to. It would be like FDR releasing the messages captured by ULTRA, the US-British signals-intelligence program that broke the Nazis’ most secret codes.

The analogy to ULTRA is excessive (al-Qaeda leadership already knew we captured their documents whereas the Nazis did not know we had broken their codes), but Carafano’s basic objection is worth taking seriously.  Our position is that whatever intelligence disadvantages accrued from the release are more than offset by strategic communication advantages.

First, everyone agrees that the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terrorism long ago degraded al-Qaeda’s ability to organize large scale attacks.  As outlined in President Obama’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism, American-led efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have destroyed much of al-Qaida’s leadership and “weak­ened the organization substantially.”

For some time now, the concern has been less about al-Qaeda’s operational abilities and more about their force as a social movement. Its brand name has been flexible enough in recent years, much to bin Laden’s discontentment, to accommodate everyone from regional affiliate organizations to organically appearing terrorist cells to anomalous lone wolves.  In many ways, the social movement that al-Qaeda hoped to inspire on 9/11 has transcended the group that created it.

Robert Benford and David Snow have shown that social movements face three key framing tasks. Diagnostic framing means identifying what a movement should consider as the problem it is facing.  Prognostic framing deals with establishing a course of action, and motivational framing establishes reasons members should participate in the recommended actions.

Al-Qaeda has been masterful at diagnostic framing.  The problem, as presented to their audience, is that the West is engaged in a cosmic battle against Islam—a continuation of the Crusades.  Stories of recent wars, al-Nakba (the loss of Palestine to Israel), and treacherous alliances with governments of the Middle East all support this narrative.  Their diagnosis is that a force of champions must step forward to defeat this menace and restore the Ummah to safety and prosperity, and that violent offensive Jihad is the only plausible path to success.  For example, Ayman al-Zawahiri asserted in a 2008 video that “there is no hope of removing the foul regimes in the Muslim countries by anything but force. There is no opportunity for change through peaceful activity.” The motivational frame is to portray al-Qaeda as this champion, an organization that all good Muslims should support, if not join.

Attacking a movement’s framing ideally means undermining its diagnosis, because without it the prognosis and motivation are irrelevant. However, this is impractical in the case of al-Qaeda because public opinion in Muslim continues to support their diagnostic framing.  The alternative, then, is to attack the prognosis and motivation. The same public opinion data show better prospects here, with half to three-quarters of Muslims expressing concern about Islamist extremism.

Release of the Abbotabad documents is good strategic communication precisely because it further undermines the idea that al-Qaeda is a champion of Muslims and that they deserve support. The documents are already challenging, if not entirely rewriting, the bin Laden story. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership can no longer be viewed as master architects running the show from behind a curtain. Rather, the documents reveal impotent leadership in an al-Qaeda that is internally divided, marginalized and exasperated.

The image is equally bad for their regional affiliates in places like Iraq and Yemen.  Far from the dutiful soldiers they portray themselves to be, the documents show just how far off the reservation they have wandered, pursuing parochial agendas against bin Laden’s wishes and the interests of al-Qaeda’s brand.  They are revealed as loose cannons that can accomplish little except killing the Muslims they are supposed to be saving.

Release of the documents is also justified because turnabout is smart play.  Al-Qaida has long supported the philosophy of rhetorical ninjitsu. Any time they can turn our own words against us, they do.  In the foreword to a book he penned about America’s internal bureaucratic dysfunction al-Qaeda senior leader Abu Jihad al-Masri even used the phrase, “From the words of your own mouth I condemn you” to describe this strategy.

Now the tables are turned.  Thousands of al-Qaeda’s followers in the extremist support forums have already read about these documents, which highlight bin Laden’s strategic irrelevance and managerial impotence. Their reactions are of defensiveness and confusion.  It is hard to dismiss the evidence when it is penned by bin Laden’s own hand.

In short, the Abbotabad documents should have been released because they provide a golden opportunity to injure al-Qaeda the social movement.  The anachronistic argument that they should not have been released ignores the reality that today our adversaries thrive more on perceptions of strength and leadership than real world applications of it.

Update May 11, 2012

Tony Lemieux has posted a blog on this topic.

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The Arab Spring showed the world how social media can help organize mass political dissent. In the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, single issues coalesced online into far broader and diverse campaigns that toppled ruling regimes. Recently, outside of the Arab world, discriminatory government policies  in Iran against Afghans have come to light. Decried by critics as overt state-backed racism, it is a scandalous hot-button issue that the rulers of the “Islamic Republic” have little chance of defending.  Already a nascent but growing social media campaign has emerged to condemn it and may soon tap into broader popular grievances against the entire regime.

“We are all Afghans” is the new rally cry among Iranian and Afghan social media users, shocked by recent discriminatory Iranian government policies against the over two million Afghans living in Iran. A Facebook page with over 20,000 members now exists. And yes, there are protests planned. Iran’s recent Oscar-winning filmmaker, Asghar Farhadi, is speaking out too.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has hardly dispelled these growing charges of racism either. On the contrary, his recent speeches have contained overt declarations of Persian supremacy. The regime of the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” whose clerical leadership claims the mantle of the Prophet Muhammad (an Arab) and his family, is baring an increasing resemblance to the resurgent Neo-Fascist parties of Europe. And it is ironic that the hated Shah Reza Pahlavi regime, overthrown by the 1979 Revolution, was once fiercely condemned by Shiite clerics for emphasizing a Persian identity for Iran instead of an Islamic one.

The BBC reports that the deputy governor-general of Iran’s northern Mazandaran Province announced late last month that all Afghans must leave the province  irrespective of their legal status by July 2 (meaning it’s not an illegal immigration issue). The deputy governor has further warned the public that offering employment or any kind of assistance to Afghans is a crime “punishable by the full force of the law.” He also asserted the validity of a law passed in 2006 that made marriage between Iranian women and Afghan men illegal. Meanwhile, last month in Isfahan, Afghans were banned by officials from attending Nowruz (Persian New Year) celebrations in a public park because they “caused insecurity.”

One Iranian blogger, suggesting a more pervasive racism beyond Iranian government institutions, recently posted photos of signs in Iran that ban the use of facilities by Afghans or dictate segregated facilities for Afghans. Still another Iranian blogger compared recent events to the rise of Le Pen’s anti-immigrant Front National  party in France and lamented the racism in Iran by stating: “[We tell Westerners that] we are from the land of Cyrus the Great, but we think Afghans are murderers, Arabs are savages, Turks are naive and Blacks smell.”

Responses to the controversy from officials in Iran’s “Islamic” government have ranged from silence and denial to speeches glorifying the supremacy of the Persian people among the nations of the earth. Take, for instance, a recent speech (broadcast on state television) by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on April 11, 2012, in the province of Hormozgan. In the speech, he states:

Inside Iran, some ask me why I always speak about Iran. They say this is, I do not know, nationalism, ethnic racism, and so forth. Such talk is baseless. Iran is not an ethnos. Iran is a culture, vision, ethics, and ideology. . . . You look for people similar to our people in other countries. Look around the borders and compare with neighbors, and you will see the difference. There is a huge difference. This difference does not mean arrogance and vanity. It is first of all a divine gift, the glorification of the divine gift. It points to a mission [for our people].

Ahmadinejad goes onto boldly claim that: If you take away the share of the Iranian nation from human civilization, nothing will be left. In support of his ethnocentric narrative, Ahmadinejad sprinkles his speech with a range of anecdotal stories. In one instance, he recounts how extensively he has traveled, visiting more places in Iran than anyone else. Thanks to his travels, he claims, he has seen firsthand that “the best people of the world are living in Iran today.” He also lists some recent achievements of Iran, claiming in the vaguest terms that Iran has improved “nanotechnologies and biotechnologies,” making it “among the few top countries in the world.” And finally he recounts a story that seems to be a hadith from the Prophet Muhammad (again, an Arab), although I am personally unfamiliar with it. It relates that the Prophet once told his followers that “Iranians will [one day] guide and lead, and introduce the truth of Islam to the world.” This, Ahmadinejad says, proves that Iranians have a divinely decreed mission to lead the world (and they must act on it).

This rhetoric of racial or ethnic pride and supremacy goes entirely against Islamic ideals about the equality and universal brotherhood of all Muslims as a single ummah. And yes, I do mean ideals. On an everyday level, one can find examples of racism and prejudice in every Muslim country in the world, just as one can find it in any other country, including the United States of America. But what makes this case so peculiar is that most countries don’t claim to be an “Islamic Republic” or a righteous state representing God’s Mahdi on earth. Moral condemnation aside, it is a tremendous blunder for the theocratic regime to indulge in this sort of racist rhetoric and behavior. And I cannot see how the “Great Satan” or the “Zionist entity” can be blamed for this one. At the very least, Iran’s treatment of its Afghans, many of whom arrived as refugees during the Soviet invasion, will only further alienate its Sunni neighbors and produce further international isolation.

More importantly though, recent events in mind, I have to wonder if the “We are All Afghans” movement might coalesce into something much more. After all,  there is no shortage of grievances among the Iranian populace. Iran’s nuclear program has yet to produce anything but international tensions and sanctions. And the tragic martyrdom of Neda Agha Soltan amidst the 2009 election scandal has yet to be forgotten, despite the regime’s best efforts. Sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but who would have thought that a fatal case of police brutality in Alexandria, Egypt, would have led to the “We are all Khaled Saeed” campaign that grew into a popular revolution that overthrew the US-backed Mubarak regime? Perhaps there’s a “Persian Spring” on the horizon after all.

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Put him in power and see how wise he is.

- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying Islamist ideologues and their ideas during my relatively short lifetime. I’ve never read War and Peace, but I have read Milestones and The Neglected Duty. In recent months, the Tunisian Islamist and leader of Ennahda, Rachid Ghannouchi, has occupied a good deal of my attention. And as regular readers of the Comops Journal may know, I recently returned from traveling around Tunisia. The election results have since been tallied there, and Ghannouchi’s party, Ennahda, won the most seats of any party in the 217 seat constituent assembly. The victory has resulted in a lot of talk about what the old Islamist will do now, and how his party will shape the future of the new Tunisia. In my view, Ennahda’s electoral victory is best understood as a reassertion of a long-marginalized Arab-Muslim identity, and should not be treated as a call for a so-called “Islamic state.” Indeed, I see Ennahda’s rise as a temporary one, and it will quickly return to the ranks of the other parties in future elections. For those interested, I previously wrote about the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in post-revolutionary Egypt.

If you have yet to review the results of the October 23rd election, Ennahda took 90 seats (42% of all seats), while the Congress for the Republic took 30 seats, Ettakatol took 21, Aridha Chaabia took 19 (currently disputed), and 17 seats went to the PDP. No other party won more than 5 seats. For all you Cold War enthusiasts, Tunisia’s Communist party took 3 seats. Overall, twenty-six parties total (including independent lists) won at least 1 seat (my thanks to Tunisia Live for great coverage).

Tunisia’s election, the first of the Arab Spring revolutions, went remarkably well (the Aridha Chaabia issue aside), and it will undoubtedly serve as a model for others in the Arab world, especially Egypt and Libya. These were not parliamentary or presidential elections though. They chose members of the assembly that will craft a new constitution and select a new interim president until the next round of elections (in a year or so). Voters chose from an enormous number (over 100) of “lists,” and based on the number of votes achieved for these lists, a certain number of seats were awarded. Due to this system, it was a given that a coalition would have to emerge and no single party could dominate via absolute majority. Nevertheless, Ennahda’s victory exceeded expectations.

During my time in Tunisia, my peers there thought that Ennahda would win no more than 30% of the seats. The numbers suggest that my colleagues may have been out-of-touch with the extent to which Tunisians profess an Arab-Muslim identity. Ennahda led in nearly every district, but only won an outright majority in the districts of Gabés (Ghannouchi’s hometown) and Tataouine, as well as among the expat community in Italy. Ennahda also had a particularly strong showing in Tunisia’s “second city,” Sfax.

Rachid Ghannouchi, now in his 70s, has not chosen to pursue a political office (as of yet). He appears content to serve as the leader and guide of Ennahda, but his political influence will still hold tremendous sway. History has provided numerous examples of terrible Islamist regimes that rise to political power, most obviously the Taliban. Those examples fail to tell the whole story however. Ghannouchi is certainly at the opposite end of the Islamist spectrum from Mullah Omar. He is definitely a social conservative and quick to condemn anything he deems offensive to his vision of Islam, but he has also repeatedly demonstrated a surprising degree of flexibility, pragmatism, and revision in his viewpoints throughout his lifetime. He is far closer to the teachings of Malik Bennabi (d. 1973) than he is to Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328). His party’s willingness to participate in the democratic process and engage secular parties alone has put him at odds with the most hardline Islamists.

Islamism, I often tell students, thrives in abstraction, but it quickly shows its weaknesses and inadequacies when it comes to the dirty details of governance. It is one thing to tell the crowds that Islam is the solution to a country’s economic woes, and quite another thing to find people jobs and lead them out of poverty. Furthermore, pledges of support for “sharia” are often little more than populist fluff, albeit with potentially disastrous results. Even if one accepts the eternal applicability of the legal content scattered throughout Islam’s most sacred texts, the fact remains that those texts leave much to be desired when governing a 21st century nation-state. This fact generally presents a great dilemma for Islamists and it has even motivated some groups to drag their countries back to a more primitive time to try and resolve it.

Ghannouchi (center) greets Erdogan (right) in Tunis during a recent visit

Ghannouchi has repeatedly said that Turkey’s ruling AKP is the model that Ennahda will follow, and I have no reason, at this time, to doubt the sincerity of his words. Indeed, Turkey and Tunisia, despite the ethno-cultural distinctions, share a fair deal in common with regards to their modern histories. Former Tunisian President, Habib Bourguiba, has often been described as an “Arab Atatürk.” The AKP in Turkey has essentially been a reassertion of Turkey’s Muslim identity and heritage in the public sphere after it was forcefully cloistered away by Kemalists for decades. I see Ghannouchi and Ennahda in this same framework. The electoral success of Ennahda reflects the desire to reassert an Arab-Muslim identity in Tunisia after decades of being pushed into the private sphere by the secularist powers of the Neo-Destour/RCD. Ennahda’s rise has little or nothing to do with a desire to see headscarves forced onto women or hands of thieves amputated.

On a more mundane level, Ennahda’s victory also reflects the simple fact that the party has strong anti-RCD credentials, it was well organized, and it was widely known among the people. There were many new parties in the wake of the revolution (over 130 lists at one point) and few people knew anything about their platforms. Furthermore, many of the parties shared a center-left ideology, splitting those votes among multiple parties, while Ennahda essentially monopolized the religious identity vote.

Now that Ennahda has been granted political power, the people will expect them to resolve their problems and concerns, which are numerous. The economy in particular will loom large in the years ahead. It remains to be seen whether Ennahda can offer solutions beyond pious slogans and public displays of religiosity. In fact, I see a steady decrease in support for Ennahda over ensuing elections, barring a miraculous economic revival (pun intended).

Lastly, I wish to convey the idea that there is an important positive dimension to the election victory of Ennahda, as well as the earlier victories of the AKP in Turkey. Admittedly, I write this as someone who does not have to live under such parties, so keep that in mind. The silver lining here is that these parties offer a viable alternative for peoples who seek a greater public role for Islam in their societies, in contrast to the militant reactionary movements we are all too familiar with.

When Islamists point to Erdogan and the AKP as a model to follow, rather than Ayman al-Zawahiri or Mullah Omar and the “Islamic emirate” of Taliban-era Afghanistan, this is most certainly a positive. Dialogue and cooperation with such parties should be encouraged, not dismissed on the grounds of ideological allegiances. Indeed, if Western countries were to suddenly turn away from Tunisia on the basis of an Islamist party’s electoral success, it would only help the hardliners and further support the erroneous view that militancy and anti-Western sentiment is the best strategy for contemporary Muslim societies. Furthermore, power means responsibility and accountability, and Tunisians will now “see how wise” the old Islamist from Gabés really is.

* Jeffry R. Halverson is an Islamic studies scholar and an Assistant Research Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. He is the author of Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), Searching for a King: Muslim Nonviolence and the Future of Islam (Potomac 2012), and co-author of Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

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I recently traveled to Tunisia where I visited the ancient holy city of Kairouan. Elections for the constituent assembly to produce a new Tunisian constitution are less than two weeks away and there is a lot of discussion taking place about the nature of Tunisian identity and the role of Islam in Tunisian society. Islamists, both mainstream and radical, obviously envision a prominent role for Islam. However, my experiences in Kairouan, as well as other cities in Tunisia, gave me a tangible sense of the complexities involved and left me with the impression that Islamists, particularly the hardliners, face an uphill battle. Our colleague Mark R. Woodward has previously noted contested approaches to Islam in public life in Indonesia, albeit in very different cultural and historical circumstances.

Regionally, Kairouan is regarded as the fourth holiest city in Islam and the “spiritual capital” of the Maghreb (although folks in Fez, Morocco, may disagree). At the center of the city is the Grand Mosque of Uqba. It was originally constructed by the Umayyad Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi al-Fihri in 670 CE, but the present structure dates from the 9^th century when it was remodeled by the Aghlabid dynasty. It is considered an architectural masterpiece and highly influential on Islamic art throughout the region. What is most interesting though is how the mosque reflects or symbolizes in so many ways the multi-layered complexities of contemporary Tunisian identity.

Interior of the Grand Mosque

As was common at the time, empires often used precious building materials from previous structures and ruins to construct their own monuments and facilities. The construction of the Grand Mosque of Uqba in Kairouan was no different. Before the Arab conquest, Tunisia was the imperial domain of the Byzantines, the Romans, the Phoenicians (remember mighty Hannibal of Carthage?), and, of course, the native Berber tribes. When the Grand Mosque was constructed, it utilized building materials from prior Byzantine, Roman, and Phoenician structures. Those elements are still very much visible today and add to the unique architectural charm of the mosque.

Legend says that there are 600 pillars in the mosque and every single one is unique. I’ve read that the actual number is closer to 414 pillars, but the claim about every pillar being unique appears true. There are pillars from each of the different periods of Tunisia’s long history. In one corner of the mosque, I observed two pillars beside each other that one would never find in the holy cities of Saudi Arabia. On one pillar, perhaps from an earlier mosque or the pre-Aghlabid structure of the Grand Mosque, there are Qur’anic inscriptions carved into the stone. Just a step away there is another pillar, perhaps from an earlier Byzantine structure, featuring a large cross. It may surprise some to see such a clear and unhidden symbol of Christianity on the actual pillars of the holiest mosque in the country, but this is Tunisia.

Elsewhere, at the base of the enormous square minaret that overlooks the marble courtyard of the mosque, there are bricks featuring Latin inscriptions. I was quite interested to see that the stones had not been stashed in a dark corner, or chiseled away over the centuries. Here is a photograph I took of the bricks below:

Latin inscriptions

It is worth noting too, that as I toured the courtyard of the holy mosque, prayers were underway in the enclosed masalah, and my female colleague was not required to cover her hair. Later on, when we visited the el-Ghriba synagogue in the Jewish quarter of Djerba, she was required to wear a head scarf and I was asked to don a yarmulke. Such is Tunisia. I myself visited dozens of mosques in Egypt, including al-Azhar and Sayyidna Husayn, and I found Tunisian sensibilities around holy places far more relaxed and tolerant of others.

Like the Grand Mosque of Uqba, contemporary Tunisian identity is multi-layered and rich in history and lineage. Tunisians simply cannot be characterized in simple terms or labels, such as “Arab” and “Muslim.” The Tunisian identity (if I may speak of “the” identity) is a rich amalgamation of Mediterranean, Arab-Berber, African, Muslim-Christian-Jewish, Maghrebi, and Francophone cultural trends. One should not over-emphasize any sense of mutual kinship with “fellow Arab” or “fellow Muslim” states. Indeed, even the founder of the Islamist party Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi, has written often of the uniqueness of Tunisia’s cultural heritage by utilizing the concept of al-khususiyah at-tunisiyah (“Tunisian specificity”). The Grand Mosque, down to its bricks and mortar, is a wonderful and telling symbol of this complexity. At the same time, as with Tunisian identity itself in the wake of the January 14th revolution, the mosque has become a contested symbol.

Among the resurgent religious parties in post-revolution Tunisia, the Islamist-Salafist group Ansar al-Shariah is among the most hard-line and vocal. The group recently established a media wing called al-Qayrawan Media Foundation (QMF). As you may have guessed, the word “Qayrawan” is a variant transliteration of Kairouan. For Ansar al-Shariah, the Grand Mosque of Uqba is a symbol of a strictly Arab-Muslim identity and its aspirations for a Tunisian government that will impose their vision of “shariah” on society. The image at top left is a poster from the QMF promoting a lecture by an extremist shaykh, Abu al-Mundhir al-Shaqiti. Note the Grand Mosque. Below it, an image of myself at the Grand Mosque in September.

The fact that the hardline Islamists have laid claim to the Grand Mosque of Uqba in Kairouan is obviously not surprising. As already noted, it is among the most venerable Muslim cities in the region, if not the world. However, if the hardline Islamists seek to impose a narrow understanding of Tunisian identity, they will have to overlook the very foundations of the Grand Mosque itself.  The unique history and culture of Tunisia seems to me fertile territory for a vibrant pluralistic society, one in which the Islamists have their due place at the table, but fail to dictate a vision of the future to the exclusion of others. While conditions remain bleak and troubling in Egypt, as recent violence involving the Coptic minority has shown, Tunisia seems set on a different course and there is optimism for the future.

* Jeffry R. Halverson is an Islamic studies scholar and an Assistant Research Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. He is the author of Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), Searching for a King: Muslim Nonviolence and the Future of Islam (Potomac 2012), and co-author of Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

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Since March 15 Indonesia has experienced another wave of bombings, including a suicide attack on the Az Zikro mosque located in a police compound in Cirebon, Central Java. The bomber struck during Friday prayers. Other targets have included a book bomb mailed to Ulil Abshar Abdallah, the leader of Jaringan Islam Liberal (The Liberal Islamic Network), the offices of Densus 88, an elite anti-terrorism unit, a natural gas pipeline and Christian churches on Good Friday services. Indonesian authorities have again demonstrated their ability to locate and arrest suspects, more than twenty at last count. It is clear to most Indonesian Muslim leaders that effective police power alone will not bring the threat of terrorism to an end. Escalating reactions to these events by civilian groups are taking a possibly worrying turn, however.

In this report I focus on responses to the bombings, especially to that of the Cirebon mosque, and in regard to counter-radicalism measures taken by the progressive Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) prior to and in response to these attacks. NU is Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, with membership of at least fifty million and many more supporters. The Cirebon attack was particularly significant for NU because Az Zikro is an NU mosque.

In Indonesia radical groups have rarely attacked mosques. They seem to have assumed, correctly as it turns out, that attacking one of the most important symbols of Islam would yield little sympathy. Churches and structures symbolic of western dominance or cultural decadence, including Western “branded” hotels such as the Jakarta J.W. Marriott and bars catering to foreign tourists in Bali have been the most common targets. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the identity of the Cirebon bomber soon became clear.

Muhammad Syarif was a bright young man, 31 years old, who had been fascinated with electronics since he was in elementary school. He became involved with a radical Muslim movement in 2000 and vanished from sight for nine years. When he resurfaced in 2009, his character and behavior had changed dramatically. He was formerly respectful and polite but had become violent and angry. He called both his parents kafir (unbelievers) and married without their permission. He often wore a jubbah (Arabian-style robe). His father also described him as being a follower of the radical cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir who is who is generally believed to the spiritual mentor of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah.

Many Indonesians believe that Syarif must have been the victim of cuci otak (brain washing), as the indoctrination techniques used by radical groups are commonly known. The Negara Islam Indonesia (Indonesian Islamic State) movement calls this tactic “Basic Training” (English in the original). It involves blindfolding potential recruits, taking them to remote locations and subjecting them to several days of intense religious instruction. Many reject the message, but those who accept it undergo a process of cognitive restructuring in which core values, personal and collective identity are redefined in terms of the group’s radical teachings.

As is almost always the case, mainstream Muslim organizations denounced the attacks and even radicals have condemned the Cirebon mosque bombing. Ba’asyir stated that there was no Islamic justification for bombing a mosque and that the attacker was with a kafir who had a childish understanding of religion or who was mentally ill.

Leaders of many mainstream Muslim organizations, including Din Syamsudinn of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second largest Muslim organization,  spoke of the need to address the underlying social, political and economic causes of terrorism but offered little in the way of specifics. Vice-President Boediono called on the ministries of education and religion to upgrade religious and citizenship instruction in schools, colleges and universities. Numerous commentators called attention to the “brainwashing” techniques used by radical organizations to recruit young people and the need to respond to them.

By far the strongest response has been from the religiously and socially conservative NU leaders who reiterated their commitment to comprehensive counter radicalism efforts and announced new efforts to make sure that radicals do not use any of the tens of thousands of NU mosques to recruit new followers.

NU’s counter-radicalism program includes four basic components:

• Active cooperation with security forces in efforts to apprehend suspected terrorists.
• Refutation of extremist ideologies, especially those concerning jihad. This is a common theme in Friday sermons, religious talks (pengajian) and in many pesantren (traditional boarding schools) affiliated with NU. NU’s position is that radicals have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of jihad, that suicide bombings are not jihad and that those who carry them out are not martyrs. It also repudiates the anti-Semitic views held by many Islamist organizations.
• Outreach programs for young people in print, online and at Indonesia’s government sponsored Islamic colleges and universities. They have recently published a book entitled Peaceful Jihad for Teens (only the title is in English), available at bookstores through out the country.
• Assisting victims of terrorist attacks. The NU youth organization Ansor and the paramilitary security force Banser NU routinely assist with the repair and renovation of churches damaged by bombings.

In response to the most recent bombings NU announced a self-policing program. On April 25, leader Nusron Wahid  announced that Ansor and the Baser cadre would begin nationwide  “sweeping” operations to cleanse NU mosques of radical teachers and preachers. At a speech in Magelan in Central Java he stated that men with “long beards and short pants” had occupied many of the largest mosques in the country, spreading radical messages and teaching that all who oppose them are unbelievers or polytheists. He linked them to Abu Bakar Ba’asyir and accused them of planning and encouraging terrorist attacks. He also pointed to the need for similar actions at mosques on university campuses that have become centers for the dissemination of radical ideas.

Nurson’s observations about the exclusivist character of radicals and the fact they often use mosques for recruitment purposes are accurate. New recruits are often taught that they do not have to seek their parents’ permission to join in jihad. They are encouraged to recruit family and friends, but told that those who do not join them are kafir.  In a society such as Indonesia, where respect for parents is a core value, these views are on the outer limits of extremism. Mosques are public spaces and are often unoccupied. Private teachers unaffiliated with organizations that officially control them often use unoccupied mosques for religious lessons.

Nurson is, however, known for off the cuff statements, exaggeration and hyperbolic rhetoric. The term “sweeping” (English in the original) is used by the radical Front for the Defense of Islam for the violent attacks it conducts against those it views as “sinners” or religious “deviants.” Nuron’s use of the term suggests that NU is prepared to use similar tactics. The expression “long beard, short pants” has become short hand for a wide variety of salafi groups, who sport beards and distinctive Pakistani style clothing to distinguish themselves from traditional Indonesian Muslims.

Calf-length pants and robes are considered to be equivalents in this symbolic discourse. Most who wear such clothing are religious fundamentalists but very few are terrorists. Some are explicitly and vocally opposed to the use of violence for political purposes. Nurson’s comments  are examples of a growing tendency to associate salafism and terrorism. I and my colleagues Inayah Rohmaniyah and Ali Amin have argued that this component of Indonesian counter-radical discourse is disturbing and potentially dangerous because it tends to demonize innocent people who share the religious orientation, but not the violent inclinations, of terrorist organizations. From an organization that is generally viewed as being tolerant toward not only other faiths but also other streams of Islam, this is a development that is cause for concern.

_____________________________________

* Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University and Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta Indonesia. Unless otherwise indicated this report is based on ethnographic research conducted in Yogyakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia.

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There is a new narrative responsible for the success of the uprisings that spread from Tunisia through Egypt and now are heard in the streets of Syria, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere.  It is a secular narrative generated by young Muslims who recognize that older jihadist forms of “telling their resistance story” by linking them to Islamic Master Narratives were largely responsible for the binary oppositions that divide them, and Islam, from the West and modernity.

As Jacqueline O’Rourke, a communication consultant working in Qutar and writing in Z Magazine sees it:

This new communications plan is a direct attempt to create a counter-narrative to the predominant one which has dominated Western discourse for the past decade. That narrative runs roughly like this: Muslims are jealous of the freedom and technological advantages of the West. Their society has been in decline after their scientific advances of medieval Europe. Instead, they try to use the West’s technology against itself. Whether airplanes, viruses, or chemicals, Muslims have appropriated science for the purposes of terrorism.

As Thomas Friedman and others have pointed out, the existing “anti-technology/science” narrative is often coupled with Zionist-American conspiracy tales, and together they have fueled the extremist “New Jahiliyya” master narrative developed by Sayyid Qutb.  It depicts a Muslim world in chaos and disorder that can only be made righteous again by a vanguard of True Believers who rise up and seize power by any means necessary, and who essentially return their culture and people to a 7^th Century CE way of life.

Clearly that old religious narrative has been either silent or silenced in the face of these new uprisings by young Muslims throughout the Middle East and North Africa.  Not even the Muslim Brotherhood is calling for an Islamic state.  Instead, the young Muslims and their new leaders are pressing for reforms that offer more freedom, more opportunity, and more control over their own choices, not a return to Sharia law or the reestablishment of a Caliphate.  More importantly, their call for reform is accomplished without challenging the sanctity of the Five Pillars of Islam, which places obedience to God before any other duty or goal.  In this way, young Muslims have opened up a “Third Way” narrative that balances respect for religious traditions with progressive political reforms designed to improve their ability to live well and to compete in a global economy.

But as good as this new secular narrative may sound to Western ears, O’Rourke explains the outcome is unlikely to be one that accepts Western “hypocrisy and condescension”:

One critical reality is that this revolution is not only a revolution against Arab dictators, but a revolution against the humiliation Muslims have been facing in the post-9/11 global landscape. The Arab/Muslim people are not just enraged with political, social, and economic oppression, they are also angry with their rulers’ complicity with imperialism, particularly American and Israeli. In short, the revolution has erupted from Muslim societies as a result of internal oppression and as a response to political, economic, and cultural imperialism, with which the post-9/11 youth are intricately familiar. In this regard, the international community must get the message that this revolution is as much against its hypocritical and condescending manner of dealing with Muslim societies as it is against Mubarak, Ben Ali, or Qadaffi.

One way to think about how all of these narrative tensions may play out is to consider that across this region people are not so much interested in trading one way of life for another, but instead creating a new way of life—a new language for governance—that avoids the pitfalls of either the old jihadi ideological worldview or one that values free market capitalism via oil revenues in exchange for continued support for dictators, particularly if the latter alternative carries with it unquestioning support of Israel.

What might that new narrative be?  One possible story is a hybrid combination of socialism designed to better distribute the wealth and opportunities afforded by revenues (however they are derived) with a progressive Islam dedicated to improving human rights and building communities that are based more on Islamic scholarship and nonviolence than on free market capitalism or extremism.

In this brave new narrative the system of stories would be all about more openness and tolerance, as well as more democratic reform, but there would be no good reason to expect that U.S. corporate or political interests would enjoy any special status in it.  There are other emerging markets—from China to India to the EU—and the political landscape that was once dominated by American foreign policy backed by an unlimited military budget is not what it once was nor do we have the will to wield power in the old fashioned way.

The speech given in Cairo by President Obama last year set in motion a storyline that may well have influenced young Muslims to go ahead with their uprisings.  The president’s late intervention in Libya—and that only with international backing and cooperation—further provided evidence that our intentions are no longer driven by revenge, as they have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead by a steely pragmatism that weighs in on the side of those fighting against oppression but leaves outcomes to those who must then forge a new society.

In general, this new secular narrative is all about accepting this post-uprising/revolution responsibility.  It is thankfully free of the old Islamist rant.  It is so far mostly free from violence, except in Libya.  We should begin to expand our conception of how secular narratives are producing political and social change and rethink our approach to strategic communication as a result.  We don’t want to make the old Pentagon mistake of preparing for the last war, in this case the jihad drawn from master narratives of Islamist extremism, while a whole set of new strategic communication challenges that has nothing to do with those old stories takes shape.

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To say Somalia has problems would be the very definition of an understatement.  Piracy has certainly received its share of attention, primarily because it is sensational and somewhat easy to comprehend.  The chaos in the south also gets some attention due to the rise of Islamists groups and the potential for Somalia to become a terrorist safe haven.  Despite this increase in attention, there has been no real political or humanitarian progress in the country.  Education is lacking, violence is a way of life and the political system is a shambles.  It is time to make some dramatic changes to American policy toward Somalia.

Since the fall of the Said Barre regime in 1991, Somalia has been mired in chaos.  In the subsequent twenty years various warlords and Islamist groups have come and gone.  Al-Shabaab is the current Islamist power in the country and has control over much of the south; Hizbul Islam is another emergent Islamist group but it does not have the strength of al-Shabaab.  Both of these groups fight the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Somalia’s “official” government.

One of al-Shabaab’s tactics is the use of child soldiers.  Children as young as twelve are given weapons and sent out to fight the TFG.  This is not a new tactic in Somalia; Mohammed Farah Aidid, a powerful warlord in the 1990s, used to get teenagers hopped up on qaat, a narcotic plant popular in the region, hand them AK-47s and send them into the streets to foment chaos and frighten the local populace.

Jeffrey Gettleman recently produced a short video and article about child soldiers in Somalia, and pointed out a terrible fact–some of these kids essentially work for the United States.  Gettleman’s piece looks at child soldiers who fight, not for al-Shabaab but for the TFG.  The U.S. provides aid, including pay for soldiers’ salaries and presumably weapons, to an organization that actively uses child soldiers.

This is a horrible situation.  President Obama and officials at the State Department have acknowledged and regret that we are supporting child soldiers.  Senator Russ Feingold argues that we should suspend  security assistance to the TFG until the use of child soldiers stops.  Beyond the obvious tragedy of using children in war, this undermines the authority of the United States.  Foreign intervention is viewed with a great deal of skepticism in Somalia, but a foreign power that is literally putting Somalia’s children in harm’s way is not going to be viewed favorably by the locals or the world community at large.  It is certainly not going to give the local population any reason to trust the U.S.  The U.S. publicly condemns the use of child soldiers yet pays them in Somalia, a blatant hypocrisy.  What do we do about all of this?

The U.S. has hung its hopes on the impotent TFG, a group that has proven time and time again to be ineffective.  The TFG holds only a few blocks of Mogadishu and manages to hold that largely due to the presence of about 6000 African Union troops.  It is time for a radical game change in Somalia.

First, the U.S. must abandon the idea of a centralized Somali state.  Clan divisions alone have proven hard to overcome and are enough to undermine a central government.  Instead we should support a confederal system, a collection of regional governments with a central government limited to very specific functions.  These smaller regional governments need not be divided along clan lines.  Smaller regional governing bodies would allow for greater local autonomy and more cooperation among those who live in close proximity to each other, and eliminate some of the conflict that exists in the current national system.

Second, if the U.S. is going to back a Somali group it should be Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaah, a Sufi paramilitary group that is opposed to radical Islam.  They have been the most effective in combating al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.  The TFG should be disbanded or alter its mission to that of community and humanitarian support, dispensing food, medicine and other logistical tasks.

Third, there needs to be a humanitarian surge; our actions cannot only be military in nature.  The Somali people have enough distrust of foreign intervention that military intervention itself will not be enough to win any hearts or minds.  There needs to be an organized and accountable relief effort.  To avoid some of the pitfalls of the 1990s, this relief effort needs to be backed up by a military force from the African Union.

Fourth, the moderate Islamists need to be won over.  Just as there are meetings between government officials and moderate members of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the moderate Islamists in Somalia need incentives to work with us.

A strong military effort by Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaah and AU forces, tactical support from the U.S., plus organized humanitarian effort will help stabilize the country; it will not solve all of Somalia’s problems but it will be a drastic improvement.  Stability is a prerequisite to any type of nation-building in Somalia, therefore stability should be our first priority.

There is much that could go wrong with the scenario I have outlined,  but what is abundantly clear is that the status quo is not working.  Somalia has been the poster child for failed states for over twenty years and it is time to rethink our strategy.  Somalia should be a country in which children are given lunch and an education rather than an AK-47 and an extra clip courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.  The most radical and experimental ideas are not out of bounds when it comes to Somalia.  Our current policy is not working and it is far past time to try something, anything, new.

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The following is a summary of some arguments  from my new book, Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood, Ash’arism, and Political Sunnism, published by Palgrave Macmillan.  It offers an explanation of why fundamentalist literal interpretations of the Qu’ran have so much influence in contemporary Islamist extremism, and why extremists’ views about what the Qu’ran says can be so difficult to challenge.

Mohammed Arkoun has described the notion of the “unthinkable” in Islamic thought, referring to the expansive realm of the intellectually forbidden. In recent decades, this realm has been greatly fortified.  But among the pre-modern casualties of the “unthinkable,” there was a surprising fatality, the discipline of Sunni theology (‘ilm al-kalam). Through a complex confluence of events, kalam fell into steady decline during the waning of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate and into virtual extinction as an active discipline by the fifteenth century (CE), replaced by a distinctly creedal enterprise.

Theology is the systematic, rational, defensible articulation of religious beliefs about God, revelation, and the cosmos. Therefore, when I describe the demise of Sunni theology I am referring to theology in this technical sense and not the disappearance of particular axiomatic religious creeds, called ‘aqidah (“creed”). Nor am I referring to Islamic philosophy, a separate discipline known as falsafah.

Among the leading factors behind the demise of kalam was an anti-theological school of thought that opposed the classical theological enterprise as it responded to a range of sociopolitical concerns, principally from the seventh to tenth centuries (CE).  This movement, known as the Athariyya, stressed strict adherence to the literal outward meanings of the sacred texts. For the Atharis, human reason cannot be trusted in matters of religion, thus making theology a sinful (even satanic) and dangerous exercise in human arrogance. Following the demise of kalam, Athari thought has flourished and, I argue, contributed in important ways to the reformulation of Islamic political theory in the twentieth century commonly known as “Islamism.”

This new Islamic polity borrowed heavily from modern European political ideologies and centered on the so-called “Islamic state.” In this book, I propose a new definition of Islamism, articulated in great detail, as the marriage of Athari-imposed creedalism and the modern-nation state. The turmoil and bloodshed that the Muslim world endured in the early centuries, out of which the dominant schools of Sunni theology (e.g. Ash‘arism and Maturidism) eventually emerged with important resolutions, is now being forced to play out once again, with the most dangerous elements emanating from those factions opposed to theology as a satanic force and a deserving prisoner of the “unthinkable.”

For more from this title, please visit Barnes & Noble or Amazon

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The Consortium for Strategic Communication has released a new white paper by Mark Woodward, Ali Amin, and Inayah Rohmaniyah entitled Lessons from Aceh Terrorist De-Radicalization.  The full white paper can be downloaded here.

The executive summary is as follows:

Although the International Crisis Group’s reports on radicalism in Indonesia are extremely detailed and well informed, their recommendations tend to be short-term solutions aimed at preventing terrorist acts in the near term. This report argues the value of a longer term approach to both prevent radicalization as well as to rehabilitate jihadis who have been identified and arrested. Although the “soft” approach to imprisoning arrested jihadis is more successful than harsher approaches, this approach still has counterproductive shortfalls, such as allowing unrepentant radicals the opportunity to preach to inmates and guards. Allowing ustad and imam with similar theological backgrounds but without sympathies for terrorism would be an effective way to counter radicalism in prisons as it would not represent a major shift in theological views of terrorists but rather in how they act with respect to terrorism.

This report also shows that although there appear to be three different groups that have emerged from Jemaah Islamiyah, their goals remain the same and they differ only with regard to which tactics to employ. Thus, disengagement efforts aimed at shifting perceptions of operational or tactical matters may be more effective than attempts at de-radicalization that require the transformation of worldviews and identities. However further research is needed on the cognitive restructuring processes involved in these kinds of transformations.

Inayah Rohmaniyah

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In recent months, Indonesian security forces, including the US-trained Detachment 88, have proven to be increasingly effective in locating, capturing or killing suspected terrorists. But police power alone will never defeat a deeply entrenched extremist sub-culture.  Soft power is a crucial component as well, perhaps even more important than enforcement.

The deaths of Noordin Top on September 17, 2009 and Dulmatin on March 9 of this year, raids on a training camp in Aceh on February 23rd, and continuing operations in that province are examples of the Indonesian authorities increasing operational capabilities. Reuters described Dulmatin’s death as a “fresh blow to Indonesian militants.” Western media reports have focused largely on his role in the 2002 Bali bombings and have suggested that his death may have crippled Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and other Indonesian militant groups because of the entirely unsubstantiated claim that he was the sole remaining operative with the skill to construct large bombs.

It is undoubtedly true that militant groups have suffered significant losses over the past few months. But it is also true that “decapitating” militant organizations and breaking up training centers will not solve the problem of Islamist violence in Indonesia or elsewhere. Some terrorism experts have expressed concern that the existence of the Aceh camp is a sign that radical Islamists are regrouping and that evidence points to the continued existence of Indonesian and trans-national networks providing weapons, funding and ideological-religious support.

These concerns are probably well founded. At the same time they are myopic and rooted in the naive assumption that “taking out” critical nodes in radical networks will resolve the problem of extremist political violence. Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, who is the foremost authority on Indonesian Islamist militant groups, has warned against over estimating the significance of Dulmatin’s death. She is almost certainly correct.

Almost every time a leading terrorist operative is killed or captured the media, government officials and some terrorism experts proclaim that the movement has been crippled or its capacity to conduct operations diminished. This has not proven to be the case. Despite the apprehension or killing of several leaders, Indonesian extremists have proven to be remarkably resilient. The source of this resilience is not international links or financing. It is that fact that JI, Negara Islam Indonesia (NII) and other extremist groups have very small, but highly dedicated and well organized support bases.

Most of these supporters have never engaged in terrorist or other criminal activities. They live seemingly normal lives and include people who are everything from farmers and petty traders to business executives. Even if they could be indentified, only a government that aggressively pursued repressive security measures unacceptable in a democratic society such as Indonesia could detain them. NII and other extremist groups also have centralized leadership structures that make replacing “fallen comrades” relatively easy. They are based on bureaucratic not charismatic authority.

The cell structure of Indonesian militant organizations isolates both the leadership and rank and file members. Structurally it is similar to the segmentary lineage systems well known to anthropologists and multilevel marketing schemes. Typically rank and file and mid-level militants know only members of their own groups and their immediate superiors. They also swear oaths of eternal loyalty and obedience. The structure of these networks is such that not even high-ranking leaders are not fully aware of their size or structure.

Some Indonesian extremist organizations are of relatively recent origin and have ideological ties to Middle Eastern Jihadi organizations including al-Qaeda. Others, especially NII, have deep historical roots. The fact that some Indonesian groups appropriate the name al-Qaeda and a handful of leaders may have once met with bin Laden or his associates does not imply anything like a centralized command and control system or that Indonesian and other Southeast Asian organizations are “al-Qaeda franchises.”

Indonesian extremist groups have received funds from Middle Eastern extremists. The Saudi government spends a lot of money in efforts to promote an exclusivist, intolerant version of Islam that contributes to the development of extremist sub-cultures. There is a shared perception that Muslims the world over face a common threat from an aggressive Western alliance. Many non-violent and even entirely non-political groups and individuals share this view.

NII is the largest underground Islamic extremist movement in Indonesia. It is the grandfather of JI and the “splinter groups” led by Noordin Top and Dulmatin. There are probably others of which authorities are not yet aware. NII has always been a nationalist Islamic movement concerned only tangentially with affairs outside Indonesia.

Kartosuwirjo and other Islamic leaders who rejected the secular orientation of mainstream Indonesian nationalism founded NII in the 1940s. Their goal was the establishment an Islamic state based on Shari’ah. During the Indonesian Revolution (1945-1949), NII rejected negotiations with the Dutch and the Indonesian Republic. It proclaimed an Islamic state (Darul Islam; DI) on August 7, 1949. The movement was instrumental in fomenting ethic and Islamic separatist movements in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid 1950s it controlled much of West Java, South Sulawesi and Aceh. Indonesian forces broke its military strength after the declaration of martial law in 1957. The movement went underground and has persisted for generations.

A 2005 report by the International Crisis Group stated that:

Every time the older generation seems on the verge of passing into irrelevance, a new generation of young militants, inspired by DI’s history and the mystique of an Islamic state, emerges to give the movement a new lease on life. If the pattern outlined in this report holds, Indonesia will not be able to eradicate JI or its jihadist partners, even if it arrests every member of the central command but, with more attention to a few key measures, it ought to be able to contain them.

The measures ICG suggested included the resolution of ethnic conflict, better control of the arms trade, improved law enforcement capability and recognition that prison terms do not lessen the commitment of DI militants. The fact that all but one of the Bali Bombers was completely unrepentant even facing execution supports this view. The Indonesian government might well have spared their lives had they expressed remorse and regret for their actions. They preferred death and martyrdom.

The Indonesian government has had a fair measure of success in attaining the first three objectives. The fact that the US-trained counter-terrorism unit Detachment 88 seems to be inclined to kill – rather than capture – terrorist suspects may indicate that they are taking this last recommendation seriously. Some Indonesian human rights advocates are concerned that the police are now taking the law into their own hands, killing suspects who should be and could be captured and brought to trial. Some understand this as resurgence of the brutal and oppressive policies of the military regime of former President Suharto (1965-1998).

Despite these measures, NII, JI and other militant groups have not vanished. It is naive to expect that Dulmatin’s death will diminish their conviction and capacity. There may be no further incidents for a year – or five – but there is no reason to believe that they will not strike again where and when they feel ready. The suggestion that eliminating one or even a group of key figures can cripple the movement is wishful thinking.

So is the idea that neutralizing one explosives expert seriously diminishes the operational capacity of militant groups. Hundreds if not thousands of Indonesians were trained in the use of weapons ranging form small arms and improvised explosive devises to surface-to-air missiles and heavy artillery in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the war against Soviet occupation forces. While they have not had the opportunity to use sophisticated weaponry on the home front, knowledge of simpler but no less deadly technologies has been passed on to younger generations in camps such as the one recently discovered in Aceh.

These operations do not require extensive foreign or domestic funding. Indonesian government sources state that the Aceh camp had a funding stream of approximately $50,000 (US). It was a remarkably cost effective operation. Firearms are difficult to obtain in Indonesia, but the Philippines is awash with them, many stolen or purchased illegally from the armed forces. The Philippine-Indonesia boundary is porous and unsealable because it is open seas.

Religious Extremism or Culture of Radicalism?

Hendropriyono (many Indonesians have only one name), the former chief of Badan Intelijen Negara (BIN; the Indonesian state intelligence agency) recently stated that:

Terrorism is analogous to the stem and the leaves while the fundamentalism is the root, which should be removed.

Former militants we have spoken with over the past several months share this view. They often say that if the authorities capture or kill one terrorist anywhere from three to a hundred will take his place.

Hendropriyono’s statement that the government should act against fundamentalism and “inflammatory sermons” is more problematic because these concepts are extremely difficult to define in ways that do not infringe on freedom of speech and religion. Political violence cannot be unambiguously linked with any theological position. His suggestion that people who hate people of other religions is the root of the terrorist problem is equally naive because Islamist militants are as concerned with other professed Muslims as they are with people of other faiths.

JI is linked to the extremist Salafi understandings of Islam characteristic of most other contemporary Sunni Islamist groups; NII is not and never has been. Its goal is the establishment of an Islamic state, not the promotion of a particular theological agenda. Some leaders and supporters of the movement do hold religious views similar to those of Saudi Wahhabis. Others have more traditional views and engage in religious practices including pilgrimage to holy graves that many contemporary Islamist and other Indonesian Muslim organizations, including the modernist Muhammadiyah, that are not linked to violence in any way, consider to be “unbelief.”

The defining characteristics of the ideologies of NII, Majlis Mujahidin Indonesia and other extremist groups are commitment to the idea of the Islamic State. They denounce  those who do not share this commitment as kafir (unbelievers) and regard the taking of their blood and property as halal (permissible). This is a critical point because there is an increasing tendency in Indonesia and elsewhere to link Muslim political violence to Wahhabi understandings of monotheism and ritual practice. As is stated in a previous posting, this is a serious and potentially dangerous mistake.  NII’s position is that Muslims who embrace the teachings of al-Wahab on religious matters, but who reject jihad and accept the legitimacy of the Indonesian state, are also kafir.

While political violence cannot be linked directly to a single variant of Islam, there is what can be called a subculture of extremism. It defining characteristics are principled opposition to secularism and the secular state along with the belief that violent jihad is a legitimate form of political action. This is often coupled with belief that only those who share these views are truly Muslims and stand for the glorification of martyrdom. This subculture is now several generations old.

Militant groups are usually endogamous. That is, young members are only allowed to marry others committed to the cause or at least to “bring in” their spouses. Marriages are often arranged without the knowledge or consent of young couples’ families. These practices build in-group cohesion at the cost of cutting family ties that are of central importance in Indonesian societies. Children from NII and other militant families are raised with the belief that they are different from others and quickly learn to be suspicious of political and religious authorities. Many are sent to camps for “basic training” and formally initiated into extremist organizations as adolescents.

Others are recruited in secular secondary schools, colleges and universities or in local mosques, including campus mosques at secular universities, and undergo similar training and indoctrination, with or without a para-military component. Some recruits live double lives, keeping their membership in extremist associations secret even from close friends and family members. It is not possible to say how large this subculture of extremism is. Most members of these communities are not currently engaged in terrorist activities. They are, however, a pool from which violent activists can be readily recruited.

Dulmatin’s funeral provides insight into the characteristics if not the extent of this culture of radicalism. Dulmatin was buried in his native village of Loning in Central Java on March 12. Several hundred mourners had gathered, not only from his home town, but from as far away as Bayuwangi in East Java and Banten in the west, both hundreds of miles away.  Some came as soon as they learned of Dulmatin’s death. His supporters, including Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, maintain that he is a martyr not a “terrorist.”

Ba’asyir is generally considered to be the spiritual leader of JI. In his sermons he denounces Indonesian leaders and most other Indonesian Muslims as kafir. In a sermon delivered in a Yogyakarta mosque during Ramadan last year, he stated that more than 90 percent of the Indonesians who call themselves Muslims actually are not. He calls for jihad against the United States and its western allies but publicly rejects violence in Indonesia, always referring to it as “mistaken” or “misguided.”

In a statement reminiscent of his eulogies for the Bali Bombers executed last year, Ba’asyir stated that Dulmatin was a martyr who had died in the struggle for Islam, but that he may have erred by conducting violent operations inside Indonesia. As proof of Dulmatin’s martyrdom Ba’asyir stated that at the time of his burial Dulmatin looked as if he was still alive, his body smelled sweet and blood continued to flow in his veins. Rumors spread throughout the country that as he was carried to his grave the words “Allah Akbar” (God is Great) appeared in the sky, confirming the chants of the mourners. A banner erected in front of his family home stated that he was not a terrorist but a mujahid (freedom fighter).

Counter-Exclusivism as Counter-Extremism

Indonesia’s security forces have proven that they are capable of locating, killing or capturing known terrorists. This alone will not bring an end to Islamist political violence. Given the fact that there is a well established and well organized subculture of violent extremism it is to reasonable to conclude that there are no quick fixes. This does not mean that the country must or should resign itself to the institutionalization of violence of the type that has occurred in India and Pakistan, where Muslim on Muslim, Hindu on Muslim, Hindu on Christian and Muslim on Hindu violence have become almost politics as normal.

There are at least three factors that can lead to the diminution of violence:

• Islamic Education. The more people know about Islam, the less attractive they find extremist ideologies. Extremists rely on simplistic religious ‘proofs’ for their political positions. Muslims with more than rudimentary understanding of the Qur’an and Hadith (traditions concerning the Prophet Muhammad and his companions) recognize the simplicity and banality of these ‘proofs.’ This is not conjecture; former NII recruiters have told us that people with little religious education are the easiest targets and those from pesantren (traditional Islamic boarding schools) the most difficult.
• War Weariness. Violent Islamist ideologies offer the promise of “victory or martyrdom.” Indonesian Islamists have engaged in what they think of as jihad for nearly seventy years. They are no closer to victory than they were in the 1940s and much further than they were at the height of their power in the mid-1950s. Some have come to see the Islamic State as a lost cause and have turned to peaceful strategies to bring about political and religious change. Aceh, in North Sumatra, was once a rallying point because the Acehnese waged jihad against first the Dutch, then the Japanese and finally the Indonesian government for more than a century.  The Acehnese provided a heroic example for others in much the same way that the Palestinians do on a global scale. Aceh now shows that there is an alternative to violent struggle and that peace and reconciliation are possible. A 2005 peace accord between Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM; the Acehnese independence movement) and the Indonesian government granted the province a high level of self-government. In return, the Acehnese stopped the jihad. Today, peace has returned to the province for the first time in a century. When you travel to Aceh, people speak of two things: their sorrow about loved ones lost in the 2004 Tsunami and how overjoyed they are to be able to do simple things such as going out to dinner or to a coffee shop or to a fruit market in the evening. Those things were not possible during the long years of war. This is not to say that all is well in Aceh. In a rush to establish its Islamic credentials and assert its independence the provincial government has implemented draconian Shari’ah legislation that negatively impacts women. The equation of Islam with gender-based discrimination is an alarming tendency not only in Indonesia but in other regions of Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia that have used the concept of local autonomy to promote Islamic identity.
• Takfiraphobia. Takfir is the practice of declaring professed Muslims to be kafir. It is a common element in Islamist ideologies. In the abstract it is not difficult to refer to people with whom one strong disagrees as kafir, especially if they are geographically and socially distant. It is an entirely different matter to accept the fact that your relatives and friends are kafir who are going to hell. This is one of the things that violent Islamist organizations demand of recruits. It is very hard to accept the fact that your mother is going to hell, if you believe in it – and most Indonesians do. This limits the ability of extremist groups to recruit new members. Takfiri rhetoric may strengthen solidarity and collective identity in instances where there are clearly discernable lines of conflict. This is not the case in contemporary Indonesia.

The Case for Soft Power

No reasonable person would deny that it is necessary to use police power to combat violent extremists who believe that they have religious obligations to kill other people. Police power is a necessary but not sufficient component of an ongoing effort to counter violent extremists. But as long as they are ideologically and socially intact and are able to reproduce themselves, these networks will endure. In Indonesia, some have endured for generations.

The use of police power confronts extremists where, culturally and ideologically speaking, they are least vulnerable. Jihad and martyrdom are among the key organizing principles of the extremist sub-culture. Dead extremists become heroes and martyrs for surviving members. It is entirely possible that Dulmatin and other JI fighters who have been killed or executed are more influential dead than they were alive. This is certainly true of the Bali Bombers who were unknown to most Indonesians prior to the 2002 attacks but whose funerals attracted sympathetic media coverage despite the horrendous nature of their crimes. They are now the posthumous authors of best sellers that can be found in bookstores throughout Indonesia.

Building strategies rooted in Islamic education, and concepts such as war weariness and takfiraphobia has an important role to play in the struggle against extremism. Such efforts strike extremists where they are sociologically, psychologically and theologically most vulnerable. Properly implemented, they can expose the banality of Islamist theologies, offer hope of life without fear and escape from the psychic trauma of imagining loved ones enduring the torments of hell.

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* Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Ali Amin is Academic Director at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta Indonesia. Inayah Rohmaniyah is Senior Lecturer of Tafsir and Hadith at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta Indonesia.

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