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.”

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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.

____________________________

* 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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Over the last year it has become increasingly apparent to progressive Indonesian Muslim intellectuals and political leaders that there is a clear association between the spread of Wahhabi religious teachings and political extremism. In the weeks following the Ritz-Carlton and J. W. Marriott bombings in Jakarta, discourse about the dangers of Wahhabism has intensified because it is now clear that Wahhabi-oriented Indonesian extremists carried out the attacks.

It is also clear that only a small minority of the Indonesian Muslims who accept Wahhabi religious teachings are violent extremists. Most practice the austere, puritanical and religiously intolerant version of Islam, not for political reasons, but because they believe that this is what God intended Islam to be.[1] It is equally clear that almost all violent extremists in Indonesia, and most of the rest of the Sunni Muslim world, justify violence on the basis of Wahhabi teachings.[2]

In a previous posting I described efforts by the Saudi Arabian state, foundations and wealthy individuals to use economic enticements to spread Wahhabism as a new form of colonialism, the goal of which is to radically transform most aspects of Indonesian cultures. I did not invent the term “Wahhabi Colonialism.” I first heard it nearly a year ago from a horse cart driver who used it to describe Saudi attempts to link disaster relief with the acceptance of Wahhabi religious teachings.

In the last year this perception has become increasingly common. “Wahhabi” is now a derogatory term among those who reject political extremism and puritanical religious teachings. It is frequently associated with political extremism, religious bigotry and violence. Saidiman (many Indonesians have only one name) from the Liberal Islam Network made the point very clearly:

Many observers argued that almost every militant Islamic movement today is part of, or at least influenced by, Wahhabism. Where trouble is found, Wahhabism may thrive. Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaida, which have been launching several terrors across the world for years, have officially adopted this ideology. Wahhabi extremism and terrorism continue to plague Indonesia, although its real supporters in this country are few in number.

Those who accept some or all Wahhabi religious teachings but who reject political extremism are increasingly defensive. Even the leaders of Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Justice and Prosperity Party, PKS), the Islamist political party with strong ties with Wahhabi religious teachings and the political agenda and tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood, now emphatically deny that they are Wahhabis.

In March 2009, PKS founder and former presidential candidate Hidayat Nurwahid called charges that PKS is Wahhabi “slanderous.” His reasoning was that the charge could not possibly true because PKS is a political party, and political parties are forbidden in Saudi Arabia. Nurwahid received a Ph.D. in Dakwah (propagation of the faith) the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in 1992. He could not have better Wahhabi credentials. Very few Indonesians, other than PKS cadres, found his statement credible.

I described PKS’s tepid, almost defensive, response to the Jakarta bombings in a previous posting. There are aspects of the struggle against Wahhabism that are, for many Indonesians, more important than politics, and even bombings, because they are about very basic religious matters. They are not about life and death, but rather, life after death.[3]  These struggles are not overtly political but have political implications. One of the factors that limits the appeal of PKS and other Islamist groups is that they share the Wahhabi view that religious practices most Indonesian Muslims regard as basic elements of Islam are actually forbidden (haram) and that people who participate in them are destined for the fires of hell.

Indonesian Muslims take this issue very seriously. PKS leaders avoid public discussion of these issues, probably because they are aware that publicizing the party’s Wahhabi positions would limit its electoral appeal. The condemnation of traditional Islam and the teaching that “PKS Islam is the only Islam” play important roles in “in group” discussions and cadre training. Most politically aware Indonesians know about the party’s Wahhabi religious orientation. Many find PKS claims to be “pluralistic” unconvincing and believe that were it to come to power, it would move rapidly towards the formation of an authoritarian Islamic state based on a Saudi model, at least as far as religious and legal matters are concerned.

These issues have led the religiously conservative, but politically progressive, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) to become the most articulate opponent of political Islamism and Wahhabi religious views linked to it. Denunciation of devotional practices concerning the veneration of saints and prayers for dead has always been at the core of the Wahhabi religious agenda. The Saudis are literally despised by the majority of the world’s Muslims because they have desecrated the tombs of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca and Medina. NU was founded in 1928 in part as a protest against what traditional Indonesian Muslims consider to be Wahhabi sacrilege.

Pilgrimage to the graves of saints, especially the nine legendary Wali (saints) believed to have been responsible for the spread of Islam in Java (Indonesia’s most populous island) is an important component of the type of Islam NU expounds. Tens of thousands of Indonesian Muslims visit the tombs of the Walis, and lesser-known tombs of local saints, every day. They range from villagers, including the horse cart driver from whom I first heard the expression “Wahhabi colonialism” to many of Indonesia’s most prominent political and intellectual figures. They do not like to be told that they are going to hell.

Debates about religious practice are now closely associated with, and are indeed a part of, those concerning Indonesia’s political future. The intensity of this conflict was driven home to me today (August 16) when I attended a “Muslim Fair” supported by PKS and other Islamist organizations. PKS was actually one of the more moderate groups taking part in the event.

The fair featured booths selling Islamist and jihadi books, jihadi videos depicting the Taliban and bin Laden as “heroes of Islam,”  “Muslim” clothing, herbal medicines which many Islamists believe to be more effective than “Jewish” western medicines, and a speech by the Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Basyir, who only a few days ago offered prayers at the funerals of the Jakarta suicide bombers. Basyir is the spiritual leader of the violent Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah that was responsible for a series of attacks on western targets in Indonesia beginning with a foiled attempt to blow up airliners in flight over the Pacific Ocean in 1995 and including the 2002 “Bali bombings.”

In his Yogyakarta address Basyir was circumspect. He was only mildly critical of the bombers stating that, in his opinion, jihad is not an appropriate strategy for Indonesian Islamists at the present time. Almost in the same breath he described the Jakarta suicide bombers as martyrs; martyrs go directly to heaven when they die. Basyir also wrote a laudatory introduction to a series of posthumously published books by the three men executed for planning and carrying out the Bali attacks in which he described them as martyrs, who, of course, go directly to heaven.

Basyir is careful not to implicate himself in the planning or conduct of terrorist attacks. His statements and actions make it very clear that he endorses them, while at the same time doing nothing to give security forces “probable cause” that he is involved in planning them. Indonesians who have met him say this is in keeping with his usual practice. When people who are planning attacks seek his blessing, he generally does not respond directly, but his facial expressions clearly indicate approval or displeasure.

In addition to jihadi materials, there were books denouncing traditional Muslim devotional practices as unbelief. Some of these were Indonesian translations of standard Arabic Wahhabi texts. Others were more explicit attacks on traditional Indonesian Islam, including one describing pilgrimage to the tombs of the Nine Walis as unbelief and as shirk.[4]  Shirk is the association of other beings or powers with God. It is often translated as “polytheism.” It is a very serious sin that God will not forgive. People who practice it go to hell.

I chatted for a time with a group of PKS cadres who told me that this was a very good book because it applied general “Islamic” principles in an Indonesian context. I ask them whether people who visit tombs will go to hell. They replied in the affirmative. I bought a copy of the book and other research materials including a small collection of jihadi videos, had lunch some students from one of Yogyakarta’s secular universities and listened while they explained that re-establishing the Caliphate was the solution to Indonesia’s, and the world’s, problems.[5] They also provided me with a recording of Basyir’s sermon.

With the exception of Basyir’s speech, this Muslim Fair was a very unremarkable Islamist event similar to many others I have attended in the last 18 months. There were books on childcare, business management, the TOEFL exam and large numbers of children’s books and videos. This was entirely reasonable as most in attendance were young people in their twenties and thirties, many of whom brought small children with them. For many, the fair was a “family outing.” This speaks to the extent that a distinctive sub-culture of Islamist extremism has developed in Indonesia. Because substantial numbers of children are being raised in this sub-culture, the struggle against extremism will continue for generations. It is for this reason that Islamists are strongly natalist and promote polygamy as a strategy for producing more Islamist children. Many Islamist leaders, including those of PKS practice polygamy. Most progressive Muslims oppose it. I encountered several polygamous families at the fair.

Returning home, I checked my e-mail and found messages from an NU mailing list directing me to the organization’s Indonesian language website.  Several articles spoke of the need to combat political extremism. One explained that suicide bombers are definitely not martyrs. Because suicide is a very serious sin, it is, therefore, likely that they will go to hell. This is the strongest possible Islamic critique of suicide bombings.

Another message directly confronted Islamic critiques of traditional religious practice. It described a ceremony commemorating the death of the founder of one of Indonesia’s largest Islamic schools. Nuril Huda, the chairman of the NU dakwah committee, addressed the issue of Wahhabism very politely, but very firmly. He stated, “it is very disturbing that groups with the same basis as Wahhabis” are spreading propaganda according to which religious practices such as visiting graves “are not in accordance with Islamic guidance.” He continued that if members of these groups did not understand or had questions about these rituals, that they should, “seek guidance and clarification from NU scholars and teachers.” He concluded:

We will provide them with detailed religious proofs concerning all of the rituals we perform. We are not stupid people. As far as the Holy Books are concerned, we know very much more about them than people who can only read them in translation.

Huda’s concluding remark is stronger than it might appear. Fluency in Classical Arabic is an almost universally acknowledged as being essential for those would claim religious authority. Very few Indonesian Islamists, including PKS cadres, have this knowledge. All NU scholars and leaders do. At the same time his rhetorical style is the antithesis of that of Wahhabi activists. Huda did not refer to his opponents as kafir (unbelievers) but rather suggested that they are ignorant, deluded and in need of proper religious guidance.

This style is in keeping with Javanese and other Indonesian cultural values of politeness and rhetorical moderation and with the common Islamic theological view that only God can know who is a Muslim and who is not. It is dakwah in the sense that it is a call or invitation for errant believers to return to the straight path of Islam. It was also a very charitable offer, because Islamic law holds that a Muslim who calls a Muslim a kafir, becomes a kafir him/herself. It is a very serious sin, which if not recanted, will also lead to hell.

An NU student commented on line: “Looks like war, ya?” That is exactly what it is. The struggle against political extremism is also a struggle against the religious ideologies used to support and maintain it. Islamists seek to undermine traditional religious authorities who oppose political violence by propagating a version of Islam that holds traditional Muslim devotions to be “unbelief.” NU has now made it clear that it will engage forcefully in this struggle.

This is a theological war that can only be waged by Muslims, wielding theological weapons of their own making. The out come of this struggle will, however, significantly impact political struggles contested by progressive and extremist Muslim groups and are of greater interest and importance for the global community.

* Mark Woodward is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He is Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University and Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, both in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Notes

[1] On Wahhabism see, N. DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, for a sympathetic perspective and H. Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, New York: Islamic Publication International, 2002, for a more critical view. The term Wahhabi is used in many different ways. In a strict historical sense it refers to Muslims who subscribe to the teachings of the Arabian Hanbalite jurist Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92) who sought to purge Islam of what he believed to be unlawful innovation in matters of religious practice. In contemporary Indonesia the term is used to refer to Muslims and Muslim organizations that use contemporary Saudi Arabian Islam as a model for belief and practice and condemn other forms of Islam and local cultures as unbelief.

[2] The evidence linking Wahhabi religious teachings with violent extremism is extensive and irrefutable. It is also important to keep in mind the fact that this is correlation, not causation. Some advocates of theological positions very similar to those of Wahhabis concerning religious practice are apolitical. Others are politically progressive and advocate human rights, religious and cultural pluralism, democracy and gender equality. A blanket denunciation of Wahhabi religious teachings as a cause of violence would be an irresponsible and reprehensible witch-hunt.

[3] I have included references to the consequences of human action for the after life in this paper because it is an issue of paramount importance in Indonesia and other Muslim societies. Because this issue is of such importance, an analysis that fails to consider it is necessarily incomplete.

[4] I. Muhammad Ali, Penjelasan Gamblang Seputar Hukum Ziarah Wali Songo, Bekasi Barat: Pustaka Al-Ummat, 2007.

[5] Students at Islamic universities are much less inclined towards extremist political or religious views because they have much more sophisticated understanding of Islamic texts and teachings.

Related posts:

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2. Blatant Colonialism in the Malay Muslim “Deep South” of Thailand by Mark Woodward and Mariani Yahya* Thai-Buddhist colonialism? That is...
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On 17 July 17 2009, Indonesia and the world were shocked by another round of terrorist attacks. Two powerful bombs exploded in the J.W. Marriott and Ritz- Carlton hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia. Another was found and defused in a hotel room the bombers had rented. I am currently visiting Indonesia and have observed initial reactions by ordinary Indonesians as well as by various religious/political organizations.  Two different kinds of responses by the organizations are telling.

Since 2003 the Indonesian police and security forces have captured or killed numerous terrorist leaders and operatives, particularly those associated with the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) organization. Three men convicted of planning and carrying out the 2002 Bali Bombings were executed on 8 November 2008. The executions were covered extensively by the Indonesian press and television news. Islamist groups protested the executions and declared that the bombers died as martyrs. Mainstream Muslim organizations rejected this claim, but many feared that the executions would lead to revenge attacks and reinvigorate violent extremist organizations. 

Revenge attacks did not immediately materialize. This led many to believe that the threat of further violence had dissipated. Others were less optimistic and suggested that JI could not be silenced so easily.  They said members would bide their time and strike again when and where they chose. It is possible that the pessimists were correct.

Indonesian and foreign terrorism experts immediately suspected JI and especially Malaysian Noordin Top, one the few known JI leaders who remains at large. The facts that these were suicide attacks and that the explosives were nearly identical to those in the Bali bombings lends support to this position.

The Marriott Hotel was the target of a previous JI attack on 5 August 2003.  It is an obvious choice of targets, as is the Ritz-Carlton. These are very high profile American hotels frequented by foreign diplomats and business executives. The US embassy often uses them for meetings and public events.

How bombs or bomb making materials could have been smuggled into these hotels is unclear because they normally have very tight security. All vehicles are inspected before they can approach the entrance. Guests and visitors must pass through metal detectors and bags are checked for explosives residue. This suggests that the bombings may have benefitted from inside collaboration, like the attacks in Mumbai, India last year. It is also not clear why high profile people continue to stay in such obvious targets. There are numerous other five star hotels in Jakarta that are not “symbols of the US.”

There has been considerable speculation in the press and among people I have spoken with over the past three days about exactly what the motive for the attacks might be. Some see it simply as a part of the ongoing jihad waged by people referred to as “excessive fanatics,” “followers of Sayid Qtub” (i.e. like al Qaeda and JI) or of the Indonesian Islamist Abu Bakr Basyir, who has been implicated in previous attacks. Others described it as an attempt to discredit recently re-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), or to “destroy” the economy, particularly the important tourist industry. Still others saw it as attempt to keep the enormously popular Manchester United football (soccer) club from playing a match in Jakarta (the team was scheduled to stay in the Marriott, but the match was cancelled). Many expressed concern that the attacks would promote negative images of both Indonesia and Islam. None of the people I spoke with expressed any support for the bombings.

Muslim organizations have reacted in ways that reflect their more general religious and political orientations. These range from the strongest possible Islamic condemnations of the attacks by mainstream organizations to strategically ambiguous statements by Islamist groups.

Mainstream Organization Responses

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), a religiously conservative but politically progressive organization, and Muhammadiyah, a modernist movement with religiously fundamentalist leanings, are Indonesia’s two largest Muslim organizations. Both have played leading roles in the democratic transition of the past decade and resolutely oppose violence. Despite very considerable religious differences, the two organizations are united in their concern about the spread of radical Islamism in Indonesia. In a joint statement that aired on Indonesian TV One the two organizations declared that the attacks were “evil” and that terrorism is incompatible with Islamic and other religious values but that counter-terrorist efforts by security forces are in keeping with religious values. They also urged the public not to pay attention to conspiracy theories.

In a separate statement, NU’s leader Hasyim Muzadi explained that, “terrorism is not religion, so it is not the case that the Muslim community can be held responsible for these acts.” This statement requires some unpacking. Muzadi does not deny that the people responsible for the bombings claim to be Muslims. He is stating that those who commit such acts are not included in the community of people who submit to God’s will, which is the theological meaning of the phrase “Muslim Community.”

This is the strongest possible criticism of the bombers, because it suggests that they are not Muslims, but rather hypocrites (munafiq) who merely claim to be Muslims. Almost all schools of Muslim thought teach that munafiq will burn in the fires of hell. Rhoma Irama, a Muslim “pop star” closely associated with NU, made a similar statement: “Terrorism is not a religious problem. It is a political problem. So it is wrong to mix religion and politics.” He was also strongly critical of the view that the suicide bombers died as martyrs, which is likely to emerge among some radical Islamist groups.

Agus Handoko, one of the leaders of the NU community in Pakistan, which consists primarily of university students, described the attacks as “inhuman” and called on the Indonesian government to bring those responsible to justice. He stated that doing so is in keeping with the core NU values of moderation, tolerance, harmony and justice. He added that pursuing terrorists can be understood in terms of the Quranic legal principle of “Commanding the Good and Forbidding the Evil.”

Din Syamsuddin of Muhammadiyah spoke in similar terms. He called on the government to apprehend not only those directly involved but also the “intellectual actors” behind them. This reflects the widely held view in Indonesia that those who carry out these acts are figures of minor importance and that the Islamist ideologues who preach intolerance and hatred of those who do not share their religious views are ultimately responsible. He denied that there is a connection between Islam and terror, and stated that such acts “only sicken the Muslim Community.” He stated that Muhammadiyah opposes all forms of terror and that neither religion nor politics justifies such acts, concluding that “terror is terror and evil is evil.”

Islamist Organization Responses

The responses of Indonesian Islamist organizations were strikingly different. All but Jihadi web sites avoided using the word “terror.” There were no press reports or statements supporting or even justifying the bombings. Several Islamist organizations did, however, suggest that unnamed sinister elements were involved. Most avoided making religiously based condemnations of the bombings.

The most significant of these organizations is Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS, the Justice and Prosperity Party), which was the subject of an earlier post in this blog. PKS can be best understood as the Indonesian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its organizational base is located in the urban middle class, especially students in engineering and other technical fields at secular universities. P

KS publicly portrays itself as being tolerant, clean (non-corrupt), caring and professional. It is exceptionally well funded and receives considerable financial assistance from wealthy foundations and individuals in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. As a political party it has not been particularly successful, despite massive media campaigns it has sponsored.

PKS is also a social movement. It attempts to infiltrate and take over mosques, schools, clinics and other social service agencies run by other Muslim organizations, especially NU and Muhammadiyah. Its cadre structure now reaches into middle schools. Cadres are subjected to intense indoctrination during which they are taught to hate other religions and that “their Islam is the true Islam and that other Muslims are non-believers.”

PKS leaders were circumspect in their comments on the bombings. An official statement strongly condemned them and stated that they would have a negative impact on Indonesia’s image abroad and on investors. PKS president Tifatul Sembiring condemned the bombings but did not mention the possible involvement of Islamist groups except in indirect terms.  He suggested–again indirectly–that there might be other culprits. He urged that people refrain implicating “certain individuals or groups” until an investigation was completed.

Other PKS communication echoed this theme. This article on the PKS web page is entitled “Don’t Play Around with Blame for the Bomb.” Soepripto, another PKS leader, urged that the bombings be viewed from a “comprehensive perspective.” PKS parliamentary leader Muhfudz Siddiq stated that the purpose of the bombing was to undermine the credibility of the recent presidential election and that the case had to be resolved before the inauguration scheduled for October. If not, the people’s belief in the government would be shaken.

None of these statements has any religious content. This might be considered strange coming from an explicitly Islamic organization, but it can be understood in the context of PKS’s attempts to discredit or coopt SBY. Despite polling less than eight percent in the May parliamentary elections, PKS demanded that it receive the Ministries of Religion and Education from SBY in return for continuing to support his government. This would have given them the ability to implement the Islamist agenda that the voters had overwhelmingly rejected. It would also have enormously reduced the influence of Muhammadiyah, which generally controls the Ministry of Education,  and of NU, which generally controls the Ministry of Religion. SBY was not interested, nor were the other presidential candidates. The probable result is that PKS will not be represented in the next governing coalition in a significant way. It would appear that PKS is attempting to use the bombings to destabilize the newly elected secularist government while placating some of its more extremist supporters by failing to mention the probability of involvement by Islamist groups.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Liberation Party) is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood founded in Jerusalem in 1953. Its primary goal is the re-establishment of the caliphate which it sees as the only solution to all of the problems facing the Muslim world. It does not advocate violence but is virulently anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and anti-Western. It is also opposed to the governments of all Muslim countries. The party operates openly in Europe, North America and Australia but is outlawed almost everywhere in the Muslim world except Indonesia. Like PKS its primary support comes from students in secular universities. It rejects democracy as un-Islamic and does not participate in elections.

Most Indonesian Islamists consider Hizb ut-Tahrir to be utopian and naive. Party spokesmen denounced the Jakarta bombings stating that Islam does not allow the destruction of private property or public facilities and killing people except for just cause. They also stated that people seeking to destroy the security of the country and society and to discredit Islam carried out the bombings. They warned authorities against holding Islamic groups responsible.  Hasyim Muzadi’s statement that the Muslim community is not responsible for these acts of terrorism could be easily associated with suggestions by radical Islamists that “certain groups” were actually responsible. To differentiate between the two it is necessary for analysts to understand not only Islam, but local, culturally specific modes of discourse. Given the cultural diversity of the Muslim World, this is not an easy task.

Forum Ummat Islam (FUI, the Islamic Community Forum) is one of the most extreme Islamist groups operating legally Indonesia. It frequently references ”conspiracies of Crusaders and Jews” and publicly preaches the message of hate that PKS mentions only in private. FUI General Secretary Muhammad al-Khaththath condemned the bombings but stated that the Indonesian Muslim community could not have been involved because it lacks the financial resources to build the bombs or rent the hotel rooms used by the bombers. He suggested that the attacks were carried out by the intelligence organizations of “certain countries.” In Indonesian Islamist rhetoric the phrase “certain countries” almost always refers to some combination of the US, Israel and Australia. The absurdity of these claims is obvious to almost all Indonesians.

Even Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front) denounced the bombings and stated that some young people might “follow the bombers like sheep,” which could lead to civil war. FPI is a radical Islamist group that has often engaged in acts of domestic terrorism which they refer to as “sweepings.” These target hotels, nightclubs, bars and religious organizations that hold views they do not agree with and that are frequented by foreigners.

Implications

Three implications can be drawn from the Jakarta bombings and the discourse surrounding them. Two are obvious, and the third is more complex.

1. If JI proves to have been responsible for the attacks, Indonesia’s anti-terrorist efforts have not been as successful as some observers have assumed. There are at least three reasons for this. One is that JI and other terrorist organizations strike when and where they are able. Their agenda is long-term. Many fully expect that it will take generations to achieve results. Another is that they have hidden resources, people who have a commitment to a violent agenda who have escaped the attention of authorities and who for the time being live peacefully and wait until the “time is right.” And a third is that organizations that are not involved in violent action promulgate teachings of hatred and bigotry that contribute to and are used to justify violence. There is little that law enforcement can do to stop the social reproduction of this ideology. That can only be accomplished by progressive, mainstream Muslim organizations like NU and Muhammadiyah.
2. It does not make sense to place oneself at risk by staying at or conducting business in buildings that are high profile, symbolic targets. The sad fact is that sooner or later they are probably going to be hit. I am often in Jakarta and would not dream of staying at one of these hotels (even if I could afford it). My Indonesian friends think I’m being smart. In this case, they are right.
3. The more complex conclusion is that it is not whether but how groups criticize attacks like these that is important. It is, after all, highly unlikely that anyone would publicly support them. The differences between the strategic communication of mainstream Muslim organizations including NU and Muhammadiyah and those of (perfectly legal) Islamist groups such as PKS, Hizbut Tahrir, FUI and FPI are striking. Muhammadiyah and NU have taken very strong religious positions against these attacks and against terrorism in general, to the point of implying that the people involved will burn in hell. Criticisms by Islamist groups, on the other hand, are not nearly so strong. They often use the concept of an “objective” investigation to deflect attention from the almost certain involvement of groups that consider themselves to be fighting the long jihad. The distinctions between these two kinds of critique are subtle and depend on cultural context, but they are nonetheless crucial to draw.

UPDATE  7/24/09 6:30 MST

Indonesian authorities recently announced that a man known only as “Ibrahim” (many Indonesians have only one name), who worked as a florist in a basement room of the Ritz Carlton, is suspected to have been an accompice in planning and carrying out the bombings. He vanished shortly before the blasts and has not been seen since. An increasing body of evidence points to the conclusion that Noordin Top and JI associates with links to Malaysia and Singapore were involved. If correct, this indicates that years of seemingly sucessful counter-terrorism efforts have not diminished the ability of the trans-national JI network to plan and carry out increasingly complex attacks. The network is clearly more resiliant and sustainable than many analysts believed.  In statements in print editions of the Jawa Pos and The Jakarta Post, PKS continues to urge Indonesian authorities to be cautious and warning against blaming a “certain religious group” without sufficient proof.

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The Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) Summit took place last week in New York City.  The event was announced during a press conference on November 24 by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman and Jared Cohen of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff.

During the conference, Glassman described the summit this way:

a conference is being held in New York City at the Columbia University Law School that will bring together 17 organizations around the world that currently have an online presence similar to the Million Voices Against the FARC Movement, but usually at a much lower level – 17 of these organizations, bringing them together with private sector partners, including Facebook, Google, MTV, AT&T, Howcast, Access 360 Media – and I may be forgetting some, and Jared will remind me. Columbia University is also – the Columbia University Law School is also a partner. And the idea is put all these people together, share best practices, produce a manual that will be accessible online and in print to any group that wants to build a youth empowerment organization to push back against violence and oppression around the world.

The summit took place, the participants conferred, they partied at the MTV studios, and produced the manual as promised.

The conference accomplished the goals laid out by Glassman.  It provided direct contact between a number of strikingly disparate people and groups (with respect to geography, culture, and targets of resistance) that almost certainly would never have met under any other circumstances.  It is also a signature example of Glassman’s vision for public diplomacy, involving ideals, cultural exchange, and new technology, leading to movements of diversion from dangerous ideologies.

But since this was a “2.0″ event, we should also evaluate it from a buzz and viral marketing point of view.  Judging by the extent of the pre-summit publicity, I have to assume this was an informal goal of the event too.  On this score it was not so successful.  Attendance at the actual conference was limited to a few hundred people (mainly, I am told, because of fire code limitations at the scheduled venues).  So the organizers actively encouraged participation by people not attending the summit.

Participation opportunities included watching  live feeds of the events provided by Howcast and using discussion threads on their web site.  One estimate–which must have been part of a press release given its appearance in multiple sources– said “millions of viewers” were expected to visit Howcast for the event.

I can find little evidence of participation at anywhere near this rate.  Howcast hasn’t released any numbers on the event, but the Alexa traffic history report for their site shows only a small blip-up in page views on December 3rd, going back to pre-summit levels on December 4 (I have been holding this post for several days waiting for the December 5 data to come in, but Alexa seems stuck; I will post an update when data becomes available the data has now become available and is posted in the update below).

Oddly, there were no videos available of the presentations immediately after they occurred, and this probably contributed to low viewership.  I wanted to watch a few of the presentations but had work responsibilities at the time, so I could not tune in live.  The Howcast site is promising availability of videos next week, but long delays like this kill any buzz that might have been generated by the event.

There is also little evidence that people participated in asynchronous discussions on the Howcast site.  When I checked over the weekend, 14 discussion threads were available.  They averaged only 35 views and two replies per thread.  So remote participants did not join the dialog either. So remote participants did not make much use of the asynchronous discussion forums (see update below).

I looked at blog buzz resulting from the event, using a Google blog search on the phrase “Alliance of Youth Movements.”  I found 93 matching entries and classified these as announcements of the summit or its events, coverage of what actually went on there, or other (mostly sidebar links to “recent posts”). Granted it could take more time for Google’s crawlers to find all the relevant posts, but it searches the most buzz-worthy blogs frequently, so this is probably a representative set.

Half of the items were dated December 2 or earlier, automatically putting them into the announcements category.  But even after the conference started few posts could be categoried as coverage.  As a result, the blogs overwhelmingly talked about the occurrence of the event rather than what went on there (see pie chart).

Of the coverage posts, there were two themes apparent.  One was about an Egyptian activist who challenged the sincerity of the United States, citing a say-do gap between the ideals of the summit and our support of the Mubarak regime.  The other theme was a tangent about the Obama campaign’s shortage of smart phones.  This story popped up during the summit and is the only thing from it that appears to have gotten any traction in the MSM.

Confirming the blog pattern, a Twitter search turned up only about 35 tweets about the AYM summit.  This small new media footprint is not too surprising.  Given the limited number of attendees, few of the people who would be inclined to blog or tweet about it were there.  The use of a live-only feed made time shifting of the event impossible for the rest of us.

The AYM summit was a conceptual win and it also appears to have been a very valuable event for promoting relationships.  Some of those who attended described it as a remarkable event and spoke highly of the contact it afforded.  But this means that its impact will be long term, and will probably manifest itself only in the social networks of a few hundred participants.  The summit is unlikely to set off a meta-movement because it did not generate buzz.  As with all things “2.0,” buzz is everything.

UPDATE  2:00 pm MST

I got a note from Tessa Barrera at Howcast who corrected me on the statement that “remote participants did not join the dialog either.”  She pointed out that there was live chat during the events and many people were participating via those.  My bad.  I have edited the post to say people did not make much use of the asynchronous discussion forums.

Tessa said the summit was an amazing success from the point of view of the participants, something I tried to emphasize in my post.  She also relayed some further information on this point:

What may not have been translated on the screen were the personal connections and the inspiring stories that each of the delegates had.  I personally have never been so inspired to see two Sri Lankans from rival factions sitting together over lunch, an Iraqi man chatting with a man from Colombia about how he can better galvanize his online presence to help his cause or even members of the press corps reduced to tears at the stories of people’s own stories.  The participants were so moved by the summit that they are planning a global march on January 17th against violent extremism.  Marches have already gotten support in Mumbai, London, Sri Lanka, Baghdad, Beirut and New York.

This is great to hear, and I hope the planned march is a big success.

To be clear, the point of my post was not to call the summit a failure, and I don’t think I did that.  It was merely to point out that it did not generate much social media buzz, which seemed to be one of its implicit goals.  I stand by that analysis until I see numbers to convince me otherwise.

UPDATE December 12

I promised an update when the additional Alexa traffic data was available, so here it is.  Alexa doesn’t break out subdomains, so this data is for all of howcast.com.  They express the traffic numbers as a percent of all the page views they log, but unfortunately they don’t provide that number (that I can find) so I can’t convert these percentages back into raw numbers.

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In two recent briefings, one for the MSM and one for bloggers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman spoke approvingly of an incident that took place in Colombia earlier this year.  It involved Facebook and a march against Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), a Bolivarian revolutionary guerrilla organization.  FARC is classified as a terrorist group by the government of Colombia, the United States, and the European Union because of the large number of kidnappings the group has committed over more than a decade.

In early January of this year, a 33 year old Colombian engineer named Oscar Morales expressed his indignation (and that of many other Colombians) against the FARC by launching a Facebook group called Un Millón de Voces Contra las FARC (UMVCF, “One Million Voices Against the FARC”).  It contained the declaration

Firmly and unanimously we want to express to the whole world that the FARC does not represent any of us, nor our interests, nor our people. We also want to express that we strongly condemn all their terrorist actions that, for more than 40 years, have been producing death and pain, while stopping the progress of the country we want for our families and children. For the previously listed reasons we want the whole world to know: We DON’T want more kidnappings. We DON’T want more death. We DON’T want more terrorism. We DON’T want more FARC.

The Facebook group, and its companion web site colombiasoyyo.org (I am Colombia), underwent exponential growth.  Within four days the group had 20,000 members, and by late January it swelled to almost one-quarter million members.

UMVCF became the basis for an anti-FARC protest march on February 4th that was one of the biggest civil events in Colombian history.  On the day of the protest, February 4th, an estimated 4.8 million people turned out across Colombia.  Numerous other protests were held simultaneously in 44 other countries around the world.

Press accounts tend to credit the Facebook group itself with causing the march.  For example, the Christian Science Monitor’s story carried the headline “Facebook used to target Colombia’s FARC with global rally.”  Glassman also seems to regard Facebook as a primary cause of the marches.  In his press briefing, the Under Secretary said

I recently came back from Colombia, and in Colombia, a small group of young Colombians, without government assistance, used Facebook to build a movement that put 12 million people around the world into the streets on February 4th, including 1 million in Bogota alone, in demonstrations against the FARC, a violent extremist group that has terrorized that country for more than 40 years.

Accordingly, he is launching efforts to “speed the use of the same techniques — again employed by foreign citizens, not governments — to build movements against violence.”

While there can be no doubt that Facebook played an important role in the events, it is a mistake to assume that it was the root cause of the movement.  What most press accounts of the march leave out is that the UMVCF group formed in the wake of an event in late December of 2007 that sources in Colombia describe as being similar in impact to the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.  Here is the rest of the story.

In the third week of December 2007 the FARC announced plans to release three high-profile hostages to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was acting as an intermediary with the Colombian government.  They included Consuelo González, a former senator, and Clara Rojas, a campaign manager for former Colombian presidential candidate and FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt.  In 2006 it was learned that Rojas had given birth in captivity to a son named Emmanuel, and he was also to be released.

The hand-over was to take place on December 31st in an area of Colombia near the Venezuelan border.  Chávez and numerous international observers waited to receive the hostages.  But at the last minute, the FARC canceled the release, citing military operations and a lack of security in the neutral area.

An infuriated President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia flew to the area and gave a televised address to the Colombian people in which he accused the FARC of duplicity. Uribe revealed that his Attorney General’s office was investigating the case of a foster child in the care of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute who they believed to be Emmanuel.  Four days later the Attorney General announced that a first round of DNA tests showed a “very high probability” that the boy was Rojas’s son.

Ordinary Colombians were off work for the holidays, and watched the address and other televised developments by the millions.  It soon became apparent to everyone that the release was canceled not because of security concerns, but because  the FARC had promised to release a hostage they did not hold.  The result was that public sentiment turned overwhelmingly against the group.  It is notable that UMVCF was launched on the same day that the Attorney General announced the results of the DNA tests identifying Emmanuel.

While Facebook played an important role in the development of the protest march, it can be better described as a catalyst than a cause.  Public resentment was building against the FARC, especially over 2007.  “Emmanuel-gate,” as it came to be called — plus its fortuitous timing when Colombians were home to follow events in the media — pushed things to a tipping point.  It was in this environment that something as seemingly innocuous as an online group could lead to a protest involving millions.

Under Secretary Glassman and other commetators like Marc Lynch have correctly pointed out that Web 2.0 technologies may offer important asymmetries (in our favor, for a change) in the effort to resist terrorist groups.  But at the same time, the full story of the anti-FARC marches in Colombia shows the danger of technological determinism in these efforts.

Had the conditions not been exacrly right, UMVCF probably would have become one more drop in an ocean of online groups.  Likewise, merely giving Facebook (or other social networking technologies) to people in other terrorism hotspots will probably do little until the right social conditions develop for them to have an imact.  Facebook, by itself, is not enough to cause social movements that can defeat terrorism.

UPDATE 11/18

Here is a post by Matt about a conference the State Department is sponsoring to catalyze similar uses of Facebook.

UPDATE 11/25

I have it on good authority that Under Secretary Glassman does not think of Facebook as a primary cause of the Colombia protests.  I suppose this illustrates the hazards of divining someone’s beliefs from press statements.  In any case, I’m glad to hear this is the case.

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In wars that are as much about ideas as they are about anything else, it is convenient to have enemies that are clearly defined, easily demonized and clearly distinguishable from real or imagined allies. When none are apparent we all too often imagine them. Referring to our opponents in the “Global War on Terror” as “Muslim” or “Islamic” terrorists is counterproductive because no matter the intent, these terms suggest that Muslims are terrorists and that Islam is a religion of violence.

This wins us no friends in the Muslim world and indeed lends support to view that the “War on Terror” is actually a war on Islam and the global Muslim community. One need spend no more than a few days in any of the world’s Muslim majority countries, or those with substantial Muslim minorities, including the United States, to realize this. For those who do not speak local Muslim languages, a conversation with a cab driver in broken English will suffice.

Now we have seemingly turned to the term Salafi, or more properly Salafiyah, to define our “enemies” and are debating distinctions between “good” ones, who should be encouraged, and “bad” ones who we must continue to oppose by any means necessary. There is an aphorism attributed to Einstein (also often cited by members of Alcoholics Anonymous) according to which “insanity is doing the same old thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  This is exactly what Scheuer, Wiktorowicz and other participants in this discourse have done.

Salafi is a highly contested term in Sunni Muslim religious discourse. Wiktorowicz’s statement that:

All Salafis share a puritanical approach to the religion intended to eschew religious innovation by strictly replicating the model of the Prophet Muhammad

is simply wrong. It is worse than wrong. It conflates the most liberal with the most radical Muslim groups. The term Salafi refers to those who practice what they believe to be the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and his close companions. The term “companions” can refer to either those Muslims who actually knew the Prophet or to as many as four generations of their descendants. Muslim extremists have attempted to appropriate the term Salafi in much the same way that American Evangelical extremists have appropriated the term Christian. It would seem that they have been more successful in the West than in the Muslim World.

Almost all Sunni Muslims use the term to refer to their own understandings of Islamic faith and practice. Shiah generally do not use it because their understanding of Islam is based on the assumption that, in addition to the Prophet Muhammad, a series of divinely guided Imams were religious authorities. The term has been, and currently is, used by groups including Western oriented educational reformers, Sufi mystics and Wahhabis, who actually are puritanical and exclusivist. To describe “Salafis” as puritanical is to mirror the theological views of the most radical among them. It has much the same effect as denouncing “Islam” or “The Muslims.” It plays into the hands of extremists.

By far the largest Salafi movement, with over forty million members and many more supporters, is the Indonesian Nahdlatul Ulama (Renaissance of the Muslim Scholars). Its understanding and practice of Islam includes Sufi theology and devotionalism and the veneration of saints (practices that those Scheuer and Wiktorowicz call Salafis denounce as “unbelief”). Politically this group strongly supports pluralism, freedom of religion, democracy and human rights. There are similar Salafi groups throughout the Muslim world. Lumping them with Al-Qaeda and Wahhabis is like saying that Jim Jones and the Pope are both just “Bible-believing Christians.” It is the worst possible guide for public policy.

Scheuer makes an absurd statement when he says:

Thus the graduates of the Salafi school, who have embarked on violence have added nothing to this ideology; they simply have applied it. They have been honest in using it and faithful to their belief.

There is no “Salafi school” either in the sense of an educational institution or unified, coherent body of thought (for a similar argument see here). To suggest that those who oppose violence are somehow less than “honest” and “faithful” Muslims is at once nonsense and the worst sort of Islamapohobia. It suggests that “honest” and “faithful” Islam is violent Islam. There is no basis in mainstream Islamic theology or Muslim history for this position.

Analytically the term Salafi is meaningless. Most Sunni Muslims think of themselves as Salafis, to use the term in reference to “violent puritanical radicals” is to incur the contempt, if not the wrath, of hundreds of millions of Muslims, the vast majority of whom understand and practice Islam as a religion of peace. Similarly not all “jihadis” are Wahhabi style puritans. Many fight, not for a theologically defined religious cause, but for no other reason than that they consider armed opposition to the occupation of “Muslim territory”–Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine–by non-Muslims to be a just war and a religious obligation.

There is a unique religious ideology that binds Al-Qaeda and associated groups together. It can not be reduced to one word sound bites. It includes two basic components: defining those with whom they do not agree as kafir (unbelievers) and the Kharajite notion that there is a religious obligation to fight and kill them.

Like Wahhabis, Al-Qaeda and associates denounce most aspects of Muslim popular piety as “unbelief.” The practice of denouncing one’s religious opponents as unbelievers is takfir, and those who employ this rhetorical tactic are known as Takfiris. One example will suffice to illustrate this point. Many, perhaps most, Muslims believe that the veneration of the tombs of saints is a pious act and in keeping with the practice of the Prophet Muhammad. The Saudi elite and other Wahhabis think of it as polytheism and unbelief. For them words are not enough. They have destroyed — or desecrated as other Muslims would have it — the holy tombs of Arabia, including those of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. This is one of the many reasons why most Sunni and Shiah Muslims detest Wahhabis.  This is Al-Qaeda’s greatest ideological weakness. The Saudis and other Wahhabis do not wish to exploit it because they share this religious orientation and actively promote it throughout the Muslim world.

Most Takfiris do not resort to violence. Some seek to isolate themselves from a “sinful world,” others propagate their understanding of Islam through peaceful means. Non Muslims have no reason to either oppose or promote these efforts. For the U.S. or other governments to do either would be bad public policy because it would leave them open to charges of arrogance for daring to make Muslim theological judgments and meddling in the internal affairs of Muslim communities. It would be rank hypocrisy for governments that pride themselves for promoting religious tolerance and for maintaining walls of separation between church/mosque and state to make overtly theological pronouncements.

Kharajites are Takfiris who believe that they alone are capable of distinguishing Islam from unbelief and that they have an obligation to kill unbelievers. Their view is that anyone who has committed a serious sin is a kafir and deserves death. This orientation is almost as old as Islam and is generally understood as heresy. Historically Kharajites have condemned as unbelievers almost all Muslim leaders, including the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali, who is beloved by all other Muslims. The Kharajites killed him, a crime for which the Muslim community has never forgiven them. They are a tiny, but dangerous, minority of the world’s Muslims.

The Saudi royal family and other Muslim elites fear Kharajites, and with good reason. Many Muslim scholars, Wahhabi and non-Wahhabi alike, have used this term to describe Usama bin-Laden and his supporters. This judgment is entirely reasonable because Al-Qaeda and associates denounce Muslim rulers as kafir and kill them whenever possible. The Saudis would like to believe, and would like others to believe, that Kharajite thinking is on the decline. This is wishful thinking. Public recantations by a handful of jailed and most likely tortured terrorists count for very little. Torture works. When it is severe and prolonged enough victims will say almost anything that perpetrators want them to. It makes for bad intelligence but good propaganda.  On this point I agree with Scheuer.

There is little that Western governments can do the influence the war of ideas that rages in the Muslim World. It would be the height of absurdity to think that Muslim governments could influence the war of ideas raging within the Anglican Communion concerning homosexual bishops. It is equally absurd to entertain the notion that US public diplomacy can shape the direction of Muslim discourse.

Muslim scholars are well equipped to fight this war of ideas and are doing so in their own ways and in their own languages.  In a recent (2007) Indonesian book titled Al-Quran Ktab Toleransi, Inklusivisme dan Multikulturalisme, (The Qur’an: A Holy Book of Tolerance, Inclusivism and Multi-Culturalism) Zuhairi Misrawi describes his work as an attempt to:

safeguard the Qur’an from the type politicization that was carried out by the Kharajites in the past. Today religion and politics are intertwined in exceptional ways. Safeguarding the Qur’an from extremist ideologies is an essential effort so that it can convey its message of tolerance, harmony and peace.

Misrawi’s scholarship is simultaneously meticulous and accessible (for those who read Indonesian). He draws on a vast array of classical Muslim sources to develop theological arguments counter to those of contemporary Takfiris and Kharajites. He writes regularly for daily papers and popular magazines and appears of radio and television talk shows. His efforts, and those of many other Muslim scholars like him, are not merely academic exercises. They are dakwah (missionary outreach efforts) that seek to counter those of extremists.

Misrawi and other Muslim scholars committed to this view do not need, or necessarily want, our “help.”  Indeed we have little, if any, help to offer. What we can do is to stop taking the quasi-theological pronouncements of self appointed pundits so seriously.  A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. That is exactly what these pundits would seem to have.  Acting on their advice would be self defeating because it could lead us to condemn our friends as potentially threatening “Salafis.”

It has been almost seven years since the wake up call of 9/11. Knowing your enemy is essential for the successful conclusion of almost any conflict, but so it knowing your friends. As far as Salafis are concerned, it is time that we stop fooling ourselves and to pay closer attention to friendly voices speaking from within the Muslim world.

________________________

*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. He has been studying political Islam for more than thirty years.

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A few weeks ago I wrote about an appearance by Michael Scheuer on a radio talk show.  The theme was the possible disintegration of al Qaeda based on recent denouncements and recantations by prominent  ideologues.  He was going against the grain, arguing that the reformed extremists were making their statements from prisons, and nobody in the Muslim world would take them seriously.

Today, Scheuer published a downright iconoclastic essay over at Jamestown.  In it he expands on his argument, more or less claiming that the illusion that we’re winning is part of an Arab PSYOP campaign:

The recantations making a splash in the Western media are part of a bigger project conducted by several Arab states—led by Saudi Arabia—to make the United States and its allies believe Islamism’s strength is ebbing. Their campaign is made easier, of course, because the West desperately wants to believe such claims.

Talking about the extremist “re-education programs” we’ve heard so much about lately, he continues

This program of what the West might call “tough love” is being hailed by Riyadh, Cairo, and Sana as a success, these claims meshing with the West’s faith in reforming flawed human beings by therapy.  There are suspicions that re-educated graduates are released on condition they go to Iraq or Afghanistan to fight infidels…

It’s an interesting essay filled with pretty good questions.  The one thing I question is whether Scheuer elides important differences within the Salafi movement.  For example, he says:

Thus the graduates of the Salafi school, who have embarked on violence have added nothing to this ideology; they simply have applied it. They have been honest in using it and faithful to their belief.

I am no Salafi ideology expert, but I have read some papers by academic cum CIA analyst Quintan Wiktorowicz, who is.  In an article in a 2006 issue of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism he notes that

 All Salafis share a puritanical approach to the religion intended to eschew religious innovation by strictly replicating the model of the Prophet Muhammad.

But, he says, the community of Salafists is split into three factions.  There are the purists who reject violence and politics and are concerned with propagation, purification, and education.  The politicos focus on social justice and the exclusive right of God to legislate.  It is only the jihadis who advocate change through violent revolution.

 All three factions share a common creed but offer different explanations of the contemporary world and its concomitant problems and thus propose different solutions. The splits are about contextual analysis, not belief.

Accordingly the problem is not Salafi beliefs per se, but how they are contextualized and used to justify particular courses of political action.  Paradoxically, he says, the best bet for U.S. strategy is to “influence these interpretations of context to empower the purists.”

On the face of it, this would seem to be what the Arab re-education programs are trying to do, yet Scheuer seems to treat all Salafists the same and view their religious ideology per se as the root of the problem.

I don’t know who is right, but there is a clear difference of perspective between the two analysts.  I would like to see Scheuer address directly the question of whether Salafism is a monolithic movement.  Better yet, it would be great to hear a discussion/debate  between these two experts.

UPDATE

Late yesterday Jeffrey Imm at the CT Blog posted an extensive argument, not too unlike Scheuer’s, that media reports of the demise of the extremists are exaggerated.  He concludes his post with the statement (in boldface) “this is our fight for America.”  Hmm.  I thought it was an analysis of the veracity of media reports that the extremists are on the ropes, but this suggests it is rhetoric to advance some political agenda.

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