Indonesia and
the globalization of religious terrorism
Wibawanto Nugroho |
September 9 2016 | Jakarta Post
Terrorism is a
multidimensional phenomenon, and until today the existence and
latent threat of Islamist terrorism confronts global society with
formidable challenges. As a global phenomenon, it is indeed easy to
recognize the manifestation of terrorism, but it is rather
difficult to clearly define it.
However, based on at least
109 available definitions of terrorism, the key elements are
obvious: violence; targeting of civilians and noncombatants;
intention of spreading fear; and political aims that can be mixed
with ideological and religious ones. This common denominator
reflects the utility of terror as a tool of change used throughout
human history.
As an old tactic, terrorism
has been used by governments to suppress revolution as well as by
revolutionaries seeking to overthrow governments. The terrorist,
whether in possession of or in want of governmental power, uses
terror to achieve a political, social or religious goal. Modern
terrorism is at least 200 years old and has not aged a
day.
Religious terrorism is even
older, reaching back more than 2,000 years in Hinduism (the Thugs),
Judaism (the Zealot Zicariis), Islam (the Assassins during the
Turkish Seljuk Empire), and Christianity (the Ku Klux Klan in the
US).
In the early 1980s, the
world entered the era of a modern religious terrorist movement,
which is not limited to any one state, which is bound by a
rationality incomprehensible through secular thought, and which has
religious symbolic meaning in its commitment to change the
structure of society.
Al-Qaeda and its associated
movements, including the so-called Islamic State (IS), are part of
this wave, and they have the strategic aim of establishing a global
Islamic caliphate.
Correspondingly, by
definition Islamist terrorism is a form of political violence that
is partly manifested in the form of terrorism as a criminalized
armed tactic that rejects democracy and pluralism while aiming to
produce sudden, deep socio-political economic changes and
legitimating the violent action by selective, extreme
interpretations of Islamic texts.
The religion itself is
actually not the inherent cause of violence or terrorism, since
violence might occur with or without religious context. However,
religion provides symbols that make horrific bloodshed easier to
vindicate.
Jews and Christians, as
well as Muslims, have much to answer for as fomenters of religious
terror. Nevertheless, the Islamist fanatics have a much greater
opportunity for mayhem because of the alienated hordes in the
Middle East that see no hope at all in the status quo.
The opportunity created by
despair and rage, not the intrinsic elements of the religion
itself, give Islam an edge over Christianity and Judaism as a force
for terror.
Consequently, the cure for
religious violence may ultimately lie in a renewed appreciation of
religion itself and in the acknowledgement of religion in public
life. The solution is not secularization, but a renewed/revived
understanding of religion.
As for Indonesia, this
great archipelago actually used to be a Buddhist, Hindu and
Christian nation before the arrival of Islam. The coming of Islam
to Indonesia in the 14th century was filtered by the preexisting
culture, thus making Islam in Indonesia an Indonesian version of
Islam. However, over the years the streams of transnational
Islamist movements from the Middle East began to transform the
Indonesian version of Islam into the “pure”/Middle Eastern version
of Islam.
The Middle Eastern
influence appears a profound one on Indonesian radical
fundamentalists. The dissemination of ideas from the Middle East to
Southeast Asia is actually grounded in age-old cross-regional and
global processes of the transference of ideas.
New methods of
communication (i.e. the internet and physical transportation)
further facilitate the general process of the globalization of
Islam, including the dissemination of radical fundamentalist ideas
to the Indonesian archipelago.
The fundamentalist
movements, consisting of Islamist transnational movements, have
similar characteristics, which are part of the international Sunni
pan-Islamist political movement. They are commonly associated with
a goal of unifying all Muslim countries under an Islamic caliphate
ruled by Islamic law and led by a caliph as the head of state
elected by Muslims.
Having identified such
global patterns, Indonesia should address this particular
phenomenon as no longer a tactical, temporary phenomenon, but as a
strategic, national security threat, which in turn calls for the
involvement of all instruments of national power.
Historically, Indonesia’s
national security is characterized by the fact that global
conflicts would always permeate through Indonesian society, so the
Indonesian government must be vigilant about the threat of global
violent Islamist movements permeating through Indonesian society
and exacerbating potential domestic conflicts.
All that said, to better
formulate the right counterterrorism policy, strategy, and
operations for our nation, we should engage terrorism from four
levels of analysis: individual, group, state and world.
Ending terrorism should
become the goal of any counterterrorism policy and strategy, and
this is not a simple task.
In dealing with radical
Islamist groups, the Indonesian government so far has engaged in
decapitation through eliminating group leaders, negotiation and
repression.
However, the case of the
Santoso terrorist group, which recently lost its leader in a
security operation and saw many of its members captured, suggests
that violent Islamist groups in Indonesia do not simply
self-implode when they fail to reach their ultimate goals, but
rather transition to another modus operandi, where their cells
engage in illegal criminal activities.
There is no guarantee that
they have abandoned their goal of establishing an Islamic state and
will refrain from terrorist attacks in the future.
Unity between the national
security apparatus, the government and the people is highly
relevant in protracted counterterrorism struggles, since in the
view of Islamist radicals, they are engaging in an unfinished war
to achieve their utopian goals that may be unachievable during
their lifetime, so their war becomes their heritage to future
generations.
As a nation guided by the
state ideology of Pancasila, Indonesia must be highly vigilant to
ensure this country will become neither a producer of terrorists
nor the battlefield of a global terrorist movement.