Andrée Feillard and Remy Madinier undertake the task of ‘reconstitut[ing] the genealogy of the different networks of Indonesian radical Islam so as to understand its functioning and describe its ideology’. And they pledge to do so without falling into the trap of ‘simplistic analogies with their fellow believers in the Middle East’, stressing instead Indonesia's ‘unique’ religious history and peculiar political developments (p. 2). They bring to the fore a much needed contribution to a literature which — with few exceptions — has otherwise found the roots of this phenomenon in foreign agents.
The brief introduction fixes the boundaries of this enterprise, in time and approach. The authors set as their starting point 1967, which, marking Muhammad Natsir's founding of Dewan Da'wah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII) as well as the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, establishes the premises for their argument that radicalism developed as the result of both domestic and international dynamics. ‘Radicalism’ is defined as the ‘attempt to return to the roots’, which here surfaces in the rejection — ‘by a militant minority’ — of the Pancasila. This rejection then becomes an expedient ‘response to a chaotic and complex world’, embodying the ‘temptation’ of finding an easy answer and the ‘temptation’ of using religion for socio-political ends (p. 3).
The book would have benefited from a note to the English translation guiding the reader through the additions, as the French edition was published in 2006, but one sees substantial reliance on material printed between 2007 and 2010. The book draws substantially on Indonesian primary sources and French literature which would otherwise go undetected by an international readership, yet one cannot but help noticing the absence of references to Ed Aspinall's landmark publication Islam and Nation and Roel Meijer's volume on Global Salafism.
Charting the development of radical Islam in Indonesia over the past half-century is an ambitious task. Chapter 1 starts with the Islamisation of Sumatra and reaches to Suharto's foundation of Ikatan Cendiakawan Muslimiyah se-Indonesia (ICMI) in 1990. Despite the chronological breadth, the pages flow smoothly, providing the needed foundation (even though the numerous cross-references might force the uninitiated reader to often flick back the pages).
Chapter 2 tackles the dense years between 1996 and 2004; providing the historical background to the Army's ‘dual function’, Feillard and Madinier unfold the difficult relations between political and military elites, delving into the fall of Suharto, the Islamists' support for Habibi, and the rise of Wahid, Megawati and Yudhoyono, respectively. The authors follow this thread of power struggles until today, postponing discussion of the chaos that hit the provinces to the following chapter.
The wave of violence that swept the Moluccas becomes the expedient to explain the nexus between local and external dynamics in the radicalisation of militant Islam (both spiritual and armed). The authors see the ‘inward-looking’ dakwah movement of the 1960s–1970s (including the rebirth of Darul Islam [DI] networks, ‘extremist’ religious schools, and usrah circles) being transformed into a cluster of armed groups (e.g. Front Pembela Islam and Jemaah Islamiyah) as a result of the DI legacy as well as jihadist international networks. Within this frame, then, if regional demographics had caused the initial shift from socio-economic conflict to ethnoreligious confrontation, it was the influence of mujahidin returning from Afghanistan that further polarised local communities to the point of no return.
Chapter 4 moves on to the ‘ideology of radical Islam’, which, however, seems oversimplified. The recent Islamist trend of ‘historical revisionism’ is reduced to an ensemble of conspiracy theories, and the rhetoric of betrayal becomes the core of Salafi calls for a return to the origins (‘trying to erase almost 14 centuries of social evolution’, p. 210), or the implementation of Islamic laws and rejection of ‘Western-style democracy’ (p. 219). The authors could have taken this opportunity to reflect on revisionist attempts to rehabilitate the memory of former Islamic rebels, or accord more credit to alternative understandings of Islamic governance, instead of dismissing Masyumi's pledge to Islamic democracy as ‘a position of compromise’ (p. 219).
Chapter 5 addresses a key feature of the religion–politics nexus: the constant tension between calls for a stronger Islamic identity and the refusal of ‘project-based Islam’ (p. 223): a tension enshrined in the failure of religious parties advocating for a systematic shariatisation, and the increase instead of local-level religious legislation. This discussion feeds into a broader analysis of the evolution of Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, their internal struggles, and the external challenge posed by Majelis Ulama Indonesia and Jaringan Islam Liberal as well-defined conservative and progressive organisations.
The concise conclusion neatly recounts the argument, tying all the loose ends together and providing a long-awaited red thread: Feillard and Madinier show how Islamic identity mutated into religious politics in the anticolonial movement, how Masyumi failed to bring Islam to the political forum in the 1950s, and a ‘section of the old Muslim elite’ found refuge in dakwah since the 1960s; how the memory of DI rebellions (1949–65) was used by the army to regain political control through people's fear of further disorders, and the cooptation of rebels (1960s–1970s); and how within a decade this reincarnation of DI cut its ties to the Indonesian Intelligence Agency (BAKIN) and developed as an independent group fomented by international networks as well as the ‘sacrifice’ of ethnic and religious minorities in the archipelago.
The authors draw two paths for the formation of ‘Salafists–Jihadists’ and ‘pure Salafists’ (non-violent). The former ‘hope to create through bombings the “salvation cataclysm” that would herald a new dawn’ and aim ‘to take advantage of the opening up of the political field’, whilst the latter ‘follow[ed] in the footsteps of Darul Islam […] seek[ing] refuge outside of their own era by running modest fundamentalist phalansteries that imitate Islam of the early times’ (p. 271). One flaw, however, is the failure to clarify how Kartosuwiryo's DI re-emerged as the matrix of both radicals who ‘do not shy away from joining politics […] call[ing] for Islamic law and violent criticism of parliamentary democracy’ (p. 211) and those ‘whose endeavours are essentially devoid of any political project’ (pp. 271–2).
This book offers insightful analysis and richness of data on a topic of utmost importance, as its authors craft a compelling argument chasing Islamic radicalism through the intricacies of Indonesia's relation to political, and politicised, religion and its relation to international networks.
