Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy, and the Quest for Identity in Post––New Order Indonesia (review)

The first time that I met Umar Jafaar Thalib, the first thing that I noticed about him was that he had delicate manicured hands, an eerie juxtaposition to all the bloodshed for which he was responsible. Yet reading through Noorhaidi Hasan's Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy, and the Quest for Identity in Post–New Order Indonesia — the first book-length study that charts the decline and fall of one of the most visible symbols of post-Soeharto Islamic militancy — one gets little sense of the sheer brutality or scope of violence that plagued Indonesia's Outer Islands from 1999 to 2002. Much of the violence gets glossed over and many parts of the book are frustrating because very little attention is given to such critical points. But the book, which was based on 18 months of fieldwork and 125 interviews of members of Laskar Jihad, remains a wealth of information.

The book in many ways is much more of an intellectual history of the Salafi movement within Indonesia, and in particular, Jafaar's quest to become the movement's paramount leader. Chapter 4, for example, simply explains the Salafi ideology as it took root in Indonesia. The book begins with an analysis of the rapid emergence of Salafi mosques, madrassa, and halqa' ("study circles"). It ties in local politics with the expansion of Saudi Arabian geopolitics and explains the emergence of what he considers a "new type" of Salafi students, in particular, those who went through Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Bahasa Arab (LIPIA). Under the constraints of the New Order regime, the nascent Salafi movement in Indonesia was forced to focus on what it considers to be its core mission: da'wah, and eschewing politics and militancy. Hasan's argument is that the Salafi movement, perhaps more than any other movement in Indonesia, was highly influenced by exogenous factors: the Afghan war, Gulf charity funding, and the first Gulf war. As Soeharto's legitimacy waned in the 1990s with economic slowdowns and rampant corruption, he turned to the Islamists for support — a move that gave the Salafi movement more space. Yet the Salafi movement remained woefully disparate throughout the 1990s. Hasan explains both the doctrinal schisms and personality contests that kept the Salafis divided (pp. 54–58). To that end, Jafaar turned to the Saudi Arabian Hai'at Kibar al-Ulama (the Committee of Senior Ulama) led by Bin Baz to issue fatwas justifying Thalib's actions, and hence his authority — a tactic Thalib would use again in the coming years to crush his rivals in the Salafi movement (pp. 58–61).

Following a rift within the global Salafi movement over the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia in 1991, Thalib began publishing Salafy in 1996, which became his ideological mouthpiece. Hasan argues: "There is little doubt that the monthly Salafy quickly reinforced Thalib's image as a leading Salafi authority in Indonesia" (p. 85). Salafy was followed by a network of pasentren, Ihyaus Sunnah Network, though which Thalib fell out of favour and was ousted.

The move from quietest activities into political activism, always a wedge within the Salafi community between the strict Salafis and the Ikhwanists and Surusist, is charted in Chapter 3. As Hasan notes: "The dramatic shift of the Salafi movement towards political activism and militancy was inseparable from the political ambitions of the movement's leaders who saw that the rapid changes in the Indonesian political landscape would facilitate the orchestration of popular politics and the staging of collective actions" (p. 93). While some of the opening came from the rise of Islamist political leaders following the fall of Soeharto in May 1998, Hasan contends that it was the outbreak of sectarian conflicts that gave the Salafis not just the political opening, but a religious obligation to act — both a personal obligation (fard ayn) and a collective obligation (fard kifaya). Thalib with other Salafis...