Islamist Terrorism and Militancy in Indonesia: The Power of the Manichean Mindset

274 Pages·2015·2.702 MB·English

by  Kumar Ramakrishna (auth.)

Kumar Ramakrishna
Islamist
Terrorism and
Militancy in
Indonesia
The Power of the Manichean Mindset
Islamist Terrorism and Militancy in Indonesia

Kumar Ramakrishna
Islamist Terrorism
and Militancy in Indonesia
The Power of the Manichean Mindset
Kumar Ramakrishna
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore , Singapore
ISBN 978-981-287-193-0 ISBN 978-981-287-194-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-194-7
Springer Singapore Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953840
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Acknowledgements
The current project has benefi ted a great deal from the insights of Tito Karnavian,
Noor Huda Ismail, Taufi k Andrie, Dina Afrianty, Jamhari Makruf, Al Chaidar,
Nasir Abbas, Kamarulnizam Abdullah, and Rommel Banlaoi. I would also like to
especially thank Tito for using his good offi ces to enable me to have face-to-face
discussions with both incarcerated and former Indonesian militants. I must also
declare an intellectual debt to Sidney Jones, Greg Fealy, Tony Bubalo, Bilveer
Singh, Mark Woodward and Greg Barton, whose ideas have long had a signifi cant
infl uence on my thinking about Southeast Asian militancy and terrorism. Further
afi eld, the wisdom and expertise of Bruce Hoffman, Ilan Mizrahi, Paul J. Smith,
John Alderdice, Marc Sageman, Stuart Croft, Joshua Sinai, Peter Neumann, Alex
Schmid, John Horgan, David Cook, Quintan Wiktorowicz and Andrew Silke con-
tinue to engage my attention. Jan Vasbinder, who until recently headed Nanyang
Technological University’s Complexity Studies Program, has been a most encour-
aging colleague, ever willing to reach out to colleagues beyond the hard sciences.
Within the Center of Excellence for National Security (CENS), as well as the
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) of which the Centre is a con-
stituent unit, the following colleagues past and present kindly read the manuscript
in whole or in part and offered constructive comments and criticisms: Amitav
Acharya, Muhammad Haniff Hassan, Sulastri Osman, Greg Dalziel, Yeap Su Yin,
Damien Cheong, and Khong Yuen Foong. Mark Dechesne, Rick O’Gorman and
Scott Atran offered many helpful suggestions. Eliane Coates provided copyediting
support. I would like to thank Sidney Jones and Joost Hilterman of the International
Crisis Group (ICG) for kind permission to make extensive use of material from the
ICG Asia Report 204 on I nternational Jihadism: Small Groups, Big Plans (2011) in
Chap. 6.
Initial drafts of this study were written in 2011 while I was a Visiting Scholar at
the Center for International Security Studies in the University of Sydney, where
then-Director Alan Dupont and university colleagues Vivian Puccini-Scuderi, Tom
Wilkins, Justin Hastings, and Yuan Jing-Dong were a source of great comradeship
and intellectual stimulation. In addition, Shanaka Jayasekara, Peter Anderson and
Julian Droogan at Macquarie University’s Center for Policing, Intelligence and
v
vi Acknowledgements
Counter-Terrorism proved to be great sources of wit and insight as well. At the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, Rizal Sukma and Lina
Alexandra proved to be great interlocutors. I must also extend my gratitude to RSIS
Dean Barry Desker and Chairman Eddie Teo, for their valuable support for this
project. I also acknowledge past and present CENS and RSIS colleagues, in particu-
lar Norman Vasu, Yvonne Lee, Damien Cheong, Rohan Gunaratna, Bernard Loo,
Adrian Kuah and Peter Ee, for their comradeship down the years.
I must also acknowledge my continuing appreciation to Singapore government
colleagues who have supported me throughout my tenure as CENS Head: Peter Ho,
Benny Lim, Lee Ark Boon, Kok Ping Soon, Yeong Gah Hou, Patrick Nathan and
Sean Lee. I remain thankful for the encouragement of senior academic and policy
fi gures I have long respected: Lau Teik Soon, Edwin Thumboo, K. Kesavapany,
Tony Stockwell, Sumit Ganguly, Gerard Chaliand, Ilan Mizrahi, Tan Tai Yong, Katy
Hassig, James Veitch, the late Ong Chit Chung and former Singapore President
S. R. Nathan. Special mention must go to Hanna Hunt and her late husband Paul of
Egham, Surrey in the UK for accommodating me for several weeks a few years ago
to develop some of the ideas that are now in this book. As always, my beloved wife
Rosemary and wonderful children Joshua Luke, Jonathan and Jordan Ling were
each pillars of strength throughout this process. And fi nally, I thank God, who con-
tinues to keep me steadfast in times of trial. As a “theistic evolutionist”, I remain
inspired by the apt observation of the renowned scholar of religion – and one-time
skeptic – Rodney Stark: “science is theology and thereby serves as another method
for the discovery of God”.
Contents
1 Is Ideology the “Root” of Islamist Terrorism in Indonesia? ................. 1
1.1 An Encounter with a Terrorist – and an Epiphany ............................. 1
1.2 The Overall Argument at a Glance ..................................................... 3
1.3 The Three Limitations of Extant Scholarship on Islamist
Militancy in Indonesia ........................................................................ 5
1.4 Research Note .................................................................................... 8
1.5 The Plan of the Book.......................................................................... 10
References ................................................................................................... 11
Part I The Human Nature Triad Unpacked – The Manichean Mindset,
Embattled Religiosity and Violent Fundamentalism
2 The Origins of the “Manichean Mindset” .............................................. 15
2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 16
2.2 The Great Human Nature Debate ....................................................... 17
2.3 Evolutionary Psychology and Our Ancestral Shadow ....................... 19
2.4 Darwin, Individual Selection and the Thorny
Issue of Cooperation .......................................................................... 23
2.5 The Rise of Human “Groupishness” .................................................. 27
2.6 Social Categorization, Group Selection,
and the Uncomfortable Logic of Between-Group Competition ......... 31
2.7 Binary Oppositions, the Human Need for Control
and the “Group Tent” ......................................................................... 37
2.8 The Manichean Mindset Deconstructed............................................. 43
References ................................................................................................... 48
3 The Embattled Religiosity of Religious Fundamentalism ..................... 53
3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 54
3.2 The Religiosity Instinct and the Cultural Artifact of Religion ........... 56
3.3 Religion as an Evolutionary By-Product, Part I:
The Pattern-Seeking, Storytelling, Mythmaking Individual .............. 60
vii
viii Contents
3.4 Religion as an Evolutionary By-Product, Part II:
The Hyperactive Agency Detection Device ....................................... 62
3.5 Religion as an Evolutionary Adaptation for the Group:
Beyond Kin and Direct Reciprocity ................................................... 65
3.6 Enter the Meme .................................................................................. 71
3.7 The Manichean Mindset, Religious Fundamentalism,
and the Potential for Violence ............................................................ 74
References ................................................................................................... 82
4 Six Steps Toward Violent Fundamentalism ............................................ 87
4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 88
4.2 Violent Radicalization, Extremism, or Fundamentalism:
What’s in a Name? ............................................................................. 89
4.2.1 A New Synthesis: Cognitive Radicalization
as Drastic Identity Simplifi cation ........................................... 92
4.2.2 Cognitive Radicalism and Cognitive Extremism ................... 95
4.3 A Tight Counterculture ...................................................................... 96
4.3.1 Understanding Culture ........................................................... 96
4.3.2 Culture’s Evolutionary Rationale ........................................... 98
4.3.3 “Tight” Cultures ..................................................................... 99
4.3.4 Relevant Dimensions of Culture ............................................ 100
4.3.5 Tight Countercultures ............................................................. 101
4.4 An Enabling Ideology ........................................................................ 104
4.5 The Protean Charismatic Group: Converging Perspectives ............... 105
4.5.1 The Complexity Element of the Human Nature Triad ........... 107
4.5.2 The Charismatic Group as Complex Adaptive System .......... 108
4.6 Intragroup Psychic Dynamics ............................................................ 110
4.6.1 The Power of the Situation ..................................................... 110
4.6.2 The Impulse to Conform ........................................................ 111
4.6.3 Deindividuation ...................................................................... 112
4.6.4 Obedience to Authority .......................................................... 112
4.6.5 The Dispositionist Objection.................................................. 113
4.6.6 The Echo Chamber Effect ...................................................... 116
4.6.7 Online Groups, Optimal Group Size,
and Fuzzy Boundaries ............................................................ 119
4.7 The Power of Social Humiliation ....................................................... 122
4.8 The Enabling Environment ................................................................ 125
References ................................................................................................... 127
Part II The Human Nature Triad Applied – Violent Islamist
Terrorism and Militancy in Indonesia: Origins, Evolution
and the Counter-Ideological Response

5 The “Glocalized” Origins of the Darul Islam Counterculture ............. 135
5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 136
Contents ix
5.2 Islam: A Capsule History ................................................................... 136
5.2.1 The Socioecological Milieu ................................................... 136
5.2.2 The Sufi Emergence ............................................................... 140
5.3 Islam in Southeast Asia ...................................................................... 141
5.4 The Glocalization of Southeast Asian Islam and the Emergence
of the Traditionalist-Modernist Binary Opposition ............................ 144
5.4.1 Glocalization Part I: The Traditionalists Emerge ................... 145
5.4.2 Glocalization, Part II: Three Modernist Responses ............... 149
5.5 The Emergence of Violent Islamism .................................................. 164
5.5.1 Sayyid Qutb ............................................................................ 164
5.5.2 ‘Abd al-Salam Faraj ............................................................... 165
5.5.3 Abdullah Azzam ..................................................................... 165
References .................................................................................................. 168
6 The Darul Islam Charismatic Group and Its Violent “Mutations” ..... 173
6.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 173
6.2 SM Kartosoewirjo and the Origins of the Darul Islam
Charismatic Group ............................................................................. 174
6.3 Abu Bakar Ba’asyir and the Origins of the Jemaah Islamiyah
Network .............................................................................................. 181
6.4 The Many Changing Faces of the Darul Islam
Charismatic Group ............................................................................. 188
6.5 The Turn to Violence .......................................................................... 196
6.5.1 Three Recent Mutations of the Darul Islam
Charismatic Group ................................................................. 197
References ................................................................................................... 206
7 Muting Manichean Mindsets in Indonesia:
A Counter-Ideological Response .............................................................. 211
7.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 212
7.2 Terrorism and Islamist Violence in Indonesia:
The Power of the Manichean Mindset ............................................... 216
7.3 Muting Manichean Mindsets Through
a Counter- Ideological Response ........................................................ 221
7.3.1 Ideology: Not the Root but the Center of Gravity .................. 221
7.3.2 Exploiting Ideology to “Steer” the DICG in Desired
Directions ............................................................................... 223
7.3.3 Steering the DICG via the Counter-Ideological
Response Model ..................................................................... 224
7.3.4 Sender ..................................................................................... 226
7.3.5 Message .................................................................................. 228
7.3.6 Mechanism ............................................................................. 230
7.3.7 Recipient ................................................................................ 232
7.3.8 Context ................................................................................... 243
7.4 Three Possible Futures ....................................................................... 254
7.4.1 Collapse .................................................................................. 255