23 March 2010
WP194 | Jemaah Islamiyah: Of Kin and Kind
Abstract
Convicted terrorists from Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) have attested to using the Internet in one way or another during their operations, from sending messages to one another to looking for extremist fatwas online to justify their actions. That said, one would however be hard pressed to prove the primacy of the Internet in their step up to violence. More often than not, more traditional elements remain the key to individual religious radicalization and political violence in Southeast Asia — blood relations and marriage ties. This paper revisits these kinship linkages as well as quasi-kinship ones that include teacher-disciple bonds and the wider fraternity of ikhwan-ship (brotherhood) with particular regard to JI. Keeping counterterrorism efforts in context is important or else governments could run the risk of carelessly appropriating vital resources on less immediate concerns.
Abstract
Convicted terrorists from Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) have attested to using the Internet in one way or another during their operations, from sending messages to one another to looking for extremist fatwas online to justify their actions. That said, one would however be hard pressed to prove the primacy of the Internet in their step up to violence. More often than not, more traditional elements remain the key to individual religious radicalization and political violence in Southeast Asia — blood relations and marriage ties. This paper revisits these kinship linkages as well as quasi-kinship ones that include teacher-disciple bonds and the wider fraternity of ikhwan-ship (brotherhood) with particular regard to JI. Keeping counterterrorism efforts in context is important or else governments could run the risk of carelessly appropriating vital resources on less immediate concerns.
