The jihadist belief in mati syahid, espousing victory through death, presents an uncomfortable and troubling contest for would-be adversaries. Facing an enemy swelling in number, unflinching in their ideological cause and unperturbed by even the direst of terrorist acts, nations have reacted forcefully to threats at home and abroad. However, confronted with a vanishing battlefield, where opponents have instead become surreptitious targets, there is little to suggest that victory is at hand, despite intermittent successes. As Sally Neighbour laments in In the Shadow of Swords, ‘And none of these separate defeats will quench the deadly conviction of those who wage terror in the name of Islam, or extinguish the dark and powerful ideas that nourish that conviction.’
Neighbour, a veteran reporter and foreign correspondent with the ABC, frequently returns to this affirmation—‘in the name of Islam’—in tracking the fanatical rise of the Jemmah Islamiyah (JI) movement throughout the Indonesian archipelago and beyond. For many of JI’s acolytes, it is religious teaching through madrasses and halaqahs, which dictate belief systems and the notion of a pure Islamic state. For others, particularly the more senior religious zealots, it is the corruption of Islamic culture by Western imperialists which fortifies their radical convictions. Though their anger is tapped from a range of sources, their brand of jihad is declared and delivered through the trinity of ‘faith, brotherhood and military strength’.
Through scrupulous research and use of intelligence sources, Neighbour presents a detailed criminal map, beginning and ending with the invidious cleric Abu Bakar Bashir. Descended from a large merchant family, Bashir grew up during the Sukarno era, a period marked by strong nationalistic fervour following the fall of Dutch sovereignty. Latching on to a new doctrine seeking to modernise the Islamic faith and strengthen the fundamental truths of the Koran against dangerous Western ideals, Bashir soon became a prominent figure in the Islamic youth movement. Newly acquainted with Abdullah Sungkar, a like-minded revivalist, the pair began to spread this new teaching through the establishment of ‘Jemmah Islamiyah’, or ‘Islamic Communities’. Under the Suharto regime, which had already brutally suppressed the Communist Party, Bashir and Sungkar were imprisoned on a charge of subversion, following their repeated denunciations of the ruling power and apparent plans to wage war against the government and remaining ‘unbelievers’. After serving a three-year prison term, during which time Amnesty International labelled them ‘prisoners of conscience’, the now celebrated leaders fled to the