Islamic militants' publications thriving in Indonesia

Indonesia needs to keep closer tabs on a flourishing publishing network linked to the militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, which reflects a debate on tactics among Islamic extremists, an International Crisis Group report said Friday.

It said the profitable book business had been growing at a time when Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional network blamed for a string of deadly attacks in Indonesia including the 2002 Bali bombings, had been weakened and appeared to be rebuilding.The increase in publications, which indicate a debate within Jemaah Islamiyah over the desirability of using Qaeda tactics, could be a sign that the organization was trying to rebuild by focusing on religious outreach and recruitment, the report said."These publishers are disseminating a radical message, but they also may be playing a positive role by channeling JI energies into jihad through the printed word rather than through acts of violence," said Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, a prominent Jakarta-based authority on Jemaah Islamiyah.The report said that banning publications, which are often Arabic translations and include titles like "Join the caravan of martyrs" or "Becoming an infidel without knowing it" would be counterproductive, but there was a need for more scrutiny.As well as being a possible recruiting tool, the report said the publishing web based around the central Java town of Solo illustrated the social network holding Jemaah Islamiyah together and helped explain the ability of Jemaah Islamiyah to rebound from setbacks.

Alert for terror suspect Interpol said Friday it had issued a worldwide security alert following the escape of a man from a jail in Singapore who is suspected of being an Islamic terror leader, The Associated Press reported from Singapore.The international police organization said it put out an "Orange Notice" on Mas Selamat Kastari, suspected of being a commander of the Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah's Singapore arm. Kastari, 47, who is accused of once plotting to hijack a plane and crash it into Singapore's international airport, escaped from a detention center Wednesday.

Comments

Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens

Billionaires Among Thousands of Indonesians Found in Secret Offshore Documents By Nicky Hager April 9, 2013, 8:15 pm Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens, holding ownership of more than 190 offshore trusts and companies, secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show. The nine families, worth an estimated $36 billion among them, are at the top of a wealthy class that dominates Indonesia’s politics and economy. Six were closely tied to the late dictator Suharto, who helped a special circle of Indonesians grow rich during his 31-year rule by granting economic fiefdoms to family and friends. The billionaires are among nearly 2,500 Indonesians found in the files of Singapore-headquart ered offshore services provider Portcullis TrustNet, which ICIJ has been analyzing and began reporting on last week. Although there is no evidence in the files of illegality by any of the ni...

Debate Islam in Indonesia

http://www.thejakar taglobe.com/ opinion/interloc utors-of- indonesian- islam/560447 Interlocutors of Indonesian Islam Ahmad Najib Burhani | December 08, 2012 A few months ago, the Japanese anthropologist Mitsuo Nakamura told me that studying Nahdlatul Ulama as an organization was beyond the imagination of any American scholar from the 1950s to the ’70s. But he is not the only academic to have noticed this. George McT. Kahin of Cornell University stated the same thing. Even NU-expert Martin van Bruinessen was not expecting to study NU as his primary focus when he came to Indonesia for the first time in the 1980s. During the early decades of Indonesian independence, NU was relatively unorganized and its management was largely based on the authority of religious teachers ( kyai ). Of course there were a number of scholars who studied NU-affiliated religious schools ( pesantren ) and its kyai, but not NU as an organization. Even though NU was one of the ...

is that true in Indonesia there freedom of religion?

The problems began shortly after Tajul Muluk, a Shiite cleric, opened a boarding school in 2004. The school, in a predominantly Sunni Muslim part of East Java, raised local tensions, and in 2006 it was attacked by thousands of villagers. When a mob set fire to the school and several homes last December, many Shiites saw it as just the latest episode in a simmering sectarian conflict — one that they say has been ignored by the police and exploited by Islamists purporting to preserve the purity of the Muslim faith. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has long been considered a place where different religious and ethnic groups can live in harmony and where Islam can work with democracy. But that perception has been repeatedly brought into question lately. In East Java, Sunni leaders are pushing the provincial government to adopt a regulation limiting the spread of Shiite Islam. It would prevent the country’s two major Shiite organizations from ...

INDONESIA A NEWS

Search This Blog