An in-depth study of the militant Islamic Laskar Jihad movement and its links to international Muslim networks and ideological debates. This analysis is grounded in extensive research and interviews with Salafi leaders and activists who supported jihad throughout the Moluccas.

This book critically analyses the specific threat of terrorism in Southeast Asia since the Bali blasts of 12 October 2002 and the US-led war on Iraq. It offers a comprehensive and critical examination of the ideological, socioeconomic and political motivations, trans-regional linkages, and media representations of the terrorist threat in the region, assesses the efficacy of the regional counter-terror response and suggests a more balanced and nuanced approach to combating the terror threat in Southeast Asia. The contributors include leading scholars of political Islam in the region, renowned terrorism and regional security analysts, as well as highly regarded regional journalists and commentators. This represents a formidable and unequalled combination of expertise.

This book is with a contemporary focus. Author, Dr. Max Gross’s purpose is to use history to explain today’s Islamic insurgencies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines and to offer perspectives for the future. Muslim Archipalego’s unique contribution is that it brings together in one reference a mass of information on the insurgencies in Southeast Asia. The country accounts are detailed and thorough as to events, organizations, dates, and participants. The chronological context provides Dr. Gross the opportunity to give insights about historical casualty. His accounting highlights the interaction of the insurgencies within Southeast Asia and their international connection outside the region. The detailed presentations in the chapters on Indonesia and Philippines are especially fruitful. Included in this nearly 280 page book are detailed four-color regional maps, charts, and historical photos spread throughout the text. An extensive bibliography and index are included.

The twentieth century was a fascinating period of profound political, social and economic changes in Indonesia. These changes contributed to the diversification of the religious landscape and as a result, religious authority was redistributed over an increasing number of actors. Although many Muslims in Indonesia continued to regard the ulama, the traditional religious scholars, as the principle source of religious guidance, religious authority has become more diffused and differentiated over time. The present book consists of contributions which all deal with the multi-facetted and multidimensional topic of religious authority and aim to complement each other. Most papers deal with Indonesia, but two dealing with other countries have been included in order to add a comparative dimension. Amongst the topics dealt with are the different and changing roles of the ulama, the rise and role of Muslim organizations, developments within Islamic education, like the madrasa, and the spread of Salafi ideas in contemporary Indonesia.

Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia examines the conditions facilitating democracy, women’s rights, and inclusive citizenship in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. The book shows that Muslim understandings of Islamic traditions and ethics have coevolved with the understanding and practice of democracy and citizen belonging. Following thirty-two years of authoritarian rule, in 1998 this sprawling Southeast Asian country returned to electoral democracy. The achievement brought with it, however, an upsurge in both the numbers and assertiveness of Islamist militias, as well as a sharp increase in violence against religious minorities. The resulting mobilizations have pitted the Muslim supporters of an Indonesian variety of inclusive citizenship against populist proponents of Islamist majoritarianism. Seen from this historical example, the book demonstrates that Muslim actors come to know and practice Islam in a manner not determined in an unchanging way by scriptural commands but in coevolution with broader currents in politics, society, and citizen belonging. By exploring these questions in both an Indonesian and comparative context, this book offers important lessons on the challenge of democracy and inclusive citizenship in the Muslim-majority world. Well-written and informative, this book will be suitable for adoption in university courses on Islam, Southeast Asian Politics, Indonesian and Asian studies, as well as courses dealing with religion, democracy, and citizen belonging in multicultural societies around the world. The book will be of interest to the general reader with an interest in Islam, citizenship, and democracy.

In October 2002 a bomb blast in a Balinese nightclub killed more than two hundred people, many of them young Australian tourists. This event and subsequent attacks on foreign targets in Bali and Jakarta in 2003, 2004, and 2005 brought Indonesia into the global media spotlight as a site of Islamist terrorist violence. Yet the complexities of political and religious struggles in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, remain little known and poorly understood in the West. In Riots, Pogroms, Jihad, John T. Sidel situates these terrorist bombings and other "jihadist" activities in Indonesia against the backdrop of earlier episodes of religious violence in the country, including religious riots in provincial towns and cities in 1995-1997, the May 1998 riots in Jakarta, and interreligious pogroms in 1999-2001. Sidel's close account of these episodes of religious violence in Indonesia draws on a wide range of documentary, ethnographic, and journalistic materials. Sidel chronicles these episodes of violence and explains the overall pattern of change in religious violence over a ten-year period in terms of the broader discursive, political, and sociological contexts in which they unfolded. Successive shifts in the incidence of violence-its forms, locations, targets, perpetrators, mobilizational processes, and outcomes-correspond, Sidel suggests, to related shifts in the very structures of religious authority and identity in Indonesia during this period. He interprets the most recent "jihadist" violence as a reflection of the post-1998 decline of Islam as a banner for unifying and mobilizing Muslims in Indonesian politics and society. Sidel concludes this book by reflecting on the broader implications of the pattern observed in Indonesia both for understanding Islamic terrorism in particular and for analyzing religious violence in all its varieties.