Submit your comments on this article | ||
Southeast Asia | ||
JI splinter group ’carried out attacks’ | ||
2003-09-28 | ||
Several Jemaah Islamiah members detained by Indonesian police said an extremist splinter faction of the group is responsible for conducting terror attacks in the country. Malaysian Nasir Abbas said yesterday during a broadcast by El Shinta radio station that JI has broken up into at least three distinct parts. ’The third group is extremely radical. I suspect that this radical group is behind the terror and bombings in many places,’ said the detainee who claimed to be the chief of JI overseeing the Malaysian state of Sabah, Indonesia’s Kalimantan and Sulawesi and the southern Philippines. If that is true, then Hambali, the operations commander of JI, must be part of the ’radicals’. Perhaps spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir angered them because he saw the chance of pursuing a Sharia state through political means, like the Indonesian Mujahideen Council he set up that included Indonesian Islamist parties.
That would explain why there have been comparatively few attacks, considering JI is supposed to have a membership in the low thousands. The other two factions included one that sticks to JI’s original goal of establishing Islamic states in the region through peaceful means, and a more hardline group that supports attacks but wants selective targeting of victims. Analysts including Ms Sidney Jones, the International Crisis Group’s project director in Jakarta, have suggested that the JI has shown internal rifts. Several JI cadres may feel attacks such as the one at the Marriott kill Indonesians and Muslims, not foreigners. Traditionalists also fear that this kind of extreme militancy may hamper the process of spreading Islamic teachings into the larger society. In the past 5 years or so they have made enormous progress in introducing radical Wahhabi/Salafi ideas into the mainstream, I could see why many wouldn’t want to jepordise that with a few car bombs.
| ||
Posted by:Paul Moloney |