Jemaah Islamiyah

12/12/2006

Jemaah Islamiyah, which means the "Islamic Community," was formed in Indonesia and Malaysia when two Muslim clerics, Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, desired a salafi fundamentalist Islamic organization to terrorize the region into Submission/Islam. Both men were supporters of Darul Islam, a salafi or fundamentalist movement grounded in the five earliest Islamic sources - the Qur'an, Sira, Ta'rikh, and Hadith Collections of Bukhari and Muslim. That would make Darul Islam indistinguishable from Wahhabi Islam, which is extraordinarily similar to Shia Islam. The two Muslim clerics wanted nothing less than the creation of an Islamic theocracy in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

In 1978, Sungkar and Bashir were arrested in Indonesia for subversive activities - treason. Upon their release, the men left Indonesia for Malaysia and settled in the Indonesian-expatriate community in Johor. No longer living in Indonesia, they openly preached their Qur'anic ambition of creating a unified Islamic state across all of Southeast Asia to also include Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, and Thailand in addition to Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Being a fundamentalist Islamic organization, Jemaah (or Jamaah) Islamiyah, advocated the use of terrorism to attain its political and religious goals. By the late 1990s, coterminous with the faux peace accords postured by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Jemaah Islamiyah was busy recruiting and training Muslim Jihadists throughout all of Southeast Asia for the express purpose of perpetrating acts of terrorism. Jemaah Islamiyah demonstrated the ability and willingness to inflict significant casualties on innocent civilians and those they believed to be allied with "Western or Christian interests.".

In August 2003, the Community of Islam's leader, Hambali was captured. It made no difference. Jamaah Islamiyah remains an active and significant terrorist threat in all of Southeast Asia. JI's terrorist violence, often brutal and fatal, continues to this day. After the October 2002 Bali bombings, on October 1st, 2005, Jamaah Islamiyah perpetrated a triple-suicide bombing which murdered another 20 innocent souls.

To better understand MILF, ASG, and JI, let's take a closer look and the Community of Islam's founders, Muslim clerics Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar. In 1978, both Islamic clerics were imprisoned because of terrorist acts they had committed as part of the Commando Jihad Group. Since membership in the CJG got these religious Muslims into trouble, when they were released from prison they formed the even more violent and fundamentalist Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiyah. Following a subsequent arrest, imprisonment and eventual release in Indonesia, Bashir and Sungkar started corrupting Malaysian Muslims in 1993.

Upon Sungkar's death in 1999, Bashir took over as the Community of Islam's spiritual leader. Bashir was quickly ousted from power by younger Jamaah Islamiyah members who considered him to too weak and moderate. Bashir then formed the International Mujahideen Rabitatul, or Council of Holy Islamic Warriors and eventually, the Majelis Mujahideen Indonesia in August of 2000.

Bashir was arrested for connections to a number of terrorist attacks and a failed assassination plot against Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Like so many good Muslims this Islamic cleric served many prison terms for bad behavior. He was arrested again in late 2002 shortly after the Bali bombings because of his Mujahideen Council's involvement in this attack. Released, he was jailed in August 2003, following the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, for which al-Qaeda was also implicated. In March 2005 Bashir was acquitted of involvement in the Marriott attacks but he was convicted of being part of an "evil conspiracy" (better known as Islam) in relation to the Bali bombing, and was given a 30-month term in prison. After his sentence was reduced for good behavior, Bashir was released from jail in June 2006. Keep in mind, Malaysia and Indonesia are Islamic states and in such places terrorism is good and terrorists are heroes.

Jamaah Islamiyah's political manifesto, dated May 1998, states: "The people of Southeast Asia must live under Islamic rule and Sharia Law in a pan-Islamic state," referred to as "Daulah Islamiyah." Abu Bakar Bashir told the Herald Sun: "Muslims and non-Muslims will only be free under Islamic law.".