The Darul Islam Charismatic Group and Its Violent “Mutations”

Abstract

This chapter argues that Islamist violence in Indonesia arises from the basic and irreducible perception on the part of some Muslims that their Group Tent has long been under threat of severe marginalization and even extinction. Such perceived existential threat has generated a defensive, fundamentalist response, and certain groups have reacted by seeking to establish a dominant in-group status against them: be they religious out-groups and/or secular thaghut (evil) State forces. Against this backdrop, the chapter lays bare the origins and dynamics of violent Islamist terrorism in Indonesia. It examines the processes by which various networks of cognitively radicalized Muslim fundamentalists populating the so-called Darul Islam Charismatic Group in Indonesia have turned into violent cognitive extremists. To recall our earlier discussion, while fundamentalists are cognitive radicals, violent fundamentalists are cognitive extremists. The Darul Islam Charismatic Group (DICG), the chapter shows, is best viewed as a human superorganism arising from the wider Darul Islam Counterculture (DICC) explored previously. The DICG superorganism moreover functions much like a complex, self-organizing adaptive system and has over the decades spawned various violent sympathy groups and medial networks. The latter entities, despite certain tactical, personality, and other differences, have nevertheless been unified by one underlying characteristic: a highly tuned Manichean Mindset and an embattled religiosity, expressed via an overarching violent ideological frame. This ideological frame comprises a common master narrative within which specific stories transform and evolve, but the overall narrative structure remains resilient.

[When] Wak Geng later took part in the bank robbery, he did not do so as MMI, JAT, JI or KMI; all that mattered was that his commander was Taufik.

– International Crisis Group