LookSmart's FindArticles – Australian Journal of Anthropology, The: Islamic radicalism online: the Moluccan mission of the Laskar Jihad in cyberspace

Throught Gary Bunt’s blog I found this article: LookSmart’s FindArticles – Australian Journal of Anthropology, The: Islamic radicalism online: the Moluccan mission of the Laskar Jihad in cyberspace

Birgit Brauchler

Since the investigations of the September 11, 2001 event, it has become increasingly obvious that terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism–interconnected or not–cannot be separated any more from cyberspace. (1) Radical Muslims as well as terrorists worldwide use the Internet to build up effective communication networks and to spread information and propaganda. Since the Bali bombing in October 2002, much effort has been put into the investigation of Islamism in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. (2) The Laskar Jihad is one of the Islamist groups that have emerged in Indonesia recently. The Internet provided its members with the means to spread news and images of the Moluccan conflict in which they were actively involved, to project the image of an idealised Islamic identity and to express their attitude towards the September 11 attack and the group thought obviously responsible for it. This shows how the Internet has become an important instrument for the information politics of radical Muslim groups. Therefore, this is not a paper about the Laskar Jihad per se but is, rather, focused on its self-presentation in cyberspace, i.e. the social space constituted by the Internet.