Photo: Jihad book collection in Jakarta Sept.21, 2009. REUTERS/Supr

A half-century ago, Washington worried about Southeast Asian nations falling like dominoes to an international communist movement backed by Maoist China, and became bogged down in the Vietnam War.

Noordin Top, believed to be the mastermind behind most of the suicide bombings in Indonesia -- including the July 17 attacks on two luxury Jakarta hotels -- pronounced himself to be al Qaeda's franchise in Southeast Asia.

Top and his allies in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) aimed to create an Islamic caliphate across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and Southern Philippines. Even before the 9/11 suicide airliner attacks, they were trying to spark an Islamic revolution with ambitious plots and attacks.

Their young foot soldiers dreamed these pro-Western nations (which had banded together to form ASEAN under the U.S. military umbrella at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967) might fall like dominoes to the righteousness of an Islamic jihad. Their martyrdom to the cause would given them a blissful reward in Heaven.

But just as Communism was not the monolith it was feared to be in the 1960s -- China and the Soviet Union had split for one thing -- so too has the Southeast Asian jihadist movement failed to cohere into a singular movement.

Vietnam, it turned out, was fighting what it believed to be a war of national liberation, and was (still is) historically suspicious of China. Al Qaeda's jihad in Southeast Asia has stumbled over similar misconceptions.

JI's former military commander, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin or "Hambali", tried to pull together various insurgencies in the region under an al Qaeda umbrella before he was captured in Thailand in 2003. He even helped sponsor an "al Qaeda summit" with bin Laden's lieutenants in Kuala Lumpur in 2000.

He failed mostly because the groups had different agendas and a fragmented leadership. The ideology that animates the movements -- Islam -- also prevents it from incorporating as well. The religion does not have hierarchies. People can have different views. The jihadist groups don't do politburos.

Reuters has taken a look at these issues -- including for investors in the region -- in a package of stories. Click on the headlines below to read more about Southeast Asia Islamic insurgencies.

Is economic terrorism a threat to SE Asia?

Have the Islamists started to go too far in Somalia?

The reaction among ordinary Somalis to an al-Shabaab car bomb attack on African Union peacemakers last week may be instructive.

The attack was billed as an act of revenge against America for a commando raid carried out a few days earlier by U.S. troops, who killed one of the most wanted al Qaeda men in Africa.

Seventeen of the peacemakers, all Africans, were killed. So too were a number of Somalis who had gone to the peacekeepers' base for medical attention. At least 19 Somalis died in shelling that followed the car bomb attack.

"Bombing Somali Muslims because of a dead foreign terrorist is totally ungodly and
inhumane," businesswoman Asha Farah told Reuters after the al Shabaab attack. "I can only say that al Shabaab are mad."

Her view reflected that of many Somalis that Reuters correspondents spoke to in the capital, Mogadishu.

Will any of this make a difference to a group that has already conducted executions and punishment amputations and which shows no sign of letting up in its fight to oust the transitional government?

That remains to be seen, but it is perhaps worth remembering that both in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, al Qaeda lost a lot of  ground when they began killing innocent Muslims during their attacks on Westerners.

There is certainly frustration among Somalis, who feel that al Shabaab is misinterpreting Islam and using religion to justify criminal acts in what is after all a traditionally moderate Muslim society.

Most Somalis are not in a position to take the initiative against al Shabaab -- but if a real international force took the fight to them in Mogadishu and elsewhere, it could find it had more support on the ground than expected.

One moment everything was quiet on the streets outside the Khartoum courtroom where Lubna Hussein was on trial this morning, charged with indecency for wearing trousers.

The next, a three-way fight had exploded between riot police armed with crackling electric batons, women's rights protesters waving banners and posters, and Islamists fuelled with righteous indignation and pious chants.

You couldn't have asked for a better illustration of the opposing forces that have come piling down on Sudan's government since the start of the case -- opposing forces that also compete for influence at the heart of the Khartoum regime.

Women's rights campaigners and other activists were the first to get involved after Sudan's public order police barged into a party in the capital in July and found Lubna and 12 other female guests wearing trousers.

The activists saw it as a test case for the hundreds of women who get picked up every year in Khartoum, and face flogging for a range of for public order offences, mostly related to dress. Punishments aside, may women also complain about the sporadic way the law is applied and the lack of a clear definition of indecent dress.

The human rights protesters had a powerful case to make to a Sudanese government that is currently keen to cosy up to the West, in the hope of getting some of Washington's crippling trade sanctions lifted. A highly publicised flogging would have been particularly bad news for Khartoum on Monday, two days ahead of an expected visit from the U.S. Sudan envoy Scott Gration.

The next group to make their presence felt at today's protests were the Islamists who infiltrated the crowd, shouting religious slogans and tearing up women's posters. They also had influence to wield. Sudan's government, which once played host to Osama bin Laden, has its roots in the Islamist movement.

The next people to pile in were the police, a group with their own strong power base in a regime built on its security services. Lubna's case in a way was a challenge to the authority of a brother force, questioning the right of the public order police to arrest at will.

So what's a judge to do with so many conflicting pressures piling up around him? No doubt he would insist his ruling today was based purely on the law. But his final judgement -- a $200 fine, way below the maximum penalty of 40 lashes -- certainly felt like a compromise.

For the Islamists, the law was upheld and a guilty verdict given.

For the campaigners, Lubna had her chance to publicise her case and got off with a relatively light sentence. For the police, order in the streets was restored As the last riot police moved off in their caged vans, and the last protesters dispersed, two southern Sudanese women stood no more than 100 yards away from the site of the demonstration, buying oranges from a pavement stall. Both wore tight blue jeans and close-fitting t-shirts. No-one batted an eyelid.

Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese woman arrested in Khartoum for wearing trousers despite the country’s Islamic decency regulations, was found guilty of indecency on Monday and ordered to pay a fine or go to jail for a month. She was spared the possibility of 40 lashes for wearing trousers at a party in July with 12 other women. Ten of the other women arrested with her have pleaded guilty and have been whipped.

Read the whole story here.

Hussein’s case was seen as a test of Sudan’s Islamic decency regulations, which many women activists say are vague and give individual police officers undue latitute to determine what is acceptable clothing for women.

After the verdict, Hussein said: “I will not pay the money, and I will go to prison.”

Scuffles erupted at a protest before the court session even began between women supporters and Islamists, who shouted religious slogans and denounced Hussein and her supporters as prostitutes and demanded a harsh punishment for Hussein.

The photo above, by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah, shows Hussein leaving the court wearing her trousers. Do these seem indecent to you?

UPDATE: Sudan’s conviction of Hussein for indecency violates international law and is emblematic of wider gender discrimination there, the United Nations human rights office says.

Following is a short video of Hussein surrounded by supporters shouting “freedom, freedom” as she enters the court:

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President Dmitry Medvedev has urged Russia’s top Muslim clerics to join forces to stop radical Islamist groups wooing young people in the turbulent North Caucasus.

(Photo: Main mosque in Grozny, capital of  Caucasus region of Chechnya, 17 May 2008/Said Tsarnayev)

“We cannot force people to give up Internet or close (Islamist) sites,” he told clerics and regional leaders at his summer residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.  “We need to think about finding a (television) channel which would offer teaching and comprehensive explanation of Islam that is traditional for our country.”

Medvedev also proposed stronger control over young people returning to Russia after studying Islam abroad. “Unfortunately these people are returning … (and) bring back unorthodox views on Islam,” he said.

“It is absolutely essential to ensure full support for the Islamic leaders, the muftiat, those who serve in the Caucasus,” he said.  “Without consolidating the authority of the Islamic leaders we will be unable to deal with the problems that exist.”

Read our reporting on this meeting here and here. For more background, see our analysis on the “Afghan-isation” of North Caucasus.

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Coming home on Sunday after a long day at work, there was still no rest. Several of my neighbours in Gaza were escaping the late evening heat of their apartments to sit outside our building chatting about the previous two days that had seen the bloodiest inter-Palestinian fighting in two years, between forces of the Islamist Hamas rulers of Gaza and gunmen of an al Qaeda-style group. It left 28 people dead.

Knowing I'ma journalist, and discovering that I had been at the scene of the clashes, down in the south of the Gaza Strip at Rafah, the neighbours started bombarding me with their questions. Most of them were confused about what exactly happened between these two groups, which both endorse Islam as a political ideology.

Some of them asked whether the clashes would have a backlash and whether they should keep a distance from Hamas police stations and even restaurants to avoid being blown up by followers of the Jund Ansar Allah (the Warriors of God), whose leader had been killed in the fighting with Hamas security forces.

Most of the neighbors did not condone the radical splinter group's support of the use of force to impose Islamic law on Gaza's community of 1.5 million people, nearly all of whom are Muslim. But some were confused over the religious implications of such clashes with Hamas, which also sees itself as a guardian of Islamic orthodoxy.

"Killing in the name of Islam?" said Mustafa, one of my neighbours, reflecting on the clash of two groups both sure of their beliefs. "But who among the dead will go to heaven and who to hell? Who was the good guy and who was the evil one?"

"Those wanted to establish an emirate," said Abu Hassan, referring to Jund Ansar Allah. "Do you know what that means? Like the Taliban in Afghanistan. That means American warships will sail to Gaza."

Others complained that Hamas itself sometimes seemed no less extreme in its religious views than these small, al Qaeda-like groups. They cited a recent campaign by Hamas's religious affairs ministry in Gaza to encourage women to wear headscarves and adhere to Islamic values. "Hamas police are stopping couples walking in streets and checking their IDs," one of the neighbours complained. "Am I supposed to carry around my marriage certificate whenever I go out with my wife?"

As a reporter, I tried to listen more than talk, and my answers to their questions were mostly similar to the various stories we wrote during the day. For an even more detailed view of the challenge to Hamas from al Qaeda-aligned Jihadists, and an insight into the details of their different brands of political Islam, I'd recommend this recent research report by Are Hovdenak of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

I am struck, though, by how this sudden, complex and bloody controversy has become the talk of ordinary Gazans, some of whom seem unsure where their sympathies, or their duty as Muslims, should lie. It seems for now an inexhaustible source of conversation.

Running to the lift as it suddenly came to life after a typical hours-long power cut, I got away from my inquisitive neighbours and gratefully went up to my floor and opened my apartment door, looking forward to a rest.

"So," asked my wife, "What really happened down in Rafah...?"

A crucial part of gunman Mohammad Ajmal Kasab’s confession at the Mumbai attack trial has been censored by the judge on the grounds that it could inflame religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India. After stunning the court on Monday by admitting guilt in the the three-day rampage that killed 166 people, Kasab gave further testimony on Tuesday that included details about his training by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group on U.S. and Indian terrorist lists.

The front-page report in today’s The Hindu, which noted the judge’s gag order in its sub-header, put it this way:

Ajmal made some crucial statements on Tuesday as part of his confession. They pertained to the purpose of the attack as indicated by the perpetrators and masterminds and the message they wanted to send to the government of India. Ajmal also wanted to convey a message to his handlers. However, this part of his confession faces a court ban on publication.

In view of the communally sensitive nature of Ajmal’s statements, judge M.L. Tahaliyani passed an order banning the publication and broadcast of Ajmal’s statement recorded on Tuesday by any media or person, except the part which pertains to the CST. Mr. Tahaliyani remarked that the trial was at “a delicate stage.”

Given the complex mix of religion and politics in India, it’s not unusual to see the media playing down the communal aspect of tension and violence. In the recent general election, the party that usually plays up these differences, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), hardly used the “religion card” in its losing campaign. But that doesn’t mean things are getting better. According to the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, the “unfortunate year of 2008 … proved to be worse than 2007.” See their two-part report on 2008 here and here.

But Kasab’s testimony could shed important light on what role religion plays in Islamist militancy. How could a young man who wanted to become a dacoit (bandit) be convinced by Islamist militants to try to become a shahid (martyr) instead? Was he actually convinced, or did he do it for other reasons?

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel burns, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

Kasab told the court on Monday that he originally approached the militants to get weapons and training and won (surprisingly easy) admission to their office by saying he wanted to wage jihad. He was taken in and given extensive training in preparation for the Mumbai attack last November. All of this is detailed in published accounts of his statement in court on Monday. In earlier statements, police say, he showed little understanding of Islam or jihad, saying the latter was “about killing and getting killed and becoming famous.”

What role did Islamist ideology play in this, and what part the confused ambitions of a poor and impressionable young man? In a publication entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad?, Lashkar-e-Taiba listed its goals as:

1) to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;

2) to ensure the ascendancy of Islam;

3) to force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);

4) to assist the weak and powerless;

5) to avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;

6) to punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;

7) to defend a Muslim state; and

8 ) to liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupation.

Did his handlers stress all this to Kasab? Did he want to do any of the above? What did his Islamist handlers say about Hindus? If they fed him a diet of anti-Hindu hatred, might it be better to publicise the details so they can be debated and discredited? Some of the most interesting contributions to such a debate could come from Indian Muslims, who live in the kind of secular democracy the LeT rejects.

(Photo: Kasab in detention, 3 Feb 2009/video grab from CNN IBN)

I’d be especially interested to hear the reaction from the famous Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, which is a traditionalist Sunni school but has urged Muslims to reject terrorism and vote in elections against extremists.

Right now may not be the best time to publish Kasab’s censored confession. But revealing it at a later date, for example after the verdict, might do more good than the harm Judge Tahaliyani fears. What do you think?

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, battling a low-level Muslim insurgency in Russia’s south, has met Muslim leaders and asked them to spread a message of tolerance to combat Islamist extremism.

Medvedev met 12 muftis, Muslim spiritual leaders, from across the country on Wednesday in the pre-revolutionary Congregational Mosque in central Moscow, said by Muslims to be one of the oldest in European Russia.

(Photo: President Medvedev (L) and Chief Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin in Moscow, 15 July 2009/RIA Novosti)

Although the Kremlin has calmed the province of Chechnya by installing a strong local leader, violence has flared in other areas of the volatile, poverty-ridden North Caucasus. Killings of police and local officials are on the rise.

“It (extremism) destabilises the situation in our country and we are obliged to take all the necessary measures to neutralise it,” Medvedev told the muftis.

“In these conditions our crucial joint task is to spread the ideas of tolerance and acceptance of other faiths.”

It was the first time that a Russian president had visited the mosque, which was built in 1904. Medvedev said 57 of Russia’s 182 different ethnic groups identified themselves with Islam.

Russia is predominantly an Orthodox Christian nation but its vast territory is also home to around 20 million Muslims, many of them concentrated in the southern republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Analysts say growing violence in these regions has highlighted the danger of the Kremlin’s policy of handing control to local elites to try to stem unrest.

“These regions have become increasingly explosive. I think there is a crying need to have at least some people at some level to take decisions, not yes-men,” said Maria Lipman, an analyst at Moscow’s Carnegie Centre think-tank.

Ravil Gaynutdin, the head Mufti of Russia, told Medvedev: “We Muslims in Russia want dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church and we thank you for helping the Muslim brotherhood by visiting Dagestan and Ingushetia”.

The Kremlin has tried to co-opt Russia’s religious leaders into a shared vision of how the country should develop and in return expects loyalty to officialdom. Russia’s Supreme Mufti Talgat Tadzhutdin told Medvedev: “There is only one nation — Russian.”

(Photo: Qol Sharif mosque in Kazan, Tatarstan, 25 August 2005/Alexander Natruskin)

In Soviet times, religion was discouraged by the state though many, including Russia’s Muslim community, practiced underground.

In recent years the number of racist attacks on dark-skinned immigrants, most of them Muslims, has increased and rights groups say this is linked to the social turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Medvedev also visited the surroundings of the Congregational Mosque, where an enormous new Muslim temple is being built with private money, to be finished in 2010.

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By Niluksi Koswanage

Gay Austrian fashionista Bruno will not be making an appearance on Malaysia's screens this summer for fear of corrupting this mostly-Muslim nation's youth.

But Malaysia's parents will still not have it easy as the country's opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim  is again on trial for sodomy in a re-run of a 14-month case that in 1998 generated endless sexually explicit headlines and questions from curious children.

Photo: Anwar enters Kuala Lumpur courtoom with wife Wan Aziza Wasn Ismail for his sodomy trial on July 15/ Reuters (Zainal Abd Halim)

I was a teenager then when the former deputy prime minister was first found guilty of
sodomy and corruption in a marathon trial that featured graphic descriptions of anal
penetration, faithfully reported in lurid detail by this country's government-owned press and on prime-time TV.

(Photo: Anwar arrives in court on July 15, Reuters/

On my way to school, I saw angry protesters take to the streets and heard parents and teachers raging about children getting exposed to gay and straight sex (Anwar was accused of having an affair with a woman as well), accompanied by the kind of graphic descriptions usually reserved for specialist magazines.
 
A columnist in the normally staid government-run New Straits Times suggested at the time that all Malaysians should study a book to be entitled "An intelligent parent's guide to sodomy and other painful issues," based on the explicit testimony of Anwar's former driver who said he had been assaulted by Anwar and his adopted brother. Needless to say, he lost his column.
   
These were pre-YouTube days where sexual images were only available on illicit video recordings  and imported magazines. At the time, it was impossible to ignore the headlines as pro-government newspapers sought to tarnish Anwar's image.

One of the many ironies of the case was that Anwar, a pious Muslim, had been an education minister who had fervently opposed sex education in schools on moral grounds.  And blushing teachers often skipped or skimmed over the reproductive system in classes.

But with the trial, a generation of school kids were confronted with a court parade of x-rated items from a semen-stained mattress, medical reports on anal tearing to pubic hair samples.

Malay-language newspapers had to invent new words to decribe sex acts and body parts as Arabic loan words were inadequate to explain everything. Slang Bahasa Malaysia words like "pondan", a derogatory word for homosexual entered the formal lexicon via the courts and media.

The uncovering of Anwar's alleged sexual crimes in court and in the media was seen by many as a demonisation of a popular Malay politician in a leadership struggle during the Asian financial crisis that rocked Malaysia.

Despite the press palaver, there was no real crackdown on homosexuals during the trial, apart from the Muslim morality police occasionally raiding private gay parties in hotels. They still do that but you can more likely be arrested by the religious police for being in "khalwat" or "close proximity" to a person of the opposite sex.  

What 1998 did bring was protest. For the first time in a country that has now been ruled by the same political party for 51 years, many university students and young professionals took part in daily demonstrations numbering in the tens of thousands.

It also gave birth to Malaysia's political alternative media that have grown into the main source of news in a country where the printed press is heavily controlled. Websites like Malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) got their first breath of life. A widely read Reformasi (reform) diary (a precursor to the blog), which detailed the movement started by Anwar, made its rounds in cyberspace and Malaysian gay websites saw their best business in years with chatrooms like GayMalaysia and SayangAbang (darling brother) filled with inquisitive onlookers. 
  
If there were long lines to get into the courthouse to witness the downfall of one of the country's best-known political figures, there were also long queues of straight patrons trying to get a feel of the drum and bass-thumping gay clubs like Liquid Room and the Blue Boy in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.

The clubs, like Anwar, are still around today.
   
One young gay reporter even told Time Magazine his sex life had sizzled in 1998 as many people wanted to experiment, inspired by the trial.
   
Will the trial shock as much this time round or are Malaysians just too exposed to sex through MTV, YouTube and MySpace and numerous blogs?

More than 10 years on and two prime ministers later, Malaysia's conservatism appears to have grown deeper. Its rising political force is an Islamist party, one of Anwar's staunchest allies.

Will the new trial and publicity damage Anwar or the government? Finally released from imprisonment in 2004 and after a bar on holding office ended, the 61-year old was catapulted back into parliament in 2008 by-election with a huge majority, so it seems not.

(Photo: Sufi at festival in southern Algeria, 24 March 2008/Zohra Bensemra)

FaithWorld recently ran a post about Pakistan considering playing the “Sufi card” in its campaign against Islamist militants. The idea is that promoting this mystical and tolerant school of Islam could counteract the influence of more radical readings of the faith. It looks like they’re not the only ones considering this:

After using police raids, arrests and gun battles in its fight against Islamist insurgents, Algeria is now deploying a new, more subtle weapon: a branch of Islam associated with contemplation, not combat.

The government of this North African oil and gas producer is promoting Sufism, an Islamic movement that it sees as a gentler alternative to the ultra-conservative Salafism espoused by many of the militants behind Algeria’s insurgency.

The authorities have created a television and radio station to promote Sufism and the “zaouias” or religious confraternities that preach and practise it, in addition to regular appearances by Sufi sheikhs on other stations. All are tightly controlled by the state.

Read the whole feature here.

Neighbouring Morocco is taking a different approach, opting to reinforce the authority of state-appointed imams in the hope this will cut off support for jihadism.

What do you think? Do state-supported campaigns to promote certain types of Islam are an effective way to counter militancy?

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