ABSTRACT
In relation to present-day, post-authoritarian Indonesia, two major issues have been a source of disquiet in so far as the imperatives of American Empire in Asia are concerned. First is the ‘discovery’ of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia (see International Crisis Group 2002; Barton 2004) soon after the World Trade Center attacks. JI and other assorted groupings of ‘Islamic radicals’, which are most certainly quite diverse in terms of origins and orientations, soon came to be almost uniformly seen as linked to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda (Williams 2003; Abuza 2003). In the Indonesian case, prominent analysts have pointed out the likelihood that JI individuals have direct or indirect affiliations with ‘legitimate’ Islamic organizations such as mass organizations or foundations, and even political parties (Jones 2004: 25).
