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RSM’s Ideology
RSM’s jihadist ideology is largely influenced by Ahmet Santos’ infatuation with
Wahabbism, which also explains the group’s affinity for al-Qa’ida’s ideology. As
is the case with ASG, it is possible to gain a view into RSM’s beliefs by examining
literature captured from the group. Based on documents seized in 2005, it seems
that two works are particularly relevant to RSM’s ideology: Shaykh Abdullah
Azzam’s Defense of the Muslim Lands, and The Virtues of Shuhadah in the Path of
Allah, believed to be by the same author. The first document uses a question-andanswer
approach to rationalizing jihad. The first part discusses the Great March
of Islam in the contemporary period, a period in which “the woman leaves
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without the husband’s permission and the son without his father’s permission.”
According to Azzam, the Great March is required in this period for the following
purposes: 1) expanding the Islamic territory for the millions of Muslims; 2)
saving the Umma; and 3) preventing the open areas of the world from becoming
territories of the communists, Baptists, nationalists, and secularists. 35 The first
JI’s long-term political objective is to create an Islamic state (Daulah Islamiyh Nusantara) composed
of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Mindanao (and incorporating Singapore and Brunei). The core of JI is
based in Indonesia, where it emerged around the “Ngruki school network” in Solo, Central Java.
In 1985, Sungkar and Ba’syir fled to Malaysia and this marked the beginning of an extraordinary
degree of organizing and networking building of what in 2002 would be called JI. JI experienced
further expansion in Malaysia when Hambali and Jibril recruited Indonesian migrants and
university lecturers and students at the University Tecknologi Malaysia. In August 2000, JI
members, in cooperation with the MILF, tried to kill the Philippine ambassador to Indonesia in a
car bomb attack in Jakarta. The Philippine cell was formed through Al-Ghozi who did liaison
work with the MILF in the mid-1990s. In 2003, however, Al-Ghozi was killed in Central
Mindanao by government forces after he escaped from a police detention center in Manila. His
death and the ongoing MILF-Philippine government peace negotiations marked the decoupling
of the MILF from JI as the former took a number of dramatic steps to distance itself further way
from transnational terrorist organizations in an effort to forge a long-term and a comprehensive
peace agreement with the Philippine government with the support of moderate Muslim countries
and the West. See John Sidel, “Cracking Down in Indonesia,” Jakarta Post (23 October 2002), 1,
http://www.worldpress.org/article_model.cfm?article_model.cfm?id=938&dont=yes ; John
Gershman, “Is Southeast Asia the Second Front?” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 4 (July/August 2002), 66;
International Crisis Group Asia Briefing, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia: The Case of the “Nguki
Network” in Indonesia (Jakarta/Brussels, 8 August 2002), 9; Paul A. Rodell, “Separatist Insurgency
in the Southern Philippines,” in A Handbook of Terrorism and Insurgency in Southeast Asia, ed.
Andrew T. H. Tan (Cheltenham, UK; MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publications, 2007), 225-47.
34
Shaykh Abdulah Azzam, Defence of Muslim Land, monograph version captured from the March
2005 Philippine National Police Operation against RSM in Quezon City, the Philippines, ch. 4.
35
Ibid.
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