Abstracts & Bio Notes - Asian Studies Association of Australia

state’s formal consent.This paper demonstrates that Indonesia intervenes in employment
matters that involve its citizens overseas through mundane consular services, such as the
issuance of new passports. Using the example of Indonesian embassies in Malaysia and
Singapore, it examines the political and technical processes that enable one country to enforce
a minimum wage for citizens in the territory of another, arguing that such extraterritorial
interventions have become an increasingly frequent feature of the infrastructure for
governance of temporary labour migration in Asia.
Bionote: Wayne Palmer is a PhD student in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the
University of Sydney. His research is focused on how government officials manage illegality in
Indonesia’s state migration program. Wayne published a book chapter in 'Labour Migration
and Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives' (2012) on the role of discretion
in the handling of human trafficking cases by Indonesian embassies. His most recent
publication, in Political Geography (2013), examines extraterritorial interventions made by the
Indonesian consulate in Hong Kong through public-private partnerships with migrant labour
employment companies. (wayne.palmer@sydney.edu.au)
RAHMAN, Taufiqur (University of Western Australia)
Title: Jihad Online, Imagined Communities and the Search for Legitimate Muslim Religious
Authorities in Indonesia
Abstract: Several studies suggest that the internet has played a significant role in the
transformation of Muslim religious authority in the global and local context. The old traditional
authority of local imam or Islamic clerics is now being challenged by a trans-national authority
with the availability of a direct connection with Islamic clerics and religious learning resources
from the Middle East, the United States, the United Kingdom or anywhere else in the world. In
this paper, the emergence of new interpreters of Jihad and new online Muslim communities
facilitated by the internet will be specifically analysed within the context of the transformation
of Muslim religious authority in Indonesia. The paper will argue that several distinct features
of the internet such as the availability of hyperlinks, multimodal interactions, powerful search
engines, networking facilities and user-friendliness have helped the existence of new
interpreters of Jihad and different imaginations of Islamic ummah in Indonesia.
Bionote: Taufiqur Rahman is a PhD candidate affiliated with the Centre for Muslim States and
Societies at the University of Western Australia. He is a lecturer at Universitas Muhammadiyah
Yogyakarta currently on study leave undertaking his PhD degree sponsored by AusAID. He
holds a Master of Arts in Communication Management from University of Technology Sydney
(2003) and a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication from Universitas Gadjah Mada
Yogyakarta Indonesia (1999). His main research interests are in the areas of media and identity
politics, intercultural communication and strategic communication
(20689098@student.uwa.edu.au)
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