I

ndonesian militants are fighting over influence, power and prestige. These are mainly supporters of the Islamic State (IS) movement and its opponents, especially from supporters of An Nusro, one of the rebel groups in Syria that are linked to al-Qaeda.

One of the possible ways to understand this tension is through the linguistic concept of metaphor. It is typically viewed as a characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action.

Linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in their seminal book Metaphors We Live By (1980), give as an example the concept of “argument” and the conceptual metaphor “argument is war” as follows: “Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on the target.”

It is important to see that we do not just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle and the structure of the argument — attack, defense and counter attack, etc. — reflect this.

The escalation of the confrontation between the two militant groups may escalate into the next level, what I call a “pissing contest”, where each party tries to prove that they are better than the others.

This is how this abstract concept works among Indonesian militants.

It was in a mosque in Jakarta last year where IS supporters used to gather to talk about the plight of the Syrian people. IS supporters called those who opposed them hasaders (an Arabic word that means “those who have hatred toward religious matters in their heart”).

One of IS’ eloquent speakers attacked the argument of the hasaders in front of around 150 IS supporters:

“We must be grateful that finally ustad (teacher) Abu Bakar Ba’asyir did baiat (oath) for the caliphate. Unlike those hasaders, he prays and asks God’s direction then he sees the light of the truth, the caliphate.”

The speaker acts as an “intermediary actor” between Ba’asyir, an IS ideologue who is now incarcerated inside a maximum-security prison, and his audience outside the prison.

What do An Nusro supporters do to respond to the attack from IS supporters in this event?

In general, the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) community has been known for its opposition to IS propaganda. Like most Islamic militants, Abu Rusdan, a senior JI member, is convinced that the Syam area, which consists of Syria, Palestine and Jordan, has a special religious position in Islam.

Rusdan hopes that the existing difference between IS and An Nusro is a matter of “internal administration” between two big jihadi organizations. Therefore, Muslims outside these two organizations should not get involved in the conflict.

This kind of middle stand is typical of Rusdan’s political view. He always puts himself as the moderate faction of JI so that he can continue to do public outreach through a series of sermons in a number of mosques in Kudus.

However, IS and An Nusro supporters, especially on the grass roots level, started their “war” through “arguments” ranging from the ideological to even the personal level. They attacked, criticized and bickered with each other.

Following the logic of metaphor, they use this “argument” as a real war between them.

A rhetorical war, a war of words, leads to a cascading escalation, one side stepping up the rhetoric until violence breaks out and then the other side tries to be more violent, such as with the plan to carry out an attack on Christmas Eve in 2015 and New Year’s Eve 2016.

Thus, the unity of the militant group depends on how charismatic its leader is. If he is perceived to offer weak leadership and his strategy is not deemed progressive enough to confront the enemy, the group will lose its cohesion.

Charisma, rhetoric and violence mean that militants from IS and An Nusra are in a pissing contest, trying to “out-compete” or outdo each other with their violent acts in order to gain membership and increase their legitimacy. As the history of JI shows, splinters form when another charismatic member offers a more violent vision. Those impatient for action coalesce around him and the splinter group’s success in carrying out a terrorist attack in turn attracts more young restless would-be terrorists to its fold.

The more dedicated of Indonesia’s aspiring terrorists have taken to calling themselves freelancers. These freelancers may be individuals or a “bunch of guys” (as according to former CIA operations officer Marc Sageman in 2005) who want to take revenge on the Indonesian police for perceived wrongs. But they still want to be part of a group structure and will join any group that is active in carrying out jihad, whether locally or globally inspired.
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The writer has just completed his documentary film Jihad Selfie, which will be screened in Geneva later this month.