Author: Bilveer Singh File Type: pdf Long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, awakened the United States and the Western world to the heightened level of the terrorist threat, Southeast Asia had been dealing with this threat. The bombing in Bali that killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists, was by no means the regions first experience with Islamic extremism, which can be traced back to the 1940s, and the Darul Islam struggle. The most recent group to emerge is Al-Jamaah Al-Islamiyah (AJAI), the most potent Islamic terrorist organization to date in the region and the group behind the Bali bombing. Understanding the process of Talibanization in Southeast Asia, which was once an oasis of moderate Islam in the modern world, is a key to unraveling the mystery of the increased radicalization in the region.Essentially, this involved the establishment of a political system that was more Islamic in character, either nationally or within a specific territory of a national state. This book analyzes the increasing Talibanization of Southeast Asia, a relatively new phenomenon that involves the adoption of Islamist doctrines, ideologies, and values that are largely militant in character, and that for some groups includes the adoption of violence to achieve their goals.This has succeeded in posing one of the most serious security challenges to the region since the end of the Cold War. Jihadists are operating in small and localized cells even though the broad goals remain the same, namely, to spread sharia, establish an Islamic state, and bring down secular regimes. As most governments do not have the credibility or the expertise to diminish the threat posed by Islamist extremism, Wahhabism, and Salafism, Southeast Asia is in danger of being Talibanized in the near future.ReviewThe merit of this book lies in the way in which it combines an analysis of the ideology of terror with a study of the methodology of terror.ullulThe Strait TimesSingh sees kinship as being a vital element in the makeup of al-Jamaat al-Islamiyah--the organization responsible for the Bali nightclub bombings in October 2002. The people who form terror groups have to know and trust one another. In most Muslim societies it is kinship, rather than shared ideological values, that generates relations of trust.ullulThe New York Review of BooksSingh writes a detailed and carefully defined analysis of the growth of Islamic extremism in Southeast Asia. Professor Singh is conscientious about defining the Islamic terms that he uses, noting their multiple meanings however, he does not box himself in with overly narrow definitions. The book is organized into a well-written introduction four chapters outlining the history of religious extremism and terrorism in Southeast Asia (principally Indonesia), the growth of transnational terrorist organizations, and the problems of counterterrorism policy in Southeast Asia and a conclusion outlining policy suggestions for the governments of the region. Professor Singhs detailed knowledge of Islamic movements in Southeast Asia, and particularly Al-Jamaah al-Islamiyyah, makes the book an interesting read complete with organizational charts and graphs of terrorist organizations and their global links..Recommended. Research and professional collections.ullulChoiceBook DescriptionAnalyzes the increasing Talibanization of Southeast Asia, which involves the adoption of Islamist doctrines, ideologies, and values that are largely militant in character and that sometimes include the adoption of violence to achieve their goals.

Author: Jillmarie Murphy File Type: pdf This interdisciplinary study examines the role interpersonal and place attachment bonds play in crafting a national identity in American literature. Although there have been numerous ecocritical studies of and psychoanalytic approaches to American literature, this study seeks to integrate the language of empirical science and the physical realities of place, while also investigating non-human agency and that which exists beyond the material realm. Murphy considers how writers in the early American Republic constructed modernity by restructuring representations of interpersonal and place attachments, which are subsequently reimagined, reconfigured, and sometimes even rejected by writers in the long nineteenth century. Within each narrative American perceptions of otherness are pathologized as a result of insecure human-to-human and human-to-place attachments, resulting in a restructuring of antiquated notions of difference. Throughout, Murphy argues that in order to understand fully the contextually varied framework of human bonding, it is important to emphasize Americas attachment to various constructions of otherness. Historically, people of color, women, ethnic groups, and lower class citizens have been relegatedsocially, politically, and culturallyto a place of subordination. Refugees escaping the French and Haitian Revolutions to American cities encouraged writers to transform social, cultural, and political attachments in ways that the American Revolution did not. The United States has always been part of an extended global network that provides fertile ground from which to imagine a future American identity this book thus gestures toward future readers, educators, and scholars who seek to explore new fields and new approaches to understand the underlying human motivations that continually inspire the American imagination. **About the Author Jillmarie Murphy is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Womens Studies Program at Union College, Schenectady, NY. She has published books, journal articles, and essays that focus on Puritan poetics, literature of the early American Republic, prominent and lesser-known antebellum literary figures, and transatlantic novelists who span the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her publications generally employ the psycho-social paradigm of attachment theory, drawing on topics considering parenting, gender, race, class, and ethnicity, as well as publications that consider the evolution of literary history and how certain authors and texts resonate long after their heyday.