Imam Samudra’s Revenge

On the evening of 12 October 2002 two suicide bombers detonated bombs inside Paddy’s Pub and in front of the Sari Club in Kuta, one of Bali’s main tourist districts. Two hundred and two people were killed including eighty-eight Australians and thirty-eight Indonesians.

The ‘field coordinator' of this terrorist operation was the Bantenese Abdul Aziz alias Imam Samudra, who was later executed for his role in the attacks.

Imam Samudra’s Revenge examines why Samudra bombed nightclubs in Bali paying due regard to the social and political context provided by both his experiences as a youthful member of the Darul Islam movement in Indonesia and Pakistan, and the outbreak of religious violence in Indonesia from 1999. Yet these same factors also influenced his colleagues within the extremist Islamist group Jema’ah Islamiyah, and they strongly disapproved of his actions in Bali. Therefore, it is also important to consider Samudra’s personality; and, more particularly, his proneness to humiliation which led him via the vengeful ideology of global jihadism to embrace terrorism in Bali.


Islamic Studies Series - Volume 20