Jamaah Ansharusy Syariah Moderates in Indonesia

Executive Summary:

• Jamaah Ansharusy Syariah (JAS), once an anti-Islamic State jihadist splinter group, has shifted its stance since late 2024 by recognizing Indonesia as an “Islamic state” and softening its rejection of democracy. This marks a significant ideological pivot toward actively cooperating with state institutions.
• Although JAS publicly promotes moderation, its past links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Jabhat al-Nusra highlight lingering risks.

It was recently revealed that the leader of Jamaah Ansharusy Syariah (from Arabic: , جماعة أنصار الشريعة, “Group of Shariah’s Champions; JAS), Abu Tholut, collaborated with Indonesia’s National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) to deliver anti-Islamic State (IS) lectures to jihadists. This was set out in a book published earlier in 2025 by Sentot Prasetyo, the head of Indonesia’s counterterrorism unit, Special Detachment (Densus) 88, discussing the disbandment of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). [1] Existing records suggest these lectures occurred in 2015–2016 in Jakarta and Poso in Central Sulawesi (Kiblat.net, June 27, 2016; Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, April 27, 2017). At the time, Abu Tholut maintained that his participation was only driven by an anti-IS agenda, and was not an endorsement of BNPT’s deradicalization efforts (Kiblat.net, June 27, 2016).

Following increased scrutiny from authorities after this discovery, JAS’s overall leader, Muhammad Achwan, has campaigned for strengthening cooperation with the police and the military. Achwan was designated a terrorist by the United Nations in 2012. Achwan claims to defend Indonesia from foreign exploitation by “colonizers,” with other JAS preachers alluding to the China–U.S. conflict as potential destabilizing factor for Indonesia (Ansharu Syariah, February 3; Ansharu Syariah, August 14). Such approval of Indonesia’s state apparatus is rare among jihadists in the country, as government authorities are typically branded as taghut (Arabic: طاغوت, “tyrant,” meaning that which commands authority beside Allah). This indicates that JAS has become more moderate relative to other radical Islamist groups, like Hizb ut-Tahrir in Indonesia (S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Commentary, June 9).

Major Ideological Changes

JAS was founded in August 2014 as an anti-IS offshoot of Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid (Arabic: جماعة أنصار التوحيد, “Group of Monotheism’s Champions”; JAT). Although JAS has tried to maintain a philanthropic and non-violent image over the course of its existence, arrests of militants in 2023 revealed that it had sent at least seven of its members to train with terrorist organizations in Yemen and Syria between 2014 and 2017. From its outreach activities to various state institutions, including the police, the parliament, and mass media, it is apparent that JAS is now making even stronger gestures to signal the reversal of its former promotion of violent jihad in Indonesia (Ansharu Syariah, July 11, 2023, February 13; TVOneNews, December 27, 2023).

First, JAS has embraced participation in democracy and support of Pancasila, Indonesia’s national ideology. JAS’s organizational plan in 2014 originally stated that JAS rejects man-made ideologies and lamented that the Muslim community has been divided due to foreign ideologies, as well as the application of man-made, un-Islamic laws (Ansharu Syariah, December 6, 2014; Indonesia Supreme Court, February 6, 2024). [2] In November 2024, JAS uploaded a new plan to its website, which notes that while democracy does not derive from Islam, some clerics believe that democracy has goals that align with Islamic values, such as the right of citizens to choose their leaders. [3] Thus, JAS no longer denounces Muslims who choose to participate in the democratic process (Ansharu Syariah, July 31).

Second, JAS now considers Indonesia an “Islamic state.” The group argues that since Indonesia was initially governed with Islamic sharia in pre-colonial times, it is at heart an Islamic country. According to this line of thought, given that there is a need to avoid potential conflict among Muslims in the country, the evaluation of Indonesia’s Islamic status should be handled delicately. JAS thus concludes that the applicable madhhab (Arabic: مذهب, “Islamic legal school) is madhhab ahl al-balad (Arabic: مذهب أهل البلد, “madhhab of the local people”), meaning that which has been chosen and is followed by most Indonesians, rather than a foreign puritanical theology imposed by jihadists. This again reflects the embrace of moderate, democratic values. In discussing jihad, JAS emphasizes that Indonesia is not considered part of Dar al-Harb (Arabic: دار الحرب, the “Realm of War,” a label applied to non-Muslim lands in which jihad is permissible) and, as a result, the only permissible form of jihad in Indonesia is the existing Islamic principle of “encouraging the good and forbidding immorality” (Arabic: الأمر بالمعروف والنهي عن المنكر), a principle of “everyday sharia” as opposed to violent jihadism (Ansharu Syariah, July 31).

Surviving Scrutiny

Ideological changes within JAS were likely driven in part by the 2023 arrests of seven JAS members for foreign terrorist fighter activity. This had marked the first explicit evidence of violence by the organization. JAS members Taqiyudin, Heru Siswanto, Arif Arifiyanto, and Endri Sunaryo departed for Yemen in December 2014 to train with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and “assist the Yemeni mujahideen” (Supreme Court of Indonesia, February 6, 2024). Heru Siswanto stayed on and became a respected member of AQAP until AQAP announced his death in May 2022 (see Militant Leadership Monitor, December 21, 2022). The remaining three members returned to Indonesia in mid-2015, but were not tried until 2024 (Supreme Court of Indonesia, February 6, 2024; Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, June 27, 2024).

A separate JAS contingent was sent to Syria in October 2015. Muhammad Abdullah Hussein, Sayono Darmo Suwito, and Dian trained with the then-al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its then-ally, Ahrar al-Sham, in Idlib. Hussein and Suwito trained with the Syrian militants for two years until their deportation from Turkey in October 2017, after which they were arrested on arrival in Indonesia (Supreme Court of Indonesia, February 6, 2024). [4]

JAS has consistently denied involvement in any terrorist activities, arguing that any arrested individuals, including foreign fighters, were not active JAS members (Kompas, December 29, 2023; Fakta Hukum NTT, September 7, 2024). That being said, public court documents indicate that JAS members traveled to Syria under the guise of delivering aid for Me-Dan (Medical and Humanitarian Action), JAS’s charity organization. [5] The trips were partially organized by Yudo Ratmiko, then-head of JAS’s Morality Police unit. Additionally, JAS regularly sent funds from Indonesia to its members in Syria (Supreme Court of Indonesia, February 6, 2024).

Conclusion

JAS’s efforts to rehabilitate its image reflect an interest in safeguarding its wide network of approximately 3,000 members and volunteers (South China Morning Post, August 22, 2014). [6] While there are no official numbers on membership in recent years, frequent JAS activities across East Java, West Java, Central Java, West Nusa Tenggara, Bali, Banten, and Jakarta, such as food package distribution, community clean-ups, free tattoo removal services, and disaster-response training, are well-documented (Ansharu Syariah, August 4). JAS’s willingness to reform its public stance on jihad and make overtures to the police signifies the importance of organizational survival for JAS, as the group values conducting dakwah (Indonesian from Arabic: دعوة, Islamic outreach), which has helped built up a wide network of grassroots supporters. The group will likely be open to further reform if its organizational activities are at stake, but continued oversight of the process is needed to ensure true disengagement from violence and violent ideologies by JAS.

Notes:

[1] The text reads “Instead of following Ustaz [Abu Bakr] Ba’asyir in joining ISIS, Ustaz Abu Tholut founded a new group called Jemaah Anshar Syariah (JAS), which emphasized Islamic law (sharia) without engaging in ISIS’s transnational violent agenda. Later, this group collaborated with Indonesia’s National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) in deradicalization efforts, primarily through delivering anti-ISIS lectures to members of jihadist groups.” Sentot Prasetyo, JI The Untold Story: History and Destiny of Jemaah Islamiyah (Jakarta: PT Elex Media Komputindo, 2025), p. 183.

[2] The first version of the plan was available on the JAS website from 2014 until at least 2020, based on archival records of the webpage.

[3] The upload date is drawn from the document’s URL, which shows the date stamp as November 2024: https://ansharusyariah.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/BUKU-PROFIL-JAMAAH-ANSHARU-SYARIAH-.pdf. Archives of the webpage indicate that the document had not been uploaded to the website until September 2024.

[4] The other member in the contingent, Dian, had left Syria two months after arriving in the country.

[5] Me-Dan was originally a JAT sub-division but was carried over to JAS when the latter splintered off.

[6] This estimation of 3,000 JAS members was reported by JAS leader Muhammad Achwan in 2014. Since then, there have been no updated estimates of membership numbers, although JAS operates various accounts across different social media platforms, which show varying numbers of followers, from most to least: 63,100 on YouTube (YouTube/@SyariahChannel, accessed September 16); 2,378 on Instagram (Instagram/ansharusyariah, accessed September 16); 1,600 on Facebook (Facebook/Jama’ah Ansharu Syari’ah, accessed September 16);  723 on an aid-focused YouTube channel (YouTube/@relawanansharusyariah, accessed September 16); 602 on Telegram (Telegram/Syariah Broadcast, accessed September 16); 440 on TikTok (TikTok/ansharusyariah, accessed September 16); and 290 on X (X/@ansharusyariah, accessed September 16).