Terrorism was unknown thing in the past, but it has now become the order of the day in many parts of the world. Relating to this, Indonesia received yet another blow on the onset of 2016. On the 14th day Jan 2016, a dull cloud hang over Indonesia with news that another terrorist attack had invaded their land. The incident refreshed wounds not yet healed following an attack in 2011. Indonesia is not alone but everybody in the world would treble by sheer mention of terrorists. While terrorism is a global threat, few questions arise as to why Indonesia, alongside other countries in South East Asia like Malaysia has become more vulnerable to the terrorist.
Speculations going round have it that, the recapture of ISIS’s Ramadi in Syria by Iraqi forces was likely to attract a retaliatory attack, which made Jakarta a victim of circumstance, but with reasons. Radicalization is not rampant in Indonesia contrary to the high population of the Islam community exceeding by 80%, as a matter of fact, terrorism and destruction of human kind activities which is the ISIS proposition of global Muslim caliphate are strongly rebuked by the Muslims in Indonesia; because they contravene with the instructions of the Holy Quran. Consequently, organizations like the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) comprising of more than 50 million followers are out there denouncing the ISIS scheme. Notably, Muslims in Indonesia are very categorical on this as depicted by their hash tag KamiTidak Takut meaning ‘we are not afraid’.
In a different view, Singapore’s prime minister sees Southeast Asia as an ISIS recruitment hotspot; whose sentiments are supported by Malaysian prime minister citing the increased increment in radicalization with ISIS religious ideology. As a possible cause, Malaysia has received numerous terror threat while her counterpart Indonesia has suffered the attacks severally now. Indonesia is particularly concerned with the turn of events considering it is the second largest democracy in the world, harboring more than 250 million people, 80% being Muslim. If the ISIS is able to endeavor their scheme successfully here, there is the potential of mass radicalization that can pose serious security challenges in the region and the entire world at large. Notwithstanding though, Europeans Muslims are alleged to have joined the ISIS more than those from Indonesia.
The conflict in Syria has been blamed to stimulate for good grounds for the ISIS in attacking Malaysia where a recent attempted attack was foiled by joint Malaysian, Australian and American authorities. The Malaysian authorities also arrested 17 people in Kuala Lumpur for plotting attacks while other 70 armed forces officers were identified as ISIS sympathizers’ and affiliates. The desire for Malaysians to be anti-terrorism is often thwarted by political competition, where each political factor like identifying themselves as “more” Muslim than the others; driving the internal politics to pro-Muslim and extremism. With this advantage, ISIS is now spreading to Philippines and Southern Thailand targeting high Muslim population. The severity of the situation is calling for appropriate methods to fight terrorism through combat operations, keen surveillance and ensuring tight security.