‘Victim’ Reveals Sinister Workings Of NII Recruiters

Revelations that Islamic extremists are recruiting university students nationwide to join their cause come as no surprise for Lombok native Edi.

He says he and two friends almost fell into the clutches of a suspected Indonesian Islamic State (NII) cell when they were at university in Malang, East Java, five years ago.

The way the recruiters approached them was subtle, he said, but their indoctrination methods were anything but. “They invited us someplace and we agreed,” he recalls. “Once we got there, they placed us in separate rooms and began interrogating us.”

At the rented house far from their college dorms, the students were grilled about Islam and repeatedly asked to pay Rp 5 million ($585) each.

“They said that was the fee to cleanse ourselves of infidel characteristics,” Edi says. “That’s when I got suspicious, but I later found it was very hard to leave.”

The group repeatedly refused the students’ requests to leave the house, instead forcing them to take part in prayers and listen to sermons.

“Finally, I’d had enough and refused to go along with their activities,” Edi says. “I told them we were leaving. They turned surly but they let us go. It was a long walk back to our dorms.”

He says the fact that this scene continues to be played out even today at university campuses across the country underscores a lack of action by the government to nip the radical threat in the bud.

Ridwan Hidayat, the head of the social and political unity office in West Nusa Tenggara, agrees that this creeping radicalization poses a serious threat, particularly in provinces already struggling to contain religious violence.

“It’s certainly going to spark social conflict,” the official says.

The problem with the NII movement, he adds, is that it promotes an extreme form of exclusivity coupled with a high level of fanaticism.

“The problem with exclusive groups is that they refuse to recognize outside points of view,” Ridwan says.

“This is bound to rub the wrong way on those outside these groups, and so conflicts are likely. This is something we need to watch out for.”

He cites the minority Ahmadiyah Islamic sect as another example of an exclusive group.

An Ahmadiyah community in Gegerung village, West Lombok, was in 2006 chased out and members had their homes destroyed by other residents who deemed the sect deviant.

Since then, the West Nusa Tenggara authorities have refused to let them return to their homes or relocate elsewhere, instead forcing them to stay cooped up in a temporary shelter for years.

Ridwan says the difficulty in resolving this and other sectarian conflicts is the fact that the religious and community leaders responsible for bridging the divide are often acting on their own political interests.

Kadri, a religious expert from the State Islamic Institute (IAIN) in Mataram, the provincial capital, agrees that the lack of credible religious leaders makes it difficult to contain the NII threat.

“The leaders that we have now are all contaminated by politics and vested interests,” he says.

“None of them can claim to be neutral, which is something we need to address.”

The scholar says another factor that could fuel the spread of extremist doctrine like the NII’s, particularly in West Nusa Tenggara, is the long-held culture of village rivalry, which often spills over into violence and can be exploited by radicals to further their cause.

(x the JG)