Malaysia's Isis sympathisers draw focus after deadly Ulu Tiram attack

A deadly assault on a police station in Malaysia's Johor state last week has highlighted the enduring dangers of violent extremism in a country that closely monitors militancy and has not experienced a major terror attack in over two decades.

The 21-year-old attacker who killed two policemen in the Johor Bahru suburb of Ulu Tiram on Friday was shot dead at the scene. He was reportedly buried on Monday in an isolated grave as a mark of condemnation, in accordance with instructions from the state's fatwa committee.

Ulu Tiram is a former stronghold of al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the militant group behind the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including at least 11 Hong Kong residents.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

The Lukmanul Hakim Islamic boarding school, established by JI's Indonesian founders Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, was located in Ulu Tiram before it was closed in the early 2000s. Its alumni included Indonesian terrorists Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas, who were executed in 2008 for their role in the Bali bombings, as well as Malaysian bomb-maker Noordin Moch Top, who was killed by Indonesian counterterrorism forces in a 2009 raid.

Radicalised students from the school have since spread out across Southeast Asia, according to Benny Mamoto, a retired Indonesian police general who investigated the Bali bombings. Local media reported on Tuesday that authorities were considering demolishing the school building, with the head of the local religious affairs committee saying he had received complaints that it was still in operation, despite the building no longer being in use.

Malaysian police initially identified the suspect in Friday's attack as a member of JI. But on Sunday, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution described it as "a lone wolf attack" unrelated "to some big overall mission or a dangerous group".

JI is estimated to have some 6,000-7,000 members in Indonesia, though the group has not carried out a terror attack since 2009.

Under its last known leader, Para Wijayanto, the group set up businesses to raise funds and cut ties with any branches outside Indonesia, according to Mohd Adhe Bhakti, executive director of the Centre for Radicalism and Deradicalisation Studies. Para Wijayanto was arrested in 2019, causing a power vacuum that Adhe said could lead to the group splintering.

There was a danger that a splinter group could start carrying out attacks again, "especially now that there is no new leader in JI that could control them", Adhe said.

Yet a regional security source told This Week In Asia that there was only a "very slim chance" of JI "re-establishing itself" in Malaysia due to the advanced age of remaining members and their "mental faculty issues".

"Many of the younger generation can't even recall what JI is, let alone describe its mission," said the source, who requested anonymity as they are not authorised to speak to the media. "Even young people from Luqmanul Hakim village subscribe to modern lifestyle now and perceive keeping up with social media as trendy."

Authorities have yet to establish how the Ulu Tiram attacker was radicalised. "He is not a member of any terrorist organisation, and he was not detected on social media platforms," the security source said, adding that he may have been "inclined" towards Isis as investigators had found a sketched drawing among his belongings that looked like an Isis flag.

Though JI's presence in Malaysia may be on the wane, the threat of extremism remains as it knows no borders, former Indonesian militant Sofyan Tsauri told This Week In Asia.

Tsauri - a former member of JI splinter group al-Qaeda of Southeast Asia who was in charge of logistics and weapons procurement from 2005 until his arrest in 2010 - now monitors social media and dark web activity linked to Islamic State, the radical terrorist group known for leveraging technology to further its extremist agenda.

And he has discovered Malaysian Isis sympathisers.

"This is dangerous," he said, adding that some of the Malaysian phone numbers associated with the WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook chat groups he monitored could be traced back to Ulu Tiram.

"These Malaysians are Isis sympathisers," said Tsauri, who has been helping with Indonesia's counterterrorism efforts since his release from prison in 2015. "I private-messaged one person [on Isis social media] and he told me he is Malaysian."

Malaysian extremists were indeed "lurking in cyberspace", the regional security source told This Week in Asia, seeking a space to "nurture their ideologies, be it in a rhetorical form or by calling people to commit physical form of jihad ... But their number is very small".

Malaysian law enforcement coordinates with Indonesian authorities to keep tabs on extremist discourse and find the numbers involved "manageable for police monitoring capability", the source said, while admitting that encrypted chats can make their job more difficult.

Tsauri said the children of JI militants, and younger people in general, tend to be more drawn to Isis than their parent's choice of extremist organisation as the newer group is considered to be more "brave" and offer more "action".

Muh Taufiqurrohman, a senior researcher at the Centre for Radicalism and Deradicalisation Studies, agreed. "JI is viewed as offering religious studies and paramilitary training but no action and attacks," he said, adding that young people thought of JI as "no action, talk only".

"Young people have grown impatient with JI and prefer to join pro-Isis groups which ask them to carry out attacks."

Retired Indonesian police general Mamoto said there was "a need for cooperation and intensive exchange of information" to monitor the movements of Indonesian and Malaysian militants' children, especially between countries "as we don't know what networks they could possibly belong to".

"When we underestimate or drop our guard, they will carry out attacks," he said.

However, the regional security source insisted that there was declining interest in Isis-related content among Malay speakers.

An Isis-affiliated group recently announced the launch of a Malay language "media foundation" to translate Isis content in an attempt to boost interest, the source said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.