Protecting Indonesia’s future
School seeks to steer sons of militants away from terrorism
SEI MENCIRIM ( Indonesia): The slim boys in Muslim caps and robes at the Al-Hidayah Islamic boarding school are grinning bolts of energy who love football, need a little coaxing to do their math and Quran lessons assiduously and aspire to become policemen or respected preachers.
Their school, like many in rural Indonesia, started as a modest affair with a dusty yard, spartan sleeping quarters and an open-air classroom with a dirt floor and corrugated iron roofing.
The boys, though, have been spoken to roughly by villagers, the school’s banners and billboards trampled and burned, and its head teacher reported to police.
The 20 pupils are the sons of militants, reviled by most Indonesians for killings and other acts of violence that they justified with distorted interpretations of Islam.
Nearly half of the boys’ fathers were killed in police raids and in some cases, the children witnessed the deaths. Most of the other fathers are in prison for terrorism offences.
Al-Hidayah’s founder Khairul Ghazali is a former radical preacher whose involvement in militancy stretches back decades.
Nowadays, the soft-spoken 52year-old professes to be a changed man who wants to atone by preventing his young charges, who were ostracised and taunted at mainstream schools, from becoming the next generation of Indonesian extremists. His three sons attend the school.
A turning point, he said, came in 2010 when anti-terror police raided his home and shot dead two other militants, wanted for killing police officers, in front of him, his wife and children.
In prison, he dwelt on his decades of militancy and in the hours spent poring over the Quran, found his past wanting. He has since written several books against radicalism.
“It’s hurt our innocent children. It’s hurt us,” said Ghazali, who was released in 2015 after serving four years for offences that included a major bank robbery to fund attacks.
His school in North Sumatra is supported by counterterrorism officials, but is only a small dent in a largely undiscussed problem.
By his reckoning, there are at least 2,000 sons and daughters of killed and imprisoned militants at risk of becoming battle fodder for a new wave of extremism.
The Islamic State group’s declaration of a caliphate over swaths of territory it temporarily held in Iraq and Syria, and more recently the occupation of the southern Philippine city of Marawi by IS sympathisers, has provided a psychological boost to militant networks in Indonesia that had been atomised by a sustained crackdown.
As the group’s territory in the Middle East shrinks, officials fear Indonesians who fought there or in Marawi will return.
Sitting in a classroom just after dawn with students whose ages range from nine to 15, Ghazali tells stories about the life of the Prophet Muhammad to show them, he said, that Islam is a religion of love and mercy, not an ideology to justify a war against police.