A reprieve for terrorists’ kids
Islamic school seeks to steer sons of militants on new path
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 maths and Qur’an 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 roof. The boys, though, have been spoken to roughly by villagers, the school’s banners and billboards trampled on and burned, and its head teacher reported to the police.
The 20 students are the sons of Islamic militants, reviled by most Indonesians for killings and other acts of violence that they justified with distorted interpretations of Islam. Nearly half 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.
Bombings
Al-Hidayah’s founder, Khairul Ghazali, is a former radical preacher whose involvement in militancy goes back decades. He was recruited at 19 by Abdullah Sungkar, the now-deceased leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group responsible for attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people.
Nowadays, the soft-spoken Ghazali, 52, 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 jihadists. His three sons also attend the school.
A turning point, he said, came in 2010 when anti-terror police raided his home in North Sumatra and shot dead two other militants wanted for killing police officers in front of him, his wife and children.
In prison, he reflected on his decades of jihad and in the hours spent poring over the Qur’an found his past wanting. With the encouragement of prison officials, he wrote several books against radicalism, earning the enmity of other jihadists who denounced him as an infidel who deserves death.
“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. “Stigmatisation, poverty and the fact that many innocent people were killed and the destruction we caused all accumulated into an inner torment.”
Ghazali’s school in North Sumatra is supported by counter- terrorism 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 jihadism.
Indonesia has had successes in rooting out violent militants, but officials acknowledge that risks remain. A 2015 Pew survey of Indonesians showed that 4%, or about 10 million people, had a favourable attitude towards the Islamic State group.
A survey by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting in May this year showed 9% support Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, changing from a secular to an Islamic state. A few Islamic boarding schools churn out students susceptible to violent radicalisation.
The Islamic State group’s declaration of a caliphate over swathes of territory it temporarily held in Iraq and Syria, and more recently the occupation of the southern Philippine city of Marawi by their 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 to Indonesia and provide leadership and skills that could help produce more lethal attacks.
Sitting in a classroom just after dawn with pupils whose ages range from nine to 15, Ghazali tells them 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, currently the most frequent target of militant attacks in Indonesia.
Abdullah, 13, and his two younger brothers were sent by their mother to Ghazali’s boarding school last year because of the hostility they faced at their regular school.
Taunted
“I can’t stand the taunts at school,” he said, his lips trembling. “I dropped out when I was in the third grade and I had to move from place to place. I was insulted as a terrorist’s kid when my father was in prison. I was so sad.”
Abdullah said his favourite activities at school are football and Arabic lessons. He aspires to become an Islamic teacher because “there are many people who claim to know Islam, but actually they don’t know what Islam is and how to practice it”.
The initial hostility the school faced when it opened in 2015 has faded. Local police talked to the villagers, raising awareness about its purpose.
Villager Hendra Widiarto, who lives near the school, said lack of information about it and its makeshift appearance made locals suspicious and they became confrontational when they learned about the backgrounds of Ghazali and the students.
Nowadays people from surrounding villages and students from government schools come to Al-Hidayah on Fridays to pray. – ANA-AP