Malaysia’s Reckoning With the Islamic State

In Malaysia’s bustling capital Kuala Lumpur, with its towering steel and glass skyscrapers and sleek, modern rail and highway networks, the call to prayer rings out from a mosque on a quiet side street just several doors down from a Hindu temple.

With a population of around 1.6 million, much of which is employed in the finance and real estate sectors, Kuala Lumpur is the heart of a country that has embraced shopping malls and almost entirely eradicated poverty. Malaysia’s mix of ethnic Malay, Chinese, and Indian residents – Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus respectively – all work and worship on the same streets, allowing the country of 31 million inhabitants to be upheld as a symbol of cosmopolitan multiculturalism and tolerance.

But simultaneously, the world’s most regressive and ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim group is increasingly targeting this majority-Muslim nation. As U.S.-allied forces drove extremists from the Islamic State (ISIS) out of major parts of their self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq, the militants ramped up their efforts in Southeast Asia and declared Malaysia a part of their dominion. Most recently, the extremist group named Malaysia’s anti-terror chief, Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, one of its main targets, calling on its adherents to “awake now and finish off Ayob Khan,” according to social media messages and media reports.

In response, Malaysian authorities have doubled down on the group’s online recruitment efforts and launched security measures to prevent terrorist attacks at home.

Police have arrested more than 300 individuals over the past four years for suspected links to the Islamic State, and shut down numerous pro-ISIS websites. But experts say the government’s efforts have failed to prevent a significant number of Malaysians from fighting for ISIS in diverse countries such as the Philippines and Iraq, and that more efforts will be needed as ISIS militants return home to Malaysia.

“The amount of Malaysian suicide bombers we have witnessed in both Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017 can be described as noticeable and is intrinsically the result of the domestic [ISIS] propaganda campaign in Malaysia,” says Tomas Olivier, a counterterrorism and intelligence expert at the Netherlands-based consultancy firm Twickelerveld Intelligence and Investigations.

“The sheer amount of Malaysian foot soldiers in the Middle East is also remarkable.”

Meanwhile, in the nearby Philippines, the city of Marawi has been decimated as ISIS-affiliated jihadists, known as the Maute group, laid siege to the island of Mindanao. The battle to reclaim Marawi is still ongoing and at least 700 people have died, most of them militants, since the fighting began in late May. ISIS propagandists called on militants to join the fight in the Philippines if it was too difficult to travel to Iraq or Syria. So far, both Malaysian and Indonesian fighters have been discovered among the jihadists in Marawi.

One of the most visible examples of Malaysians associating with ISIS was the appearance of two Malaysian militants in the 2016 ISIS propaganda film Toghut, Olivier says. The militants identified themselves as members of the Katibah Nusantara movement, the official Southeast Asia military unit of ISIS in Syria.

One of the Malaysian militants in the video, Mohd Nizam Arafin, was reportedly killed in Mosul, Iraq in June. He was the 31 Malaysian fighter reported dead in Iraq and Syria.

The exact number of Malaysians who support ISIS is unknown, but experts estimate that at least 200 Malaysian fighters have travelled to fight in the Middle East. ISIS even publishes its own Malay-language newspaper in Syria. As some of those fighters return following the group’s battlefield defeats in the Middle East, it could increase the threat to Malaysia.

A 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that 21 percent of Malaysians surveyed said they were unsure how they felt about ISIS, and 12 percent had a favorable view of the group. Experts say this is a relatively high number of individuals open to the group’s overtures and recruitment efforts.

Online recruitment has been particularly successful, with some Malaysian extremists using everyday technologies like the Google Plus apps and Facebook to spread messages. Over 70 percent of ISIS’s recruitment efforts in Malaysia are done online, according to research by terrorism expert Dato Saiffudin Abdullah.

ISIS-affiliated extremists argue that Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, is not Islamic enough, and that the country’s security forces are puppets of a secular state. Malaysia has often been touted as a bastion of moderate Islam, even as prominent Christian pastors are suspected to have disappeared at the hands of religious vigilantes and Islamic courts are given primacy over secular ones.

Others, however, argue that Razak is partly to blame for the rise of extremism in Malaysia. His party postures itself as a protector of Islam, and Razak has been accused of using the religion as a political tool and manipulating ethnic Malays into thinking their religious and ethnic identity are under siege.

“We must understand that the issue is not just ISIS per se, but the kind of exclusivist discourse predicated on the supremacy of one faith over all others that helps create the kind of environment in which narratives like those propounded by ISIS and its sympathizers will find an audience,” says Professor Joseph Chinyong Liow, a scholar of Islam and politics in Southeast Asia.

And according to Dina Zaman, the executive director of IMAN, a Malaysian think tank that has conducted extensive research on youth radicalization, identity politics and the politicization of faith are having a negative impact on Malaysian society.

“When IMAN conducted focus group discussions among young Malay Muslims in Malaysia, the youths did say that they are cynical of politics, politicians, and the process. There is great mistrust on their end,” says Zaman.

“Malaysia does have a history of radicalization, religious and political, but ISIS is a game changer.”

Amid this atmosphere, Malaysia’s government has implemented a variety of measures to counteract the influence of ISIS. 

In 2014, the government’s Department of Islamic Development, the overseer of Malaysia’s mosques, issued a fatwa against ISIS and announced that militants who died fighting for the group were not martyrs. Prime Minister Najib also founded the Global Movement of Moderates, a Kuala Lumpur-based organization that works to counter violent extremist ideologies.

The organization sponsors research, advocacy campaigns, lectures, and other events on conflict resolution and peaceful co-existence, among other topics.

Malaysia’s government has also made serious attempts to obstruct the online channels between extremists and potential recruits. In late 2015, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, established the Regional Digital Counter-Messaging Communications Center, set up in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Southeast Asia Regional Center for Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT), to counteract ISIS propaganda in Malaysia.

Two similar initiatives were launched the following year: the Digital Strategic Communications Division, which also operates within SEARCCT, and the Regional Digital Counter-Messaging Center, run by the Royal Malaysia Police.

All of these initiatives aim to undermine and disrupt online extremist messages. Still, some experts argue that these projects have failed to decrease the number of ISIS recruits in Malaysia.

The government has also attempted to use legislation to crack down on ISIS. In 2012, the government passed the controversial Security Offenses Special Measures Act (SOSMA). The law is meant to facilitate the interrogation and investigation of people posing a security risk. Critics, however, say the law’s basis for arrest is too vague, and that it has been used to silence civil society activists.

In addition to SOSMA, in April 2015, the government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). The law allows authorities to detain terror suspects for two years without trial.

Numerous sources, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, said that young people are afraid they will be thrown in jail if they so much as read ISIS propaganda material online.

Meanwhile, the government also began closely monitoring and identifying radicalism at universities and other institutes of learning. In 2016, university students across the country were briefed on the dangers of terrorism.

Nevertheless, some say the threat from ISIS will increase as the group is pushed out of the Middle East and other parts of Southeast Asia.

“The interest to join the ISIS fight in the Philippines appears to have grown in the last couple of months. This development is worrying and will have, without a doubt, a destabilizing effect on Malaysian society in the upcoming months and years,” Olivier says.

“Additionally, the Malaysian authorities will have to be extremely focused regarding the Malaysian fighters who managed to escape Mosul and Raqqa and return to the streets of Kuala Lumpur with battlefield experience and the intention to create havoc.”

Law enforcement officials will also need to focus on breaking the links between Malaysian and Indonesian militants, experts say. Historically, the ties between Islamic extremists in Malaysia and Indonesia have been strong, and militants have cooperated on training, recruitment, financing, and operations.

It was Indonesian militants who issued the threat against Malaysia’s police chief during Ramadan, and ISIS-affiliated Indonesian militants were arrested in Slim River, Perak, and Sandakan, Malaysia this year.

One of the men detained was an administrator for a group on the encrypted cell phone application Telegram. Around 200 militants from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Syria had reportedly joined the group.

In July this year, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines launched trilateral naval operations, including patrols, to counter ISIS terrorism in the region, especially in the Sulu-Sulawesi Seas.

Olivier says that the fact the police chief was targeted directly is a sign that law enforcement officials are experiencing some success against the group.

“This is definitely an indicator that terrorist organizations in Malaysia recognize their inability to operate without being targeted by SBCTD [Special Branch Counter-Terrorism Division] and, or, other law enforcement units,” he says.

So far, only one terrorist attack has been carried out on Malaysian soil, when two men threw a grenade into a nightclub in Puchong last year. Six people, who were visiting the club to watch a European football match, were injured.

Liow, however, says it’s too early to tell whether the Malaysian government has been successful in its efforts.

“There has been some measure of success in terms of foiled plots as well as arrests,” Liow says. “But the thing about terrorist attacks is that the terrorist need only be successful once.”