Dutch and Indonesian terrorism compared

 Beatrice de Graaf (b. 1976) is a Dutch scholar on the history of terrorism. Recently she published a book with the title: Radicale Verlossing: wat terroristen geloven (2021, Prometheus Amsterdam, 383 pages). The title can be translated as: Radical Redemption. What terrorists believe. On page 14 she identifies what she does not accept as methodological guidelines: 1) "Islam is a peaceful religion. Muslim terrorists therefore cannot be accepted as Muslims." 2) "Religion in general and more specifically Islam invites its believers to be violent." Both position are rejected by De Graaf. Instead she takes as her methodology, that the actual modern terrorists often claim that they have religious motivations and this must be taken serious. Not the basic religious texts, not theology, but the actual motivation of terrorists must be taken as a starting point.

In many life stories, she found that terrorists were seeking some kind of redemption from personal sin, from a lost life, frustrations and negative feelings. Quite many of them were as teenager small criminals, who sought a radical redemption in a turn towards 'Islam', whatever they may have understood about it.

De Graaf was born in de Dutch village of Putten, known for its orthodox Protestant population, went as a child twice to church services on Sundays and still holds a good memory of the pious environment in which she grew up. For her research De Graaf interviewed 18 young men put in jail because of terrorist acts in the Netherlands. One of these was of Dutch offspring and was member of a small group that tried to set a mosque in fire in the town of Enschede. All 17 other young men originated from Muslim families, most of them from Morocco, some from Iran or Turkey. They had been jailed for terrorist actions and De Graaf could interview them in prison. All of them had no thorough knowledge of classical Islam and most of them had a history of contact with the police for drug addicts, thefts. De Graaf's method is called by her as thick description and micro history. Narratives fill about 70% of her book and she moves then to 'grounded theory', or a general theory grounded in facts rather than theoretical models or reasoning from sacred texts.

She also included five Indonesians in her research and took interviews in Jakarta from  24-27 February 2020 (with good help from the side of the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta and BNPT or Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Terorisme: the National Counter Insurgency of Indonesia).The five ex-terrorists were Sofyan Tsauri, Kurnia Widodo, 'Ramli' (a self-chosen name of a terrorist), Syarafina Nailah (member of a large family, whose father and uncle are still in prison), Farihin.  She gives a very positive impression of the way BNPT works to de-radicalize terrorists. A difference with Dutch terrorists is also that some of the older terrorists of Indonesia have a history of parents or even a grand-father, going back to the 1950s like Darul Islam in West Java. Also the debate about the Jakarta Charter and the introduction of shari'a is typical Indonesian. Common ground is found in the positive attitude to the war in Afghanistan and the rise of IS in Syria and Iraq. And most of all in the individual quest for Radical Redemption.

Sofyan Tsauri was born in 1976 in Depok. His father was a police officer, the family seldom went to the mosque and prayed at irregular times. At secondary school Sofyan became a petty criminal and was arrested several times. At the age of 18 a friend suggested him to read books by Sayyid Qutb and Shaikh Azzam. He realized 'that I had to change my life. I should cleanse my soul from all evil acts. ... I should not only think about myself, but spend my energy and agression in favour of others.' He started dreaming of the desert of Afghanistan, 'we were hiding in caves and we had grenades and guns who always hit the target. And my ammunition never was finished.'[88] But he would never make it to Afghanistan. After secondary school he went to a pesantren, a religious school, besides studying at the police academy. In the pesantren he met some teachers who had fought in Afghanistan and the book by Shaykh Azzan, Ayaturrahman fi JihadilAfghan became his favourite. He left the circle of Muslim Brothers, because they were only talking, had no actions and became in 2007 member of Jemaah Islamiyah, more or less the Indonesian branch of Al-Qaida, With his friend Dulmatin he went to Aceh to start a training camp. He did not tell to his police department, where he had worked for several years that he left his job. Also to his father he did not say anything. He was active in the camp in Aceh, in processes of securing weapons from corrupt police fellows, until the camp was arrested on 6 March 2010, put in jail for six years (after a first verdict of ten years). Already before his arrest he concluded from readings from Usama bin Laden, that it is not allowed to kill fellow Muslims. De Graaf only gives very short and incomplete life stories: she only uses the cases as illustrations for her major thesis aboutthe Radical Redemption.

The most interesting  story resulted from the interview with Syarafina Nailah, member of a great family. Her father worked in Batam as government official in a quite good position. But she, and even more her younger sister Nur Dhania were not happy in Batam: life without meaning (151-6). Nailah was at university for her study of computer science, Dhania still at high school. The two girls  listened to stories of a brother of her mother, a devout Muslim who had heard stories about life in the Islamic State as a truly Muslim paradise. Thisuncle had problems with his business and so the three dreamt of going to Syria in order to become a citizen of the new caliphate. Moreand moremembers of the family became happy with the idea of a new life: the father sold the family house in Jakarta and in August 2015 the extended family, 18 members left for Turkey (6 more members could in the end not follow themajority). Already in the first weeks they saw that the Caliphate was not a good place: everything dirty, even the hospital, strict separation between men and women and the obligationfor men to join the fighting. The Caliphate was a disastrous utopia. Communication with people of the caliphate was very difficult and it took them two years before they could reach Turkey, where the Indonesian government facilitated the return to Indonesia. (Something the Dutch government is quite reluctant to provide!) The grandmother of the family had died in hospital and put in a anonymous grave before the members could perform the burial rituals. The father and theuncle were sentenced to four years of prison because they had become member of a terrorist organization. The female members of the party had to attend de-radicalization programmes and a re-integration course.

In general this is a quite interesting book, but it remains difficult to formulate general qualifications for the 18 Dutch and 5 Indonesian terrorists from the short andsomewhat defective life stories.