Families leaving for ISIS as Malaysia not Islamic enough, says top anti-terrorism cop

KUALA LUMPUR – Police have observed a recent trend among Malaysians joining the terror group the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS): They are young families willing to give up everything here for a life under a caliphate because they think Malaysia is not Islamic enough, a senior counter-terrorism official said.

“To these families, it was a ‘dream come true’ to have migrated from Malaysia, which they label as ‘taghut’, to a pure Islamic government under a caliph’s rule,” Police Counter-Terrorism Division principal assistant director Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said.

“Taghut” is an Arabic term referring to idolatry or the act of worshipping other things instead of Allah.

Mr Ayob told The Malaysian Insider that since the end of 2014, 10 families, many of them young parents in their late 20s, had left Malaysia for Syria.

With their offspring, they were 28 people in all, and included children as young as a few months old, to a 16 year old. “Two were from Penang and another from Selangor,” said Mr Ayob.

He added that Malaysians leaving to join ISIS were no longer a new phenomenon, but where sympathisers used to be single men or women travelling alone, the difference now was whole families were uprooting themselves in pursuit of a purer form of Islam.

In the past, police have said that failed marriages, loneliness, or failing at studies were among the reasons driving some people to seek a different life with the ISIS.

“The families moved there because they see Malaysia as not being Islamic enough, even calling the government here ‘taghut’. They want to migrate so they and their children can live under an Islamic nation (led) by a caliph,” Mr Ayob said.

“This is a worrying trend as they are willing to sell off property, businesses and empty their savings, even cheating their parents, so as to build a new life in Syria,” he added.

One of the three families police have information on include a woman called Aminah, who had been living in Penang with her husband and their six-year-old daughter. According to Mr Ayob, the woman conned her father out of RM130,000 (S$48,200), which she used to buy one-way tickets for herself, her husband and their daughter.

Plans to migrate were hatched and executed discreetly, so that none of her extended family members were aware of the young couple’s plan until it was too late.

Mr Ayob said information on Aminah’s background showed that she and her family, including her parents and siblings, were “normal Muslims” and had no tendency to sympathise with extremist ideology. She had a comfortable life, running one of her father’s six mini-markets together with her husband.

Mr Ayob said police believe Aminah had been influenced through ISIS’ online propaganda, through social media and other Internet platforms.

Intelligence reports also showed that the male figure in the families would join ISIS as fighters, while the wife and children would stay at home. New recruits received a US$200 (S$267) allowance per family and were given an apartment to live in, Mr Ayob said.

Other “benefits”, he said, were enrolment for children into a “jihadist school” while husbands were free to take another wife since polygamy was allowed under the self-declared caliphate.

Mr Ayob said police were concerned about the young children taken to ISIS-controlled areas.

“Their fates are unknown. They may enrol these young children in the training camp set up to train the children to become the next jihadist,” he said, adding that ISIS, as a terrorist organisation, conducted training and preparation of militants from a young age.

These training camps are apparently operated by seasoned fighters from different backgrounds and ethnicities and lessons are conducted in multiple languages to cater to recruits from Asia and Europe.

So far, police have only managed to stop one family from leaving Malaysia.

In November 2014, police moved in on a family in Shah Alam, Selangor, the richest and most developed state in Malaysia. The husband and wife owned a kindergarten but sold it off to migrate to Syria.

Nazahatulshima Sahak and her husband Amir Azlan Zainuddin were charged at the Shah Alam magistrates’ court in November with supporting terrorism. Their case is pending trial.

Malaysian authorities have declared a war against ISIS and have pledged to nip its influence in the bud.

To date, more than 90 people have been detained by Malaysian police for alleged ties to terrorist organisation. In early April, 17 people were arrested for suspected involvement in the planning of terrorism activities in Kuala Lumpur.

But the police’s efforts have also come with threats of reprisal. Twelve people arrested in Hulu Langat, Cheras, in the capital, had planned to attack government buildings in the Klang Valley as retaliation for the crackdown on ISIS sympathisers, according to Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar.

In that operation, explosive materials were seized as well as items which police said were likely meant for making bombs. THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER