Deradicalisation and Terrorist Rehabilitation by Rohan Gunaratna Sabariah Hussin

Author:Rohan Gunaratna, Sabariah Hussin [Rohan Gunaratna, Sabariah Hussin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780429891045
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

5 Entrepreneurial rehabilitation

The promise of social entrepreneurship in disengaging religious terrorists

Yanto Chandra

Introduction

The ubiquity of religiously inspired terrorist attacks in recent years, from New York’s 9/11 attack (2001), the Bali bombing (2002), Paris’ Charlie Hebdo attack (2015) and the Manchester attack (2017), has continuously reminded the world of the persistence of religious terrorism. Religious terrorism is a type of terrorism that legitimizes violence based on religious precepts and is thus considered far more lethal than its secular counterpart (Victoroff 2005; Hoffman 1995). Religious terrorism is an old phenomenon that predates modernity, from the radical Sikh and Hindu Thugs movements in India, the radical Buddhist monks who incited bigotry and violence against Muslims, to the contemporary Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) (Hoffman 1995; Oppenheim 2017; Schmid 2004; Stern and Berger 2015). Experts argued that government-led military style interventions have failed (Thrall and Goepner 2017) and only led to counter attacks by terrorists and helped terrorists search for new and better tactics (Cockburn 2017). The ‘War on Terror’ approach seems to offer no sustainable solutions to stop religious terrorism and the terrorist movement (Thrall and Goepner 2017; Lum et al. 2006). As evidence shows, the weakened Al-Qaeda (Miller and Whitlock 2014) does not end religious terrorism but rather gave impetus for the rise of ISIS, which is known to be far more radical than Al-Qaeda and which has gained support from 31 terrorist/radical groups worldwide (Rabouin 2015), including Nigeria-based Boko Haram, Phillipines-based Abu Sayyaf Group and Indonesia-based Mujahidin Indonesia Timur. Where does that leave us? These terrorist movements raise two fundamental questions: How do we reduce the threat of future terrorist acts and what are the steps to be taken to promote peace?

The study of religious terrorism, particularly in the context of Muslim extremists, can be advanced by studying Indonesia as a ‘strategic research site’ (Merton 1987), as it has a record of religious terrorism dating back to the 1940s (e.g. the Darul Islam revolt in 1947; Ramakrishna 2005) and a resurgence of terror attacks claiming religious justifications (Nugroho 2016; Putra and Sukabdi 2013). In Indonesia alone, the National Police has arrested over 800 suspected (religiously inspired) terrorists since the 2002 Bali bombing incident (Jakarta Post 2013; Gunaratna 2012). Around 250 terrorists were released in 2014 (Collins 2013), and more will be released in the near future. Unfortunately, the government is not ready to help them. Some might ask if the terrorists deserve any help at all given the atrocities they commited. Do they or do they not deserve help? In this study,1 I do not aim to offer a philosophical or moral debate on the ethics of helping religious terrorists return to normalcy but rather offer a strategic and intervention-based perspective to explore deeper into the how and why religious-based terrorists and extremists in Indonesia can be assisted to return to a normal, mainstream lifestyle.

Besides a lack of coordination among state institutions on what to do with the terrorists after their capture and subsequent release into society, there is also a stigma attached to ex-terrorists and terrorists recently released from prison.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.