'Terrorist whisperer' Noor Huda Ismail helps rehabilitate Islamic militants
Noor Huda Ismail sees extremists as people on a path he might have taken himself
An "epiphany" in Northern Ireland and a "watershed moment" in his native Indonesia put Noor Huda Ismail on track to become a "terrorist whisperer", helping convicted Islamic militants reintegrate into society.
Ismail, who has interviewed hundreds of former terrorists as a scholar and journalist, admits he could have been on the other side of that divide as an Islamic militant himself, as he told a Hong Kong audience yesterday.
Ismail was giving a talk at TEDx Wan Chai, the local version of the international event series at which speakers get 18 minutes to tell their life stories, under the slogan "ideas worth spreading".
He recalled being sent to an Islamic boarding school at the age of 12 and being taken under the wing of an older pupil called Utomo Pamungkas, or Hasan.
Ismail long believed Islam was a way to solve social problems, though he later became disillusioned by the school's teachings and its lack of critical thinking.
As a journalist, he was assigned to cover the 2002 Bali bombings - which killed 202 people, including 11 Hong Kong residents. It was a turning point for him because he found out one of the men behind the bombing was Hasan. "I thought to myself: how can a normal person get involved in such things?" he said. "It was a watershed moment."