Terror group Jemaah Islamiah wants to ‘take over’ Indonesia by infiltrating state institutions, with aim of creating caliphate
- More than 30 public servants have been nabbed for terrorism in the past decade, a national counter-terrorism official says
- Wariness towards Chinese workers in Indonesia has also fuelled support for Jemaah Islamiah, which is spreading a ‘massive’ amount of radical propaganda online
When an Indonesian politician, several civil servants and a senior Muslim cleric were in 2020 arrested for alleged ties to the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah group, Indonesians were shocked.
It revealed how some alleged members of the militant group, which carried out the 2002 Bali bombings, were entrenched in influential positions.
But Ahmad Nurwakhid, a deputy official for terrorism prevention at Indonesia’s National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT), said the development was only a reflection of Jemaah Islamiah’s calculated efforts over the past decade to infiltrate state institutions in its bid to turn the world’s most populous Muslim country, officially a secular democracy, into a caliphate.
The group is seeking to influence policies in the political, social and religious field to support its agenda to establish “its version of sharia law and a caliphate”, Ahmad said.
“To accelerate taking over power [from the government], Jemaah Islamiah has to use state and government institutions, including the military and the police,” he said. “That is JI’s strategy.”
Between 2010 and last December, Indonesian police arrested 31 civil servants for involvement in terrorism, including eight personnel from the police force, five from the military, as well as 18 public servants.
Indonesia has in the past few years seen a growing wave of conservatism, with politicians pushing for a greater role for Islam and others advocating more hardline ideologies in some private education institutions and laws governing women and minority groups.
