By Ankit Panda
A new report elucidates the allure of the Syrian conflict to Islamic extremists from Indonesia.
It was the Indonesian jihadist leader Abu Bakar Bashir who once described Syria as a “university for jihad education (PDF),” and it appears that his assertion was taken to heart by Indonesia’s extremists.
A new report released by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conclit (IPAC) titled “Indonesians and the Syrian Conflict” (PDF) sheds light on the troubling extent to which the Syrian conflict has drawn Indonesian extremists “in a way no foreign war has before.” The report isn’t the first to emphasize that Indonesia Islamist organizations have fixated on Syria – this much was known as early as 2012. It rather focuses on explaining the allure of Syria in comparison to similar causes in the past, such as Palestine, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, that have drawn the attention of Indonesian extremists .
At the core of it, the report takes to Islamic eschatology which predicts that “the final battle at the end of time will take place in Sham, the region sometimes called Greater Syria or the Levant, encompassing Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel.” It additionally emphasizes that coverage of the Syria conflict within Indonesia has focused on framing the conflict as one where Bashar al-Assad’s government has directed atrocities against pious Sunni Muslims.
According to IPAC, some 50 of the 11,000 or so foreign fighters in Syria from over 74 countries are “thought to be Indonesian.” The number is based off an Indonesia foreign ministry estimate from December 2013 but is widely unconfirmed.
Read the full story at The Diplomat