Shantanu Mukharji
Malaysia, a relatively peaceful country in the Southeast Asian region, was struck by terror attack recently when the hardline Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group stormed a police station and killed two police officers in the town of Ulu Tiram in the southern state of Johor. More alarmingly, when the officer confronted the suspect, he retaliated with a machete, grabbing the policeman’s service revolver and shot another police officer dead. Later, the police raided the suspect’s house and recovered substantial incriminating material. The authorities also arrested a number of JI activists thought to be complicit in the attack.
JI is an al-Qaeda-affiliated group that aimed to establish a hardline Islamic state in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia. At its peak in the 2000s, JI had members from Indonesia to Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and the Philippines, and masterminded a series of deadly bombings, including the October 2002 attack in Bali that killed more than 200 people.
Minister backtracks
Meanwhile, more inputs on the terror attack are trickling in. Initially, the Malaysian police said they suspected incident was linked to the JI and was probably an attempt to steal weapons. Malaysia’s Minister of Home Affairs Saifuddin Nasution Ismail appeared to backtrack on the JI connection, describing the attacker as a “lone wolf” who was driven by certain motivations based on his own understanding because he rarely mixed with others.
Interestingly, a former member of JI in Indonesia Ali Imron told media from a Jakarta prison that an attack by the group on Malaysian soil seemed unlikely. He gave out that JI’s profile in Malaysia did not seem to fit the police station attack. There have never been any JI members in Malaysia who agreed to commit acts of violence like this. Before the Bali bombing, there were attacks in Malaysia, but these were committed not by JI but Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM). This contradicts claims of the Malaysia police.
KMM, an extreme group directly linked to JI, carried out small-scale attacks in Malaysia in the early 2000s. Rueben Dass, a senior analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, observed that JI had never previously mounted attacks in Malaysia. This incident, therefore, triggers food for thought about this sudden emergence of terror activity in Malaysia.
Radicalisation cases
It is important to highlight that the JI was founded by Indonesian Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar in 1993, with a mission to establish an Islamic caliphate across Southeast Asia. The group has historically been linked to al-Qaeda, from which it received funding and training in the 1990s and early 2000s. JI was officially banned in Indonesia in 2007, leading to the group splintering. Some members focused on dakwah or proselytization, while others continued to plot violent attacks. Between 2021 and 2023, out of 610 people arrested in Indonesia, 42 per cent were JI and 39 per cent from other hardline groups.
While Malaysian militants have been key figures in JI and Philippinesbased groups, there are few indications of sophisticated plots targeting Malaysia specifically in recent years, as per Judith Jacob, Director at risk management company Forward Global. However, while Malaysia and Indonesia have not seen anything like the scales of violence of the early 2000s, attacks have not been completely eradicated.
With the Islamic militants in Southern Thailand bordering Malaysia in the Malay Patani region, Songkhla, Yala and Narathiwat are far from being dormant and there are stray cases of radicalisation in Indonesia too. The recent JI terror assault throws up potential of future extremist attacks in Southeast Asia opening a new vista in the terror happenings.
