In an official statement the Finance Ministry has said Triyono Utomo, whom authorities had linked to the Islamic State (IS) movement, tendered his resignation as a civil servant in February 2016.
Based on data of the Foreign Ministry, since 2014 there have been three former employees of the Finance Ministry who intended to "migrate" to Syria: Two were stopped at the border of Turkey and another one managed to cross.
Triyono became interesting because he graduated from the school of public administration at Flinders University, Australia, in 2009. Why does his experience learning and living abroad seem to have made no positive impacts on his life choices? Or maybe even when he studied overseas radicalism gained momentum in his thinking.
Radicalism is a very complex affair. Everyone who is radicalized has his or her own pattern that can hardly be generalized. Louise Richardson in her 2007 book, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat, offered a theory that the emergence of radicalism was characterized by three things. First, if there are individuals who feel marginalized. Second, if these people find a community that supports them. Third, the existence of an ideology that justifies their radical actions.
Unfortunately, the theory of the British researcher is outdated for the case of Triyono and his ilk, a circle educated overseas who are then attracted by the charm of IS. Moreover, Triyono did not try to join IS because he wanted to become a terrorist. Instead, he wanted to live in a new life in a so-called Islamic caliphate. Even though he used to work in the government, his inner self was tormented to see an Indonesia that was not based on Islam.
The old profile of IS supporters in Indonesia in 2014 and 2015 was they were usually from marginalized groups. They, for example, included a seller of meatballs who was tempted by the lure of a fixed salary and a promise that his debts in Indonesia would be paid by the recruiters, or several former supporters of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) in Lamongan, East Java, who used to work as fish porters and moved to Syria with the hope of a better life. Looking at their profiles, we must be careful about concluding that the ideological factor was the main driving factor for them to go to Syria.
However, the Triyono case can be read as a phenomenon of the "tip of the iceberg" of radicalization in the government, which must be seriously analyzed in detail even though this is not a new phenomenon. Remember the two cousins who worked at the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), who were related to the main actors of the JW Marriott Hotel bombing in 2009? A former Garuda technician, whose younger brother was the mastermind of the same event? Two military deserters who became members of the Santoso terrorist network in Java and Poso? Or also a former Jambi police officer who joined IS? This is clearly worrying.
However, Indonesia is not alone in facing such a phenomenon. About 70 security personnel in Malaysia have also joined IS. Radicalization here is meant as "slowly searching, retrieving and practicing an extreme concept or one contrary to the mainstream view", as French political scientist Olivier Roy wrote in 2002. Usually this process is followed by the withdrawal from the life they consider secular.
Dialog about values
Triyono\'s decision to quit his position as a civil servant can be read as an early symptom of radicalization. However, the excitement of an individual for practicing the teachings of Islam, such as by having a beard, wearing shortened trousers, diligently praying, refusing liquor and wearing wide veils, are not necessarily a trait of radicalization.
Given the severity of the problem, the state has to examine the radicalization of Triyono, even when he studied overseas. For anyone, living overseas is an important phase in life. At that moment there is a dialog about inner values. State officials who study in the West will become very different if they have different fields of experience and fields of reference, psychologists Amos Tversky, and Daniel Kahneman wrote in 1981.
Sayyid Qutb, the former Egyptian state official who later become a Muslim Brotherhood activist, had studied in New York and Colorado, US, for two years. He was very disappointed by what he saw, especially the society\'s moral decay. Therefore, he wrote a book, Ma’alim fi thoriq’ (Signs of the Road). It is this book that is widely studied by Muslim activists throughout the world, including in Indonesia, and has become a seed of anti-Westernism, especially anti-Americanism.
Meanwhile, Muhammad Abduh, who was also a state official (a judge) from Egypt was even infatuated with the West when he studied in France. He said,
”I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.” What is meant by “Islam” by Abduh here is the "Islamic values", such as cleanliness, the habit to queue and a tradition of critical thinking that he easily found in the West, where they are not Muslims.
From the above explanation, it seems the state will see the possibility of the emergence of an elite group of Indonesians who study overseas and choose the same path as Sayyid Qutb or Triyono. They are smart students, but are frustrated by the secular Western traditions of life, especially the US as is currently demonstrated by policies with racist and foolish nuances a la President Donald Trump.
Or perhaps they are portraits of citizens who are shocked to live back in their own country after staying for a long time in the country of their fairy tales?
NOOR HUDA ISMAIL
Founder of Prasasti Perdamaian Foundation