Lesson taught by teen bombmaker in beer-fest row

“What such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.”

― Charles Dickens, ‘David Copperfield’

MCA publicity chief Chai Kim Sen made two rather disingenuous statements regarding the arrest of the teenage bombmaker and his cohorts. The first was oppositional types should apologise for casting doubts on the credibility of the state security apparatus on their claims that there were elements out to violently disrupt the beer festival, and the second was there were some rights that should be sacrificed in order to protect other rights and freedoms.

To be honest, I am not really interested in these statements. The credibility of the state security apparatus has diminished by the words and actions of people entrusted to safeguard our rights; and while there are always situations where “sacrificing” certain rights for utilitarian purposes, this is not one of those situations.

Keep in mind that according to initial investigations this teenage zealot wanted to teach Malaysia a lesson. Therefore, there is the question of the lesson he wanted to impart and what Malaysians actually learnt from his attempted criminal act of religious murder.

The great tragedy here is that in a functional democracy, the lesson he wanted to teach would be dismissed for obvious reasons but here in Malaysia, the state security apparatus gave him exactly what he wanted.

The extremely important lesson that this teenage bombmaker taught Malaysians, and especially the state security apparatus, is that terror works. It did not take a coordinated effort by committed hardened Islamic State types to disrupt a festival in Malaysia. All it took was a middle-class teenager with delusions of grandeur and the right people to “fund” him.

In any other functional democracy, the state security apparatus foils attempts at terrorism and ensures the safety and security of citizens going about their daily lives. However, in the case of Malaysia, the establishment tells us to be grateful to the state security apparatus for essentially caving in to the demands of Islamists who either protest violently - like the leader of the red shirts - or plan an attack on civilians, all in the name of safety and security.

I say “caving in” because this is exactly what happened. What was the objective of this so-called teenage amateur bombmaker?

His main goal was to disrupt the event and kill non-Muslims. We know this because initial investigations as reported in the press reveal he “was motivated by incidents affecting Muslims, and decided that Malaysia had strayed from its role as a true Islamic nation”. We also know from initial investigations that he did not have any contact with any Malaysian or Islamic State militants.

Think about this for a moment. This is made-in-Malaysia Islamic terrorism. We are not talking about a young man radicalised by foreign elements about the “plight” of Muslims in foreign countries. This was a case of a young middle-class teenager who felt that there was something wrong with the way how Islam was practised in this country and decided that he had to do something about it.

We already have a high-ranking minister make the claim that there is a concerted effort by the establishment – and this includes their non-Muslim coalition partners – to make Malaysia an Islamic state, but this is not good enough for this middle-class Muslim teenager. This is not “true” enough for someone who would use violence and attempt to murder non-Muslims in the name of his faith.

Same religious ideology

Some in the media have called this a “twisted ideology” but how twisted can this be when what this amateur bomber believes in is exactly the same kind of religious supremacy that dominates the discourse in this country?

Thomas Koruth Samuel in an article titled ‘The Lure of Youth into Terrorism’ which you can read at the Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT) website, highlighted a certain point which I have often revisited –

“Religious institutions, preaching a skewed and misconstrued interpretation of a religion have the potential to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of the young people. In most cases, recruiters would identify and target the more promising youth and pull them into a smaller setting where a more comprehensive indoctrination programme would be undertaken, without arousing the suspicions of the moderate members in the congregation.

“Coupled with the actual injustices happening all around the world, these ‘men of God’ clinically exploit the minds and hearts of the youths into thinking that the only alternative left is that of violence. Having the advantage of ‘god’ on their side, these youths are manipulated into believing that they are actually struggling for a noble and worthy cause, with the assurance of victory.”

I have no idea if this teenager went to a religious school. We know that his father “was muezzin at the local surau, while his mother is a housewife”, I wonder if the state security apparatus is concerned that these types of extremists thrive in an environment where non-Muslims are constantly reminded of their subservient place in Malaysia and where establishment politicians routinely demonise other Muslims as deviants and “liberals”.

Investigators, while looking at the diagrams of explosive devices by this teenage bombmaker, were reminded of that other Malaysian bombmaker, Azahari Husin, so to dismiss this teenager as some sort of religious kook would be underestimating the level of danger these extremists pose.

The important question here is not where this teenager learnt to make his improvised explosive devices, but rather where he learnt his “true” Islamic values. Anyone can learn to make a bomb but not everyone who knows how to make a bomb would use it to kill innocent civilians in the name of his or her religion.

Writing about why Muslim Malaysian youths are radicalised, I made this point, which is as far as I am concerned the main point in this particular discourse – others may have a different view.

“Do not act worried about radical Islamic dogma infecting Malay youths when the very basis of their identity is wrapped around the pillars of racial and religious superiority. Do not act surprised that a dogma that promulgates the meme that every other human being, including Muslims, is fair game when it comes to achieving Islamic statehood, though violence is attractive to certain youths when the same ideas could be discovered in the way how the state carries out its agenda against Muslims and non-Muslims.”

As far as I am concerned, the opposition does not owe an apology to the state security apparatus. I think the BN establishment and the state security apparatus owe Malaysians an apology for giving legitimacy to this teenage fanatic's lesson.

---

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.- Mkini