Kuala Lumpur — Mr Ahmad Salman Abdul Rahim chose to leave his job at a Malaysian construction firm to fight alongside jihadists in Syria for a reason he said is 1,400 years old: The Prophet Muhammad demands it.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, once advised a companion to fight in the area that makes up modern-day Syria and predicted that Allah would send an “army of mujahideen” to the region, said Mr Ahmad, adding that he was in Syria to avenge Muslims tortured and killed by President Bashar Assad’s regime.

“We are portrayed as terrorists, but I don’t care as this affair is between me and God,” he said via Facebook messages from near Kfar Zeta in Syria’s Hama region.

“Many of the end-of-times battles will happen around Syria. That’s among the reasons I am here,” added Mr Ahmad, 38, who was educated in the United Kingdom.

… “It is not the IS per se that may pose a danger to the region but, rather, its extreme militant ideology as well as the skills, battleground experience and international networks that South-east Asian jihadists got from Syria and Iraq,” said Ms Navhat Nuraniyah, an associate research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies who looks into terrorism and radicalisation.