Could Asian Jihadists Bring Terrorism Back Home?

South China Morning Post

03 July 2016

Malaysian Mohd Rafi Udin, a former taxi driver, had not been seen since 2014 when he left the country to join Islamic State (IS). That was until he appearedlast week in an IS propaganda video, alongside anIndonesian and Filipino. They each beheaded aMiddle Eastern-looking prisoner. It was the first time Southeast Asian fighters have been filmed carrying out beheadings.

It was a quantum leap in brutality for Southeast Asian fighters, regarded as coming from a gentler culture than their Arab counterparts.

… “This … suggests the extremely dehumanising effects of IS’s virulent ideology are taking root among the Southeast Asian fighters in Syria … to condition the radicalised individual to see out-group members as less than human,” said Associate Professor Kumar Ramakrishna, head of policy studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Singapore.

“This makes it psychologically easier [for fighters] to commit atrocities against them [non-believers].”

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