Maids Get to Know Radicalisation Risk through Film and Dialogue

The Straits Times

23 September 2019

Dian Yulia Novi used to work as a maid in Singapore between 2008 and 2009. After that, the Indonesian foreign domestic worker went to Taiwan to work, where she was radicalised online.

She later married a pro-ISIS militant, and the then 28-year-old was jailed in Indonesia for 71/2 years for plotting to blow herself up outside Jakarta’s presidential palace in 2016.

“Through Facebook, for at least one year, I opened the pages of those with jihadi status. It inspired me,” said Ms Novi in an interview with Dr Noor Huda Ismail, who produced the documentary Pengantin, or Bride, which was screened for 250 maids at Masjid Kampung Siglap yesterday.

… The documentary screening and the dialogue that followed with Dr Noor Huda, a visiting fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and members of the Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG) were organised by the mosque and the RRG, which aims to correct the misinterpretation of Islamic concepts and dispel the extremist and terrorist ideologies associated with them.

They are part of efforts to reach out to the community, against the backdrop of growing ideological threats such as Singapore seeing cases of individuals being radicalised online, said Dr Mohamed Ali, vice-chairman of RRG.

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