Inside a mind of a terrorist

My first-ever published review! The book "Temanku, Teroris?" is written by Noor Huda Ismail, who studied in Abu Bakar Ba'asyir's Al-Mukmin Ngruki. If you have been living inside a cave, go Google Ba'asyir.

Anyway, here goes.





One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. This often-debated claim could be used to sum up the message behind Noor Huda Ismail’s new memoir-slash-novel, but, as is often the case when exploring the subject of terrorism, one single phrase cannot sum things up so neatly.

Titled “Temanku, Teroris?” (“My Friend, the Terrorist?”), the book tells the story of the relationship between Noor Huda Ismail, or Huda, as he is known in the media, and Utomo Pamungkas, his former boarding school roommate who is now in jail for his involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings.

The book details the radically different paths the two men’s lives took after they graduated from the Al-Mukmin Ngruki Islamic boarding school in Central Java.

Huda pursued a degree in political science and communications that led him to the world of journalism. He later became an analyst and researcher in the field of political violence and worked as a Jakarta-based correspondent for The Washington Post.

During the same period, Utomo changed his name to Fadlullah Hasan and continued his study of Islam, becoming increasingly radical until his eventual arrest for helping to pass on the funds that financed one of the worst terrorist attacks ever committed on Indonesian soil.

The book explores how the two men, who were exposed to the same influences and curriculum at Ngruki, went on to lead very different lives.

Huda clearly illustrates the two men’s divergent paths in the opening pages of the book by displaying a map of the world with lines that trace the two men’s travels after their graduation.

Huda, who studied communications at Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University, eventually earned a master’s degree in Scotland. During his time abroad he was frequently involved in debates about Islam with fellow students and professors.

Later, the same penchant for discussion and debate earned him a reputation as a traitor among his former classmates for his involvement in Western culture.

On the other hand, after graduating, Fadlullah went to Malaysia to continue Islamic studies and eventually traveled to Pakistan where he was trained as a mujahideen — a Muslim warrior engaged in jihad.

He ended up in Afghanistan fighting against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Fadlullah’s life as a mujahideen makes for gripping reading. We are brought along as he battles alongside his Muslim “brothers,” camping out in the desert for months at a time while fighting the Soviets.

“If a centimeter of a Muslim’s land is occupied by the enemy, then jihad is a must for all Muslim brothers to defend that land,” is a phrase Fadlullah often used, quoting a prominent Afghan mujahideen figure, Abdullah Azzam.

The book describes how Fadlullah came to see it as his personal duty to save Muslims from the brutality of the Soviet invaders.

He believed that if he was killed while fighting, he would go to heaven where he would be surrounded by angels, because he was doing God’s will.

It’s noble stuff and easy to get caught up in, but the book also explores the idea of how, once the jihad door is opened, it can be very difficult to close again. Fadlullah’s mission did not end against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

When he returned to Indonesia, he continued fighting in conflict-plagued places such as Ambon, in eastern Indonesia, and Mindanao, in the southern Philippines.

Huda illustrates how Fadlullah’s fight became the sole purpose of his life until he was eventually convicted of helping to fund the 2002 Bali bombings that claimed the lives of more than 200 people.

Huda explains how he was shocked to learn that one of the men involved in the Bali bombings was his childhood classmate Fadlullah.

“When I heard Fadlullah was one of the suspects, I was shocked,” Huda said during a news conference for the launch of the book on July 16.

“He left behind two young daughters who will never have the chance to know who their father was.”

Huda takes this family theme and builds on it until it becomes central to the book’s conclusion — how children and families on both sides of a violent conflict always end up being its true victims.

“Both the bomber and the victims in the Bali tragedy left behind children and family that will always have to cope with the fact that their loved ones are gone forever,” he writes.

For all the book does to cast a light on the terrible fissure that terrorism rips in the fabric of the lives of both its perpetrators and victims, Huda could have made his point even stronger by broadening his research to document the lives of those orphaned by the attack, including Alif, the son of one of the victims of the Bali attacks, and Zahra, Fadlullah’s eldest daughter who never got the chance to know her father.

As a memoir, “Temanku, Teroris?” manages to take readers behind the veil of the infamous Ngruki school and explore how someone can become fanatical about an idea.

The book successfully provides an eye-opening look inside the mind of a terrorist while highlighting the duality of Indonesia as a country that values tolerance and peace and yet manages to be home to some of the world’s most wanted militants.

Still, for all its analysis of the divergent paths of the two men’s lives, at the end of the day it’s impossible to know exactly why an individual is called to choose the path he or she takes in life.

Perhaps the best way to sum up the one irrefutable truth the book conveys would require coining an entirely new phrase, a phrase that might go something like this: “An eye for an eye leaves a world without fathers.”