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2010-12-28 Southeast Asia
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Malaysian colleges becoming Islamist recruiting centers
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Malaysian universities have become major recruiting grounds for Islamists looking for young supporters.
Malaysia has been relatively free from terrorism, but its lax admission policies are worrying some. A number of arrests and detentions this year have demonstrated the growing presence of radicals using Malaysia as a base.
"The terror threat to Malaysia is very real in terms of terrorists who come in as students," said Zamihan Mat Zin, deputy head of the Malaysian Islamic Training Centre, "They are under the radar so they can recruit and create terrorists in our midst." Zamihan is part of a group of Muslim scholars engaged by the government to rehabilitate imprisoned terror suspects.
In June, Al-Qaeda-linked Syrian scholar Aiman Al Dakak along with eight other foreigners from Syria, Yemen, Nigeria and Jordan, were deported. Al Dakak gave lectures to students at his home in Kuala Lumpur, indoctrinating them with jihadist ideology and urging them to carry out bombings on places of worship in Malaysia.
In July, engineer Mohamad Fadzullah was detained for trying to recruit students at Malaysia's national university and technical institutes for Jemaah Islamiyah.
After the deportations, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin called the phenomenon an "unhealthy trend which can affect national security".
"Despite the arrests, we believe there are still many who are here now and this process is continuing," said Zamihan, who was given permission to interview the nine deported terror suspects. "Some of these Al-Qaeda operatives who are caught overseas but not prosecuted because of a lack of evidence or a good lawyer, they are able to escape so they then come to Malaysia to study to do a Masters or PhD, but at the same time they are busy recruiting undergraduates."
"Once they have their recruits, whether local or foreigners studying here, they plan regional attacks. Many of them have confessed this," he added.
Kamarulnizam Abdullah, head of national security studies at the National University of Malaysia, says better screening is necessary.
"Our system is very lax and we just accept whoever without thinking of consequences," he said.
Zamihan said the June deportees were Al-Qaeda agents who were quietly trying to resurrect Jemaah Islamiyah.
"They were recruiting locals or even foreigners studying here to radicalise them and create new terrorists," he said.
FBI assistant director for international operations Joseph Demarest has said recently that the FBI was deeply concerned over home-grown radicalism in the Asian region.
"It is the affiliated groups that we are very concerned about... the smaller group, the individuals that we may not know about, these are the top concerns at least for the FBI," he said at a regional security conference in Kuala Lumpur. 
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Posted by ryuge 2010-12-28 00:00||
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