The Radicalization of Abu Hamdie: Wider Lessons for the Ongoing Struggle Against Violent Extremism in Post-Marawi Mindanao

Introduction

On 25 March 2011, in a Quezon City hotel café, the writer came face to face with a stocky, fit-looking young man who was accompanied by two other men, whom I later found out to be plainclothes security officers. The man was cordial but relatively serious. This meeting had been arranged by the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research (PIPVTR), led by Dr Rommel C. Banlaoi, its Chairman. The man the writer was meeting was an ethnic Tausug from the Sulu archipelago in the Southern Philippines. His name was Abu Muslim, but perhaps better known as Abu Hamdie. Abu Hamdie had been arrested three years earlier in Cotabato City for his involvement in the terrorist network Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). However, with the encouragement and support of Banlaoi, he had turned state witness with the Department of Justice and by 2013, was working in the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission and served as a senior fellow with PIPVTR (Espejo, 2008; Galvosa, 2013). While the conversation took place several years ago, Abu Hamdie’s story retains contemporary relevance and is very instructive at three levels. First, it sheds light on how what we may call a wider ideological ecosystem, supportive of radicalization into violent extremism, functions in the Southern Philippines. Second, his story illumines some of the enduring background factors that may shed some light on the rise of those Bangsamoro militant groups—including the ASG—that in 2017, attempted to carve out some territorial space in the Islamic City of Marawi in Lanao Del Sur province in Mindanao, with the putative aim of setting up a regional province or wilayat of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In the event, after five months of sustained urban fighting, the pro-ISIS Bangsamoro militants failed to establish a foothold—a development that if successful would have been of serious concern not just to the Philippines but to the rest of Southeast Asia (Regencia, 2017). ¹ Third, Abu Hamdie’s story is also valuable, in that it highlights what the central government in Manila, civil society actors and international partners need to look into to prevent future Marawis from recurring in the troubled Mindanao region.

Accordingly, this essay is divided into three substantive sections. First, it will explore the wider historical and socio-political context within which Abu Hamdie found himself embedded: specifically, the violent Islamist ASG milieu. Second, it will then examine how his experiences within a strategic node of the violent Islamist ecosystem in Marawi, the Darul Imam Shafii religious boarding school, facilitated his own radicalization into the violent extremism of the ASG. The article will finally suggest three broad lessons that may be learned from the specific Abu Hamdie radicalization experience for the ongoing struggle against violent extremism in post-Marawi Mindanao—and perhaps beyond.

Abu Hamdie’s Wider Historical and Socio-political Context: Aburajak Janjalani and the Rise of the Abu Sayyaf

Before the arrival of Christian Filipino settlers from the northern islands of Luzon and Visayas from 1912 onwards, Mindanao, Sulu and the island of Palawan were the ancestral homelands of more than 30 ethno-linguistic groups. While 13 of these groups, such as the Badjao, Iranun, Molbog, Sama, Palawani, Sangil, Kalagan, Jama Mapun and Kalibugan—and in particular, the politically powerful Maguindanao, Tausug and Maranao—were considered as Southern Philippine Muslim or ‘Moro’, the rest came to be known as Lumad: the non-Muslim and non-Christian indigenous clans of Mindanao (Kamlian, 2003). It is well known that the Moro homelands of the Mindanao region—primarily, the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, as well as large areas in Cotabato, Lanao del Norte, Zamboanga del Norte and Davao del Sur, and to some extent Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, Zamboanga del Sur and Palawan—have long been wracked by a decades-long Muslim separatist insurgency against the central Christian government in Manila. The drivers of the violent insurgency by the Moro—nowadays increasingly also known as Bangsamoro (Liow, 2006, 2016) ² —separatists have consistently been regarded as ‘poverty, illiteracy, bad governance, wide availability of loose firearms, and non-enforcement of the rule of law’—all of which have combined to create ‘a fertile ground for radicalization to take root’ (Center for Integrative and Development Studies, 2015, p. 1). More fundamentally, historic Bangsamoro nationalist agitation for an independent homeland—exemplified by the slogan ‘Moro not Filipino’, resulted in the rise of armed separatist groups such as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) by the late 1960s and a powerful, more religiously oriented splinter faction the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) by the mid-1980s that engaged the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in extensive fighting over four decades that killed, maimed and displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in Mindanao. Compounding matters further was the tendency of the AFP to “misapply military force” in the Mindanao region. The former commander of AFP forces in Mindanao, Lieutenant-General Mohammad Benjamin Dolorfino (2011, p. 42), conceded that the ‘adverse effects of military force’ alienated the Moro public, causing them to view soldiers as ‘villains rather than protectors’. Singaporean scholar Joseph Liow (2006, p. 56) similarly notes that ‘many Philippine security officials’ in Mindanao displayed ‘dehumanizing attitudes’ towards Moros, and senior AFP officers ‘even opined publicly that Moros should basically be exterminated because they are all likely to be terrorists’. Against this tumultuous backdrop, in 1989, Aburajak Janjalani, a former member of the MNLF, decided to set up another splinter group, the Al Harakatul Islamiyah, which over time became much better known as the ASG (Banlaoi, 2009a).

Aburajak, who had been trained in Afghanistan, named the network after the Afghan mujahidin commander Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, whom he greatly revered (Hamdie, 2010). While Aburajak had attended a Catholic high school called Claret College in Isabela in Basilan, his subsequent education was fully within a fundamentalist, Wahhabi (see below) milieu. He went to Saudi Arabia in 1981 and studied Islamic fiqh (jurisprudence) for three years in Mecca, before proceeding to Pakistan, where he became deeply immersed in jihad thinking (Cook, 2015; Mourad, 2016). ³ He returned to Basilan in 1984, preaching in various mosques and emphasizing the importance of jihad in the sense of ‘fighting and dying in the cause of Islam.’ (Banlaoi, 2009b, pp. 47–48, 55). He set up the ASG as he was appalled by what he considered the ‘“heretic” leadership of the MNLF and MILF.’ (Banlaoi, 2009b, p. 48). ⁴ The ASG at the outset, such as the earlier Bangsamoro secessionist groups, the MNLF and MILF, declared that it sought the creation of an independent Islamic State in Mindanao (Kamlian, 2003; Yegar, 2002).

The ideological seeds for the ASG network were sown between 1984 and 1989 in Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga City and General Santos City. Aburajak lambasted traditionalist Moros in these areas, accusing them of not practicing what he considered the ‘true Islam’ in line with their West Asian counterparts (Banlaoi, 2009b, p. 55). This is not surprising. As Moshe Yegar points out, the Philippine Muslims were traditionally not well versed in the religion or the Quran, observed very few rituals and were rather syncretic in their religious practices. They basically regarded Islam ‘as the focal point of their identity and way of life’. Yegar adds that of all the Moro ethnic groups, the ethnic Tausugs were the oldest Muslim community and considered relatively the most orthodox (Yegar, 2002, p. 187). In any case, apart from urging stricter adherence to the more puritanical Wahhabi norm, Aburajak urged local leaders to actively oppose Manila for its historical injustices against the Moros, and said that the only way to ‘seek keadilan or justice for Muslims’ was through armed jihad. He even produced eight khutbah or sermons laying out his thoughts on the way forward for the Moros (Banlaoi, 2009b, p. 55).

In setting up the ASG, Aburajak also recruited younger scholars who had studied in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Pakistan and Egypt, who were themselves upset at both the MNLF and Manila. When ASG first started out, it was relatively organized: Aburajak presided over an Islamic Executive Council of ‘15 amirs’ that oversaw two committees, one focused on education and fundraising and the other responsible for agitation and propaganda. He also set up a military wing tasked with carrying out bombing attacks, tactical co-ordination and intelligence operations, and comprised largely ‘disgruntled members of MNLF and MILF’ (Banlaoi, 2009b, p. 49). One of the earliest Aburajak-directed ASG operations was the bombing of the Christian missionary ship M/V Doulos in August 1991, in retaliation against overzealous Christian missionaries in Mindanao who had apparently made derogatory remarks about Islam (Banlaoi, 2009b, p. 56). The ASG gained further notoriety four years later for burning down the town centre of Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur, signalling its expansion outside Basilan (Abinales, 2004; Kamlian, 2003). It is important to note also that, Ramzi Yousuf, who had carried out the World Trade Center bombing in New York City in 1993, actually went to Basilan the same year, linked up with the ASG and trained members of the organization for terrorist operations in Manila against Pope John Paul II as well as the American and Israeli embassies. Apparently, Yousuf sought to ‘turn the Abu-Sayyaf organization into a centre for international terror’, and helped build funding, logistics and training links for the group with the Palestinian Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and other Arab countries as well as ‘groups in Pakistan, Malaysia, and apparently, Iran as well’ (Yegar, 2002, pp. 346–347). Hence, the ASG from the outset has had direct exposure to violent international Islamist influences. As used here, Islamism represents ‘a form of instrumentalization of Islam by individuals, groups and organizations that pursue political objectives’, and that ‘provides political responses to today’s societal challenges by imagining a future, the foundations of which rest on reappropriated, reinvented concepts borrowed from the Islamic tradition’ (Ayoob, 2008, p. 2).

Following Aburajak’s elimination by Philippine security forces in December 1998 in Lamitan, Basilan, however, the ensuing leadership vacuum led to the ASG’s relatively hierarchical original structure quickly degenerating into a rather haphazard network of various armed groups led by their respective amirs, functioning in the main in Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi. By July 1999, however, Khaddafy Janjalani, the younger brother of Aburajak had been elected to lead the ASG, but he lacked both the organizational discipline and ideological zeal of his older brother. Thus, between 1999 and Khaddafy’s own confirmed death in January 2007, the ASG focused largely on ‘banditry, piracy, kidnap-for-ransom and other terrorist activities’ (Banlaoi, 2009b, p. 50). The network in this regard gained global notoriety in April 2000 when it abducted 21 hostages, mainly tourists, from the Malaysian tourist island of Sipadan. This was followed up by another raid on the Dos Palmas Resort on Palawan, where another 20 hostages were taken and two Americans killed (Aguirre, 2009). These highly lucrative kidnapping activities meant an inflow of huge ransom funds into the pockets of the kin and friends of ASG members in Basilan and Jolo—distorting the traditional patronage distribution networks and implying that the ASG had become a significant rival to local politicians. Pressure thus mounted on Manila to co-operate with US forces—newly deployed to the region as part of the George W. Bush administration’s post-11 September Global War on Terror—to eliminate the ASG (Abinales, 2004).

Intensified security force pressure throughout the 2000s meant that the ASG was forced to consolidate itself in two main areas: Basilan, headed until his death mid-decade by Khaddafy Janjalani and Sulu, led at one time by Ghalib Andang alias Commander Robot. The Basilan amir following Khaddafy Janjalani’s demise was apparently Khair Mundos, while the Sulu faction was led, after Andang’s arrest in 2003, by Radullan Sahiron. By 2011, Philippine security officials had assessed that the overall ASG amir was a close friend of the late Janjalani brothers, Yassir Igasan, who was a cleric and Afghan veteran with good grassroots and organizational skills and had been educated in Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Igasan represented a throwback to the more Islamist orientation of Aburajak Janjalani rather than the banditry associated with much of ASG activity since the latter’s demise. In any case, Rommel Banlaoi, who has closely studied the ASG, opines that rather than a ‘homogenous organization’, the ASG today is a ‘very loose coalition of many groups of radical Muslim leaders and bandits commanding their own loyal followers in the Southern Philippines’, possessing ‘mixed objectives from Islamic fundamentalism to mere banditry’. Moreover, rather than ‘ASG doctrines’, members of these ASG networks ‘pay allegiance mostly to their respective leaders.’ These ‘highly personalistic’ networks in truth display widely varying degrees of commitment to Aburajak Janjalani’s original ideal of a ‘separate Islamic state in the Southern Philippines’ (Banlaoi, 2009b, pp. 51–53).

Moreover, precisely because the ASG network is itself embedded in the wider Bangsamoro secessionist movement, institutional boundaries have been more imaginary than real; crossing of fighters between group boundaries is endemic. Despite the official protestations of both the MNLF and MILF that they have no connections with the ASG—whose ‘un-Islamic’ lawlessness is decried—they both have links with the ASG (Kamlian, 2003). After all, many ASG members were ex-MNLF, and informal ASG–MNLF tactical alliances for specific operations have not been unknown. MNLF members provide shelter to ASG militants on the run, while ASG has hired MNLF fighters to mount attacks. Furthermore, ethno-linguistic and kinship ties and intermarriage and personal relationships link the ASG and MILF elements. While no formal institutional links have been detected between the ASG and MILF, unofficial tactical coordination as well as sharing of resources between elements of both networks occurs. A former ASG militant even revealed that ASG fighters would fire upon Philippine soldiers wounded by roadside bombs planted by the MILF. ASG and MILF fighters have even been jointly trained by the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah in bomb-making (Banlaoi, 2009b). Such informal tactical links were clearly seen in the coalition of Moro militant groups including not just the ASG but the notorious Maute network, that were engaged in the Marawi fighting between May and October 2017 (Banlaoi, 2017).

The Radicalization of Abu Hamdie: The Role of Darul Imam Shafii Boarding School

Following his return from attending an ‘Islamic course’ in Tripoli, Libya in 1987, Aburajak took concrete steps to set up what can best be described as an ‘ideological ecosystem’ (Ramakrishna, 2015, p. 109) or a ‘passive infrastructure’ (Atran, 2010, p. 166) for the ASG, together with fellow Moro students he had met in Tripoli. Through ‘seminars, symposia’ and ‘small-group discussions’ in Basilan, Zamboanga, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Jolo, Aburajak’s ideas began to coalesce and be disseminated (Banlaoi, 2009b, pp. 46–47; Hamdie, 2010). In this respect, a particularly important ideological node of the ASG was formed in 1989 in the Islamic City of Marawi. ⁵ Called Darul Imam Shafii, this was an educational institution set up and funded by one Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Khalifa had started the Philippine branch of the Saudi charity called the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) (International Crisis Group, 2005).

Darul Imam Shafii, apparently patterned after a similar institution in Afghanistan, produced three batches of graduates, according to the former ASG militant Abu Hamdie—whom we encountered earlier and who was one of the individuals who attended the institution. He noted that many Darul Imam Shafii graduates later joined the ASG and even the MILF. Notable Darul Imam Shafii alumni included the future ASG leading lights Khaddafy Janjalani and Yassir Igasan (Hamdie, 2010). Abu Hamdie at the time was a bored 19-year old who had wanted to travel and see the world outside his Basilan village, factors that led him to enrol in Darul Imam Shafii in 1990. His 2 years in the school proved to be such a transformational experience that in his words, it ‘made me more than by myself’ (A. Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011). Darul Imam Shafii was a boarding school for students between the ages of 18 and 21, which operated 7 days a week. It was what the American political scientist Cass Sunstein (2009, p. 154) would call an ‘insulated enclave’, where, according to Abu Hamdie, ‘no contact’ was permitted with outsiders and when he did venture outside, he was always strictly supervised. ‘They control everything’, he recalled, ‘what we think, what we see and what we speak.’ Videos of the fighting in Afghanistan were employed ‘to radicalize and mobilize people to become jihadis.’ He admitted being influenced himself by these videos in Darul Imam Shafii (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011).

Of no small interest, within Darul Imam Shafii, a strong dose of the Wahhabi theological strain of Islam appeared evident. Wahhabism is so named after the extremely puritanical eighteenth century Arab Muslim reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1787). Al-Wahhab derided the Ottoman Turks, who were at the time controlling large tracts of the Middle East, including Mecca and Medina, as ‘blasphemers for their constant infractions’ of the Qur’an, such as ‘wine-drinking, gambling, fornication and idolatry’ (Nutting, 1964, p. 224). Al-Wahhab and his followers, or ‘Wahhabis’ as they came to be called, destroyed shrines, tombs and sacred objects that they considered ‘idolatrous’ (Esposito, 2002, p. 47). Even relatively observant Arab Muslims who did not embrace al-Wahhab’s extremely rigid, unequivocally monotheistic interpretation of the faith were condemned as guilty of shirk or apostasy and attacked. Al-Wahhab proceeded to forge a religio-political alliance with the powerful tribal sheikh Muhammad bin Saud, a compact that ultimately led to the founding of the future Saudi kingdom as well as the successful dissemination of the Wahhabi ideas throughout Arabia from the middle of the eighteenth century (Algar, 2002). In essence, Khaled Abou El-Fadl argues that al-Wahhab sought—by force if necessary—to ensure that Muslims remain on what he regarded as the true path of Islam, eschewing ‘corruptions’ such as ‘mysticism, the doctrine of intercession, rationalism and Shi’ism.’ El Fadl adds that the ‘Wahhabis tended to treat everything that did not come out of Arabia proper to be inherently suspect’ and ‘have always equated the austere cultural practices of Bedouin life with the one and only true Islam’ (El Fadl, 2005, pp. 45–47). Agreeing, the French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy describes Wahhabism as a ‘disembedding and asceticising’ project as it has long sought the ‘purification of religious practice of all elements of social and cultural context’ (cited in Kahn, 2006, p. 96). The Wahhabi strain within Islam is hence a ‘de-territorialized Islam’, bereft of ‘national or cultural identities, traditions and histories’ and reduced to an ‘abstract faith and moral code’ (Bubalo & Fealy, 2005, pp. 40–41).

Certainly, in the southern Philippine context, Yusuf Roque Santos Morales, a Muslim scholar, activist and authoritative observer of Mindanao Muslim politics and extremism, argued that Wahhabism runs counter to traditional Sunni theology and tends to engage in ‘selective purging’ of ideas from classical theologians that go against their views. Thus ‘Wahhabis try to make [the 13th century medieval Hanbali scholar] Ibn Taymiyya into a Wahhabi, although he had broader and some moderate views.’ Morales iterated that he had studied this issue personally for years, and had consulted with ‘classmates’ who had studied in Medina, and summed up by noting that ‘while Sunnis are physicians able to prescribe medicine’, Wahhabis ‘are pharmacists: they can make the medicine but do not know who to use the medicine, so they go haywire’. Morales went as far as to argue that in ‘Wahhabi ideology, violence is inherent’ and the direct outcome of a ‘bipolar, black and white’ mindset. In stark terms, he averred that at ‘the end of the day’, Wahhabis ‘will really evolve into violent extremists. If they don’t their children will’ (Y. R. S. Morales, personal communication, March 29, 2011). Interestingly, Abu Hamdie shared Morales’ concerns. He felt that ‘in the long run’, young people immersed in the intolerant Wahhabi worldview ‘might do something violent’, because ‘something may happen: an attack on Muslims, apprehension of the wrong person, an attack on a mosque’, or a ‘massacre’ and some ‘radical personalities’ would exploit the issue, making such youth feel ‘obliged to respond’ in violence against the so-called enemies of Islam (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011).

To be sure, the debate on the nexus between Wahhabi ideas and violence is an ongoing one (refer, for instance, Ramakrishna, 2016). Nevertheless, it is striking that other knowledgeable Southeast Asian observers have articulated concerns regarding the influence of Wahhabi worldviews on Islam in the region. For example, speaking about the Indonesian context, Jamhari Makruf of the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta dismissed the notion that Islam in the Middle East is ‘more pure, more original’ than in Indonesia, while opining that Wahhabis see ‘everything in black and white’, and worried aloud that ongoing ‘Arabization of Indonesian Islam is a concern as we are different from Arabs’ (J. Makruf, personal communication, April 5, 2011). For that matter, Morales aside, other observers have also asserted that ‘traditional Islam’ in the Southern Philippines appears to have been steadily supplanted by ‘Wahhabi-Salafi-Saudi Islam’ (Taylor, 2017).

Certainly, within Darul Imam Shafii, every effort was made to promote the notion that violent action was urgently needed to rectify injustice. In this regard, following the stock Wahhabi denunciation of the traditionalist, syncretic Islam of Mindanao and a reminder that the ‘Moro people should have correct ideology and clear objective’, the core Wahhabi concept of al-Wala’ wal-Bara—the principle of the unity of all Muslims and disassociation from non-Muslims—was employed as a ‘key factor in ideological indoctrination’. In this respect, Abu Hamdie recalled that the students were immersed in social distancing and segregationist thinking, being warned to steer clear of non-Muslims ‘who should not be with us’. The takfiri—or excommunicative—perspective of the teachers was further evinced when the students were told that even Muslims not implementing Shariah or Islamic Law were to be seen as kafir or infidels. Thus, the MNLF—Abu Hamdie recollected—were said to be not ‘real mujahids’ but in actuality ‘Zionist’ and ‘communists’. Darul Imam Shafii teachers also added that ‘negotiations with the government were out of the question’. Abu Hamdie recalled that he had been ‘a bit confused’ about the attitude to adopt towards Christians. He heard two views: on the one hand, it was possible to co-exist with them under an Islamic State as they would be considered as protected and taxpaying but socially inferior dhimmi. On the other hand, he was warned by Palestinian instructors that Christians were implacable ‘enemies’ (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011).

Abu Hamdie pointed out that the curriculum and military training programmes at the school, apparently designed by IIRO head Khalifa himself, was in general geared towards promoting an acceptance of jihad to defend Islam. The message was that as the students were going to be ultimately ‘specialized in jihad’, they would have on graduation ‘an obligation to do something’. Abu Hamdie and their fellow students were told of the struggles of Palestinian movements such as Hamas and Fatah, and in particular that the Muslim Brotherhood was ‘the best model’ to emulate. The students were also warned not to be taken in by the apolitical Tablighi Jamaat, which was accused of distorting Islamic concepts, and that it was much safer to stick with the ‘authoritative’ Brotherhood approach. Key ideologues that were promoted at the school included Ibn Taymiyya—especially, his view on jihad—the general interpretation of which, Abu Hamdie recalled, was ‘always qital (fighting)’, as well as other Islamist ideologues such as the Pakistani journalist Maulana Maududi, Sayyid Qutb of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and tellingly, al-Wahhab (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011). Maududi called upon Muslims to fight man-made tyranny and corruption, create an Islamic State to defend the weak and establish ‘Muslim supremacy’ as the rightful order of things (Cook, 2015, p. 100). For his part, Qutb excoriated contemporary Muslim political leaders for straying away from strict application of Islamic Law and in the process condemning Muslim societies to a state of pre-Islamic ignorance or jahiliyya. Hence, Qutb argued that it was crucial for Muslims to shake off their collective lethargy, rid themselves of cultural accretions down the centuries that have ostensibly diluted the Prophet’s original muscular Islam and engage in violent jihad worldwide to establish Islam at the expense of competing secular ideologies and religious and philosophical systems (Cook, 2015, pp. 102–106; Huband, 1999, pp. 88–89). Hamdie recalled there was tendency to ‘always take the extremist view of these scholars’ and that any scholar presenting alternative ideas was simply munafiq—meaning hypocritical and not credible. In general, ulama or Islamic scholars from the Middle East were ‘seen as superior’ (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011).

The mode of instruction at the school was the small study circle or halaqah, derived from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood usroh concept of small tight-knit cells devoted to the study of core religious texts and strict observance of rituals. The usroh method incidentally was also adopted by the Tarbiyah movement in Indonesia as well as the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network (Ramakrishna, 2009, pp. 64, 89). In any case, within Darul Imam Shafii, a standard programme of basically reading, understanding, memorizing and reciting verses—with a focus on the jihad texts—was followed. While there was some discussion, halaqah students took pains ‘not to argue’ and ‘never challenged’ the teachers. Instead they regarded themselves as ‘subordinate in knowledge’ to their Palestinian and/or Palestinian–Jordanian instructors who were regarded as the ‘source of knowledge’ (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011). Certainly, a number of the young students of Darul Imam Shafii were emotionally primed for relatively unquestioning obedience to their instructors. Due to years of conflict in Mindanao, many of them had suffered ‘family breakdown’ and become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), who had been ‘displaced as individuals not as families’. They tended to experience, as the Muslim civil society activist Amina Rasul of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy argued, an unsettling ‘temporariness’ in their daily lives, going ‘from one place to the next, full of uncertainty, no stability in the way they live their lives’, bereft of family and the friends they grew up with, and with ‘no future’ and ‘no sense of community ties’. These young IDPs felt ‘restricted’ and weighed down with ‘uncertainty’ as to when they were going to get their next meal and where they were going to go to school (A. Rasul, personal communication, March 29, 2011). Political psychologist Clarita Carlos added that these young people ‘were looking for a father’, and were very susceptible to groups promising to meet their need ‘to belong’, and ‘to want a father’ (C. Carlos, personal communication, March 25, 2011). These youth, above all, needed the stability, predictability and normality of a regular family (A. Rasul, personal communication, March 29, 2011). Tellingly, Abu Hamdie himself agreed that that within Darul Imam Shafii, attempts were made to generate a feeling of ‘family’ within the various halaqah circles (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011).

Darul Imam Shafii students were eventually expected to go out and recruit others in new usroh. In this way, Abu Hamdie recounts, different cells were created in Lanao and Zamboanga. He himself became a naqib or leader of two cells in Zamboanga and Basilan, while other classmates formed new cells in Davao and Marawi. Apparently, Khalifa’s strategy was to expand the movement that way. In general, as an essentially fundamentalist institution Darul Imam Shafii emphasized ‘one correct way only’. Khalifa told his students that the same ‘pure process’ of dakwah and tarbiyah followed in Darul Imam Shafii, had in fact been that followed by the Prophet himself. Abu Hamdie was candid in admitting that Darul Imam Shafii’s ideological programming was very effective as ‘most students are changed’ because the ‘teaching is strong’. Hence, after graduation, his radicalized worldview that ‘shariah law is the best law’ ensured that he ‘wanted more’ in Basilan: the Islamization of society, women in hijab and the local government to be Islamic. He claimed to have even persuaded his moderately religious father to become a more serious Muslim. Abu Hamdie conceded that at that juncture he had fully embraced ‘jihad against US and Israel’. In this respect, the ‘kafir’ enemy was not just the United States government but the ‘American people’ as well, because they ‘are mostly Christian’ (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011).

It is worth reiterating that Darul Imam Shafii was a microcosm of a larger ideological ecosystem in the Sulu–Basilan area, propagating ideological narratives that caused young men like Abu Hamdie to see themselves not merely as part of the ASG but the wider Bangsamoro secessionist and for that matter the global jihadist movement spearheaded at the time by Al Qaeda and including JI in Southeast Asia. This is precisely why the ASG also forged close ties with not just Al Qaeda but JI elements as well (Banlaoi, 2009b). Darul Imam Shafii aside, another similar ideological node was the Markazos Shabab Al-Muslim, a religious organization in Marawi, funded, like Darul Imam Shafii, by Khalifa’s IIRO. The Markazos Shabab apparently supervised madrassas in Mindanao and Manila (Hamdie, 2010; Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011). Two other madrassas, Mahad Basilan Al-Arabi Al-Islami and Mahad Shuhada Al-Arabie Al-Islamie were also key ideological spaces where the recruits for the ASG in the early 1990s were radicalized (Hamdie, 2010). In fact, the first generation of Aburajak Janjalani’s ASG recruits was largely Tausug madrassa students (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011). Another important part of the ideological ecosystem was extremist mosques. Abu Hamdie recalled that the Tabuk mosque in Isabela, Santa Barbara Mosque in Zamboanga, and Masjid Tulay in Sulu were ‘among the sacred places where radical ulama used to conduct lectures on jihad.’ Abu Hamdie opined that preachers trained in Libya or Syria usually delivered ‘a more radical point of view of Islam than those who went to study in Saudi Arabia and Egypt’ (Hamdie, 2010). Mosque khutbah (sermons) emphasized issues such as the ‘sacrifices of Prophet Mohammad and the Sahaba (Companions of the Prophet)’, the importance of jihad, as well as historic Islamic Conquests and the continuing Israeli occupation of the Holy Land. Despite the systematic allusions to the struggles of the global ummah, the centrality of Bangsamoro issues remained: another popular theme at the mosques was “The Bangsamoro People and their Homeland’ (Hamdie, 2010).

Last but not least, key nodes of the ecosystem were individuals who ‘fuelled the jihad spirit of the Moro people.’ Some of these individuals were foreigners like Khalifa, who were well resourced and built mosques, Arabic schools and extended livelihood assistance projects in an attempt to not merely assist the local struggle but also generate loyalty amongst the Moros for Al Qaeda. (Hamdie, 2010). Other ‘local religious radicals who propagated armed jihad’ were akin to Aburajak Janjalani. While some of them may have trained overseas—usually in Islamic universities in Libya and Syria—and were influenced by the Palestinian ideologue Abdullah Azzam’s global jihad narrative and perhaps linked with Al Qaeda or its affiliates in some way—they were nevertheless relatively more focused on local Bangsamoro issues (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011). It is worth recalling that Azzam was Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s ideological mentor (Abuza, 2003).

Three Lessons for the Ongoing Struggle Against Violent Extremism in Post-Marawi Mindanao

There are three broad observations or lessons worth identifying by way of concluding this essay. First and foremost, Abu Hamdie’s experiences reiterate the point that radicalization into violent extremism occurs not in a vacuum but within an ideological ecosystem populated by various nodes that propagate the ideology. Such nodes could be individual religious preachers, religious places of worship, and—as Abu Hamdie’s own situation suggests—that radicalization incubator par excellence, the religious boarding school like Darul Imam Shafii. Hence, it is important for security agencies and civil societies in Southeast Asia to map out such ideological ecosystems in their respective backyards—their own Molenbeeks, ⁶ so to speak—so that the necessary range of hard and softer countermeasures can be focused on these ecosystems to neutralize their impact (Ramakrishna, 2017). This is by no means a novel idea. Speaking about the Indonesian context, the current Chief of Police of that country, the internationally respected counterterrorism specialist General Tito Karnavian, told the writer that it was essential ‘not to waste resources on areas free of ideology’ and that there was a need to ‘identify the affected areas’ where ‘young people are already contaminated’ by violent Islamist extremism and many are thus ‘vulnerable to recruiters’ as well. Using a medical metaphor, Karnavian argued that it was important not to ‘waste your vaccines’. Instead, intelligence operations’ should be mounted to identify, map out and penetrate such ideological ecosystems, with a view to isolating locale-specific grievances or ‘drivers’ that have been exploited to empower extremist ideological narratives, such as a ‘lack of good governance’ or ‘revenge’. He suggested that a ‘database’ or a ‘map of radical areas’ should be built up through both ‘intelligence operations and social science research’, and subsequently a targeted and concerted attempt made to ‘protect these areas’ (T. Karnavian, personal communication, April 11, 2011). Karnavian’s counsel seems very applicable to the Marawi and wider Mindanao context as well—with the Darul Imam Shafii and associated nodes of the Islamist extremist ecosystem originally set up by the IIRO three decades ago, in mind.

Second, it is worth reiterating yet again that a big factor why the Darul Imam Shafii was so potent in radicalizing its students was because the wider social, economic and political environment was an enabling one. While this is not a new point at all, the clear lack of progress in addressing these grievances ensures that Islamist extremist ideologies—that exploit these issues—will continue to have much appeal amongst disaffected target groups (Ramakrishna, 2015). As mentioned earlier, decades of instability and insurgency in Mindanao had created a large pool of young, disenfranchised and bored young people from destabilized families—like Abu Hamdie—who were thus rendered susceptible to the seductive ideological appeals of ASG. Hence, good political and socio-economic governance remains an important part of any comprehensive strategy to fight violent extremism and the terrorism it sustains. In this connection, in September 2017, the current writer worked with the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy, the ASEAN Society Philippines and the Office of the Presidential Advisor on the Peace Process in putting together a major ‘Conference on Peace and the Prevention of Violent Extremism in Southeast Asia’. Involving approximately 400 participants from ‘the government, ASEAN civil society, women, youth, business, academia, religious and political organizations’, the conference produced a statement that affirmed the pressing need for strengthening multi-sectoral convergence in addressing the ‘drivers of conflicts’ and the ‘root causes of violent extremism—poverty, social injustice and inequities, marginalization, deprivation and alienation, especially of the women and the youth, and intolerance’ (Statement, 2017). More fundamentally, conference participants also reaffirmed the importance of the passage of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) ‘which provides a regional governance system, addresses both major political and economic redistribution issues and important religious and cultural identity needs and grievances of contemporary Moros’ and which represents an ‘important step in insuring [the Philippines] from the threat of ISIS’ (Center for Integrative and Development Studies, 2015, p. 2). It bears asserting that if the BBL fails to be passed into legislation in the current Duterte administration, or is passed in a diluted form that enables the proposed Bangsamoro Autonomous Region to enjoy only a symbolic autonomy without any substantive addressing of the long-standing historic Moro grievances that helped fuel the radicalization of Abu Hamdie—and indeed the other militants that laid siege to Marawi in 2017—then this would be a mistake. This is because rather than stopping violence, such a development would only ‘fuel the recruitment drives’ of not just the ASG but the other Philippine militant groups (Jopson, 2016). In any case, it seems that the Marawi crisis has finally prompted President Duterte to invest more political capital in seeking to ensure the successful passage of the BBL that would be meaningful to the long-suffering Bangsamoro people (Tubeza, 2017).

It is further recommended that the Philippine military study new techniques of applying calibrated hard military power in future engagements with militant groups. Rather than the traditional strong firepower-oriented US military, with which the AFP has traditionally had close operational ties with, perhaps a closer look at British ‘minimum force’ counterinsurgency approaches may be worth exploration (Mockaitis, 1990; Ramakrishna, 2002). It should not be overlooked that the AFP’s use of airstrikes—that destroyed large parts of Marawi City in the fighting in 2017—was adroitly exploited by the militants to argue that while they were merely seeking to conquer ‘the City for the purpose of implementing the Laws of Allah’, the ‘response of the Crusader Army’ had been ‘brutal’ (Institute for the Policy Analysis of Conflict, 2017, p. 24). Even Duterte was forced subsequently to apologize for the destruction of the city (Tubeza, 2017). In this connection, Abu Hamdie himself complained that the government has seemed overly focused on a kinetic approach, and that arrests of the wrong people unlucky enough to share the same name as wanted militants only turned entire families against Manila. He warned that people in Mindanao are just ‘waiting’; if the government does nothing to rectify its attitude, ‘more young people will join the ASG’, replenishing its ranks (Hamdie, personal communication, March 25, 2011).

Finally, Abu Hamdie’s recollections about the role of Wahhabi ideas in the ideological programming at Darul Islam Shafii suggests that beyond the important work of generating specific ‘messages and counter-narratives’ to contest Islamist extremist ideology (Statement, 2017), broader efforts to promote a so-called Islam Nusantara—or Islam of the Malay Archipelago—should arguably also be part of the policy mix as well (Arham, 2015). To be sure, this is, quite rightly, beyond the purview of governments and non-Muslim communities. It is rather the Muslim community and religious leaders in Mindanao and elsewhere in the region who have to seriously consider reasserting their respective cultural, tolerant—and thoroughly authentic—variants of Islam to counter the harder-edged, de-territorialized forms emanating from the Middle East, such as Wahhabism. The participants at the aforementioned Manila Conference in September 2017, for instance, agreed to ‘work with religious leaders and scholars and other stakeholders to counter the use of “religious doctrines” to preach the use of violence; strengthen our education system, in particular the Madrassah, in inculcating the right values to the youth, and, create platforms for both intercultural/intracultural and interfaith and intra-faith dialogue’ (Statement, 2017). Incidentally, attempts to bolster more organic, tolerant Muslim cultural identity and values have already begun elsewhere in Southeast Asia. In Singapore, for instance, initiatives aimed at reasserting Malay culture as an integral part of an authentic Islamic identity have been explored. The Singaporean Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs, Yaacob Ibrahim, asserted in June 2017: ‘We must remain proud of our heritage ... of the fact that we’re Malays and there are certain traditional practices we’ve done for many centuries, which we must continue to embrace and continue to strengthen’ (Ng, 2017).

Agreeing, the Mufti of Singapore, Mohamed Fatris Bakaram, argued that ‘the desire to live a more Islamic lifestyle’, while symbolizing ‘one’s spiritual and religious commitment’, does not in any way ‘mean we should abandon our customs’ as long as these ‘don’t run contrary to Islamic principles’. Both Muslim leaders were in short assuring Singapore Muslims that to be a good Muslim need not mean uncritically emulating Middle Eastern Muslim customs and orientations, assuming that ‘what’s foreign is definitely more Islamic’, and in the process, jettisoning ‘communal’ Malay ‘culture that encourages the spirit of gotong royong, or cooperation, in all aspects of life’ (cited in Ng, 2017). In the same vein, the Sultan of Johore—the southernmost Malaysian State—has similarly been worried that ‘Malaysian Malays’ are ‘losing their cultural identity by imitating Arabs and abandoning Malay cultural practices’ (Arshad, 2017, p. A8). For their part, Minister Yaacob and the Mufti were reminding Singapore Malay Muslims that they need not be self-conscious about how Islamic they were in comparison to their Arab brethren. After all, over hundreds of years of Southeast Asian history, the religio-cultural nexus between ethnic Malay identity and Islam has been so strong that it has long been said that to become Muslim is to simultaneously masuk Melayu—or literally, ‘enter Malayness’ (Nagata, 2011). Hence to reiterate, Nusantara Islam is arguably just as authentic as its Middle Eastern forms, including Wahhabism. For that matter, Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Secretary of the Supreme Council of the traditionalist Muslim Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) of Indonesia—the biggest Muslim mass civil association in the world—put it as such:

By raising the idea of Islam Nusantara we call upon different Muslim societies everywhere in the world to connect themselves to the actual reality of their social and cultural environment, to maintain a social bond and not to delete it for some alien idea. The Salafist [Wahhabi-Islamist] way of thinking is that Muslims must abandon anything that is considered un-Islamic. (McBeth, 2016)

It should be recognized, however, that attempts to promote an Islam contextualized to the complex, multicultural realities of Mindanao and the wider Southeast Asian region must be handled with great circumspection and sensitivity. Otherwise, complaints of Islamophobia may well result—reinforcing the narrative of the Islamist extremists—and inadvertently help the likes of ASG and similar pro-ISIS groups in Mindanao and elsewhere in the region replenish their ranks with fresh cohorts of disaffected young Abu Hamdies. In sum, it is incumbent upon Manila, civil society organizations in the Philippines and their international partners to study the radicalization trajectories and contexts of vulnerable young people like Abu Hamdie with care, and customize their overall policy interventions appropriately to ensure that a repeat of the Marawi crisis does not recur in the country. In November 2017, for example, merely a month after the end of the Marawi fighting, reports had already emerged of pro-ISIS militant cells regrouping in the neighbouring Cotabato City (Chew, 2017). The ancient Chinese strategic sage Sun Tzu’s enduring advice to ‘Fight with wisdom, and not just force alone’, therefore, remains well worth taking to heart, in the ongoing struggle against violent extremism in Mindanao and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.