T

he Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) movement in Malang to campaign for the formation of an Islamic caliphate is well prepared. When I was in high school in 2006, a group of people who championed an Islamic state in Indonesia infiltrated school and university students and became their mentors.

Between 2006 and 2007, they held mass demonstrations on my campus under the banner of freedom of expression in support of the Islamic state.

In mid-2008, I found out during an intensive discussion that the group received donations from donors who ran a business in the Middle East. In 2009, they again planned another rally but failed to secure a permit.

On Aug. 14, 2009, we set up the Webomatrics group, whose mission was to deradicalize their ideology. We managed to involve high school students who the group had recruited in our discussions.

This year we can map the group's movement thanks to drone journalism. The group is planning to create a village similar to that in Talangsari in Lampung, where a military operation targeting a radical Muslim group ended in bloodshed in 1989.

Ferril Irham Muzaki
Malang, East Java