Are you tired with your life? Do you want to achieve more before your time is up? Then join us and achieve your dreams.

The line above is a cliche of a multi-level marketing (MLM) opportunity pitch but nowadays, Islamic terrorist groups have also begun to use this kind of dream-selling propaganda to recruit young and naive aspiring jihadists into their ranks.

A documentary entitled Jihad Selfie by social activist Noor Huda Ismail shows how the Islamic State (IS) movement uses word-of-mouth propaganda through social media to expand its network of jihadists.

As with MLM, IS uses newly recruited jihadists to recruit others, mainly via Facebook.

The promised rewards are not millions in monthly passive income or free annual trips to exotic destinations but a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fight in the name of Allah, to participate in the global establishment of the caliphate and to enter heaven should the jihadist die in the line of duty.

The propaganda not only resonates with the poor, the uneducated or those with sociopathic tendencies; surprisingly it also resonates with intelligent teenagers like Teuku Akbar Maulana, who almost fell for the lure of IS when he was a senior high school student in Kayseri, Turkey, two years ago.

Akbar, who is the main focus of the documentary, is a shy, skinny kid from the small town of Blangpidie in Aceh.

He stutters when he talks to new people he meets. As he gets more comfortable, his speech becomes clearer and more firm.

A bright student, Akbar is currently engaged in biotechnological engineering in a bid to alter peanuts that he discovered in Turkey into a food that mimics tempeh, a traditional soy-based food from Indonesia.

At first glance, no one would have thought that Akbar was once very keen on joining IS, to go to a place where he could participate in the battles in the Middle East and kill thousands in the name of the caliphate and Allah.

“A friend of mine who joined IS uploaded a photo of himself holding an AK-47 rifle on his Facebook page and I thought ‘wow, that is so cool’ and I was very tempted at that time,” Akbar said during a recent screening of Jihad Selfie at The Jakarta Post.

Fortunately, before Akbar made up his mind to join IS, he met with Noor at a kebab stall in Kayseri. Akbar consulted with Noor, who once also had the mindset of a radical jihadist, about his restlessness that made him want to join IS.

“Akbar showed me his Facebook Messenger chats with his friends who had already joined IS and I was completely astonished to see how intense the recruitment process was in social media,” Noor said.

It was not Noor’s advice, however, that changed Akbar’s mind.

“I remembered my mom when I thought about joining IS. Unlike my friends, I asked my parents for permission and my mom said ‘if you die, who will take care of me?’ That made me cry and I decided to finish my education rather than joining IS,” Akbar said.

Akbar’s friends who joined IS eventually died in Iraq. One of them was a math olympiad gold medalist, Noor said.

Noor expected the screening of the documentary in many places would create increased awareness among people in the middle class and above on how extreme ideas can inflict family members.

The documentary also shows how Noor uses a personal-based approach to deradicalize other people who were once seduced by radical ideas.

An example shown in the documentary is a former terrorist convict whom Noor employs at his food stall in Surakarta, Central Java.

Noor added that the deradicalization of Akbar and the convict shown in the documentary was a sign that the Indonesian government needed to shift its approach to curbing terrorism.

Terrorism is based on an idea and ideas are bulletproof. As of now, the Indonesian antiterror squad has mostly used bullets to kill terrorist leaders. The latest of these killings was of Santoso, a notorious jihadist in Poso.

The killings do not discourage aspiring jihadists, however, because they regard a dead terrorist like Santoso as a martyr, a view that encourages them even more to become just like him.

Meanwhile, terrorist convicts are sent to jails where they can still spread their radical ideas to other inmates.

“The government should stop seeing terrorism as merely a security issue. This is a social issue,” Noor said.

Popular

Volcano erupts in North Sulawesi, hundreds evacuated

Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

Ramadan boosts consumer confidence, retail sales