"We are trying to create credible voices; that means people who are former convicted terrorists or people who went to Syria and successfully came back alive," said Rosyid Nurul Hakiim, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Ruang Obrol. "If you want someone to stop smoking, send a [former] smoker who had to pay the price for it — who got cancer — to convince the smoker to stop. Borrowing that idea, we use these voices to talk to targeted peoples about what actually happened."

In the living room, 10 full-time staff members work quietly at their desks in an open-plan office. Hakiim deliberately chose a home rather than a corporate space to create a family-like atmosphere. A cameraman and a writer visiting from outside of Jakarta are the current residents.

On the Ruang Obrol website, 14 contributors across Indonesia write stories and articles to promote a message of peace, particularly targeting individuals at risk of radicalization. Hakiim and his brother manage a chat room to counsel individuals against extremism. The pen is their weapon of choice. The internet is their battleground.

In a series of articles on countering extremism, a man who was released from prison in 2017 after serving a sentence of three years and four months explained how radicalization arises when individuals alienate themselves from society. In a personal essay, a young woman who had fled from territory held by the Islamic State (IS) movement to a refugee camp in Syria two years prior wrote about teaching Tunisian women how to make sambal ijo. "My family and I made a big mistake," she wrote. "[I am] glad that I can introduce Indonesian cuisine to that terrifying country. #foodforpeace."

This "soft" approach to countering violent extremism is consistent with the Indonesian government’s counterterrorism strategy, led by the National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT). Unlike a traditional "hard" approach that focuses on intelligence gathering and law enforcement, a soft approach tries to dismantle terrorist networks by dealing with the root causes of radicalization.

Since 2010, the BNPT has devoted more resources to deradicalization initiatives, including a program that involves cooperating with former terrorists to counsel current terrorist inmates, according to a 2018 report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Jakarta-based think tank.

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