NU: Don't believe online jihadist recruiters

Jakarta, NU Online
Member of the Lawmaking Body of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) KH Masdar Mas'udi called on ulema and teachers to increase their efforts to help young Muslims properly interpret information they receive online.<>

"It takes a certain level of intelligence to digest such information, therefore, it should be up to the people that these youngsters look up to, such as their teachers, to tell them not to easily believe in such propaganda," Masdar told reporters here recently.

Masdar made the statement following a call voiced by the leading propagandist for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) Musa Cerantonio.

As reported, in television shows, on Facebook and on Twitter, Musa Cerantonio urged Muslims to take up arms and use violence.

 But Cerantonio – a former Catholic from Australia– was not always truthful about who he is and where he was.

In July, he boasted on Twitter of having made it to the Middle East. But authorities arrested him that same month on the resort island of Cebu in the Philippines, where he had been living for a year.

 Be sceptical about social media

As radicals use social media to recruit young Muslims to wage jihad in conflict zones, a surprisingly high number of active social media-using jihadists are actually Westerners, according to a study by London-based think-tank International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR).

An ICSR research team spent a year compiling a database of social media profiles of 190 Westerners believed to be fighting in Syria .

Religious activists and leaders urge young people in particular not to be swayed by jihadist recruitment propaganda disseminated via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The most notable instance was the YouTube video posted last month that featured a wanted Indonesian terrorist calling for Indonesian Muslims to join ISIL in the Middle East.

Editing by Sudarto Murtaufiq