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Malaysia is under siege by IS

A few days ago, Puchong was under grenade attack. The Royal Malaysian Police has confirmed that it’s a terrorist attack and arrested 15 people including two policemen. On 21 June, IS has released a video urging IS’s supporters to kill non-Muslim believers in Malaysia. The threat imposed on the video is tangible. Officially, IS just landed by launching this attack. Therefore in future more deadly attacks are likely to come from them.

IS is different from any other known terrorist groups especially from Al-Qaeda. They are more violent and willing to kill their own Muslim brothers whether Shiites or Sunnis to achieve their goals. They do not observe the sanctity of the month of Ramadhan. Their victims are men, women and children. They always choose public places like airports, shopping malls, cafes and hotels as their target to terrorize the public. Their victims always will be foreigners. They also have great empathy to publish their brutality on social media to garner more support.

IS core strategy is to terrify their opponents by ferocity. By beheading their hostages or burnt them alive demonstrated that they are heartless. One of the major different between IS and other terrorist groups are the use of social media. IS effectively using social media to spread it’s concept of ‘war’ and the justifications are always in tow with religion for the recruitment purposes. IS is also financially more capable and willing to give salary and other perks including foreign and local wives as an inducement to be with them.

In April this year, Abu Sayyaf kidnapped four Malaysians and released them after their families paid the ransom. Abu Sayyaf is the most feared terrorist group in Borneo and their so called ‘expertise’ is on kidnapping and beheading their hostages.  Abu Sayyaf is now pledged it’s fidelity to the IS. It’s also believed that the ransom is their main source of income to conduct their terrorist activities. In addition, they have numerous sympathizers in Sabah and Sarawak to identify and help them to kidnap the victims.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) of UK has warned its citizens to avoid travelling to eastern coast of Sabah. Through the website of gov.uk its put eastern coast of Sabah on high threat from terrorism especially foreigners can be kidnapped which is very close to the Sulu Archipelago in the southern Philippines.

The collaboration of IS and Abu Sayyaf is lethal combination of threat for national and border security in Sabah and Sarawak. The porous border of Sabah is more vulnerable for the attacks compare to Sarawak. The first attack of IS in Puchong makes the other parts of Malaysia especially Sarawak and Sabah are exposed to such attacks.

Recently in New Zealand, Imran Patel, the 26-year-old man was jailed for distributing, possessing and copying ISIS materials to public. He was the second man to be convicted for such offences in New Zealand. This shows that the far-fetched influence of IS not only predominately in Middle East countries but able to spread to Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa and America as well.

IS is global phenomenon. By now, the formation of sleepers cells are factual conceivable in Malaysia. Young minds are brainwashed and trained to go against their own people and nation. Recently the Malaysian authorities had arrested more than 160 suspected IS terrorists or sympathizers included government servants and security personnel.

One no longer feels so relax that terrorist attacks only happened out of this country. In reality, Puchong attack has proved otherwise. The current political and economic situations will allow IS to penetrate the mind of young people with effective social media propaganda to recruit the vulnerable to take arms against this nation.

IS is always evolving itself. Therefore the security and intelligence agencies together with religious authorities have to reeducate and reengage the young ones not to fall to their preys. One of the most important tools used by British to neutralize communist terrorists was to establish close relationship with people. People become informers and British successfully eliminated this threat.

Therefore, to eradicate IS terrorists in Malaysia, people have to play a pro-active role. They have to put the security and interest of this nation as paramount. The intelligence and security agencies need this help from public to flabbergast this threat.

In addition, the public need to be vigilant all the time and it is impossible for the security forces to safeguard public places like airports, shopping malls, cafes, clubs, international schools, universities and public transportation with their limited resources.


In a nutshell, the public have to play a proactive role by informing any unwanted or suspicious incidents or persons to authorities as soon as possible to prevent any such attacks occur here because preventive is always better than cure.

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