People With Poor Religious Knowledge Easy Prey For IS - CID Chief

PAGOH (Johor, Malaysia), Feb 23 (Bernama) -- A senior police officer Monday cited a lack of religious knowledge and susceptibility to influence as the reasons for people getting lured into joining the IS militant group. Criminal Investigation Department (CID) director Mohmad Salleh said the influence of the social media was another factor as the IS recruited young people through this channel. "I feel that that those people who intend to join the IS in Syria lack religious knowledge. They are also susceptible to influence. "They claim to want to go there to uphold Islam but are unaware that they are getting themselves into extremism, which is not part of Islamic teachings," he told a news conference. Mohmad had earlier attended a gathering of Malaysian police pensioners in conjunction with the 208th Police Day at the Bukit Kepong Emergency Gallery near here. Also present was Johor Police chief Mohd Mokhtar Mohd Shariff. On Feb 18, a team from the Bukit Aman Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division arrested a 14-year-old schoolgirl at the KL International Airport as she was about to fly off to Egypt to marry a Malaysian student and then join the IS in Syria. An investigation revealed that the girl had been influenced by two individuals with whom she had communicated with on Facebook. Mohmad said the girl did not at all know what she was getting into and what she was fighting for. "She also did not know anything about the country that she was to have gone to," he said. Mohmad said it was not the responsibility of the police alone to prevent people from joining the IS but the joint responsibility of the community, especially parents. Parents should monitor and find out what information their children were getting by surfing the Internet as they could be influenced by the militant group, he said. At the Police Day event, a pantomime was held on the Bukit Kepong tragedy, as well as a 'tahlil'. Twenty-five people, among them 14 policemen, were killed by communist terrorists who raided the Bukit Kepong police station and houses of police personnel in the incident on Feb 23, 1950. Mohmad said the younger generation should be made to understand the incident which happened 65 years ago. "Many national warriors were killed in the tragedy. The coming generations must appreciate the sacrifice of these heroes in defending the nation," he said. -- BERNAMA