Reasons behind Reasons: A Communitarian Reading of Women’s Radicalization and Family Bombings in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This paper analyses conceptual frameworks that have been suggested in the literature for understanding women’s radicalization, including the emergent phenomenon of family bombings, focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia. We argue that understanding these trends requires grappling with socio-culturally specific gender-related concepts and that the liberal political theory framework that has informed a significant body of research in this area, with its emphasis on individuality, has limited utility for making sense of the new models of women’s engagement in extremism in Southeast Asia’. We suggest that a communitarian philosophical framework has the potential to provide new context-specific insights on radicalization, extremism and terrorism in Southeast Asia. We apply this approach to a reading of the family suicide bombings in Surabaya and Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, in May 2018.

Introduction

Understandings of radicalization, extremism and terrorism in Southeast Asia changed on 13^th and 14^th May 2018 when three families undertook suicide bombings in Surabaya and Sidoarjo in Indonesia. Twenty-six people were killed, including five children ranging in age from 9 to 17 years. These were the first attacks involving children in Indonesia, though there had been cases of women supporting terrorist activities, and even seeking to be suicide bombers themselves, or when children were involved in conceptualization of terrorism.¹ These bombings – not only shocking but also largely unanticipated – highlighted a need to reexamine traditional assumptions about gender roles in radicalization and terrorism, and to expand the range of conceptual frameworks that may explain emerging patterns of extremist activity.² It is important to find out what reasons motivated those families, and women members in particular, to launch the attacks. It is important to reveal what ideological resources, organizational narratives, discursive strategies and persuasion techniques were employed to formulate, justify, and internalize those reasons. It is equally important to understand reasons behind reasons, and explain why women’s radicalization and family suicide bombing have emerged in a particular historical and sociocultural context.

Researchers highlight a need for more empirical studies that could capture diverse and unique causes of political violence and individuals’ pathways into terrorism in Southeast Asia.³ As Schulze and Liow note, even though an estimated 800 Indonesians and 100 Malaysians relocated to Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2017 “the literature, on the whole, has been Middle East-centric in its discussion of ISIS and Eurocentric in its discussion of foreign fighters.”⁴ This knowledge can enrich and validate, or problematize theories of terrorism and radicalization that were historically grounded mainly within “assumptions derived from European and Middle Eastern case.”⁵ John Sidel criticizes “the smug liberal notion of a ‘view from nowhere’ in the study of religious violence in Indonesia and beyond,”⁶ and argues that knowledge about individuals’ motivations, radicalization pathways, and lived experiences needs to be interpreted in relation to the historical and sociological context. Similarly, it is pertinent to reexamine concepts of gender, gender roles, femininity and masculinity that are shaping studies on women, radicalization, and extremism in non-western contexts.⁷ This paper seeks to contribute to this stream of thought within the regional research on radicalization and extremism, as well as to the critical reflection on the assumptions, and philosophical foundations of terrorism and radicalization studies that adopt the category of gender.⁸

The changing women’s roles and pathways to terrorism⁹ makes it necessary to critically reflect on the meaning of gender, agency, empowerment, and equality in specific socio-historical contexts,¹⁰ and on cultural and ideological depictions of female terrorism.¹¹ As Banks¹² maintains, female terrorism can be envisioned either as an act of liberation, or an outcome of gender domination and coercion. At the same time, departure from the more traditional (from whose cultural perspective and in what historical periods?) role of “supporter” to that of “fighter” does not necessarily mean more agency. As Bloom and Lokmanoglu put it, is “there a move toward women’s empowerment, or is it a façade?.”¹³

A gender-based perspective needs to be augmented by a context- and culture-centred perspective, as this can help to better understand what motivates women in “traditional” societies to become involved in violent political struggle in “non-traditional” roles.¹⁴ As Nava Nuraniyah maintains, “there is still a conceptual and empirical gap about women’s pathways to radicalism in the context of a non-Western, non-conflict country,” such as Indonesia.¹⁵ In a recent study, Johnston, Iqbal, and True¹⁶ observe that understanding of women’s roles in Islamist violent extremism is shaped by the empowerment – subjugation dichotomy, whence empowerment means to be “engaged in leadership, strategy and combat roles,”¹⁷ so that it remains unclear why “women would support organizations that explicitly aim to reduce their basic human rights.”¹⁸

A pertinent question is whether assumptions that are normalized within a Western philosophical tradition are applicable to the interpretation of the motivations, reasons, decisions, and behavior of the female extremists from non-Western societies, and emerging patterns of terrorism such as family suicide bombing. This paper contributes to filling this gap by discussing a variety of conceptual framework employed in this field, and by suggesting how a communitarian philosophical framework can help understanding of an event (Surabaya case) that was presented in media and counter-terrorism analytics as a radical, highly alarming, and profound change in the regional patterns of extremist activity. In this sense, this paper stands in contrast to the other papers in this special edition that involve various social empirical studies of radicalization.

We argue that the liberal political theory framework, with its emphasis on individual motivation, has limited utility for making sense of such complex phenomena in Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia. We suggest that the philosophical framework of communitarianism may be more helpful for understanding societies that are more communally-minded as it seeks to identify how people’s identities are embedded in longstanding cultural norms and roles and how their behaviors are shaped by social relationships and interactions within their communities. Based on a review of existing literature we conclude that female pathways to extremism in Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia can be fruitfully conceptualized as emerging from the societal-normative roles of women as keepers of the faith and moral order within the family.

Our study is based on the premise that understanding culturally specific notions of justice is essential to identifying the motivations that underwrite radicalization, extremism and terrorism. To date, studies have been framed, usually unconsciously, in terms of a liberal political philosophy that is fundamentally embedded in Rawls’s seminal work, A Theory of Justice,¹⁹ which argues that justice involves the fair distribution of liberties and economic and other resources to enable individuals to lead their own freely chosen lives. The communitarianism critique of a liberal political philosophy is that it fails to adequately consider the importance of communities and relations in determining principles of justice for members of those specific communities. While communitarianism is a broad-church key thinking identified with this movement include Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue,²⁰ Michael Sandel Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,²¹ Charles Taylor Sources of the Self,²² and Michael Walzer Spheres of Justice.²³ Our own work is embedded in this approach which highlights the ways in which various identities are formed (so not chosen) in part by the specific communities and social relations within which social actors are embedded. Crucial here is the importance of culture in determining questions of justice, relations between individuals and what constitutes a just society.

This paper starts with an outline of epistemological paradigms in radicalization research and identifies key themes in scholarly debate regarding women’s motivations, pathways, and roles in extremist and militant organizations and movements, to highlight a bias toward interpretations that are embedded in western liberal philosophical traditions that focus on individualism. Further we contend that the communitarian political framework has promise in that it can account for and help to resolve various conflicting and contextually problematic claims that are made within the literature on women, radicalization, and extremism. In the next section, we focus on research on women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia, to demonstrate that context-specific conceptual frameworks can provide a more nuanced understanding of these phenomena. We then outline diverse interpretations of suicide bombings at Surabaya and Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia, and use communitarianism to suggest a new reading of the reasons behind the emerging phenomena such as family terrorism. But here we need to clarify – and this is a philosophical point – what we mean when we talk here of reasons behind acts of terrorism. Briefly, we are concerned with explanations for the phenomena of women’s engagement in violent extremism, and family terrorism, and here it is important to distinguish the different senses in which one may refer to an agent’s reasons for action. In the vast body of philosophical literature on reasons for action, such reasons have been seen to serve at least three distinct functions: to explain; to motivate; and to justify actions. But in the case of any given action these reasons need not be identical. So, where an agent attempts to justify their action, they are concerned to render it rational. But an agent’s rationalization may not get to their motive for acting or the explanation of why they acted as they did. A simple example will illustrate. Starting with justifying reasons, the reason I threw my drink at him was because I discovered he rejected my paper. But is that my motive for acting? Plausibly not, I was likely motivated by anger. Why was I angry? Perhaps because I have had a long string of rejections and am under extreme pressure to publish to keep my job. If those underlying conditions had not been present, I would not have been angry and would not have thrown my drink at him. So, we can say the underlying explanation (the reason or, perhaps better, cause) for my action were these conditions; in their absence I would not have acted as I did. Our paper is concerned with reasons in this sense. We then conclude our paper with a wider discussion of the potential of a communitarian approach to resolve some of the contradictions or conceptual confusion that occurs in the literature, and to provide culturally-embedded interpretations of radicalization, extremism and terrorism in Southeast Asia.

Radicalization, Gender, Terrorism: Epistemological Paradigms and Key Themes

Radicalization

Radicalization is a complex and dynamic socio-historical, political, and psychological phenomenon. In the most general sense, radicalization can be defined as “the process of supporting or engaging in activities deemed (by others) as in violation of important social norms.”²⁴ In more specific terms, radicalization has been conceptualized as a specific stage in the formation of subjects of political activity which is characterized by a “change in beliefs, feelings and behaviours” that develops “in directions that increasingly justify intergroup violence and demand sacrifice in defense of the ingroup.”²⁵

Social science explains radicalization and political violence via answering either the why or the how questions.²⁶ The why-focused explanations highlight the root causes, and the interplay of the macro- and micro-level factors that facilitate actors’ engagement in political violence. At a more fundamental level, researchers focus on the societal conditions that cause actors’ dissatisfaction with the status quo within some segments of society, while reducing possibilities for them to be proactive in peaceful and constructive ways.²⁷ Explanations aiming to answer the how question focus on motivations, values, norms, and dispositions that may contribute to actors’ undertaking a path to violence.²⁸ Explanatory paradigms can be further specified in regard to their prioritization of factors and mechanisms of radicalization.²⁹ Within a trait-centred paradigm, greater weight in the explanation of radicalization is assigned to factors that form a basis for individuals’ solidarity with the group, such as worldviews, values, perceived grievances, ideologies, historical imaginaries. Within an interaction-centered paradigm, engagement in political violence is one of the forms of action that political actors can choose under certain circumstances and in response to other actors.³⁰

Radicalization can be also approached within a psychosocial paradigm, in terms of individuals’ willingness, and ability to use violent means for attaining political goals. This paradigm has been applied to the analysis of a growing body of empirical data³¹ to explain the emergence of new cohorts that may be involved in political violence.³² The psychosocial paradigm has shaped multiple models³³ of radicalization; these models have informed various areas of practice, including counter-terrorism legislation, identification of at risk subjects, and formulation of policies and measures aiming at the prevention of violent extremism and at deradicalization.³⁴ These models depict radicalization as stages or phases of individuals’ path to violence,³⁵ as a gradual process of cognitive change that is manifested by specific behavior, “including incitement, the distribution of radical material, recruitment, and persuading others to hold radical views.”³⁶ One of the challenges that the prevention agenda has posed for the phase models is a need to incorporate broader contextual conditions.³⁷ Another challenge stems from methodological shortcomings in empirical studies of individuals’ motivations, pathways, and experiences, such as researchers’ limited access to primary data, in particular in the case of suicide terrorism; the nature of data generated by immediate participants as their subjective experiences are shaped by the narratives and rhetoric that they internalized in their journey to violence; a need to use secondary data (accounts from family, friends, and neighbors; observation made by intelligence and security officials); the influence of contextual factors, such as the unequal power positions of the subject and the researcher in the case when data are obtained within a particular institutional setting; and so on.³⁸ Finally, understanding of the diversity of radicalization contexts requires linking the macro- and the micro- (social and individual) planes, which can be done, for instance, through concepts such as sociocultural identity.³⁹

Gender Perspective: Motivations, Roles, Agency, Empowerment

A gender-centred perspective seeks to overcome the limitations of the political and ideological paradigm in terrorism studies,⁴⁰ explain the changing women’s roles and pathways to radicalization, and to understand the causes and the meaning of these changes. For instance, gender inequality has been suggested as a factor that explains the relative rarity of female suicide terrorism, in spite of its alleged effectiveness.⁴¹

The concept of female terrorist has been proposed as an attempt to identify the typical role of women in terrorist organizations, to understand if there is a difference between males and females in terms of motivations for choosing the path of political violence, and if female members possess distinctive psychological characteristics that may affect their pathways and roles.⁴² Some researchers argue that female terrorism needs to be approached as a distinctive phenomenon⁴³ while others assign a limited heuristic value to the aspect of sex.⁴⁴ Some authors suggested that female terrorists had different motivations to those of males,⁴⁵ while in regard to the ability to commit violence gender seemed to be irrelevant in comparison to personality, background, and experience.⁴⁶ “Although women terrorists have the equality to fight or die by the side of their male counterparts, their power position frequently is less than that of the male.”⁴⁷

Understanding of female terrorism can be shaped by an extremist organizational role matrix that reflects division of labor between members who are directly involved in acts of violence, as frontline fighters and strategic planners, and those who have other functions. Women’s participation in extremist separatist organizations, mass protest movements, anarchistic groups, or insurgent organizations and urban and rural guerrilla groups in Western Europe, Middle East, and Latin America could vary from intelligence collection and secondary support roles (couriers, nurses, etc.) to an operational role and more prominent power positions, provided that they have necessary qualities.⁴⁸ In organizations that seek to affirm traditional values that justify gender-determined divisions of labor, female members have lower chances to play an active operational role or occupy a higher position in the power structure, regardless of their psychological qualities and skills. However, in conflict zones, women become increasingly involved in terrorism in operative roles, including in organizations that fight in the name of traditional values.⁴⁹ This change can be explained by good reasons from the organization’s perspective (as a more efficient strategy; as a need to extend demographic pool), and those explanations may resonate with the women activists’ subjective perspective.⁵⁰ This change has been interpreted as shift toward women’s empowerment:

Although women still perform the traditional roles as “bride,” “mother,” and “sister,” women have gradually taken on more active roles, which consist of policing official, recruiter and most prominently, suicide bomber. These “enhanced” roles serve as a form of empowerment, which in turn, may encourage more women to join ISIS.⁵¹

The question remains, whether the availability of operational roles to women in organizations such as ISIS can be interpreted as women’s empowerment, or as an indication that women are motivated by a desire to change their broader social roles and exercise more agency.

Based on a quantitative analysis of suicide terrorist attacks between 1981 and 2008, O’Rourke⁵² argues that “female attackers are driven by the same general motives and circumstances that drive men,” and “in contrast to the existing literature, women attackers uphold, rather than eschew, their societies’ norms for gender behavior.”⁵³ In an earlier study of non-jihadist militant groups, Sixta⁵⁴ argues that women in developing societies experience oppression as a result of societal gender inequalities, amplified by nation-level oppression by external actors. In such conditions, participation in terrorist activities may become for women a way of “fighting for political equality and the betterment of their gender.”⁵⁵

However, this concept of militant feminism may not be applicable to jihadist organizations; since these organizations are driven by fundamentalist ideologies, women cannot become as empowered as their male members.⁵⁶ As Sixta Rinehart⁵⁷ demonstrates, while the repertoire of roles that women could play in militant and terrorist organizations around the world varies from founders, leaders, and planners of attacks to foot soldiers, logisticians, recruiters, supporters, and “weapon” (suicide bombers), in jihadist organizations women are mainly “placed in three roles: the disposable, the domestic, or the secretary.”⁵⁸ Sixta Rinehart⁵⁹ proposes that when women join jihadist organizations, they seek to reaffirm, rather than reject their normative societal roles.

Extant research on women, terrorism and radicalization is characterized by paradigmatic diversity that reflects the actual diversity of the roles and pathways that may be available for women in specific contexts. While interest in a gendered perspective is increasing, there are challenges that need to be answered.⁶⁰ Critical feminist scholars argue that the category of gender needs to reflect the intersection of gender with socio-historically specific power structures and highlight a need to problematize gender-related sociocultural stereotypes in official as well as research discourses on security, extremism, and radicalization.⁶¹

The gender perspective allows posing questions such as: Does radicalization manifest women’s increasing agency and empowerment, or is it a sign of the proliferation of an archaic masculinity⁶² and a re-affirming of misogyny?⁶³ However, these questions may be legitimate within a liberal universalizing/objectivist political perspective that is not applicable to many non-Western sociocultural contexts. It is necessary to reexamine the applicability of concepts grounded within the Western tradition in political thought to the understanding of women’s radicalization and extremist activity within non-Western contexts.⁶⁴

Understanding of women’s involvement in violent extremism can be conducted either from an organization-centred perspective that highlights the instrumental roles of women in organizations and operations, or from a gender-centred perspective that is applied mainly to explain women’s motivations, and that highlights societal conditions as a factor contributing to women’s radicalization. Within the former perspective, gender roles are envisioned through the lens of members’ functions in regard to the act of violence, so that the active category is assigned to those with frontline duties, while other roles can be considered secondary yet not less important for organization. Within the broader, social perspective, the notion of active is placed within an agency-centred conceptual field comprising notions such as passive, subjugated, and oppressed, or empowered. While both these perspectives can inform analyses of the changing women’s roles in terrorism and their pathways to radicalization, it is necessary to ensure that these conceptual fields are not conflated.

In this section, we established a broader framework for understanding women’s radicalization and new patterns of violent extremism, via distinguishing between fundamental epistemological paradigms in radicalization research, and highlighting the relative nature of gender-based organizational and social roles. We maintained that interpretations of women’s agency and empowerment that are grounded within an individual-cantered tradition in political thought cannot be generalized over non-Western contexts. These interim conclusions will underlie our subsequent analyses of conceptual frameworks that shape understanding of women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia, as well as interpretations of the Surabaya case.

Women’s Radicalization in Southeast Asia: Religion, Society, Culture

This section discusses conceptual frameworks that underlie approaches to women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia, focusing on explanations grounded in religion, social status, and culture.

Religion

Religion plays a prominent role in contemporary extremism and radicalization, in Southeast Asia and other regions.⁶⁵ The role of religion can be understood either from a sociological perspective, when religion is approached as a social institution that plays a range of social functions, including that of ideology, or as a system of beliefs and interpretations of dogmas and concepts.

As Sidel⁶⁶ argues, in order to understand religious violence in Indonesia, religion needs to be approached not as a belief system but as a historical and sociological phenomenon, as “a field structured by its own institutions, authority relations, instilled dispositions (habitus), means of production and accumulation, and representation of symbolic or spiritual capital.”⁶⁷ This framework enables interpreting the complex empirical reality of varying “timing, location, perpetrators, targets, processes of mobilization, forms of agency, and outcomes”⁶⁸ of religious violence in Indonesia as a socio-culturally specific process of shifting patterns of collective violence, from riots to jihad.

The ideological function of religion becomes particularly prominent in the context of radicalization. Religion can be employed by social actors as a means of mobilization for action – via shaping people’s attitudes toward others; via substantiating their sense of unity at different levels – from tribal to trans-national, from organization to family; via offering and justifying models of social relationships; and via legitimizing ideas and actions, including violence.⁶⁹

The use of religion as a means of mobilization for action involves manipulation of consciousness with particular interpretations of religious dogmas, canons, and fundamental concepts of evil, good and justice.⁷⁰ The ISIS narrative presents an example of such pragmatic application of religion. For instance, in this narrative, moving away from one radical Islamic group into a more extreme group or moving away from the past unreligious life to a more pious Islamic lifestyle are envisioned as processes emulating the path of hijrah (a step taken by the Prophet Muhammad to move from Mecca to Medina to create an Islamic society).⁷¹ Indeed, ISIS “encouraged whole families to migrate – berhijrah – to Syria so fathers could fight, women could reproduce, teach or treat the wounded, and children could grow up in a pure Islamic state” and “managed to turn the concept of jihad into a family affair, with a role for everyone.”⁷²

There is a substantial body of studies that explore how narratives based on the jihadist interpretations of jihad and hijrah have been used for motivating women and families to join the movement.⁷³ Extremist interpretations of the meaning of religious concepts cater for different groups and contexts. Schulze and Liow⁷⁴ explored radicalization in terms of the hijrah process through which Indonesian and Malaysian extremists moved overseas to fight for ISIS, and observe that Indonesia’s network-driven radicalization and recruitment followed by an organized hijrah is contrasted with Malaysia’s mostly online-driven radicalization and recruitment, symptomatic of a more personalized hijrah. Extremist interpretations of religion provide a resource for involving children in conceptualizations of terrorism. For instance, Nisa and Saenong record meeting a woman who nicknamed herself Umm Mujahid (mother of a male fighter). When asked why, she replied: “I want my nickname to be my prayer. I hope my little son will be a mujahid in the future, so he can bring me to God’s heaven.”⁷⁵

The ideological-functionalist framework explains the mobilization power of the jihadist organizations’ narratives as emanating from a legitimate, sacred source. However, this framework cannot fully explain why actors whose social identity is rooted in religion⁷⁶ may become vulnerable specifically to its extremist interpretations. In the case of women’s radicalization, answering this question requires revision of the traditional assumptions about women’s roles and status in society.

Radicalization of Female Workers

Nair and Chong⁷⁷ problematize a gender-centric frame based on “common” assumptions related to males’ and females’ motivation for joining extremist organizations and committing suicide terrorist attacks, or on broader gender stereotypes, such as that “women are nurturing, forgiving, and patient beings best suited to ensure the well-being of families and society.”⁷⁸ They suggest that in the case of migrant female workers’ radicalization, women’s vulnerability to online extremist propaganda may be better explained by their status as marginalized individuals rather than by the gender factor, as it is their status that causes “psychological displacement and the search for a sense of ‘place’ in dominant power structures.”⁷⁹

Nair and Chong argue that the development of countering policies and rehabilitation programs cannot be sufficiently informed by analyses of empirical data such as female workers’ self-accounts of their motives (for instance, romantic ideals, prospects of romance, etc.), and suggest that deeper insight can be obtained via focusing on: societal concepts and practices to which this cohort (women in workforce) are subjugated, on the ways of viewing and interpreting the world that are specific for this group; and – most importantly – on the resources that are available to them for reflecting on their experiences and envisioning future courses of action. Nair and Chong conclude that within the framework of roles that are expected from these women (those of daughter, wife, and mother), adoption of an extremist interpretation of faith is the most likely way of resisting their “fate” and improving their own lives and lives of their families. Therefore, preventing this cohort from radicalization requires creating alternative paths “out of socio-economic disenchantment.”⁸⁰

Other researchers problematize explanations that ignore the cultural dimension in conceptualization of gender along the agency axis. The importance of the cultural dimension is discussed below, focusing on Malaysia and Indonesia, two countries with strong religious, economic and social links that are at risk of increased extremism in the current climate due to the dispersal of foreign fighters as well as radical changes in gendered behaviors.

Malaysia

Sukhani (2020)⁸¹ maintains that “the lived experience of women in ISIS illustrates a contradistinctive reality where the concept of militant feminism is rendered irrelevant.”⁸² Since 2013, more Malaysian women have become engaged in militant activities, while not abandoning their conservative gender roles.⁸³ As we argue below, this indicates the limits of a framework of liberal political theory for making sense of such complex phenomena. A more helpful explanatory frame we suggest is communitarian critiques of liberal political theory that focuses on the ways in which identities are partially constituted by longstanding cultural norms and roles.

As Sukhani notes, “the assumption that Southeast Asian women were always passive, oppressed, manipulated by the ‘system,’ and devoid of agency, both culturally and economically, is a problematic colonial and Western-centric perspective.”⁸⁴ There is a clear divide between the public and the private spheres in Malaysian society, so that the middle class Muslim women, whilst being professionals, continue to be “homemakers, child-bearers, and nurturing mothers.”⁸⁵ The majority of Malay-Muslim women do not perceive a lack of absolute gender equality as an injustice or lack of agency, because, for them, women’s agency is located in the private sphere and means “a deliberate submission to Islam; their empowerment lies in fully surrendering to piety and serving the family.”⁸⁶ The woman’s power comes from her ability to transform her husband and children into better Muslims, through which she obtains the status of the guardian of the moral order in the public sphere. However, this status can open for women a possibility to exercise more agency and use their power in order to recruit other women, or their own children to become shaheeds or martyrs – an act that their mothers think is a blessing.⁸⁷

Schulze and Liow⁸⁸ argue that the emergence of single women willing to go to ISIS for the dual purpose of waging jihad and wedlock speaks to a new phenomenon in Malaysia. Does this trend indicate that Malaysian women want to exercise agency through being directly engaged into militant activities, or is this a response to the society’s change and transformation of traditional social norms and relations? As Schulze and Liow⁸⁹ found, Islamist militants in Malaysia were atomized individuals who were diverse in gender, class, age, and other socio-economic profiles when compared to their counterparts in Indonesia who were more securely embedded in historical and social kinship networks.

What the extremist movements driven by fundamentalist ideologies can offer to women seems to be in conflict with motivations such as women’s agency and empowerment. For instance, Mujani, Ismail and Salahuddin,⁹⁰ in their analysis of radicalism in terms of Akidah, Shariah, human rights and security, maintain that “the militant group challenges Allah’s laws by making women as sex slaves using the term Jihad sex” and “acts harshly by using brutal force on people regardless of whether they are women and children.”⁹¹ Osman and Arosoaie⁹² also note the role that some women may play in providing jihad alnikah (sexual jihad) for the fighters. Though pay scant direct attention to gender, Osman and Arosoaie⁹³ offer a nuanced understanding of the changing social contexts for extremism in Malaysia and this offers insights to inform gendered analyses. For example, Osman and Arosoaie’s distinction between the old and the new Malaysian jihadi generations speaks to a broadening in approaches that is a precursor of, or parallel with, changes in women’s roles. They argue that the new jihadi generation shares three distinctive features that differentiate it from the old generation: diverse occupational background, a lack of either formal or informal religious training, and a growing nexus between criminality and radicalization. They contend that while the old jihadi generation was known for its erudition in Islamic tenets and a strong sense of political agency, the new generation is characterized by a sense of moral righteousness that contributes to a sense of self-realization by living within the Caliphate and under morally righteous Islamic terms. The change in emphasis from a political agency that is concerned with changes in systems to living a righteous life shifts to a closer alignment with women’s societal normative roles, and through these roles, female agency and women’s empowerment in a sense that is in accordance with Malaysian tradition.

Indonesia

The Mothers to Bombers: The Evolution of Indonesian Women Extremists report⁹⁴ identifies four groups of Indonesian women that are at risk of becoming radicalized and/or who have become involved in the ISIS activities. These include: (1) Indonesian women migrant workers in East Asia and the Middle East; in comparison to their counterparts in Indonesia, this group is characterized by higher self-confidence, competence in English and Arabic, and computer expertise (they may become involved in radicalization more easily due to being interested in establishing a community in the countries where they work, and they present a promising target for recruiting and donations); (2) women who joined ISIS as a part of family units: married women who were influenced by ISIS propaganda, or who wanted their children to live in an Islamic state, as well as widows and young women who married foreign fighters; (3) “deportees” – women who often played an active economic role in their communities, who were attracted to the extremist goals, and who wanted to join ISIS to become united with their husbands or family members but were arrested and deported, the outcome of which could make them frustrated and radicalized more; and (4) women who can be potentially involved in ISIS activities due to them being connected to the Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT), a nationalist militant network that was active in Java and Sulawesi⁹⁵ from 2013 to 2016.

As Galamas⁹⁶ suggests, women’s extremism in Indonesia can be best understood from an historical perspective. “The ‘new’ activism of Indonesian women extremists is new only in relation to their relatively recent relegation to reproductive and nurturing roles,”⁹⁷ because Indonesian Muslim women were active in leadership roles in the armed resistance against the colonial administration in Aceh at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century and in nationalist groups in the 1920-30s. After Independence they were active in Islamic organizations, and were engaged in public life. In a more recent period, views on the roles of women changed under the influence of the 1979 Iranian revolution, and due to the proliferation of a propagation (dakwah) model, in which “commitment to Islamic law (shari’a) began with the family, then moved to the community and finally the state. The role of women was central because the family could not be transformed unless the women were both pious and knowledgeable.”⁹⁸ In the 1990s, under the influence of a Salafi-jihadist movement Jemaah Islamiyah, the public role of women was significantly minimized due to its conservative views on gender identity, and proliferation of the concept of kewanitaan (womanhood) as comprising three roles: “as a daughter who has to obey her father, as a wife who has to obey her husband, and as a mother who is responsible for her children’s well-being and education.”⁹⁹ In this context, Galamas¹⁰⁰ notes, women could be loyal supporters of their husbands who participated in jihad but could not be directly involved in the clandestine organization’s activities. However, due to the key role that women play in the private sphere, this limitation may not necessarily mean that women were deprived of agency and power.

In the ISIS movement, women can play more roles, including fundraisers, recruiters, providers of logistical support, and so on.¹⁰¹ However, their agency is manifested already by them supporting the movement, regardless of the roles that they can, or cannot (are or are not allowed) undertake within the operation-centric organizational role matrix. As Nuraniyah¹⁰² maintains, some Indonesian women were attracted to the idea of going to Syria and leaving behind their families and pasts in the name of jihad and defending the Allah. She emphasizes that the categorization of gender roles in movements such as IS does not relate directly to the concept of women’s agency.¹⁰³ Based on her empirical study of 25 women (including former or current migrant workers in countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, as well as female workers based in Indonesia) who become involved into IS activities, Nuraniyah problematizes assumptions about women extremists as being brainwashed and argues that “women who come to adopt extremist beliefs do have self-agency despite exogenous influences throughout their radicalization.”¹⁰⁴

[W]omen’s internalisation of IS’s gendered values cannot be simply viewed from the binary lens of submission or resistance, because it involves a complex process of resistance to certain structures of authority (parental and marriage-based male guardianship authorities) and active efforts to conform to new ones.¹⁰⁵

Online Radicalization and Women’s Agency

The internet has become a medium of symbolic terrorism,¹⁰⁶ and offered more opportunities for the reproduction of extremist and radicalized collective identities and people becoming recruited and mentored.¹⁰⁷ In Indonesia and Malaysia, the internet has been actively used as a tool for indoctrination, and contributed to the increased recruitment of women into the ISIS.¹⁰⁸ Extremist recruiters targeted lonely widows¹⁰⁹ as well as migrant domestic workers who found themselves isolated in a foreign country.¹¹⁰

The specific socio-cultural features of Southeast Asian societies are reflected in the design and content of extremist sites aimed at specific audiences in this region.¹¹¹ Saltman and Smith¹¹² observe that ISIS has used the Internet to increase its female-focused efforts through time, writing manifestos directly for women, directing sections of its online magazine to the “sisters of the Islamic State” and incorporating women into its online presence, especially in social media. Extremist websites in Indonesia are characterized by a “distinct recruitment language targeted at women and men, and rigid gender segregation of content and spaces.”¹¹³ In ISIS media, gender-specific strategies are employed, including the use of heroine examples and narratives directed at women and focusing, for example, on the honor of being the wife of a fighter or being part of a sisterhood community joined by worship, studying religion and keeping family strong.¹¹⁴ These themes are in tune with the responsibilities that women have in regard to building and maintaining social relations in societies such as Malaysia, and in which family-located and religion-focused practices play a central role.¹¹⁵

Based on the thematic content of the ISIS narratives, and its propaganda strategies, it would be a mistake to conclude that women are only targets, a passive audience that follow the path to extremism because they were influenced online. Rather, online radicalization itself is a manifestation of women’s undertaking a proactive stance¹¹⁶ via exploring the new forms of exercising agency and presence in public sphere¹¹⁷ that the online medium can afford. Based on an analysis of the use of social media by ISIS, Nuraniyah¹¹⁸ maintains that Indonesian women are particularly active in three types of extremists activity online: branding, recruitment and fundraising, and that they “skillfully use information technology to circumvent hierarchical barriers to female jihad, forming alliance with male leaders and members who are equally eager to take advantage of the women’s initiative.”¹¹⁹ Another study of pro-Islamic State women’s roles in social media networks has shown that women can use social media in order to “recruit, promote, and even commit terrorist violence.”¹²⁰

This section highlights the cultural aspects of gender-focused conceptual frameworks for understanding women’s radicalization in societies that have been built on the principles of communitarianism, and are characterized by multi-directional changes of women’s social status and roles, as well as by interaction of traditional and nontraditional value and normative systems, and forms of agency. This implies that women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia cannot be fully explained by the content of ideological resources that are brought forward by perpetrators and are available to vulnerable and/or proactive actors.

The Surabaya and Sidoarjo Family Suicide Bombings: Multiple Readings

Sequence of Events

Three families were involved in the Surabaya and Sidoarjo suicide bombings in May, 2018. The first family detonated bombs at three churches in Surabaya in the early morning of Sunday, 13 May, 2018. The father of the family, Dita Oepriarto, aged 45, drove a Toyota minivan filled with bombs into the Surabaya Center Pentecostal Church, killing himself and seven others. His two sons, aged 18 and 15, rode together on a motorcycle to the Roman Catholic Santa Maria Church, where they set off their explosives, killing themselves and five others. His wife, Puji Kuswati, aged 42, and their two daughters, aged 9 and 12, died trying to gain access to the Diponegoro Indonesia Christian Church.¹²¹

That evening, three members of another family died when the bomb they were making exploded prematurely. Following reports of an explosion, police went to an apartment complex in Sidoarjo, just outside Surabaya, where they discovered Anton Febrianto, aged 47, holding the detonator for a bomb that had killed his wife, Puspitasari, also 47, and their eldest son, aged 17. After an altercation, he was shot dead by the police. Two younger daughters, aged 11 and 10, were injured. Another son, aged 15, remained unscathed.¹²²

The following day, Monday, 14 May, the third family used two motorcycles in a suicide attack on a police station in Surabaya. Tri Murtiono, aged 51, and Tri Ernawati, aged 44, died, along with their two sons, aged 18 and 14. Their younger daughter, aged 7, who had been sandwiched between her parents on their motorcycle, was blown clear of the blast and survived. In all, 12 civilians and 13 terrorist suspects were killed and at least 46 people injured.¹²³

Interpretations and Explanations

The Surabaya and Sidoarjo bombings have been represented, framed, and interpreted in multiple ways in public, official, and research discourses. Comparative textual and discourse analysis of media coverage of the tragic event showed that reportages intended for the local, and for international audiences differed in focus (perpetrators or victims), and in greater or less emphasis on the religion, family, and children elements.¹²⁴ Within the security and counter-terrorism domain, this event was envisioned as a new (for Indonesia) model of violent extremism.¹²⁵ Understanding of the families’ motivations was based on the scarce and fragmented information that was available, and made public after the events, such as participants’ posts in social media (not related to the attack), statements obtained from their neighbors and classmates, evidences such as the families’ attending together pengajian (Islamic studies sessions) held by a cleric who was known as a recruiter, and explanations provided in an ISIS online magazine issue on the next day after the bombings.¹²⁶ Below, several explanatory frameworks are examined in more details.

Within the (most prominent) counter-terrorism perspective, the Surabaya case is approached as a particular type of terrorist attack, committed by particular kind of actors (families with children) whose motivation needs to be inferred from available empirical evidence.¹²⁷ Specifically, the Surabaya case could be interpreted as an instance of terrorism that is motivated by a misconstrued religious ideology.¹²⁸ Further, the Surabaya bombing can be interpreted through the extremist organizational lens, as a demonstration of the tactical advantages of using family networks for radicalization, and women and children for suicide attacks,¹²⁹ and a manifestation of the changing roles of women “from muhajirat (female emigrants) to mujahidat (female fighters).”¹³⁰ The Surabaya case presents a next step in the process of extending the roles of female Indonesian ISIS supporters, who already were

very active on social media, organizing groups as well as encouraging and even recruiting men for jihad. Several played key roles in persuading their families to go to Syria. A small number joined MIT as combatants in the Poso Mountains. Some helped their husbands make bombs. And others volunteered to be suicide bombers.¹³¹

Yet, despite a possibility to become an initiator and a perpetrator, women “do not enjoy equal standing with men, given the patriarchal values that still ground pro-IS networks. From an operational perspective, dependence on men for guidance and know-how to execute attacks also still prevails.”¹³² In the Surabaya case, the roles and behavior of husbands, wives, and children was determined by the operational needs: husbands – who had necessary competences and skills – were planning the attacks and preparing the bombs, while their wives and children attended religious discussions, and followed the plans.¹³³

However, women’s participation in the bombings extends far beyond the operational dimension. One of the reasons for using women as the martyrs is that “women have skills to transfer their knowledge to their children including the radical thought, therefore all member of the family are involved in the bombing actions.”¹³⁴ Schulze¹³⁵ identifies three aspects in which the Surabaya case can be interpreted from the ISIS perspective: as an effective operational strategy; as an example of becoming a mujahidin family and obtaining a stronger sense of belonging to the Indonesian, and broader pro-Islamic State community; and as a manifestation of “the shift in jihadism more generally from the exclusive vanguard model to a more populist endeavor.”¹³⁶

The counter-terrorist framework prioritizes explanations that focus on the pragmatic (“what for?” and “how effective?”) aspects of family suicide bombing as a modus operandi, and localizes the causes and motivations in the attackers’ reasons and/or in the extremist movement’s goals, ideologies, and gendered division of labor.¹³⁷ However, in order to explain why a woman could become engaged herself, and involve her children in a suicide bombing action, actor-centric explanations need to be suggested.¹³⁸

For instance, Takdir¹³⁹ draws upon one of the phase models of radicalization¹⁴⁰ and the concept of brainwashing to explain the Surabaya family suicide bombings. This framework assigns agency to the man – a husband, a father, and a member of a radical organization who internalized its ideological narrative and was willing, and capable of imposing it upon his family:

Dita as the main actor in the Surabaya suicide bombing indoctrinated his wife and children that what will be done is a truth contained in religious teachings. Dita brainwashed his wife and children to follow the path of his life so they could be together in the way of heaven later.¹⁴¹

As Achsin¹⁴² suggests, a more nuanced understanding of the wives/mothers roles can be obtained through the culture lens:

Puji’s obedience towards her husband Dita to carry out suicide bombing mission is a form of obedience that is justified by [traditional Javanese] culture and religion. Meanwhile, the offering and strengthening of the children to do the same thing is a role that is played by the mother. Here the role of woman in family becomes more important and strategic. It serves the double functions, to strengthen the husband’s will and embrace the children.¹⁴³

Further, Achsin¹⁴⁴ maintains, the Surabaya case may be interpreted as an example of “culture and ideology clash,” when the traditional Javanese culture’s values of harmony and peace “are defeated by terrorism ideology.”¹⁴⁵ On the other hand, the key role that mother plays in the traditional Javanese culture seems to be exactly that factor that could ensure the family’s willingness and ability to undertake extreme actions.

Interestingly for our thesis, Takdir¹⁴⁶ argues that given Dita’s and his family’s class, that was educationally and economically quite privileged rather than coming from a situation of poverty and lack of education, their action “cannot be interpreted with logic and common sense.”¹⁴⁷ We would argue, however, that this conclusion really assumes a liberal individualist political framework which focuses on economic and general social conditions as the main driver for radical political action. As against this, in what follows, we suggest that the communitarian framework that we have adopted for explanatory purposes extends the drivers of radical action to the need for radical actors to defend and promote the bonds of family and community. Looked at from the perspective of this communitarian framework these actions can begin to make sense as an affirmation, or the honoring, of particular relationship bonds.

Communitarian Reading

Can communitarianism, with its emphasis on the responsibility of the individual to the community (a traditional one, bound by territorial and kinship proximity, or a constructed, imaginary one¹⁴⁸) and the social importance of the family unit, provide an additional perspective on the Surabaya and Sidoarjo suicide bombings? What can we glean about the social and community relationships of the attackers, based on the available data on the sequence of events and on the various interpretations (see above) of the roles played by the members of these families before and during attacks?

Firstly, it is clear the three attacks were a coordinated series of actions that were planned by a small community of actors. All three men were members of the Surabaya chapter of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an Indonesian militant organization that pledged allegiance to ISIS, and Dita Oepriarto, whose own actions realized the first stage of this coordinated plan, was head of this chapter. On occasion the three men brought their wives and children to their meetings,¹⁴⁹ so it is likely that both the men and the women knew each other, and presumably felt some responsibility toward each other. This pattern is consistent with Van Uffelen and Walden’s¹⁵⁰ observation that radical networks, especially in Indonesia, are supported by social contacts established in schools, sports clubs, mosques and families, in which women play an elementary role. From this viewpoint, once the first action was taken, the parents in the second and third families would have felt obligated to carry out their family’s part of the coordinated plan.

Secondly, it seems clear that the wives were actively involved in planning the attacks. As Aschin¹⁵¹ states, in a family bombing scenario the wife’s role is strategic as it serves the double functions of strengthening the husband’s will and encouraging the children to take part in a radical action. The fact that Puji Kuswati killed herself and her daughters without her husband present to oversee her action speaks to her independent agreement with the plan. The plan that members of all three families would die on the same day accords with the communitarian idea of commitment to family. It is this idea that might have enhanced the influence of extremist narratives, and strengthened parents’ decisions to involve their children in a suicide mission. As Haula Noor¹⁵² maintains, committing this act together makes sense from the parents’ perspective:

There is, however, a rational parental choice behind these acts, based on their belief that a reward for their amaliyah (the term jihadists use to refer to field action) is waiting for them in the afterlife. They believe they will be together again in heaven. If a father committed a suicide bombing alone, he would be leaving his wife and children to bear the stigma of a terrorist’s family. Meanwhile, as women are taking a more active role in terrorism, as mothers they will find it hard to leave their children without being able to ensure their children follow their ideology. So, they choose to do the amaliyah together.¹⁵³

Finally, the errors in execution by Puji Kuswati and Anton Febrianto speak to an inexperience that suggests that while these attacks may have been inspired by ISIS, they were not under the direct supervision of ISIS. However, the factor such as absence/presence of direct guidance from the organizational leadership is not that meaningful from a communitarian perspective, since it is the sense of responsibility for the entire community that can become sufficient for undertaking action. From this perspective, the fact that these attacks occurred at a time when ISIS was sustaining heavy losses in Iraq and Syria could be interpreted in terms of the heavy responsibility felt by the individuals involved in relation to the wider ISIS community. A feeling of obligation to a community under dire pressure could have been reinforced by events such as an uprising that was squashed at the Indonesian National Police’s Mobile Brigade Corps’ (Mako Brimob) detention unit in the West Javan town of Depok, on the 8^th of May,¹⁵⁴ immediately before the Surabaya and Sidorajo attacks.

In this section, we outlined explanations of the Surabaya case that have been shaped by a counter-terrorist, organization/operation-centric framework, and a broader psychosocial framework in radicalization research. We suggested that a communitarian framework may provide another plausible hypothesis regarding the actors’ reasons, roles and behavior. In the subsequent discussion, we put the communitarian framework into the broader context of studies of women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia.

Discussion

Our analysis of the usefulness of gender-related categorization in terrorism, extremism and radicalization research, and women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia has yielded a range of conflicting claims. While some researchers have suggested that involvement in radical and extremist groups by women can be seen as fighting for gender equality,¹⁵⁵ others have pointed out that such engagement involves women seeking to uphold their societies’ gender norms against attempts to transform them into gender neutral polities along the line of Western liberal democracies.¹⁵⁶ Indeed, in the case of Malay women it has been argued that they have high status in a society where a lack of gender equality is not perceived as any form of injustice that leads to a lack of agency. Telling here is Suskani’s¹⁵⁷ claim that the reaffirmation of societal normative roles may be interpreted as women’s empowerment. We suggest that in order to make wider sense of this claim and the wider conflicting claims noted above one needs to apply the appropriate wider political philosophical frame; specifically, that we abandon the Western-liberal political framework provided by the political philosophy of John Rawls and instead deploy a communitarian framework that highlights the ways in which individuals are responsible to their specific communities and the social relations within which social actors are embedded.

So, thinking along communitarian lines in the case noted above by Sukhani¹⁵⁸ one can understand the reaffirmation of traditional societal roles for women as their empowerment once we recognize that such roles constitute deeply entrenched identities through which women’s agency in Malay society is achieved. Here a communitarian reading counters Western liberal ideas of individuals being isolated self-interested actors. When individuals are removed from the specific cultural frameworks that provide a sense of self in the first place, they become vulnerable to losing the sense of direction and purposiveness in life from which effective agency flows. This suggests that of the three factors we have noted above the most useful for understanding women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia may be the sociocultural context-focussed paradigm.

To give just one example, such a paradigm provides us with a plausible potential explanation for why Indonesian migrant workers may be at risk of becoming radicalized. That is, precisely because they have been displaced from their particular societies and the cultural identities that are part of that. While this is admittedly a speculative claim, the more important point is to assess which philosophical political framework is best able to explain and render consistent what appear to be widely conflicting claims concerning the possible causes of radicalization of women in Southeast Asia, a region in which traditional socio-cultural roles, including gender roles, plausibly form the foundational self from which individual identities and agency flow.

The communitarian philosophical framework can augment diverse studies that aim to identify and address the forms of radical and extremist threats that apply to Southeast Asia,¹⁵⁹ or studies that take a fundamentally communitarian approach, mostly unconsciously, by focusing on deradicalization in terms of families and/or specific communities of people.¹⁶⁰ We hope that the results of our study will inform more nuanced counter-narratives for non-Western non-conflict countries.

Conclusion

Research on violent extremism and radicalization that seeks to inform policy and decision-making needs to be informed by an assessment of the relevance and meaning of social categories, such as gender, within specific contexts, due to the socio-historical and cultural specificity and ideological non-neutrality of social categories. This paper contributes to this task by exploring conceptual frameworks that have been suggested in the literature for understanding women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia and discussing the heuristic significance of conceptual frameworks that are grounded within an individual-centered tradition in political thought for understanding women’s radicalization in non-Western non-conflict countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

This paper highlights a need to problematize explanations that infer the causes of women’s radicalization and engagement in terrorist acts from ideological systems that are employed by extremist movements to influence their target audiences, and which individuals internalize and reproduce as they reflect on their experiences, formulate their motivations, and justify their decisions and actions. It is also necessary to address problems such as the conflation of organizational and social perspectives on gender roles, and generalization of culturally- and ideologically-specific qualitative concepts, such as active (role), agency, empowerment, and so forth. We propose that addressing these issues requires a critical reassessment of the usefulness of the individual-centered tradition in Western political thought for understanding other cultural contexts, and that a communitarian paradigm can help interpret emerging phenomena such as family suicide bombing in non-Western non-conflict countries.

The communitarian framework outlined in this paper approaches social subjects as being shaped by their social relationships and responsibilities to members of their community, highlights that social identities are embedded in longstanding cultural norms and roles, and emphasizes the role of the social unit (the community, the family cell) in people’s motivations, decisions, and actions, including self-representation to multiple audiences. Focusing on the Surabaya case, in this paper we have maintained that diverse and sometimes conflicting interpretations tend to focus on the participants’ motivations for launching the attack and highlight the role of ideological (religious) concepts, or organizational needs and goals. We then suggested how the available empirical data can be interpreted within a communitarian perspective.

This paper does not seek to contribute to the body of empirical data on women’s radicalization in Southeast Asia. Rather, our aim is to highlight the need to critically reflect on the heuristic value of the conceptual frameworks that have been applied in the literature for interpreting and explaining women’s radicalization and the emergence of new patterns of extremist activity, such as family suicide bombing, in a specific sociocultural context. While it is for one paper impossible to provide a systematic and comprehensive assessment of these frameworks, as well as deeper explication of the philosophical paradigms that underlie them, our intention here is to highlight the issue and explore one of possible line of conceptual reflection.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was fully supported by two grants from the Defence, Science and Technology Group, Edinburgh, Australia. Grant numbers: 8846 and 9539.

Notes

1 Kirsten E. Schulze and Joseph Chinyong Liow, “Making Jihadis, Waging Jihad: Transnational and Local Dimensions of the ISIS Phenomenon in Indonesia and Malaysia,” Asian Security 15, no. 2 (2019): 122–39; Unaesah Rahmah, “Women in Jihad,.” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 12, no. 4 (2020): 21–6.

2 Muhaimin Zulhair Achsin, “Culture and Role of Woman in Terrorism in Indonesia. Case Studies: Suicide Bombings in Surabaya and Sibolga,” International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (JIEAT) 8, no. 5C (2019): 873–6; G. M. Drajat and F. R. Pertiwi, “Redefining Masculinity and Femininity on Violent Extremism and Terrorism: The Case of 2018 Surabaya Bombings,” in B-SPACE 2019: Proceedings of the First Brawijaya International Conference on Social and Political Sciences, 26–28 November, 2019, Malang, East Java, Indonesia, eds. S. Kolifah, M. Z. Achsin, R. Damayanti, M. Rohmadi, and M. Sudaryanro (European Alliance for Innovation, 2020, pp. 298–302); Kirsten E. Schulze, “The Surabaya Bombings and the Evolution of the Jihadi Threat in Indonesia,” CTC Sentinel 11, no. 6 (2018): 1–6.

3 See: Nava Nuraniyah, “Not Just Brainwashed: Understanding the Radicalization of Indonesian Female Supporters of the Islamic State,” Terrorism and Political Violence 30, no. 6 (2018): 890–910; Tamara Nair and Alan Chong, “Radicalisation of the Female Worker,” RSIS Commentaries, no. 157 (2017); Kirsten E. Schulze and Julie Chernov Hwang, “Militant Islam in Southeast Asia,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 41, no. 1 (2019): 1–13; Julie Chernov Hwang, “Pathways into Terrorism: Understanding Entry into and Support for Terrorism in Asia,” Terrorism and Political Violence 30, no. 6 (2018): 883–9; Piya Sukhani, “The Route to Radicalisation for Malay-Muslim Women: Tracing the Nexus Between Universals and Particulars in Malaysia,” The RSiS Working Papers no. 331 (2020, August 7).

4 Schulze and Liow, “Making Jihadis,” 122–3.

5 Chernov Hwang, “Pathways into Terrorism,” 884.

6 John T. Sidel, Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007), x.

7 See: Nuraniyah, “Not Just Brainwashed”; Nair and Chong, “Radicalisation of the Female Worker”; Sukhani, “The Route to Radicalisation”; Melissa Frances Johnston, Muhammad Iqbal, and Jacqui True, “The Lure of (Violent) Extremism: Gender Constructs in Online Recruitment and Messaging in Indonesia,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020): 1–19; Rahmah, “Women in Jihad”; V. Arianti and Nur Azlin Yasin, “Women’s Proactive Roles in Jihadism in Southeast Asia,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis 8, no. 5 (2016): 9–13.

8 See: Alexandra Phelan, “Special Issue Introduction for Terrorism, Gender and Women: Toward an Integrated Research Agenda,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020), DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2020.1759252; Cyndi Banks, “Introduction: Women, Gender, and Terrorism: Gendering Terrorism,” Women & Criminal Justice 29, no. 4–5 (2019): 181–7; Karen Jacques and Paul J. Taylor, “Female Terrorism: A Review,” Terrorism and Political Violence 21, no. 3 (2009): 499–515. See also: Michael S. Kimmel, “Globalization and Its Mal(e) Contents: The Gendered Moral and Political Economy of Terrorism,” International Sociology 18, no. 3 (2003): 603–20.

9 Mia Bloom and Ayse Lokmanoglu, “From Pawn to Knights: The Changing Role of Women’s Agency in Terrorism?,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020), DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2020.1759263; Ruth Gan, Loo Seng Neo, Jeffery Chin, and Majeed Khader, “Change is the Only Constant: The Evolving Role of Women in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” Women & Criminal Justice 29, no. 4–5 (2019): 204–20.

10 “Introduction: A Woman Did That?” in Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry, Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics (London: Zed Books, 2007, pp. 1–26); Phelan, “Special Issue Introduction for Terrorism, Gender and Women.”

11 Brigitte L. Nacos, “The Portrayal of Female Terrorists in the Media: Similar Framing Patterns in the News Coverage of Women in Politics and in Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28, no. 5 (2005): 435–51; Tunde Agara, “The Role of Woman in Terrorism and Investigation of Gendering Terrorism,” Journal of Humanities Insights 1, no. 2 (2017): 43–53.

12 Banks, “Introduction: Women, Gender, and Terrorism.”

13 Bloom and Lokmanoglu, “From Pawn to Knights,” 1.

14 Daren Fisher and Jacqueline G. Lee, “Testing the Universality of the Gender Equality–Peace Thesis: The Influence of Increased Gender Equality on Terrorism in Turkey,” Women & Criminal Justice 29, no. 4–5 (2019): 242–65; Debangana Chatterjee, “Gendering ISIS and Mapping the Role of Women,” Contemporary Review of the Middle East 3, no. 2 (2016): 201–18

15 Nuraniyah, “Not Just Brainwashed,” 2.

16 Johnston, Iqbal, and True, “The Lure of (Violent) Extremism.”

17 Ibid., 1.

18 Ibid.

19 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).

20 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1984).

21 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

22 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

23 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).

24 Arie W. Kruglanski, Michele J. Gelfand, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Anna Sheveland, Malkanthi Hetiarachchi, and Rohan Gunaratna, “The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism,” Political Psychology 35 (2014): 69.

25 Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, “Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism,.” Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 3 (2008): 416.

26 Eitan Y. Alimi, Chares Demetriou, and Lorenzo Bosi, The Dynamics of Radicalization: A Relational and Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

27 Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997).

28 Alimi, Demetriou, and Bosi, The Dynamics of Radicalization.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 John G. Horgan, “Psychology of Terrorism: Introduction to the Special Issue,.” American Psychologist 72, no. 3 (2017): 199–204.

32 John G. Horgan, Max Taylor, Mia Bloom, and Charlie Winter, “From Cubs to Lion: A Six Stage Model of Child Socialization into the Islamic State,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40, no. 7 (2017): 645–64.

33 Randy Borum, “Radicalization into Violent Extremism II: A Review of Conceptual Models and Empirical Research,” Journal of Strategic Security 4, no. 4 (2011): 37–62; Fathali M. Moghaddam, “The Staircase to Terrorism: A Psychological Explanation,” American Psychologist 60, no. 2 (2005): 161–9; Arun Kundnani, “Radicalisation: The Journey of a Concept,.” Race & Class 54, no. 2 (2012): 3–25; Tinka Veldhuis and Jorgen Staun, Islamist Radicalisation: A Root Cause Model (Netherlands Institute of international Relations Clingendael, The Hague, 2009).

34 Derek M. D. Silva, “Police and Radicalization,” in The Handbook of Social Control, ed. M. Deflem (Wiley Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2019), 249–62.

35 Ibid.

36 Veldhuis and Staun, Islamist Radicalisation, 7.

37 Kundnani, “Radicalisation: The Journey of a Concept”; Silva, “Police and Radicalization.”

38 Mary Beth Altier, John Horgan, and Christian Thoroughgood, “In Their Own Words? Methodological Considerations in the Analysis of Terrorist Autobiographies,” Journal of Strategic Security 5, no. 4 (2012): 85–98; Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan, “Introducing the Global Terrorism Database,” Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 2 (2007): 181–204; Michel Wievorka, The Making of Terrorism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

39 See: Julian Richards, Extremism, Radicalization and Security: An Identity Theory Approach (Springer, 2007); Lucy Resnyansky, “Intersections: Social Science Knowledge and Prevention of Terrorism,” in Doomed to Repeat? Terrorism and the Lessons of History, ed. Sean Brawley, (Washington, DC: New Academia Press, 2009), 51–80.

40 See: Leonard Weinberg and William Eubank, “Women’s Involvement in Terrorism,” Gender Issues 28, no. 1 (2011): 22–49; Lisa Stampnitzky, “The Emergence of Terrorism Studies as a Field,” in Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies, ed. R. Jackson (London: Routledge, 2016), 17–27.

41 Michael J. Soules, “The Tradeoffs of Using Female Suicide Bombers,” Conflict Management and Peace Science (2020): 0738894220948506.

42 Deborah M. Galvin, “The Female Terrorist: A Socio-Psychological Perspective,” Behavioral Science and the Law 1 (1983): 19–32; Rex A. Hudson, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? (Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, 1999).

43 Karla J. Cunningham, “Countering Female Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30, no. 2 (2007): 113–29.

44 Allan Orr, “A Formula of Terrorism?,” Journal of Applied Security Research 10, no. 1 (2015): 97–120.

45 Galvin, “The Female Terrorist.”

46 Hudson, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism.

47 Galvin, “The Female Terrorist,” 19.

48 Weinberg and Eubank, “Italian Women Terrorists”; Hudson, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism.

49 See: Gan, Neo, Chin, and Khader, “Change Is the Only Constant”; Christine Sixta Rinehart, Sexual Jihad: The Role of Islam in Female Terrorism (London: Lexington Books, 2019); Katharina Von Knop, “The Female Jihad: Al-Qaedah’s Women,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30, no. 5 (2007): 397–414.

50 Laila Bokhari, “Women and Terrorism – Passive or Active Actors? Motivations and Strategic Use,” in Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Motivation for Suicide Bombers (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2007), 51–63.

51 Gan, Neo, Chin, and Khader, “Change is the Only Constant,” 209.

52 O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?.”

53 Ibid., 681.

54 Christine Sixta, “The Illusive Third Wave: Are Female Terrorists the New ‘New Women’ in Developing Societies?,” Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 29, no. 2 (2008): 261–88.

55 Ibid., 261.

56 Sixta Rinehart, Sexual Jihad. On equality as a motivation, see: Arjuna Gunawardena, “Female Black Tigers: A Different Breed of Cat?” in Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality, ed. Yoram Scweitzer (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 2006, pp. 81–90).

57 Sixta Rinehart, Sexual Jihad.

58 Ibid., 4.

59 Sixta Rinehart, Sexual Jihad.

60 Banks, “Introduction: Women, Gender, and Terrorism.”

61 See: Gina Heathcote, “Security Council Resolution 2242 on Women, Peace and Security: Progressive Gains or Dangerous Development?,” Global Society 32, no. 4 (2018): 374–94; Ann-Kathrin Rothermel, “Gender in the United Nations’ Agenda on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 22, no. 5 (2020): 720–41. On the presence of sexism in earlier studies on women in terrorist organizations, see: Sixta Rinehart, Sexual Jihad.

62 See: David Duriesmith and Noor Huda Ismail, “Masculinities and Disengagement from Jihadi Networks: The Case of Indonesian Militant Islamists,” this volume; Kathy Laster and Edna Erez, “Sisters in Terrorism? Exploding Stereotypes,” Women & Criminal Justice 25, no. 1–2 (2015): 83–99.

63 See: Anat Berko and Edna Erez, “Gender, Palestinian Women, and Terrorism: Women’s Liberation or Oppression?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30, no. 6 (2007): 493–519. For a critique of the “liberation vs. oppression” dichotomy as reductive, see: Banks, “Introduction: Women, Gender, and Terrorism.”

64 Banks, “Introduction: Women, Gender, and Terrorism”; Phelan, “Special Issue Introduction for Terrorism, Gender and Women.”

65 Karla J. Cunningham, “Cross-Regional Trends in Female Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 26, no. 3 (2006): 171–95; Bokhari, “Women and Terrorism – Passive or Active Actors?”; O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?”; Bruce Hoffman, “‘Holy Terror’: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 18, no. 4 (1995): 271–84.

66 Sidel, Riots, Pogroms, Jihad.

67 Ibid., xi.

68 Ibid., xiii.

69 Bryan R. Wilson, “The Functions of Religion: A Reappraisal,” Religion 18, no. 3 (1988): 199–216.

70 Hoffman, “‘Holy Terror’.”

71 Mun’im Sirry, “Muslim Student Radicalism and Self-Deradicalization in Indonesia,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 31, no. 2 (2020): 241–60. For an extensive discussion of Islamism in Malaysia, see: Joseph Chinyong Liow, Politics and Piety: Islamism in Contemporary Malaysia (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009).

72 Sidney Jones, “Surabaya and the ISIS Family,” The Interpreter, May 15, 2018, accessed 17 October, 2021, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/surabaya-and-isis-family.

73 See: Katharina Hijra Kneip, “Female Jihad – Women in the ISIS,” Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science 29 (2016): 88–106; Hamoon Khelghat-Doost, “Women of the Caliphate: the Mechanism for Women’s Incorporation into the Islamic State (IS),” Perspectives on Terrorism 11, no. 1 (2017): 17–25.

74 Schulze and Liow, “Making Jihadis.”

75 Eva F. Nisa and Faried F. Saenong, “Female Suicide Bombers: How Terrorist Propaganda Radicalises Indonesian Women,” The Conversation, June 26, 2018, accessed 17 October, 2018, https://theconversation.com/female-suicide-bombers-how-terrorist-propaganda-radicalises-indonesian-women-98143.

76 Joseph Chinyong Liow and Aida Arosoaie, “The Sound of Silence: Nuancing Religiopolitical Legitimacy and Conceptualizing the Appeal of ISIS in Malaysia,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 41, no. 1 (2019): 86–113.

77 Nair and Chong, “Radicalisation of the Female Worker.”

78 Ibid., n. p.

79 Ibid., n. p.

80 Ibid., n. p.

81 Sukhani, “The Route to Radicalisation for Malay-Muslim Women.”

82 Ibid., 6.

83 Sukhani, “The Route to Radicalisation for Malay-Muslim Women.”

84 Ibid., 8.

85 Ibid., 10.

86 Ibid., 11.

87 Serina Rahman, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: Nurturing Exclusivist Interpretations of Islam in the Malaysian Home (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2020).

88 Schulze and Liow, “Making Jihadis.”

89 Ibid.

90 Wan Kamal Mujani, Ahmad Munawar Ismail, and Nurfida’iy Salahuddin, “The Threat of Radical Thinking and Extremism in the Nusantara (Malay Archpeligo),” Islāmiyyāt 42, no. 1 (2020): 85–92.

91 Ibid., 89.

92 Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman and Aida Arosoaie, “Jihad in the Bastion of “Moderation”: Understanding the Threat of ISIS in Malaysia,” Asian Security 16, no. 1 (2020): 1–14.

93 Ibid.

94 IPAC, Mothers to Bombers: The Evolution of Indonesian Women Extremists, IPAC Report no. 35 (January 2017).

95 Francisco Galamas, “Terrorism in Indonesia: An Overview,” Research Papers 4, no. 10 (2015).

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid., 6.

98 Ibid., 7.

99 Ibid., 8.

100 Galamas, “Terrorism in Indonesia.”

101 Rahmah, “Women in Jihad.”

102 Nuraniyah, “Not Just Brainwashed.”

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid., 2.

105 Ibid., 15.

106 Claire Smith, Heather Burke, Cherrie De Leiuen, and Gary Jackson, “The Islamic State’s Symbolic War: Da’esh’s Socially Mediated Terrorism as a Threat to Cultural Heritage,” Journal of Social Archaeology 16, no. 2 (2016): 164–88.

107 Robert E. Schmidle, “Positioning Theory and Terrorist Networks,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 40, no. 1 (2009): 65–78.

108 Amalina Abdul Nasir, “Women in Terrorism: Evolution from Jemaah Islamiyah to Islamic State in Indonesia and Malaysia,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 11, no. 2 (2019); Laura Huey, Rachel Inch, and Hillary Peladeau, ““@ me if you need shoutout”: Exploring Women’s Roles in Islamic State Twitter Networks,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 42, no. 5 (2019): 445–63.

109 Schulze and Liow, “Making Jihadis.”

110 Febriana Firdaus, “The Making of a Female ISIS Bomber,” NewNaratif, June 4, 2018, accessed 17 October 2021, https://newnaratif.com/making-female-isis-bomber

111 Jennifer Yang Hui, “The Internet in Indonesia: Development and Impact of Radical Websites,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 2 (2010): 171–91.

112 Erin Marie Saltman and Melanie Smith, ‘Till Martyrdom Do Us Part’: Gender and the ISIS Phenomenon (London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2015), accessed 17 October 2021, https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Till_Martyrdom_Do_Us_Part_Gender_and_the_ISIS_Phenomenon.pdf.

113 Johnston, Iqbal, and True, “The Lure of (Violent) Extremism.”

114 Julia Musial, ““My Muslim Sister, Indeed You Are a Mujahidah” – Narratives in the Propaganda of the Islamic State to Address and Radicalize Western Women. An Exemplary Analysis of the Online Magazine Dabiq,” Journal for Deradicalization no. 9 (Winter 2016/17): 39–100.

115 See: Rahman, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.

116 Nasir, “Women in Terrorism.”

117 See: Nava Nuraniyah, “The Evolution of Online Violent Extremism in Indonesia and the Philippines,” Global Research Network on Terrorism and Technology Paper 5 (2019): 1–17; Huey, Inch, and Peladeau, ““@ me if you need shoutout””; Elizabeth Pearson, “Online as the New Frontline: Affect, Gender, and ISIS-Take-Down on Social Media,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 41, no. 11 (2018): 850–74.

118 Nuraniyah, “The Evolution of Online Violent Extremism.”

119 Nuraniyah, “Not Just Brainwashed,” 17.

120 Huey, Inch, and Peladeau, ““@ me if you need shoutout”,” 445.

121 Kharishar Kahfi, Vela Andapita, and Wahyoe Boediwardhana, “[UPDATED] Surabaya church bombings: What we know so far,” The Jakarta Post, May 13, 2018, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/05/13/surabaya-church-bombings-what-we-know-so-far.html; BBC News Asia, “Surabaya Church Attacks: Indonesian Family of Bombers ‘Had Been to Syria’,” BBC News Asia, May 14, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44101070; Devianti Faridz, Euan McKirdy, and Eliza Mackintosh, “Three Families Were Behind the ISIS-inspired Bombings in Indonesia’s Surabaya, Police Said,” CNN, May 15, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/13/asia/indonesia-attacks-surabaya-intl/index.html.

122 The Jakarta Post, “Sidoarjo Bomb Also Involved Family of Six: E. Java Police.” The Jakarta Post, May 14, 2018, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/05/14/sidoarjo-bomb-also-involved-family-of-six-e-java-police.html.

123 These data have been taken from a news source published on May 15, 2018 (Faridz, McKirdy, and Mackintosh, “Three Families Were Behind the ISIS-inspired Bombings in Indonesia’s Surabaya.”). According to another source, published on May 14, 2018, the younger daughter was 8-years old (see: Wahyoe Boediwardhana, “Suicide Bombers at Surabaya Police HQ One Family,” The Jakarta Post, May 14, 2018, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/05/14/suicide-bombers-at-surabaya-police-hqone-family.html).

124 See: Chynthia Wijaya, “BBC News Coverage of 2018 Surabaya Church Bombing in Their International and Indonesian Online Publications,” Media Report, 2018, accessed November 28, 2021, https://www.academia.edu/41711930/BBC_News_Coverage_of_2018_Surabaya_Church_Bombing_in_their_International_and_Indonesian_Online_Publications; Rosalina Bilqisth, Rachmat Kriyantono, and Anang Sujoko, “Critical Discourse Analysis of the Suicide Bombings at Three Churches in Surabaya on the News Published by Vice. Com.” International Journal of Science and Society 3, no. 2 (2021): 263–8.

125 Kirsten E. Schulze, “The Surabaya Bombings and the Evolution of the Jihadi Threat in Indonesia,” CTC Sentinel 11, no. 8 (2018): 1–6.

126 Ibid.

127 Ibid.

128 Rueben Ananthan Santhana Dass, “The Use of Family Networks in Suicide Terrorism: A Case Study of the 2018 Surabaya Attacks,” Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism 16, no. 2 (2021): 173–91.

129 Ibid.

130 Schulze, “The Surabaya Bombings,” 4.

131 Ibid.

132 Rahmah, “Women in Jihad,” 21.

133 IPAC, “The Surabaya Bombings and the Future of ISIS in Indonesia,” IPAC Report, October 18, 2019, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/gdc/gdcovop/2019353352/2019353352.pdf.

134 Anik Farida, Zakiyah, and Koeswinarno, “The Involvement of Women and Children in the Bombing Attack in Indonesia,” in ISRL 2020 Proceedings of the 3^rd International Symposium on Religious Life, Bogor, Indonesia, 2–5 November, 2020, eds. Y. Durachman, A. Ruhana, and I. Futri Astuti (European Alliance for Innovation, 2021), 10.

135 Schulze, “The Surabaya Bombings.”

136 Ibid., 5.

137 We note that when the founder and leader of JAD in Indonesia, Aman Abdurrahman, read his plea in the South Jakarta court on May 28, 2018, he stated that the inclusion of women and children in the suicide bombings in Surabaya and Sidoarjo was not from Islamic and Jihad teachings and that all the attackers did not understand the meaning of Jihad. Furthermore, he condemned what the attackers did as heinous acts. (See: “Aman Abdurrahman, Ideolog Teroris yang Menyalahkan Bom Surabaya,” (Aman Abdurrahman, Terrorist Ideolog who Blames Surabaya Bombings) Tirto.id, accessed 25 October 2021, https://tirto.id/aman-abdurrahman-ideolog-teroris-yang-salahkan-bom-surabaya-cLnP

138 See: Rindha Widyaningsih and K. Kuntarto, “Family Suicide Bombing: A Psychological Analysis of Contemporary Terrorism,” Walisongo: Jurnal Penelitian Sosial Keagamaan 26, no. 2 (2018): 295–320; Mohammad Takdir, “Indoctrination and Brainwashing Process in the Case of Terrorism: A Psychological Analysis of Suicide Bombing in Surabaya, East Java,” AKADEMIKA: Jurnal Pemikiran Islam 25, no. 1 (2020): 1–24.

139 Takdir, “Indoctrination and Brainwashing Process.”

140 Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, The Radicalization in The West: The Homegrown Threat Prepared (New York: The New York City Police Department, 2007).

141 Takdir, “Indoctrination and Brainwashing Process,” 16.

142 Achsin, “Culture and Role of Woman in Terrorism in Indonesia.”

143 Ibid., 875.

144 Achsin, “Culture and Role of Woman in Terrorism in Indonesia.”

145 Ibid., 875.

146 Takdir, “Indoctrination and Brainwashing Process.”

147 Ibid., 8.

148 See: Kevin McDonald, Radicalization (John Wiley & Sons, 2018).

149 H. Beech and M. Suhartono, “At the Heart of Indonesian Terror Attacks, a Well Liked Family,” New York Times, May 18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/world/asia/indonesia-surabaya-terrorism-dita-oepriarto.html.

150 Anneleen Van Uffelen and Anna-Valentina Walden, Southeast Asia: The Role of Women in the Prevention of Islamist Radicalization and Violent Extremism (Vienna: United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, 2018).

151 Achsin, “Culture and Role of Woman in Terrorism in Indonesia.”

152 Haula Noor, “When Parents Take Their Children to Die in Jihadist Suicide Bombings, What Can Be Done?,” The Conversation, May 15, 2018, https://theconversation.com/when-parents-take-their-children-to-die-in-jihadist-suicide-bombings-what-can-be-done-96512.

153 Ibid., n. p.

154 Bennett Clifford and Caleb Weiss, ““Breaking the Walls” Goes Global: The Evolving Threat of Jihadi Prison Assaults and Riots,” CTC Sentinel 13, no. 2 (2020): 30–8.

155 Sixta, “The Illusive Third Wave.”

156 O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?”

157 Sukhani, “The Route to Radicalisation for Malay-Muslim Women.”

158 Ibid.

159 See: Achsin, “Culture and Role of Woman in Terrorism in Indonesia”; Mujani, Ismail, and Salahuddin, “The Threat of Radical Thinking and Extremism”; Farida, Zakiyah, and Koeswinarno, “The Involvement of Women and Children in the Bombing Attack.”

160 See: Bagong Suyanto, Mun’im Sirry, and Rahma Sugihartati, “Pseudo-Radicalism and the De-Radicalization of Educated Youth in Indonesia,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2019), DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2019.1654726; Nicolò Scremin, “Family Matters: A Preliminary Framework for Understanding Family Influence on Islamist Radicalization,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020), DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2020.1841242; Cameron Sumpter, Yuslikha K. Wardhani, and Sapto Priyanto, “Testing Transitions: Extremist Prisoners Re-Entering Indonesian Society,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 44, no. 6 (2021): 473–94.