Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Religious Life, ISRL 2020, 2-5 November 2020, Bogor, Indonesia

Research Article

The Involvement of Women and Children in the Bombing Attack in Indonesia

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/eai.2-11-2020.2305078,
        author={Anik  Farida and Zakiyah  Zakiyah and Koeswinarno  Koeswinarno},
        title={The Involvement of Women and Children  in the Bombing Attack in Indonesia},
        proceedings={Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Religious Life, ISRL 2020, 2-5 November 2020, Bogor, Indonesia},
        publisher={EAI},
        proceedings_a={ISRL},
        year={2021},
        month={3},
        keywords={women and children in terrorism bombing attack suicide bombing},
        doi={10.4108/eai.2-11-2020.2305078}
    }
    
  • Anik Farida
    Zakiyah Zakiyah
    Koeswinarno Koeswinarno
    Year: 2021
    The Involvement of Women and Children in the Bombing Attack in Indonesia
    ISRL
    EAI
    DOI: 10.4108/eai.2-11-2020.2305078
Anik Farida1,*, Zakiyah Zakiyah2, Koeswinarno Koeswinarno2
  • 1: Center for Policy Research, Board for Research and Development and Books
  • 2: Office of Religious Research and Development, Ministry of Religious Affairs, Semarang, Indonesia
*Contact email: anikfarida16@gmail.com

Abstract

This paper discusses women and children involvement in the terrorism in Indonesia. As it is the fact that in the first half of the 2018 there was bombing attack in Surabaya and Sidoarjo East Java involving women and children as the main actors. This action marks as a new strategy of terrorist group in Indonesia to employ them as the martyr of their battle. Indonesia has experiences a series of bombing attacks for many years with the men as the main perpetrators. In the past, women in the jihadist group are usually as the housewife and nurturing their children as well as supporting their husband by providing logistic. Data of this article was collected using interview, observation and documentary research. Findings of this study shows that nowadays, using women as the martyr was an effective way to gain the terrorism goal for the following reasons; firstly, 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. Secondly, women are less suspected than men; therefore they will freely attack at the public sphere. Thirdly, women can play many roles in the terrorism act both in the back and the front line of actions. Furthermore, this study also found that the daily performances of those actors of terrorism are similar of common people and they interact with their neighbors in which this different from the past where generally terrorist families live as a “closed” group.