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Why and how are Indonesians joining Islamist extremist groups? This paper will trace the process of joining three Islamist extremist groups: Jemaah Islamiyah, Mujahidin KOMPAK, and ISIS. In doing so, it will explore similarities and differences in the joining processes across those groups and will identify common factors that appear across groups.
Drawing on original fieldwork, including over 50 interviews with 25 members of Jemaah Islamiyah and Mujahidin KOMPAK between 2010 and 2016, this paper contends that real and imagined social networks play a key role in encouraging a person to join a jihadist group, from the initial meetings through indoctrination to induction. While these can take the form of actual ties (family, friends, teachers, or organizational membership) or virtual ties, the presence of actual ties is far more typical and more enduring even in the case of ISIS. Over time, as one proceeds through the joining process, these relationship come to supplant and ultimately redefine one’s social identity via multiple mediums, including those of a shared sense of brotherhood and worldview. Once in the network, one’s relationships shape their opportunities to participate in a jihad in a legitimate field of battle and in acts of terrorism. Those relationships make it exceedingly difficult to refuse a task, even if one believes it is morally wrong or inadvisable to carry it out.