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How middle-class Indonesian millennial Zakiah Aini became an Islamic militant
- Zakiah Aini was a quiet student who achieved good grades at university – until she became radicalised by Islamic State ideology
- Her lone-wolf attack last week highlights the role played by women in terrorism in Indonesia, where some 1,173 suspected terrorists have been arrested since 2018
Reading Time:5 minutes
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Amy Chewin Kuala Lumpur
Last Wednesday morning, 25-year-old Indonesian university dropout Zakiah Aini wrote a letter saying goodbye to her family and headed out of the house.
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As morning turned to dusk, the quiet millennial’s parents began to worry – there had been no word from Zakiah, who rarely left the family home. They became even more anxious when her sister found the goodbye note.
“Her sister wanted to report her [missing] but didn’t quite know where to report to,” said Reno Fitria Sari, a lecturer in forensic psychology at Paramadina University.
Suddenly, news broke that a woman had attacked the national police headquarters in Jakarta and been shot dead. Soon afterwards, police officers arrived to tell the family that the attacker had been none other than Zakiah Aini.
Zakiah became the second woman in the span of four days to carry out a terror attack in the world’s most populous Muslim nation of 270 million people. On Sunday, a woman and her husband detonated explosives outside a church in Makassar, South Sulawesi, killing themselves and injuring 20 civilians.
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Police said Zakiah acted as a lone wolf and based on initial investigations had been inspired by Islamic State ideology. She posted a picture of an Isis flag on her Instagram account and wrote about the struggles of jihad (holy war) just 21 hours before her death.
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