Pro-terrorism Student Speaks Out

A student of Hokkaido University who made an attempt to join Islamic State and was investigated by Tokyo Metropolitan Police in October had an interview of Yomiuri Shimbun. According to the article on Monday, he did not think well about his action and regretted on it. “I thought I would be able to have a sense of fulfillment, if I had put myself in an unusual situation,” he explained. He had no reason for his behavior in an I-don’t-like-Mondays way.

The student revealed his process to become responding to recruitment of ISIS. While he visited Tokyo in April for searching job after graduation, he found a paper on the wall of a secondhand bookshop, which was a job offer reading “Working place: Syria.” He was immediately interested in it.

The student imagined that he would be an engineer of a firm of information technology in Japan after graduation, but had no interest in his life as an ordinary worker. He had no interest in friends, family or social status and was feeling like doing something interesting. The bookshop introduced him to a researcher of Islam, Ko Nakata, and the student decided to join ISIS with Nakata’s instruction. With no experience of going abroad and no religious knowledge about Islam, he realized the possibility of going Syria.

The student knew that ISIS had been uploading movie of beheading journalists or activists and had received strong criticism from the world. Nevertheless, he did not embrace specific sentiment on it. Although he would be recruited as an engineer, he thought he would be killing someone. However, he did not consider the meaning of it.

If police had not interviewed him, the student would have flown to Syria. Now he realized how his idea was unrealistic and reckless. He no longer has any intention to join ISIS. Even if the student was in the age of prudence, his mind stopped growing up at the level of kindergarten kids in terms of doing the right thing. It is the big difference of Japan from Europe where young people join Islamic extremists with religious causes.

Not so frequent as Western people, though, Japan has produced some victims of Islamic extremist. Ignoring such possibility of being a prey, the young Japanese wanted to be involved in restless murders. Without distinction of real life from such virtual world as in video game, that kind of young people in Japan seeks realistic stimulus more attractive than in games. Some may understand the phenomenon as lack of sensitivity as a consequence of peaceful life in post-war Japan. But it must have actually been a lack of imagination how his activity would affect his outer world.