Universities to vet foreign students for ISIS links

The Malaysian government has told universities in the country – including private universities and foreign branch campuses – to step up monitoring of students to prevent Islamic radicalisation after recent attacks in Malaysia and Bangladesh.

The attack in Bangladesh this month involved Bangladeshi militants who studied at a Malaysia branch campus of an Australian university, underlining the importance of extending the country’s counter-radicalisation drive to all kinds of universities, including elite institutions.

Malaysia’s Inspector General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said on 9 July: “We already have working relationships with the institutions of higher learning and we will work closer with them to identify those that are suspected of being involved.”

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who is also Malaysia’s home affairs minister, said recently the influence of Islamic State or IS was strongest at institutions of higher learning.

“We know that universities, not just in Malaysia but abroad as well, have been influential in the spread of IS ideology,” he said.

Deadly attacks

The statements came in the wake of a 28 June hand grenade attack on a nightclub in the town of Puchong, some 30 kilometres south of Kuala Lumpur, which injured eight people. The authorities described it as the first successful IS attack on Malaysian soil – previous planned attacks were foiled by police.

Just days later the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack on an upmarket café in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on 1 July, one of the worst in a spate of attacks carried out during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that have included a suicide bombing at Istanbul airport on 28 June, killing 45 and injuring more than 250 people.

Two of the seven perpetrators of the Dhaka attack were former students at Monash University Malaysia. Some 22 people were killed in a siege of the café in the city’s diplomatic quarter. The dead included Japanese, Italian and United States nationals, several of them hacked by machetes.

The activities in Malaysia of the two former Monash University students, both from well-off Bangladeshi families, would be investigated, Bakar said. “We will check on all their movements here but I do not think that they were brainwashed during their time in the country.”

Monash University Malaysia, currently closed for the vacation, issued a statement in the wake of the Bangladesh attack saying: “The safety and security of Monash University students and staff all over the world is of paramount importance for the university.

“Monash University campuses are fundamentally safe places and, in liaison with authorities, we have no reason to believe there is any threat to the university.”

New monitoring system for universities

The Malaysian government is already monitoring madrassas or religious schools, and has stepped up counter-radicalisation measures in local public universities in recent years. But the Bangladesh attack in particular has led to calls for stronger monitoring of foreign students.

Malaysian Higher Education Minister Idris Jusoh said recently that a system to check for militancy, particularly among foreign students, would be put into place by higher education institutions in cooperation with police and immigration authorities and would include stepping up monitoring.

Azizuddin Sani, an associate professor of politics at Universiti Utara Malaysia and an expert on ISIS recruitment of Malaysian youth, told University World News that Malaysia had become “a hub for students from the Middle East”, who were targets for radicalisation along with Malaysian students and Muslim students from South Asia.

“Within Syria and Iraq the fighting is spreading, which is why ISIS is looking for new recruits. Their target right now is to attract new recruits among students,” Sani said. ISIS was aggressively recruiting through online and YouTube propaganda videos that attracted young people, he said.

However, Sani said it was not clear how universities would screen foreign students. “The profile [of militants] varies. Some are religious, some are very secular, some are poor, some are rich – the background is very diverse.”

“We know the constraints universities face, they cannot check everything.”

Some private universities have already been monitoring foreign students’ attendance. Sunway University, a private university on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur with a large number of foreign students, said it regularly sent reports to the authorities on its foreign students, which included attendance records.

Elizabeth Lee, the university’s senior executive director, told local media that action would be taken to track down any foreign student who went missing midway through a course.

“They must achieve at least 80% attendance and must pass all subjects taken in the past year,” she said, adding that missing classes could lead eventually to a police report and the cancellation of the student’s visa.

Foreign student visa applications are vetted by Education Malaysia Global Services, which handles student applications and visas, with security screenings carried out by the Immigration Department. Student visas, previously issued for the duration of a degree course, must now be renewed every year.