For those who don’t speak the Queen’s English, a “supergrass” is an informer.
This is the kind of thing we need to see much more often. Nasir Abbas doesn’t deal, at least here, with the distinction that many mujahedin make, that their victims are not “innocent,” but if he can convince Muslims that the jihadist interpretation of Islam is wrong, more power to him. He should do us the favor of explaining how he does it so that others can replicate his success, since an Islamic case against violent jihad is the great unicorn of the post-9/11 world. No one has ever actually seen it, although many are certain it exists and wax quite wroth if anyone suggests it doesn’t.
From the BBC, with thanks to Churchill:
In the fight against the international terrorist threat in Indonesia, one man has become an invaluable ally. Nasir Abbas explains why, after men he trained carried out the Bali bombing in 2002, he decided to change sides.
For many years Nasir Abbas was one of the most wanted jihadis in South East Asia.
He was a member of al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate, Jemaah Islamiya (JI).
The Malaysian trained the Bali bombers in Afghanistan, established a jihadi training camp – Camp Hudabiya – in the dense jungles of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, and rose to become the head of JI’s military training division, known as Mantiki Three.
He was close to some of the most notorious militants in the region and brother-in-law of Mukhlas, the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings.
Those he trained and those he knew went on to operate not just in South East Asia, but in other parts of the world.
[…]
According to Mr Abbas’ philosophy of jihad, it is acceptable to fight and kill foreign forces occupying Muslim countries like the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Americans in Iraq or the Philippine army occupying ancestral Muslim lands in Mindanao, but killing innocent civilians – men, women and children – is forbidden.
This is the philosophy of modern violent jihad outlined by Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, acknowledged to be the “father” of modern violent jihad.
With this distinction in mind, the 2002 Bali bombings in which 202 civilians died, made Mr Abbas think again about the organisation to which he had belonged for almost a decade.
When he discovered that his former students, whom he had trained in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, were responsible, he was deeply shocked.
“I feel sorry, I feel sin,” he said, “because they used the knowledge to kill civilians, to kill innocent people.”
It was only when he was arrested six months later in April 2003, that Mr Abbas finally decided to put his past behind him.
[…]
He said he felt “responsible, in front of God, to stop all these bad deeds.”
From that point on, Mr Abbas tried to persuade his former comrades that their interpretation of the Koran was wrong.
He urges them to “return to the right path of Islamic teaching.”
But he did much more than that.
He actively assisted the police in tracking down and arresting some of his former comrades and felt no guilt in doing so.