Even before last week’s deadly attack in Thamrin, Central Jakarta, was carried out by ISIS-linked militants, Indonesians already overwhelmingly condemned the presence of the terrorist organization in Indonesia.
That is according to the recently reveal results of a survey, done in early December, conducted by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC).
SMRC director Djayadi Hanan said that as many as 95.3 percent of respondents (who knew what ISIS was) said that ISIS should not be allowed to exist in Indonesia. Meanwhile, 4.4 percent of respondents choose not to answer.
“[These results are] not only important for the people of Indonesia in general, but also for the security forces. If the support for ISIS was high, our security apparatus would have difficulty in stopping them. But, as it turns out, rejection is very high,” Djayadi said at SMRC’s office today, as quoted by Kompas.
Djayadi also said that 89.3 percent of respondents with the ideas championed by ISIS, while 90 percent said they thought the organization was a threat to Indonesia.
The survey found that only 0.3 percent of respondents said that ISIS should be allowed to exist in Indonesia and only 0.8 percent agreed with ISIS’ ideology. Djayadi said that those who supported ISIS indicated they did not consider the group to be a terrorist organization.
The SMRC survey was conducted from December 10-12, 2015, in all provinces throughout Indonesia and polled 1,220 randomly selected respondents. The margin of error for the sample size was 3.2 percent.
A poll by Pew Research Group, conducted in April and May of last year, about feelings towards ISIS in various countries found that 79 percent of Indonesians said they had an unfavorable view of the ISIS, while 4 percent said they had a favorable view and 18 percent said they did not know.
The Pew poll was taken before last November’s ISIS-linked terrorist attacks in Paris, which could explain why SMRC’s poll, which was done post-Paris, shows even stronger rejection of ISIS amongst Indonesians. One could extrapolate that a poll done today, in the wake of the ISIS attacks in Jakarta, would show even more universal condemnation for the group.
