JAKARTA: As the child of farmers, she grew up without knowing about shopping centres or karaoke.
After participating in an Islamic boarding school for her jr high education, Listyowati wanted to have her own savings and chose to venture overseas pertaining to work.
In Hong Kong, whenever she got a mobile phone with a touch-screen for the first time, she did not even know how to develop a Facebook profile.
After a friend set one on with her, she started “searching for women who wore a hijab or a burqa, and men with Islamic attributes” to add because friends on the social media marketing platform.
She soon learned about a country known as Syria and has been shocked by the battle there. “Seeing their particular struggles drove me crazy, ” said the 33-year-old. “It made me shed tears. ”
Her quest to learn more about the turmoil led her to an Islamic State (IS) social media group that will shared updates and propaganda. She channelled money to extremists who had pledged their support for your IS.
She also came to possess a semi-automatic gun through an Indonesian WILL BE convert named Arif. Listyowati, who worked in Singapore prior to Hong Kong, claims that will she wanted to utilize the weapon in Syria.
“If we die there, it means we’re martyrs. We won’t feel hurt. It’s as though we’re bitten by a mosquito, ” she told the program Undercover Asia .
But she was arrested and it is now serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence within Jakarta for financing the IS and purchasing weapons.
Listyowati is one of the encounters of a new form of terrorism that has emerged in the area in recent years: Female jihadis who are willing to pass away for their cause.
WATCH: Female jihadists — Asia’s brand new force in fear (47: 54)