Southeast Asia will soon become major target of terror
July 15, 2016 Free Malaysia Today
Governments in the region are not helping matters, as IS influence spreads to Malaysia and other nations in the region, says article in Nikkei Asian Review.
KUALA LUMPUR: The Islamic State may be helping returning fighters recruit and organise spectacular attacks in their countries of origin in Southeast Asia.
An article in the Nikkei Asian Review said the killing of almost 400 people by the IS around the world during Ramadan, and particularly the targeting of Bangladesh and Malaysia, had revived fears that IS had begun to employ networked terrorist cells.
Since last year, the report said, a specific Malay-speaking unit within IS, known as Katibah Nusantara, had amassed a force of 500-plus fighters hailing from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Katibah Nusantara will become a conflict driver when it returns to the region, according to the article written by Michael Vatikiotis.
It said many social factors in Asia were conducive for the incubation of a new wave of Islamic extremism.
“Islamic militancy is a strong undercurrent in the Muslim-majority states of the region, fuelled by social and economic injustice and well-financed Wahhabi and Salafist teachings. The recent surge in tension between religious communities — Buddhist against Muslim in Myanmar, Sunni against Shia in Indonesia — has helped highlight perceived threats to Muslims that lend impetus to militant teachings.”
Listing some of the factors in various nations in the region that were giving rise to extremism, the article also offered some suggestions on tackling the menace.
The first priority, it said, was for states to accept responsibility for the careful management of relations between religious communities.
“In Malaysia, the government has carelessly allowed conservative Islamic views to upset the country’s delicate ethnic and religious balance. Just a week or so before the first IS attack in Malaysia, a leading member of the Islamic clergy declared that non-Muslim members of a leading opposition party could be slain because they opposed the imposition of the Islamic criminal code.”
There was also a need to control or cut off foreign funding of religious education and preaching.
“The virtually unfettered access to funding from Wahhabi foundations in Saudi Arabia has cultivated less tolerant conceptions of Islamic faith in the region. This in turn exposes young Muslims to an austere, exclusivist version of Islam at odds with the traditionally moderate and open-minded brand of the mostly Hanafi-school Islam practiced in Southeast Asia for hundreds of years.
“This is not simply about promoting moderation or balancing religious and secular curricula, but speaks to the need to actively recover the region’s distinctive adaptation of Islamic dogma and teaching, which over centuries has enabled Muslims and non-Muslims to coexist harmoniously.
“In the 1980s, Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs considered adapting Islamic law to the specific Indonesian context; today, Islamic scholars in Indonesia and Malaysia are arguing for the replication of laws and conventions that governed society in 7th century Arabia.”
The problem also lay in the fact that governments were seeking to be popular with their majority populations.
For instance, no Malaysian Government would take kindly to being told about the dangers of giving conservative mullahs free rein.