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.