| |
Southeast Asia still Islam's moderate
face
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - If US Secretary of State Colin Powell
was hoping to use his passage through Southeast Asia
this week to gauge how widespread Washington's latest
bogey - Islamic extremism - is, then he should take
comfort in the moderate voices coming from Indonesia and
countries around it.
On Sunday, the eve of
Powell's six-nation journey through this region,
Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul
Ulama (NU), affirmed its long-held commitment to
moderate Islam on the last day of its four-day national
congress.
The NU is "striving to sustain and
promote moderate thinking and a pluralist and tolerant
attitude among the younger generation", the
English-language daily Jakarta Post reported on Monday.
According to the religious leaders and Islamic
scholars of NU, which claims to have a 40-million-strong
membership, Indonesia needs a "moderate path in
developing Islamic thought", the paper reported.
"Islamic fanaticism, extremism or fundamentalism is not
a popular stance among most NU members."
Neighboring Malaysia also offers a message that
should, although not as stark as Indonesia, please
Washington's top diplomat. Two by-elections on July 18
in the northern state of Kedah revealed that Malaysia's
Islamic extremists have still to command a wide
political base.
At that poll, the Pan-Malaysian
Islamic Party (PAS), which controls two of Malaysia's 13
states, lost the tussle for one parliamentary seat that
had been held by PAS president Fadzil Noor, whose death
in June prompted the poll. The victor was a candidate
for the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front)
coalition, which has been trying to project a more
moderate Muslim face in an ongoing contest in the
country to use Islam as a political instrument.
Often, however, signs of moderate Islam are
overshadowed by the headline-grabbing activities of
extremists in these two predominantly Muslim countries.
Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world,
with 170.3 million Muslims out of a total population of
some 220 million, while Malaysia has some 10.8 million
Muslims out of 22 million people.
It is likewise
the case in some of the other Southeast Asian countries
with an Islamic presence, although as a minority
community. The Philippines has 3.9 million Muslims,
nearly 4 percent of the population, Thailand has 3.3
million Muslims, also 4 percent, and Singapore has
500,000 Muslims, about 16 percent of the population.
The reports about the activities of Islamic
extremists create the perception that their advocacy of
extremism or calling for a more militant brand of Islam
in this region is attracting a larger following.
The groups that have gained attention under this
trend are those like PAS, whose proposals for
hudud (Islamic criminal law) have created worries
along many Malaysians, and the Justice Party in
Indonesia, which is reportedly gaining young
professionals as members.
Then there are the
groups that are perceived to be more significant and
powerful than their actual numbers - such as Laskar
Jihad and Laskar Mujahiddin in Indonesia, linked to
communal problems in different parts of the country.
Even Thailand has acquired notoriety through a
rise in violence in the country's south, home to a
majority of Thai Muslims. While some in the
international media have portrayed the attacks on Thai
authorities as the work of Muslim separatist groups,
local independent investigators are still to be
convinced of that view. They think it is a turf battle
over drugs, gambling and arms trafficking, and that
groups behind them may simply be exploiting the Islamic
angle.
In the Philippines, where US forces have
been involved, albeit on the sidelines, to control a
group of armed Muslim rebels considered little more than
bandits, the forces of moderation in the Muslim
community are dominant. Over the weekend, a group of
ulamas meeting in the southern Philippines said
it is time to address the misperceptions about the
religion and the linkage of "terrorism" with Islam after
the September 11 attacks in the United States.
In short, there is no shift away from Southeast
Asia's reputation as having the moderate face of Islam,
says Maznah Mohamed, a social scientist working on Islam
and human rights at the University of Science, Malaysia.
"It's just that the global public is more aware
about the existence of these groups, who have been
around for a long time. If anything, September 11 gave
their causes more publicity than before," said Mohamed.
According to another scholar of Southeast Asian
Islam, the visible presence of political Islam in the
region is no reason for undue worry. "Such incidents
have always been taking place on the sidelines," said
this academic, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
For him, whatever support the groups in the
vanguard of Islamic extremism have received since the
September 11 acts of terror in the United States is
"mostly emotional" than ideological.
The US-led
assault in Afghanistan to drive out the ruling Taliban
last year did provide the region's extremists with a
window of opportunity to state their case. Radical
Muslim groups in Indonesia and Malaysia called for a
jihad (holy war) against the United States.
That was followed by revelations of a network of
Islamic extremists, spanning the region, that had been
planning to attack US embassies and businesses in
Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Among the plotters
were Riduan Isamuddin and Abu Bakar Baasyir, two Muslim
clerics from Indonesia.
Nevertheless, as the
Islamic experts observe, while Islamic extremism in
whatever shape or form has been in the spotlight, it has
still to dislodge the largely moderate tendencies that
prevail in the region.
In truth, the hardliners
will not find it easy to dominate the political order,
since the moderate Muslims are conscious of their
efforts, says Dede Oetomo, an anthropologist at
Airlangga University, in Surabaya, a city east of the
Indonesian capital, Jakarta. For one thing, he said,
"The moderates don't want to lose leverage among the
Muslim populace in future elections."
The
moderates would also take comfort in the tough stance
taken by the Nahdlatul Ulama at its just-finished
convention in Jakarta - a move endorsed by the
second-largest Islamic group, Muhammadiyah - to stall
efforts by the religious hardliners to amend the
country's 47-year-old constitution to include Islamic
Shariah law.
"While other Islamic organizations
and political parties are fighting to insert the word
'Islam' into Article 29 of the 1945 constitution, NU
clerics and scholars have bluntly expressed opposition
to moves to amend the article, which stipulates that
'the state is based on one God'," the Jakarta Post
noted.
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
