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COMMENTARY
The
overblown pan-Islamic threat
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG
KONG - In light of the recent terrorist bombings in
Riyadh and Casablanca, travel advisories were quickly
issued against Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. The
Kuta, Bali bombings last October 12 served as a crucial
reminder of the vulnerability of Southeast Asia to
terrorism. Can Middle East-style suicide bombings and
political violence make their home here? This question
is not posed in vain given the demographic reality of
Southeast Asia.
While Islam is commonly
portrayed as a Middle Eastern religion, the majority of
the world's Muslims reside in south and east Asia.
Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim
population, with up to 180 million believers. Next to
Indonesia lies Malaysia, where Islam is the official
religion. Two of the states in Malaysia are ruled by the
fundamentalist Islamic party known as PAS. Large Muslim
minorities also reside in parts of Singapore, Thailand
and the Philippines, some segments of which remain
entrenched with their separatist beliefs.
Attempts to link violent events in Middle East
with Southeast Asia are not novel, however. The label of
pan-Islamism under which the cluster of bombings and
incidents are grouped together to point to a unified
threat has been around since the heydays of French and
Dutch imperialism in the 19th century. In the modern
context, it is worth mentioning the perception of the
19th-century activities of the Sanussiyah Tareqah.
Not unlike al-Qaeda, the Sanussiyah was a
widespread and expanding Islamic organization in North
Africa. Sanussiyah, however, was not predisposed to the
use of violence to seek Islamic revival. Reform was the
key to Islamic revival, not violent revolutions. In any
event, Sanusis came into contact with French imperial
expansion in a number of places, and some French
imperial analysts began to feel that there was an
enormous pan-Islamic, anti-French movement that was
coordinated by some secret Sanusi intercontinental inner
circle.
The Dutch colonial administration set up
screening offices and listening posts near Mecca too.
Their cardinal objective was to keep track of Indonesian
pilgrims who arrived in Mecca for their hajj,
lest they return to challenge Dutch rule in Indonesia.
The feared Islamic threat never came. Indonesia was
liberated on the back of Sukarno-inspired populist
nationalism, rather than Islamism.
Because of
the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, the fear of
pan-Islamic threat that spans from the Middle East to
Southeast Asia has again captivated the imagination of
scholars and analysts alike. Yet, once again, this is
not new. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of
1979 in Iran, for example, leading scholars such as John
Esposito and John Voll had inquired whether
Iranian-styled radicalism could take root in Southeast
Asia. Unlike the French and Dutch colonial
administrators, they answered in the negative, as Islam
in Southeast Asia was in many shades different from the
political forms it took in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, while Esposito and Voll are
rightly considered informed commentators of Muslim
affairs, their analysis did not gain ground in the
United States - the current imperial center. This
despite the fact that the two academics have been
delivering their opinions from the well-respected Center
for Muslim and Christian Understanding based at
Georgetown University. If anything, the idea of a
pan-Islamic threat that extends from Makassar to
Mindanao continues to reverberate.
Furthermore,
Esposito's and Voll's analysis has been progressively
marginalized as Peter Rodman, Daniel Benjamin, Daniel
Pipes and Bernard Lewis, who have all written that
political Islam is a unitary phenomenon that does not
believe in political compromise. Nor is political Islam
receptive to the ideals and impulse of democratic
politics since it does not advocate a separation of the
mosque and state, according to this point of view.
Since Daniel Benjamin served, for a period, as
the chief of counter terrorism to the administration of
US president Bill Clinton, while Peter Rodman later
became a senior member of the National Security Council
of the present administration of President George W
Bush, their views have invariably carried a lot more
weight. Their opinions are also backed by the agendas of
the neo-conservatives. In fact, in Washington, the place
where the "war on terror" is planned and executed, it
has become popular to believe that political Islam is
linked in one seamless whole.
Indeed, the common
conclusion is that helped by the globalization of
communication technology and collective thirst for
revenge - aimed principally against the United States -
political Islam is poised to attack the hard and soft
targets of the West indefinitely. The manner in which
political Islam differs from one group to the other is
the extent to which violence could best be pursued for
maximum damage.
At any rate, the proclivity to
see political Islam as a universal, destructive and
undifferentiated movement has also rendered the
classification of political Islam in Southeast Asia
almost indistinctive. At best, the definition of a RAND
Center research project on "Islam in Asia" is broadly
based on whether an Islamic group is moderate or
radical. The former does not reject development and
modernization, while the latter does so openly. Yet this
division is too broad and "economistic" to be accurate.
Violent political Islam in Southeast Asia is often
inspired by the pursuit of political separation and
cultural independence, as is the case with separatist
movements in Mindanao and Aceh.
If political
Islam has local rather than global grievances, how then
do we explain the sporadic yet lethal bombings in
Southeast Asia carried out under the banner of Islam,
which are occasionally aimed at Western targets? Over
the past three years, there have certainly been such
acts of violence.
On December 30, 2000,
simultaneous explosions struck a train, a bus, the
airport, a park near the US Embassy and a gas station in
Manila, killing 22 people. Subsequently, Philippine and
US investigators linked the attack to Jemaah Islamiyah,
which is accused of having ties to to al-Qaeda.
On October 2, 2002, suspected Abu Sayyaf
guerrillas detonated a nail-laden bomb in a market in
Zamboanga, Philippines, killing four people, including
an American Green Beret. In that month alone, there were
four more bomb attacks in the Philippines that killed 16
people. All were blamed on Abu Sayyaf, another group
linked to al-Qaeda.
On October 12, 2002, nearly
200 people were killed, including two Americans, in a
pair of bombings in a nightclub district of the
Indonesian island of Bali, Indonesia. Known as the Kuta
bombings, the attack brought terror to the idyllic
paradise of Bali, hitherto a place that had avoided
serious violence even during the worst phases of the
Asian financial crisis. Although the victims in Kuta
were mostly Australians, the accused perpetrator,
Armozi, an Indonesian member of Jemaah Islamiyah,
confided that he deeply regretted that there had not
been "more American casualties".
Shouldn't these
bombings be equated with the work of pan-Islamic
networks? The quick and short answer is: They should
not. Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah are not the same
political animal. Within the Philippines, the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National
Liberation Front (MNLF) have distanced themselves from
Abu Sayyaf. The claim of a link between Abu Sayyaf and
al-Qaeda remains tenuous at best, as the former is
widely known to be a rag-tag criminal group that
survives on kidnap ransoms. According to Harold Crouch,
an Indonesia specialist, he has not found any evidence
that Laskar Jihad is "decisively influenced" by external
funds.
Moreover, the lens with which political
violence is examined in Southeast Asia remains heavily
tinted with prejudice. The accusations of a pan-Islamic
threat often come from government officials and
authoritarian decision-makers whose sole goal is to
eliminate any opposition, Islamic or otherwise. Indeed,
decision-makers in Southeast Asia are themselves
politically motivated to rein in the activities of
political Islam. This is done as much to neutralize them
as it is to negate their legitimacy altogether. Verdicts
on their militancy are usually delivered in sweeping
manner, rather than based on an impassioned reading of
the groups' motives, trajectory and beliefs.
For
instance, as early as September 2000, one year before
the September 11 attacks in the United States,
decision-makers from the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) had already identified the political
ramifications of Islamic militancy. Speaking at a June
2000 conference in Hong Kong organized by Asian Wall
Street Journal, former Thai foreign minister Surin
Pitsuwan, himself a Muslim, spoke alarmingly of the
prospective rise of Islamic extremism. During a working
visit to Malaysia that same month, Singaporean Senior
Minister Lee Kuan Yew spoke of the possible rise of
Islamic extremism in Indonesia and the rural heartland
of Malaysia: "You have to watch Islamic militancy
carefully, because if it takes root in Indonesia and
they go up to the islands south of Singapore, or if they
take root in Malaysia and come down to Johor, then we
are vulnerable," Lee added.
Lee further affirmed
that the recent rise in Islam in Indonesia started when
then president B J Habibie canceled a decree imposed by
former president Suharto outlawing the use of Islam or
Islamic symbols for political parties. As a result, more
than 20 political parties eventually used Islamic
symbols, and several splinter groups won in Indonesian
elections, making them a faction that could be courted
by whoever was in power to maximize their gains. Thus,
in one stroke of the pen, Habibie, considered by many as
an eccentric though devout Muslim, re-legitimized the
presence of "Islamic politics" in Indonesia after a
respite of some 40 years. The fact that most of these
Islamic political parties eventually received only 1-2
percent of the total votes in the June 1999 general
election is hardly mentioned.
There is another
reason the fear of a pan-Islamic threat is more apparent
than real. Over the course of the last few decades, many
analysts have situated Islam in Southeast Asia as
reactive and receptive to global or Middle Eastern
currents. Political Islam in Southeast Asia is often
seen to be devoid of a local dynamic. Yet this is a
serious mistake, as political Islam in Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand are layered and,
in turn, influenced by a variety of indigenous factors
that are not necessarily connected to events in the
Middle East other than a vague sense of Islamic
solidarity.
Moreover, since the horrific attacks
of September 11, the Malaysian and Singaporean
authorities have charged Jemaah Islamiyah with trying to
create a regional network of militants bent on creating
a union of Islamic states in Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Philippines. That these may be their motives need not be
questioned. But as Jurgen Ruland, a notable German
political scientist, has explained: "Indonesia is a
large sprawling country. It is impossible to prevent
groups like Jemaah Islamiyah from emerging altogether."
The law of averages alone qualifies their existence,
unfortunate as it may be. Sidney Jones of the
International Crisis Group also pointed out that
fundamentalist Islamic groups in Indonesia are
themselves confused, with some such as Laskar Jihad
being ultra-nationalist while others aren't.
Be
that as it may, the fear of Middle Eastern-styled
political Islam spreading to Southeast Asia has become
more palpable since the attacks of September 11. The
Philippines became the first ASEAN member to be promoted
to the status of a full US military ally during
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's visit to the United
States on Monday.
The Cobra Gold exercise held
annually between Thailand and the US has also included
scenarios of combating terrorist activities. Talks
remain rife that the US and Indonesia should cooperate
militarily, a position supported by current Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, to allow Southeast
Asia to serve as the second front in the "war on
terror".
While the fear of a pan-Islam threat is
legitimate - risks do exist that may permit an al-Qaeda,
which is currently on the run, to use the porous borders
in Indonesia and the Philippines to reestablish its
operations - attempts to see political Islam in
Southeast Asia as a homogenous threat are flawed.
Indeed, groups such as Laskar Jihad in Indonesia and Abu
Sayyaf in the Philippines are themselves invented with
the complicity of the local army commanders to
perpetrate acts of racketeering.
At shown
earlier, the tendency to see political Islam as a threat
is very entrenched even among decision-makers in
Southeast Asia. This is despite the fact that since 1955
the state in Indonesia, for instance, has successfully
used secular nationalism to supplant political Islam, as
is the case with Malaysia, which since 1957 has also
succeeded in tactically co-opting political Islam.
Indeed, if and when scholarly works were done to
correct the prejudice of political Islam as wholly
violent, this has in turn created the reverse phenomenon
of juxtaposing it as wholly pacific - that it was not
only different from the political Islam in the Middle
East, but was in fact more peaceful, civil and
accommodative. The term "civil Islam," coined by Robert
Heffner at Boston University, for instance, averred to
the pacific characteristic of Islam in Indonesia.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Graham Fuller also praised
the progressive aspects of Islam in Malaysia, describing
it as having successfully coped with the demands of
modernity.
Yet political Islam is neither wholly
belligerent nor totally peaceful. It is a complex
phenomenon, one that has adapted in various degrees to
the different regime-types in Southeast Asia, and is
still adapting, as it struggles with its own ideological
coherence and the attendant political power of the
secular state. In the years to come, because of the
gradual liberalization of political space in Southeast
Asia, one will witness a proliferation of Islamic groups
in the region. Not all will be wholly violent, peaceful
or coherent.
The reason is that Islam is itself
a religion that is subject to fluid interpretation,
making intra-elite infighting even more severe than the
normal political organizations or parties. Thus, if
bombs were set off in Southeast Asia, one need not
conclude immediately that a pan-Islamic threat has
arrived, only that under the banner of political Islam,
it is still struggling with how to advance its different
political objectives under either a weak or watchful
state. As Oliver Roy and Giles Kepel, two French
political scientists, have consistently argued in their
works, when political Islam acquires a penchant for
violence, it means that the groups are struggling,
rather than strengthening.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
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