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Malaysia, Thailand spar over
'mastermind'
By Ioannis
Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - In recent
months, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's
combative tone and oppressive handling of what has
been dubbed an Islamic separatist movement in the
kingdom's restive south hasn't exactly warmed
people to his accusations that militants
responsible for the unrest are living and training
in neighboring Malaysia. The general assumption is
that he's been trying to divert attention away
from his own misdeeds.
But the Malaysian
government's arrest this week of Chae Kumae Kuteh,
a Malaysian citizen who is the alleged mastermind
of the violence in southern Thailand, should come
as a sobering wake-up call to Malaysia and teach
it the importance of thoroughly weighing the
possibility of certain allegations rather than
dismissing them based on a tone and delivery that
it deems unacceptable.
Indirectly, it
appears the Malaysian government is coming around.
On Thursday, at an Organization of Islamic
Conference meeting, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi
urged moderate Muslims to speak out against the
spread of Islamic extremism and its sympathizers.
"It is our duty to demonstrate, by word and by
action, that a Muslim country can be modern,
democratic, tolerant and economically
competitive," he was quoted as saying.
But
to be successful, Malaysian leadership must become
more concrete in its application and strategy.
Abdullah has given the impression that his
administration is doing enough to combat Islamic
extremism, most notably through its promotion of
Islam Hadari (civilizational Islam), which
Abdullah said at the conference "promotes
tolerance and understanding, moderation and peace.
It is the perfect antidote to extremism and
militancy," he claimed.
But Islam
Hadari has mostly been platitudinous. Other
than providing 10 fundamental points of the
concept - including "the vigorous pursuit and
mastery of knowledge" and "a good quality of life
for the people" - Abdullah has yet to outline and
implement Hadari thoroughly; indeed, most
Malaysians would be hard-pressed to name but one
of the points. So while Hadari is nice in
theory, it's not being lived.
It would
also behoove the government to be more open in
admitting that Malaysia is no less susceptible to
Islamic extremism taking root within its borders
than its neighbors. Alerted to the country's
vulnerability, the public will likely be more
willing to speak out against extremism. As it
stands, the government here has often emphasized
economic growth to dismiss the possibility. But as
the case of Osama bin Laden makes clear, along
with those of myriad Islamic terrorists nabbed in
recent years, including engineers and university
professors, the link between poverty and extremism
is dubious.
It would be wise too for the
government and its champions in the
state-controlled press to move beyond superficial
indicators to assess the risk of extremism taking
root here. When the moderate, Abdullah-led
National Front coalition resoundingly defeated the
hardline Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) in last
March's parliamentary elections, commentators
concluded that extremist ideology had few if any
takers in Malaysia. This neglects the fact that
the government rules more by authoritarian than
democratic means. Naturally for some, particularly
in the Malay-Muslim heartland, this has raised
questions of legitimacy and fostered some
resentment. So, too, have perceptions in the
heartland that the ruling elite are profligate and
corrupt and have over-emphasized economic growth
at the expense of moral and spiritual development.
These perceptions were solidified last
October at party elections in Abdullah's United
Malays National Organization, which were described
by one veteran UMNO official as the worst case of
money politics in the party's history. That
Abdullah's promises of reform have been slow to
materialize have hardly worked to quell these
feelings.
The situation in southern
Thailand, in which more than 500 people have been
killed within the past year, may be triggering
Malay-Muslims' ire as well. Muslims in Thailand's
restive south, like most of Malaysia's Muslims,
are of Malay ethnicity, and this, some suspect,
has increased sympathy and resentment in Malaysia.
Some residents along the border have dual
citizenship, which Thaksin said last year was
leading separatists to train and seek refuge in
Malaysia after carrying out terrorist acts in
Thailand, for fear of the Thai government's
aggressive, no-nonsense approach to dealing with
suspected terrorists. Abdullah dismissed Thaksin's
claims as "sensational". But with the Malaysian
government's arrest of the alleged mastermind,
Chae Kumae Kuteh, also known as Abdul Rahman
Ahmad, such denials will find fewer takers.
Thaksin said he suspects that Ahmad, who
was arrested January 5, is a Thai citizen and is
seeking his extradition. Abdullah on Thursday
said, "On the basis of whatever papers that were
available on [Ahmad] and whatever we can get from
his house, there is no other evidence to show that
he is a Thai. But he has documents which prove he
is a Malaysian citizen." He added: "If Thai
authorities want to seek some help from us in
whatever way, [if] they want to know the
activities of this man, we will be able to
cooperate."
Ioannis Gatsiounis,
a New York native, has worked as a freelance
foreign correspondent and previously co-hosted a
weekly political/cultural radio call-in show in
the US. He has been living in Malaysia since late
2002.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
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