Militant Muslim in Southeast Asia?

The Economist, London
Militant Islam in South-East Asia

Turning back the tide
02 June 2005

AT THE turn of the millennium, it was fashionable to talk of an “arc of instability” sweeping from the Middle East up into Central Asia and the northern subcontinent and back south into South-East Asia. Throughout this mighty arc, home to well over a billion people, growing terrorism in the name of radical Islam was at the least a damaging threat to life and property, and at worst portended wholesale “Talibanisation”—the takeover of entire states by religious militants.

Five years on, much has changed. In the Middle East, the toppling of Saddam and the occupation of Iraq have shattered the old order, though it is still too soon to say into what configuration things will eventually settle. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, secular rulers have kept the Islamists at bay, while the much-feared jihad that would engulf all of Central Asia never materialised. No one would sensibly call any of these countries wholly stable. But it now seems right to declare that the arc's South-East Asian prong has been made safe.

The Council on Foreign Relations answers questions on Islam and democracy. The US State Department has information about Indonesia and Malaysia.

This is no small achievement. Indonesia, after all, is the world's largest Muslim country, and it is less than three years since the terrible bombing of a nightclub in Bali (only the worst of a string of outrages) showed that al-Qaeda associates were operating freely there. Other associates were known to be active in Singapore, Malaysia and the southern Philippines. In Malaysia, the ruling party faced a strong and growing threat from PAS, an Islamist party devoted to the imposition of fundamentalist punishments such as the chopping off of hands and death for apostasy. In Indonesia, the misrule of three successive weak presidents, following the ousting of President Suharto in 1998, saw the popularity of Islamist parties—though, happily, divided—rise.

Things look very different now. The influence of PAS is clearly on the wane in Malaysia, and in last year's presidential election in Indonesia no Islamist party came anywhere near posing a threat. As last weekend's bombing on the island of Sulawesi shows, violence is far from eradicated in Indonesia: but that attack, which killed 19, provoked worldwide attention precisely because it bucked an encouraging trend. One reason for declining terrorism is that police work has greatly improved. It took the Bali bomb to do it, but the security services of South-East Asia have learned to co-operate with each other and with their counterparts in Australia and America.

However, the main reason for South-East Asia's relative success in tackling violent Islam is the region's adoption of democracy and openness. Although (see article) fundamentalism is still alive and well in Malaysia, its ideas are openly debated, its champions fight at the polls, not with bombs, and where it succeeds, it does so because a majority of people want it to. The same is broadly true in Indonesia. Properly engaged with, there is no reason why Islam need become subversive or violent. It is no coincidence that the world's most democratic Islamic states are also its most moderate. Although terrorists may still launch the occasional strike in South-East Asia, they will enjoy little public sympathy.

There are, of course, counter-examples. The heavy-handed and incompetent treatment of Islamists in south Thailand has provided a good example of how not to do things. No surprise, then, that this is the only country of South-East Asia where violence is getting worse. But at least this, like a continuing insurgency in the southern Philippines, is a relatively small and localised problem. Turning back the tide really is possible.