By Amy Chew
6 Feb, 2021
The
detention of a Protestant Christian teenage boy in Singapore who allegedly
plotted terror attacks at two mosques has raised concerns of the danger of
Western-style far-right extremism in Southeast Asia, where previously,
attention had largely been focused on radicalisation affecting its Muslim
communities.
The
16-year-old, who is of Indian ethnicity, was arrested in December. He was said by
authorities last week to have been inspired by the 2019 shootings at two
mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during which the white supremacist
Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people. The boy is thought to have hatched his own
plot to attack worshippers with a machete following an attack by an Islamist
extremist in Nice, France, in which a woman was beheaded in a church and two
others killed.
Experts say
the significance of the boy’s arrest is about more than this single case; they
say it raises the spectre of “reciprocal radicalisation”, a vicious circle in
which extremist groups become increasingly violent as they launch tit-for-tat
revenge attacks in response to each other’s activities.
They warn
the case of the boy in Singapore has already been seized upon by radical
Islamist groups who are using it to propagate a narrative of Muslims being
under attack by non-Muslims.
“The rise
of the far right these days can be called ‘reciprocal radicalisation’, in which
two sides – the Islamists and the far right – feed off each other,” said Noor
Huda Ismail, a documentary filmmaker on terrorism and visiting fellow at S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“The
Singapore incident has been used as a powerful narrative for recruitment by
radical groups who say, ‘See, it is not true that Christians are not up to
something against us, the Muslims’,” said Huda, an Indonesian who founded his
country’s first private deradicalisation organisation, the Institute for
International Peace Building.
Some warn
this vicious circle may already have begun. Following the March 2019 attacks in
Christchurch that are said to have inspired the boy in Singapore, Islamic State
(Isis) called for revenge. A month later, Islamist militants bombed three
churches and three luxury hotels in Sri Lanka, killing more than 265 people.
While not all experts agree the two attacks were explicitly linked,
RuwanWijewardene – Sri Lanka’s defence minister at the time – said the bombings
were direct retaliation for the Christchurch shootings.
Amarnath
Amarasingam, an assistant professor at the School of Religion, Queen’s
University, Ontario, said “the evidence is still out” on whether the bombings
in Sri Lanka were direct retaliation for Christchurch, but is was likely that
they had been encouraged by Isis in some form.
Professor
Kumar Ramakrishna, associate dean and head of the International Centre for
Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University
in Singapore, said the circle of attacks went even further back. He noted that
the Christchurch attacker had himself been motivated at least in part by the
desire to strike back against what he perceived as Islamist extremist
aggression against Europeans.
Christchurch
mosque attack survivor speaks about encounter with gunmanChristchurch mosque
attack survivor speaks about encounter with gunman
Ironically,
said Zachary Abuza, professor of Southeast Asia studies at the National War
College in Washington, right-wing extremists had much in common with jihadist
groups.
“Both define
in and out groups, dehumanise their adversary, believe their religion and
culture are under attack and need to be defended [using this to] justify and
even glorify violence.
“Like Isis,
right-wing extremist groups are very horizontally organised, and rely a lot on
‘lone wolf’ actors. The goal of these attacks is to cause greater
civilisational conflicts,” said Abuza, who specialises in terrorism.
Professor
Greg Barton, chair in Global Islamic Politics of Deakin University, said that
for both groups radicalisation often occurred through grooming and recruitment
on social media.
“It tends
to be social and involve the forming of new friendships that offer a sense of
acceptance and personal affirmation, combined with a romantic notion of
participating in revolutionary change,” said Barton.
The
country’s Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said he was concerned
about right-wing extremist views creeping into Singapore and fighting this
would be a “long battle” for Singapore and the world.
Amarnath
cautioned against overstating the threat, saying the number of cases of
far-right extremism in Southeast Asia was “still quite small”.
But Kumar
was not so sure. “If one youth went down this path, why not others? We see the
same phenomenon on the Islamist extremist side as well,” Kumar said. “This case
is a wake-up call that policy attention should not just be focused on
self-radicalised Islamist extremists.”
Kumar said
that Southeast Asian countries with significant Christian minorities that
perceived themselves as being on the receiving end of strident Islamist
activism or violence might be vulnerable.
“Certain
middle class, educated Christians in those countries who buy into the Trumpist,
anti-Muslim inclinations of some white Christian evangelicals in the United
States for instance, may more readily absorb far-right extremist ideas online,”
said Kumar.
He said a
similar demographic in the Philippines, where there was a decades-long history
of Christian-Muslim violence, might also be vulnerable to the appeal of
far-right extremism. The middle class, he said, had more access to the sort of
online conspiracy theories that had inspired the Christchurch shooter.
Meanwhile,
Barton thought the likelihood of right-wing extremism affecting mainstream
politics in the region was highest in Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia.
In
Muslim-majority Indonesia, the largest member state of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) with 270 million people, has a recent history
of fighting between Muslims and Christians in the far flung islands of Poso in
central Sulawesi and the eastern spice islands of Maluku. Conflicts from
1999-2002 in these areas, driven by local issues, claimed thousands of lives.
Mohamad
Adhe Bhakti, executive director of the Centre for Radicalism and Deradicalisation
Studies, said it was “highly possible” that right-wing extremism would emerge
in Indonesia.
He also
warned that a Hindu-based group in Bali and a Christian-based group in North
Sulawesi – both of which refer to themselves as “armies” despite being mostly
non-violent, at least until now – have the potential to turn radical if they
feel threatened.
The Bali
Army is involved in countering jihadist movements on the island, which has
suffered two deadly bombings – an attack on the tourist district of Kuta in
2002 that killed 202 people and a series of suicide bombs in 2005 that killed
20 – that devastated its tourism reliant economy.
In North
Sulawesi, the Christian-based Maguni Army is involved in promoting an
economically independent society based on traditions and moral values.
“If
Islamists and jihadist groups are active in their areas [North Sulawesi and
Bali], these groups could become radical,” said Adhe.
Adhe said
there were also extremist groups in Christian-majority Papua province, that
while small had the potential to turn violent if they felt threatened by the
presence of outsiders, namely transmigrants from Java island. He said the Save
Indonesia Coalition, a self-proclaimed social movement which was against
President Joko Widodo and displayed anti-Chinese sentiment, also fell into the
definition of a far-right group.
In October
2020, Indonesian police said a group of Save Indonesia Coalition radicals in Medan,
north Sumatra, were planning to incite riots and loot Chinese shops in a
similar fashion to the violence that swept the country amid the Asian Financial
Crisis of 1998. Four people were arrested in connection with the plot.
However,
Adhe said right-wing extremism was likely to remain small in scale because the
government was strong and moderate groups were in such a majority that
extremists would “not be able to draw much sympathy and support”.
Original Headline: Far right vs Islamists: a vicious circle of
extremism in Southeast Asia?
Source: The South China Morning Post
URL: https://newageislam.com/radical-islamism-jihad/a-vicious-circle-reciprocal-radicalisation/d/124257
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