In recent decades, the world has seen a significant revival of Islam. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion, and the faith is expected to overtake Christianity as the largest faith in the world as the number of adherents of the Islamic faith continues to see exponential growth.
A key development accompanying Islam’s growth is a significant rise in “Islamism”, or the “ideological politicisation of Islam”, or the movement to establish political order articulated in religious terms as dictated in Islam; “Islamisation” is the process through which Islamism takes place. Islam is not just another faith. While the practice of most other religions is generally confined to personal space, the all-encompassing nature of Islamic doctrines mean that adherents are theologically obliged to apply Islamic tenets to all aspects of life, including politics and governance. This phenomenon cuts across geography and polities, and impacts at many levels, including the political, societal, organisational and individual.
A key concern of this thesis is the form in which Islamism manifests itself or which agents of Islamism seek to achieve the goal of politicising Islam, in particular, how Islamisation leads to religiously-motivated terrorism, or more specifically, Islamist terrorism. (I would also like to state at the outset my belief that Islam is a religion of peace, one that has brought about spiritual peace and harmony to many individuals and communities.) At the national-level, several countries have successfully incorporated Islam and/or Islamic tenets into its rule and made themselves official or de-facto Islamist governments via peaceful and/or democratic means, with Turkey being the most recent example. But my concern is that of more violent manifestations or outcomes of those that pursue political Islam. As with many religions, Islam comes in various shades, some more nefarious than others. This is none better than the brand of Islam exemplified by violent groups such as al-Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has in recent years dominated news headlines over their violent activities intended at coercing governments and whole populations to conform to their political views and vision of a global utopia (or in Islamic terms, a caliphate), based on their interpretation of Islam. Their acts of violence coincided with the exponential growth of adherents to Islam – and this observation has led some scholars to associate the spread of Islam, specifically more radical and extreme forms of the religion, to an increase in terrorist attacks by these Islamist groups.
Section 1. Aims and Objectives
My thesis will focus on the Muslim-majority country of Malaysia. It is a country where Islamic revivalism had contributed to significantly to the process of Islamisation. As a result, Islamist influences are particularly strong there, and had been fed further fuel amidst significant political and societal flux in recent years. The thesis essentially seeks to answer two key questions – (a) how does Islamisation influence the Islamist terrorism threat emanating from Malaysia; and (b) what are the other contextual factors that may act in conjunction with Islamisation to promote Islamist terrorism intent and sympathies in Malaysia, and the extent to which they may do so? The main outcome of this thesis is to propose an analytical framework that would reinforce current academic studies in this area in Malaysia. I aim to do so by proposing other contextual factors that drive terrorism in Malaysia, either in conjunction with Islamisation or otherwise, and the extent to which these factors may interact.
Section 2. Islamisation and Terrorism in Malaysia – Some Theories
One key impetus for my thesis is my opinion that current answers to these questions remain unsatisfactory, primarily because the proposed theses fail to convincingly show causality between Islamisation and Islamist terrorist acts, particularly for the Malaysian context. For instance, scholars and observers of Malaysia that the “Islamisation” of Malaysian society, government and politics from a variety of international, regional or even organic (i.e. home-grown or domestic) sources had contributed to the Malay-Muslim community becoming more inclined towards supporting or conducting terrorist acts. But these assertions remain hypothetical at best, as there remains an absence of deeper academic study to ascertain the validity of the specific pathways proposed, if any at all, to explain this phenomenon. For instance, Joseph Liow had suggested that competition between the ruling Malaysian political coalition led by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and a key opposition party built around religious/Islamic ideals, the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), had led to increasingly extremist vitriolic in Malaysian political discourse and created an environment partial to extremist religious thought, causing discord in the multi-racial, multi-religious Malaysian society and inadvertently fuels Malaysian Muslim participation in terrorist activities in support of Islamist movements. But it remains to be proven if this “Islamic” political competition is indeed a causal factor – for instance, how this actually promotes and contributes to terrorist intent amongst the Muslim community was not addressed, apart from asserting that it purportedly promotes an environment supportive of violence. Indeed, a counter-argument would be that UMNO’s reliance on its non-Malay partners and their consociational contract which had allowed for the multi-racial, multi-religious Malaysian society to remain united and thrive thus far is a structural deterrent for it to go too far in terms of building in Islamic rhetoric into its policies, and in fact obliges it to take measures to ensure the security of non-Malays.
These assertions also tend to take an isolated, instead of a systemic approach towards appraising the situation in Malaysia. As mentioned earlier, while the effects of Islamisation are wide-ranging and simultaneously affects politics, society and government in Malaysia, studies so far tend to look at changes to the terrorism threat based on changes in a single factor i.e. one of politics, society and government. They hardly consider how these areas interplay, and/or the downstream effects of Islamisation in these areas, and the consequent impact on the level of terrorist threat. For instance, it had also been theorized that Malaysians who participated in or backed Islamist extremist groups such as AQ or Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) did so as they were influenced by these groups’ ideologies to fight as part of a global effort to establish global Islamic state (or caliphate in Islamic parlance.) There is certain truth to this theory, as Islamisation as a phenomenon has had a direct impact at the level of individual religious interpretation, and may in turn impact on the commitment of Muslim politicians or security personnel towards countering Islamist terrorism. Over the years, elements of the Malaysian security forces had been arrested over the years for participating in, providing support for or sympathizing with Islamist terrorist elements. In 2015, the Malaysian government admitted to at least 70 such individuals in the armed forces. But this theory ignores how the political and societal contexts influence or reinforce their views. Why and how were these individuals drawn into the conflict in the first place? After all, the Malaysian constitution stated clearly that Islam was the “religion of Malaysia”, which some politicians had used to argue that Malaysia was in essence, an Islamic state. Hence, why would Malaysian Muslims, who are theoretically and in many ways practically already living in an Islamic state, still want to change their own government into a more Islamic one in their own vision? Was it deficiencies in their own national government or religious system that drove these people to action? Did the “creeping” Islamisation of the Malaysian government, including the religious education authorities, somehow play a part in convincing these individuals that they needed to take action and advance Islam, in the form they saw, domestically and further afield? My point here being that, it is too simplistic to only consider that Islamist influences bring about terrorist intent – the political and societal contexts need to be investigated to give a full appreciation.
Apart from academic interest, a more personal impetus for investigating Malaysia on this topic is the fact that any political and security upheaval there would have a serious impact on my home country, Singapore. By virtue of both countries’ proximity, intimate societal, cultural, economic and historical ties, as well as similar political background (for instance, the heavy weightage race and religion have on the political landscape), any upheaval in Malaysia is bound to have a serious impact on Singapore’s own interests.
Section 3. Originality and Methodology
I believe the situation in Malaysia (as with other places) is the result of a confluence and interplay of various factors. To better answer the aforementioned questions, I will be proposing a framework to systematically analyse and reinforce current theories in explaining the phenomenon. The choice of the word “systematically” is deliberate – I will be drawing on renowned international relations scholar Robert Jervis’ “systems effect” approach in coming up with this framework. The “system effect”, according to Jervis, refers to the unintended consequences and outcomes occurring as a result of the “complex” actions and interactions of individual, interconnected elements in a “system”. A system exists where “a set of units or elements are interconnected”, and where the individual actions, ties or mutual interactions of these elements produce changes in other parts of the system. Jervis proposed that system effects, apart from being unintended, often take place in an unavoidable and unpredicted manner, partly because changes in the units, as well as the sum total of their actions and interactions do not simply add up to the aggregate effect, i.e. the relationship between these variables are “non-linear”. In addition, the erratic nature of system effects can also be attributed to the fact that they usually come in the form of “multiple effects”, i.e. where one change leads to many others because of this interconnectedness between units, which means outcomes are hence often indirect and likely gestate over a period of time. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first such approach to this issue in the Malaysian context.
I intend to first establish the pathways by which Islamisation breeds terrorism in Malaysia, and establish the “elements” that Islamisation interacts with that may lead to changes in the terrorism threat. The elements I will be exploring in my thesis are (a) the sources and drivers of Islamisation, (b) Malaysian politics, in both domestic and international realms, (c) Malaysian government and policy implementation, and (d) Malaysian society. I draw on Joel Migdal’s “State-in-Society” theory, which provides the rationale for my focus on politics, society and government. Migdal argued that states and social organisations interact and/or compete with each other to create guidelines, rules and narratives to control the individual’s behaviour within and without the state he belongs to. In my thesis, I will attempt to draw out this dynamic within the Malaysian context. I will explore the impact of, Islamisation’s impact on the Malaysian political, societal and governmental arenas. I will propose pathways on how these elements interact with each other in the face of various external factors, such as political competition and the import of Islamic education, and the effects these have on the Malaysian terrorism threat. I will be citing primarily secondary sources for historical analysis of these at the international, regional and national levels.
As for the terrorism aspects of my analysis, I will consider the outcomes of Islamisation on the above-mentioned areas in the context of current frameworks assessing terrorism threat to show how the terrorism threat in Malaysia may be affected. I will be relying on the latest academic perspectives on what the best counter-terrorism (CT) strategies are to analyse and assess the effectiveness of Malaysia’s CT approach since the September 11, 2011 attacks, specifically the willingness of the political and security forces leadership to conduct CT action.
The primary aim of my analysis is to better understand the dynamics at hand, and to establish the link between these elements, especially how politics and government contribute to the terrorist problem. What it is not intended, is to prognosticate the level of terrorism threat (and/or if the terrorism threat may lead to an increase in Islamisation, for example), as it is difficult to tell what outcome one value input would lead to, and assumptions will need to be taken to give it predictive value. To do so, it will be dependent on the individual reader’s discretion on which factors to focus on when considering the issue of terrorism threat in Malaysia. A secondary objective would be to identify the means by which foreign countries can use to manage the terrorism threat in Malaysia, bearing in mind the political context there.
Section 4. Topics of Discussion and Structure of Thesis
With the above in mind, I will be structuring my thesis as follows. In Chapter 2, I will first provide the reader with a primer to Malaysian political and government structures and systems, and discuss the prominence and influence of religion, in particular Islam, in these contexts as well as in Malaysian society. For instance, how Islamisation and domestic politics affect ties with the West, and Malaysia’s approach towards Islam-related issues that have a global or regional impact, such as the thorny Palestine and Rohingya issues. In this chapter, I will also dedicate a section to discuss the Malaysian government’s CT policy and the concrete measures it has taken since the 9/11 attacks.
In Chapter 3, I will lay out and discuss my proposed analytical framework, and use it to explain how Islamisation leads to changes in the terrorism threat via politics, government and society. I will show that while action in one sector may not necessarily lead to an increase in terrorism threat on its own (e.g. the “competition in Islam” theory as proposed by Liow), the net effect of this, and other impacts due to Islamisation may. For instance, I observed that the Malaysian government had focused and had done very well with regards to law enforcement – enacting the relevant laws and using these and the law enforcement agencies they have to detect and interdict terrorists, and ultimately preventing terrorism-related activities and attacks in Malaysia. However, as capable as Malaysian security forces are, the concern that root causes of terrorism in Malaysia remain, for instance that the politicking in Islam and religious-related issues may erode such forces’ willingness and ability in dealing with the terrorist threat, and also drive societal acceptance of radical and extremist ideologies and activities most associated with Islamist terrorist groups. Using the framework, this chapter will propose several such ways changes in Islamisation levels may eventually lead to changes in the level of terrorism threat emanating from Malaysia.
Following these, in Chapter 4, I will round up my thesis with a discussion on the utility and veracity of my framework, its limitations as well as that of my research.