Policy Bulletin The Stanley Islam in Southeast Asia: Foundation What Should US Policymakers Know? hen Southeast Asia was desig- representatives to consider recommen- nated as a “second front” in dations for US policymakers. An W the US war against terrorism essential prelude to the recommendation Cosponsored by in late 2001, Muslims in the region process was an examination of Islam in The Stanley Foundation became the subject of an intense “hearts Southeast Asia, its place in the global and The Asia and minds” campaign, as did those in the Muslim community, and present US Foundation Middle East and South Asia. Despite this policy toward Southeast Asian Muslims. new focus, approval of the United States has plummeted among Southeast Asian The Difficulty With Definitions Muslims. Some analysts point to obvious A common paradigm in US counterter- and immediate reasons, such as the unpop- rorism policy for Southeast Asia ularity of the war in Iraq among Southeast divides Muslims into “moderates” and Asians in general, Muslim or not. “extremists” and aims to strengthen the November 18-19, 2004 San Francisco, CA former while weakening the latter. A more subtle but complex source of dis- Many Southeast Asians object to this content with the United States lies in US and any other categorization of policy paradigms for Muslim Southeast Muslims in the region. In applying Asia. Many Southeast Asians complain labels under such sensitive circum- that the American view of Muslims is stances, American and Southeast Asian monolithic and inaccurate, based upon participants found that the caveats the image of the radical “Arab street.” invariably outnumbered the categories. They argue that US policy needs to be based upon a more nuanced understand- Underneath these semantic difficulties ing of Islam in Southeast Asia and of the are problems of understanding the complexities of Muslim politics and soci- Muslim spectrum in Southeast Asia and ety in the region. the tendency to group all extremists together. This encourages a confusion of To aid policymakers in this regard, the ends and means, and ultimately can cause Stanley Foundation organized a round- More information on table on Islam in Southeast Asia in San the Southeast Asia in Improving the image of the United the Twenty-First Francisco in November 2004. This event Century program is was the fourth roundtable in an 18-month States among Muslims in Southeast available online at Asia requires not only a considera- www.stanleyfoundation.org program on Southeast Asia in the Twenty- First Century: Issues and Options for US tion of new initiatives but also a hard This Policy Bulletin Policy. Cosponsored with the Asia look at some of the assumptions that summarizes the primary undergird US policy in Southeast findings of the conference as Foundation, the meeting brought together interpreted by the rapporteur Asia. Recommendations on page 4. and program officer. American and Southeast Asian government Participants neither reviewed nor approved this bulletin. officials, scholars, and nongovernmental Therefore, it should not be assumed that every participant subscribes to all of its recommendations, observa- tions, and conclusions. policymakers to conflate Muslim fundamentalism with the terms as much as with the arrogance of or extremism with terrorism. In an extreme worst- outsiders attempting such linguistic engineering— case scenario, this practice can turn hasty and Americans do not have the credibility in Southeast injudicious tagging of Muslim groups into a self- Asia to label Muslims. Moreover, Southeast Asians fulfilling prophecy. themselves are engaged in a struggle over Islamic terms, particularly in the political arena. In To avoid making enemies in Islamic communities, Indonesia and Malaysia both, secular leaders are policymakers should take a more cautious and cal- inclined to represent themselves as religious ibrated approach when it is necessary to parse nationalists, so as to co-opt the agendas (if not the Muslim communities in Southeast Asia. Many images) of their more radical rivals. Southeast Asians find the categorization of “mainstream” and “fringe” groups more acceptable, Southeast Asia in the Muslim World because it describes the relation of groups to one Despite the awkwardness of defining Muslim another, rather than rating them according to identities, Southeast Asians and Americans alike Islamic intensity. In addressing the radical end of view the great majority of Muslims in the region to the spectrum, US policy should reflect an under- be moderate in their orientation and practice. On a standing that personal piety does not necessarily policy level, this would seem to give Southeast lead to violence. Distinctions should be made Asia the potential to play an important role in the between groups that advocate jihad as an internal Muslim world. Indonesia is the world’s largest struggle to follow the teachings of Islam and Muslim-majority democracy, and Malaysia stands those to whom it means armed struggle—violent out as an example of a modern Muslim state. But extremists are “the radical fringe of a radical is Southeast Asia positioned to play such a demon- fringe.” However, both American and Southeast stration effect in the global Muslim community? Asian participants acknowledged that the term jihad may be so linked to violence in popular per- Scholars point out the need to separate theology ception that it is no longer a useful term. from culture in the Islamic world, and point to six major cultural zones in the global Muslim commu- To be sure, there are difficult gray areas, such as nity: Arab, Persian, Turkish, sub-Saharan, Indian, between fundamentalists who adhere strictly to and Malay. Each of these zones has a distinct reli- Muslim law in their personal lives and those who gious identity, forged by theology, legal frameworks, would impose that practice upon others, even on and interaction with other religious and cultural non-Muslims in Muslim-majority areas. On the groups. Malay Islam, the result of voluntary rather other end of the spectrum, policymakers should than forced conversion and filtered by passage note that “moderates” are not limited to those through India, has historically differed from who favor secular government over theocracy and Muslim cultural zones farther away. eschew violence but also include a number of progressive groups that believe Islam can make a At the same time, this distance has narrowed in major contribution to democracy. In addition, recent decades, particularly with the influence of policymakers should avoid rigidity in their assess- petro-dollars from the Middle East. At the present ments of Muslim groups, as they can be extremist time, in both theological and economic dimen- on some issues but moderate on others. sions, the influence of the Middle East over Southeast Asia is essentially a one-way street. Prior Southeast Asian participants pointed out that to the 1970s, many Southeast Asians went to Muslims in the region themselves use terms such Cairo, Jordan, and Baghdad for education and were as “moderates” and “extremists,” and allowed that exposed to different theological strains. Today the some working division is probably necessary for educational flows to Saudi Arabia are far heavier. policymaking. In many cases, the problem is not 2 Although Middle Eastern aid to mosques and Muslim men in Southeast Asia and manipulate Muslim schools has played a key role in some tensions within impoverished Muslim communi- Southeast Asian areas, trade itself is lackluster— ties as well as between Muslims and other for Indonesia and Malaysia, trade with the Middle religious or cultural groups. It does not follow, East is less than 5 percent of the total volume. however, that an infusion of funds would neces- sarily reverse these trends. The missing link in Middle Eastern views of Islam in Southeast this process is the quality of governance in Asia, as well as in other regions, do not encour- Southeast Asia, particularly in the wake of the age two-way transfers and influence in the near 1997 Asian financial crisis. term. For the most part, Middle Eastern Muslims see Southeast Asia as the periphery. A Southeast Asian disillusionment with the per- dangerous exception to this is Al Qaeda’s view of formance of their leaders is broad, encompassing the region, which regards Southeast Asia as an all religious groups. Discontent over the failure important operational theater. On the Islamic of governments to achieve sustainable economic world stage, however, this dynamic is beginning development in the mid and lower economic to change. Malaysia plays an important role in tiers in the region and to control corruption is the Organization of the Islamic Conference. widespread. However, these disappointments are When Prime Minister Badawi addressed the particularly acute in Southeast Asian Muslim United Nations last year, he warned Muslim communities. Indonesia has yet to recover fully leaders that they needed to pay greater attention from the 1997 crisis. Among Muslim minorities to governance and education in their countries. in the Philippines and Thailand, poor gover- nance has exacerbated economic gaps with other On the whole, however, ambitions for Southeast groups. Muslims are also critical of government Asia to serve as a moderating example for more performance on the protection of human rights, radical corners of the Muslim world are probably and here too they often find themselves on the unrealistic. A more critical policy objective may losing end. be for Southeast Asians to focus on influencing one another, by sharing best educational practices These popular views of governance often trans- and stimulating dialogue across the region among late directly into politics. In 1999 the Malaysian moderate and progressive groups. Islamic opposition party, PAS, gained support and control of two states at the local level because Religious Flashpoints of perceptions of gross injustice from the ruling or Failed Governance? party. In Indonesia, although Islamic parties are Almost immediately after the September 11 not dominant, their support is based on their attack, Southeast Asian leaders, such as President anticorruption positions.