Islamic Terrorism in Sea

School of Politics, History & International Relations

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The view towards Islam have shifted following the September 11, 2001 catastrophic incident towards a new phase where the core threat to humanity has leaned towards the abstract of international terrorism. It is taken as the consequence of anti-globalization movements in mainly the Islamic world, where traditional values are used and are meant to be substituted with the modern world. Some Muslims are known to perceive globalization as a threat that affects the Islamic culture and religious identity. Terrorism has many terrifying impacts towards a country, for instance, deflation, mass unemployment and the events of terrorism are unpredictable as they can be taken place anytime and anywhere in the world. Southeast Asia is accepted to be a region that is home to 15 percent of the world’s Muslims that consists of 16 billion individuals. Southeast Asia consists of 11 countries which are Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. The rise of Islamic terror groups such as the Islamic State in Southeast Asia has made a serious impact globally because they carry links and threats with Al-Qaeda. The main terrorist groups that possess the capability and intentions to exercise terrorism in Southeast Asia is the Abu Sayyaf group, Gerakan Aceh Merdeka and Jemaah Islamiah. These groups are well known for their terrorism acts having an organizational structure, how they strategically operate, their enormous membership and how they imply for maritime security in Southeast Asia. The Association of South East Asian Nations condemns all violence including terror caused by radical Islamic groups following their movements in the region. The fear has taken a sharp rise with the number of occurrences such as murders and kidnappings operated by these terrorists. Southeast Asia is known for its unique region that possesses challenges for such accusing war on terror as it is comprised of 11 countries and over 17,000 islands, its effort to curb terrorism have been overloaded by the existence of porous maritime borders (Carter, n.d.). This essay will discuss the main characteristics of Islamic Terrorism in Southeast Asia.

While most of Muslims in the region of Southeast Asia are secular, the region is influenced by the rise of the fundamentalism of Islam in the Middle East. This is a subject that is rather new but more fundamental versions of Islam like the Wahhabism is brought back to the region by Hajj pilgrims and student seeking education in the region of Middle East. In recent times, fundamentalism rose in Southeast Asia through the Salafiyyah, a movement whose adherents look to bring Islam back to its purest form as practiced by their Prophet Muhammad and the two generations of followers at the beginning. To most Muslims, the only pure way to establish a pure Islamic State and lift the siege is through Jihad. Numerous characteristics make Southeast Asian soil for neo-salafists. Firstly, the influence and inspiration of Southeast Asian militants who fought in Afghanistan returning home. Although the number of militants are non-existent, it believed that there have been over 1000 Southeast Asian Muslims that are believed to have been exposed to the Islamic schools known as madrassas or training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan while they were fighting with the Mujahedeen. When returned home, these “jihadists” passed on their newly-found beliefs at by establishing their own Islamic school or madrassas and by passing on these beliefs to their local mosques and communities. In addition to that, their students are then encouraged to fly to countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan to study more about “pure” Islam. The second characteristic that identifies Islamic terrorism in Southeast Asia is the influence of fundamentalist Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia on the encouragement of education of Southeast Asians. The Muslim practice known as zakat requires all Muslim individuals to donate 2.5% of their net income to charity. Most of this money is pooled for charitable work like constructing schools and mosques around the world. Excessive revenue from oil similarly enabled rich Muslim states to fund education for a big number of Southeast Asians to pursue their studies at Islamic Universities abroad. Majority of these scholars are then exposed to the ideas of being Salafists through madrassas found in the region by Saudi Arabia. These schools’ curriculum are based on strict Wahhabi forms of Islam as compared to the original forms of Islam such as sufi and sunni (Abuza, 2003).