Although Muslim populations in ASEAN are not high on the US’s list of potential terrorism targets, Islamic State (IS) movements are likely to remain stagnant in the region, an expert on Muslim affairs.
IS operations have been prominent in Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, which are also home to foreign fighters who owe allegiance to the IS, said Charan Maluleem, a Muslim academic from Thammasat University.
In Jakarta last January, the IS claimed responsibility for bombings in the capital which killed four civilians and injured another 25. Then in July, Santaso, leader of the IS-affiliated East Indonesia Mujahidin, was hunted down and shot by Indonesian police.
Malaysian authorities have also stepped up measures against the IS threats following a grenade attack in Kuala Lumpur in June. Two months later, they foiled alleged IS militants who planned to attack several sites in the capital on the national independence day. The country, with 60 per cent of the population of 30 million being Muslim, has also been verbally threatened by IS affiliates.
Some 500 Indonesians, half of whom are students or migrant workers, have gone to Syria or Iraq to fight for the IS compared to about 40 Malaysians who have also joined the battles in the Middle East. But the fact that the IS is not prominently active in any other ASEAN countries, Charan said, could imply that the movement is unlikely to grow in the region but will still be active.
Charan was speaking at a session at the Thai Journalists Association’s course on the ASEAN community.
The academic also doubted that Thailand was one of the IS’s potential targets. Although the Kingdom has had long-running conflicts with Muslim separatists in its southernmost provinces, he said that they have “different manners” than the Syria-based extremist group.
US President Donald Trump, while declaring he would “eradicate radical Muslim terrorism from the face of the earth“, emphasised that he would not include Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, in any of his measures.
This could be partly due to Indonesia’s moderate, flexible form of Islam that predominates, Charan said, but it could be also because the Southeast Asian nation has good relations with the US.
