How
Quiet Islamization Threatens Secular States
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
August 1, 2018
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 While all eyes have
focused on the obvious – Islamist violence in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq,
in Pakistan and the Congo, and in Muslim communities of Western European
cities – radical Islam has been quietly tightening its grip in
formerly-secular Muslim regions such as Malaysia, Turkey, Bangladesh,
Indonesia and the Maldives. In turn, these changes are also helping to
guide the rise of radical Islam across the West. As Farooq Sulehria, assistant
professor at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore noted in a recent
e-mail, "diaspora communities are politically reflective of the
mainstream currents in the home country."
Yet outside of think tanks and counterterrorism circles, few have paid
much attention to the changes in these countries, and the growing threat
they pose. Even since the 2002 attacks on two nightclubs and the American
consulate in Bali, for instance, most people considered Indonesia a
secular, Muslim majority state. Subsequent suicide attacks, one in 2003 and
another in Jakarta in 2005, were staged by Jemiaah Islamiya, an al-Qaida-
and ISIS-affiliated group with no direct ties to Indonesia.
But by 2017, Reuters reports a survey showed that "one in five
Indonesian students supported an Islamic state, and one in four" were
ready to wage jihad "to achieve it." According to the polling
company Alvara, the results indicate that "intolerant teachings have
already entered top universities and high schools" in the world's
largest Muslim-majority country.
Already that influence is being felt by skeptics and non-believers, including
atheists and Christians, says the AFP. Criticizing religion can result in a jail
sentence, at a time when "conservative Islam has exploded in
Indonesia's public life in lockstep with the rise of hardliners and
religiously motivated violence."
Such crackdowns have already led to the implementation of Sharia law in
Indonesia's Aceh Province, where a woman was publicly caned last year for being seen with a man
other than her husband.
Similar stories are emerging from Malaysia, Indonesia's formerly-secular
neighbor. Earlier this year, Malaysia's federal court ruled that sharia courts could preside over cases
involving apostasy. Last year, a state assembly controlled by the Islamist
PAS party approved a law that would subject those found guilty of
adultery or drinking alcohol to public canings. Even stricter laws are
already in place in Kelantan state, which bans cinemas and nightclubs. In
addition, throughout Malaysia, reports the AFP, the word "Allah," which has
previously been used both by Muslims and Christians, is now reserved for
Muslims only. Arabic words are increasingly replacing Malaysian ones, while
Christians have been prohibited from erecting crosses.
And during the Chinese New Year, despite the fact that nearly 25 percent
of Malays are of Chinese descent, images of dogs meant to celebrate the Year of the Dog
were "omitted from Lunar New Year decorations and merchandise for fear
of offending the country's Muslim majority."
The situation is getting worse., "One of the reasons is that
Malaysia sends thousands of students to Saudi Arabia, where they are
indoctrinated with hardline intolerant forms of Islam like Salafism and
Wahhabism," Ahmad Farouk Musa of the Islamic Resistance Front, a Malay
think tank, told CNN.
Students also are being indoctrinated in Bangladesh, another
formerly-secular Muslim country facing what a New York Times op-ed called "Creeping Islamism." As in Malaysia,
books by non-Muslims have been removed from school curricula, and secular
bloggers have been threatened or even killed,
including one American. Two of the largest extremist groups in
Bangladesh, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and ISIS, have targeted separate groups of young men – the former focused
on less-educated youth, the latter on wealthier, upper class men –
resulting in a broad swath of jihadist recruits.
Fortunately, "Bangladeshi terrorists have largely been
incompetent" so far, Georgetown University Professor C. Christine Fair
notes. Still, "there is evidence that
"Bangladeshi terrorists are upping their game."
Indeed, last December, a Bangladeshi terrorist attempted to blow up a
New York City subway station near Times Square. Five people were injured,
although the suicide bomb "malfunctioned. "
ISIS has also made significant inroads in the idyllic
"paradise" tourist destination of the Maldives, a group of nearly
1,200 tiny Pacific islands especially favored by honeymooners. Travel web
sites describe lush, tropical gardens, snow-white sands, sapphire waters
and other alluring clichés, accompanied by tantalizing photographs.
But in recent years, "there have been protests calling for the
imposition of sharia law, the black flag of Islamic State waved by
participants, just 15 minutes' boat ride from the nearest resort serving
alcohol and pork to skimpily-dressed Western guests," the Telegraph
reported in 2015.
The country also has one of the largest per-capita numbers of ISIS
recruits, and, according to a 2017 European Press Prize-winning report in the Internazionale, the ISIS fighters
are considered national heroes. "While the rest of the world watched
the Olympics last August," journalist Francesca Borri writes,
"everyone here was watching the battle of Aleppo. And rooting for Al
Qaeda."
A tourist staying at one of the Maldives' luxurious island resorts would
never notice most of this, because most locals live on other islands.
There, reports Borri, women are completely covered. Former Buddhist temples
have been transformed into mosques. While a supreme court justice was
caught with prostitutes, women suspected of adultery receive public
lashings. And only Muslims can be citizens.
Compounding the problem is that poverty in the Maldives is extreme – a
situation that adds to the allure of joining foreign terror groups, where
salaries are high and benefits frequently extended to families at home.
Now, some are returning from the failed caliphate and other
battlefields, yet "are living freely" on the islands, recruiting
and plotting new attacks.
But Islamism does not always translate into violent terrorism. In
Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's successful re-Islamizing of
Ataturk's secular republic involves the molding of minds away from Western
values to create a "new, religious generation." More and more
public schools have become more like religious madrassas, where girls
are taught to "obey" men, lessons on evolution have been removed
from schoolbooks, and boys and girls are often segregated in classrooms. In
Istanbul, reports
the Washington Post, "a local education official...demanded
that teachers bring pupils to attend morning prayers at local
mosques."
"Basically, President Erdogan is destroying Turkey's secular
education system," Soner Cagaptay, Turkey program director at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Voice of America. "That is the key reason why
Turkey worked as a democratic society, which did not produce violent
jihadist radicalization."
It's not just the schools. After the failed coup in 2016, Erdogan commanded the country's
mosques to raise the volume on calls to prayer. Once a gently melodic
intonation, the sound now blares over the cities, making normal
conversation nearly impossible until it ends. Most notably, many critics of
Islam have been arrested, and on Turkish state TV, renowned
theologian Mustafa Askar stated in 2016 that "those who do not pray in
the Islamic fashion are animals."
Such incidents attest to Sulehria's claim that Islamization in countries
of origin are shaping immigrant communities in the West. In Holland, for
instance, 20 Islamic boarding schools were legalized in 2016, according to
Elise Steilberg, who maintains a blog focusing on Turkish and Islamic
involvement in education in The Netherlands. Almost all, she says, are run
by a Turkish religious organization. Many also maintain strict Islamic
dress codes "that make covering the hair obligatory for girls from the
age of 4 on." Girls are also required to wear long skirts or pants,
and boys an Islamic headdress, or "topi." And all students
memorize Quranic surahs in both Arabic and Dutch.
Indeed, Steilberg says, there is an encroaching sense that Muslims are
becoming more fundamentalist in the Netherlands, despite efforts at
integration. "According to a recent survey," she notes, "the
number of people in the Netherlands that call themselves pious Muslims is
decreasing. But those who are religious are steadily becoming more
conservative in their beliefs. It is no longer even a surprise to see an
11-year-old fully covered in a chador in downtown Amsterdam."
Such sightings, to be fair, are by no means common; but the very
presence of fully-covered girls in a city known for its freedoms, including
legalized marijuana and prostitution, demonstrates the dramatic cultural
changes fundamentalist Islam is imposing on the secular West.
Yet Western governments seem to do little about it. In the UK, observes Deutsche Welle, rights organizations
"have repeatedly pointed to a growing radicalization, yet it appears
that authorities have not taken strong measures against it." In
Holland, "There is a lot of discussion about potentially violent
radicalization, but the principle of freedom of religion makes the
discussion of the growth of Islamic orthodoxy a no-go area," says
Steilberg. And in Belgium, despite a spate of terrorist attacks, Politico warned in early 2017 that "an
increasing number of mosques in Belgium teach a radical form of
Islam," while moderate preachers feel "'powerless' against the
spread of the more extreme ideology."
For many, the concern also goes beyond national security and cultural
change. Human rights issues are also frequently involved, particularly when
it comes to girls and women. Of the young girls in chador in downtown
Amsterdam, for instance, Steilberg says, "if she goes to an Islamic
school, one wonders if she will ever be fully aware of the rights and liberties
our country has to offer her. I think those rights and liberties are
something we should be proud of. They are not relative, but a basic
ingredient of what the Netherlands are and stand for today, and should be a
part of every citizen's future."
Even more, they are rights and liberties that should belong to everyone,
wherever they may live.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
Related Topics: Abigail
R. Esman, Malaysia,
radical
Islam, Farooq
Sulehria, blasphemy
laws, sharia
courts, Islamic
Resistance Front, Ahmad
Farouk Musa, Al-Qaida
in the Indian Subcontinent, Bangladesh
bloggers, C.
Christine Fair, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, madrassas,
Soner
Cagapty
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