Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid is Professor of Political Science, School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). He was visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, from 1 September 2015 to 31 May 2016. He obtained his BA and MA from the University of Oxford and the University of Leeds respectively, and earned his PhD in Politics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, in 1998. He teaches undergraduate courses at USM in political science and manages as well a postgraduate course, “Islam in Southeast Asia,” for the M.A. in Asian Studies at the School of Social Sciences. He has held visiting research fellowships in Singapore and Australia, participated in international research projects and published in leading international journals. His recent book chapters are “Malay Racialism and the Sufi Alternative” in Melayu: The Politics, Poetics and Paradoxes of Malayness (Maznah Mohamad and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied, eds.; National University of Singapore Press, 2011), “Religion, Secularism and the State in Southeast Asia” in Thinking International Relations Differently (Arlene B. Tickner and David L. Blaney, eds.; Routledge, 2012) and “The Aurad Muhammadiah Congregation: Modern Transnational Sufism in Southeast Asia” in Encountering Islam: The Politics of Religious Identities in Southeast Asia (Hui Yew-Foong, ed.; Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013). He also authored a chapter on Middle Eastern Christians for the Oxford Handbook on Christianity in Asia. His publications earned him a Ma’al Hijrah (Islamic New Year) academic excellence award from USM in 2010.
Institutionalized Violence In Muslim World Begets Global Islamist Militancy
The rise since mid-2014 of the Islamic State (ISIS) seems to have eclipsed other manifestations of global Islamist violence. ISIS’s notoriety is attributable to, among other things, its spectacular brutality, territorial gains, and apocalyptic ideology. Escaping the attention of many is the fact that ISIS taps into sentiments that have been fostered by extremist policies of many Muslim governments and leaders themselves as an outgrowth of decades of authoritarian rule following post-colonial upheavals in many Muslim societies.
ISIS in Southeast Asia: Internalized Wahhabism is a Major Factor
The internalization since the 1970s of the Wahhabi brand of Salafism among Southeast Asian Muslims is the major factor behind this apparent shift towards a more radical worldview. The relatively low level of concern over rising Islamist extremism among Indonesian and Malaysian Muslims indicates a worrying institutionalization of radical interpretations of Islam in the general Islamic landscape of both countries. Countering Salafization is rendered difficult by the fact that influential Muslim personalities and elements within Muslim-majority states have themselves embraced aspects of Wahhabism. Between Wahhabism and ISIS, which is but its violent manifestation, lies a short and slippery slope.
Shi‘a-Inspired Violence in Malaysia: A Possibility?
Ever since the triumph of Iranian Shi’a revolutionaries against the shah in 1979, the Malaysian government has been wary of the dangers of the revolution being exported across its borders. The author argues that rather than oppressing and vilifying indigenous Shi‘a citizens, the state should engage them intellectually, socially, and perhaps even religiously, in the spirit of Prime Minister Najib Razak.
