Political Islam in Southeast Asia:
Moderates, Radicals and Terrorists

Angel M. Rabasa
London: Oxford University for the International Institute

for Strategic Studies, 2003. 82 pages.

The author of this brief study on the political aspects of Southeast Asian
Islam is a former State and Defense Department official who originally spe-
cialized in Latin American affairs before turning his attention to Southeast
Asia. Rabasa now works for the RAND Corporation, a think tank with
close links to the American national security community.

The publisher’s target audience is security policy makers. Therefore,
the studies it commissions are part analysis and part policy recommenda-
tions, whereby the former is often reduced to the bare essentials. It must be
said that, in this case, Rabasa has succeeded in presenting a reasonably bal-
anced picture in the space of a mere 80 pages. Already in his introduction
the author observes that, apart from a sharpening divide between militant
Islam and the West, the antagonism between radicals and moderates within
the Muslim world has increased as well, and that strengthening moderate
and tolerant tendencies within Islam should be supported.

Rabasa sees both external and internal influences contributing to the
rise of Islamic radicalism. In response to the intrusion of western culture, a
heightened sense of Muslim self-awareness has found expression in identi-
ty-driven politics. A further polarizing element in Southeast Asian Islam is
the Arabization process carried out by Wahhabi-inspired movements and
with financial support from the Middle East. Other auxiliary factors to the
formation of transnational networks connecting Muslim radicals are the
Iranian revolution, the Afghan war, disillusion over the lack of progress in
solving the Palestinian issue, and the eruption of ethnic conflicts involving
Muslims in such areas as Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir.

Shifting to internal factors, Rabasa identifies different sets of causes
for each Muslim country and Muslim-dominated region in Southeast
Asia. In the case of Indonesia, the vacuum left by an imploding state
structure following Suharto's fall led to a sharpened political competition
in which some saw Islam as a suitable vehicle to power. Malaysia wit-
nessed increased rivalry between the ruling UMNO coalition and the Pan-
Malay Islamic Party (PAS) for the vote of rural Malays, while in the
Muslim-dominated southern regions of Thailand and the Philippines resis-

Book Reviews 105



106 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:4

tance to the central government has manifested itself in religiously inspired
militancy.

Before elaborating on these issues, the writer provides a bird’s eye
view of the historical diversity of Southeast Asian Islam. Touching on the
multiplicity of Muslim identities in Indonesia, the fusion of ethnicity and
religion in Malaysia, and the formation of Moro identity in the southern
Philippines, Rabasa adds briefer impressions of the Muslim presence in such
miniature states as Singapore and Brunei, and in the mainland states of
Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma. The presence of Shi`ism is also noted.
Although the produced images lack nuance due their brevity, they at least
make the reader aware of the complex nature of Southeast Asian Islam(s).

The author’s analysis of the emergence of a “Jihad Project” in
Indonesia drops a bit out of the air. If Indonesian Islam was originally so
tolerant, how did Muslim radicalism succeed in getting a foothold in the
first place? This question is basically left unanswered. Maybe this is
because Rabasa subscribes to the thesis that fundamentalism is a response
to discomfort with modernity, as proposed by Bruce Lawrence in his land-
mark study Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the
Modern Age (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995). 

So, without mentioning the heated debates between the Shari`ah-minded
and proponents of wahdat al-wujud in the seventeenth-century Indo-Malay
world or the impact of Dutch colonialism, Rabasa moves straight to the
rebellions that raged through parts of Indonesia between 1948-65, led by
Muslims who were dissatisfied with the secularist politics of the young
Indonesian republic. He then continues with the repression of political
Islam under General Suharto’s “New Order” regime (1967-98). 

Although he sees a change of attitude in the early 1990s – seen in the
emergence of charitable foundations, legal equality for Islamic courts, and
the formation of the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI)
– Rabasa leaves the reader guessing as to what caused some of Suharto’s
generals to turn “green” and establish links with increasingly active dakwah
(propagation) organizations. The deteriorating security situation after 1998,
leading to anarchy and atrocities in eastern Indonesia, before culminating
in the Bali bombing of 2002, is explored in considerably more detail. The
existence of a greater regional Jemaah Islamiya terrorist network, however,
is only briefly touched on in a later chapter.

The author qualifies Malaysia as an Islamic country, in contrast to
Indonesia, which supposedly defines its national identity in non-religious
terms. This is not entirely correct, however, because Indonesia’s official



Book Reviews 107

Pancasila ideology – although refusing to identify with one or the other
denomination or tradition – establishes the belief in a single God as one of
its pillars, and is therefore decidedly religious. In analyzing the situation in
Malaysia, Rabasa explores the stellar rise and equally rapid demise of
Anwar Ibrahim, a former Muslim student leader turned cabinet minister.
Briefly profiting from Ibrahim’s ill-treatment at the hands of the UMNO
leadership in 1998, the PAS lost much of its appeal again after the 9/11
attacks. Rabasa also signals that the course of political Islam in Malaysia is
of great concern to neighboring Chinese-dominated Singapore, a commercial
powerhouse that needs security and stability for its economic survival.

The governments of the predominantly Christian Philippines and
Buddhist Thailand are each confronted with a different set of challenges in
dealing with the substantial Muslim minorities in their southern regions.
But what they have in common is a Gordian knot of grievances resulting
from economic deprivation, political marginalization, and questions of cul-
tural identity. 

Rabasa concludes that both threat-perceptions and policy priorities have
changed dramatically since 2001-02. But instead of spending a lot of time
on suggesting concrete security measures, the author deserves credit for tak-
ing a more long-term perspective and focusing on the role that moderate
Muslims can play in stemming the tide of radical political Islam. Rabasa has
consulted leading intellectuals, among them Nurcholish Madjid (Indonesia)
and Azyumardi Azra (Indonesia), as well as such promising young activists
as Ulil Abshar-Abdalla (Indonesia) and Farish Noor (Malaysia). The current
American foreign policy establishment would do well to follow him in this
and pay more attention to the strand of Islam represented by these thinkers.

Carool Kersten, Arabist and Islamologist
Academic Director of Lexia in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Faculty Member, Thai & Southeast Asian Studies Program
Payap University, Ching Mai, Thailand