Dealing with "extremism"

The Pew Research Centre poll I referred to in yesterday’s post, while highlighting considerable differences between Muslim and Western publics, also pointed out that they shared worries about “Islamic extremism”. In Indonesia, for example, 42% expressed this concern (only Muslims were interviewed, for the sake of comparison among publics). This is a significant number, although still the lowest among the publics surveyed. The problem, as always, is that one person’s “extremist” is another person’s strong-minded defender of the good.

Indonesia has made significant strides in dealing with terrorist elements, although they are constantly morphing. Luke Hunt focuses on the hardball side of Indonesia’s counter-terrorism (as well as offering Malaysia’s “widely loathed” International Security Act a rare plaudit). A recent comic book initiative in Indonesia, starring a reformed militant in a “Captain Jihad” role, exemplifies another side of the attempt to change the script. 

But as Tim Lindsey argued last week, “extremism” has many guises, not all of them terrorist.

The treatment of minorities is always a good test of the health of a democracy. This applies to any democracy – and some Western democracies need to take a good, hard look at themselves in this respect. But relatively young democracies are particularly vulnerable to challenges in this area. Rising tension between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia is therefore a real cause for concern, and is likely to provide fuel for more intolerance and stereotyping, on all sides, both domestically and further afield. 

As a report on Indonesia late last year from International Crisis Group makes clear, when officials and legislators insist on the need for “religious harmony”, they often give the impression that “this can be legislated or even imposed, rather than requiring sustained time and effort to understand how tensions have grown and developing programs designed to reduce them”.

Religious tension is not primeval, unstoppable, or inevitable. It is caused. Rooting out those causes – while sensitively dealing with their effects – will not be easy, but it is possible.