In the first of a two-part essay, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib offers several reasons for why extremists have been able to influence and condition the discourse that they want. The second essay will look at how to address the polarisation wrought by extremist discourse.
A week after the shocking acts of terror in Paris, questions began to emerge on how imminent the danger was to Singapore society. Given the Republic’s status as a major cosmopolitan city, the danger is real — particularly when we have appeared on the target list of terrorist networks such as Jemaah Islamiyah and more recently, the ISIS-affiliated Katibah Nusantara. We have also seen the emergence of what terrorism expert and forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman termed as “leaderless jihad” in his 2008 book of the same title. This is a type of social movement that is fluid, independent and unpredictable, yet connected through a common cause and linked via the virtual world of social media.
Earlier this year on 27 May, Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry announced that two radicalised youths were detained for harbouring intentions to carry out attacks in public places. The pull towards extremism among youth in Singapore is certainly a cause of concern. It shows the success of extremist movements to rebrand and position their struggle into something that is attractive, hip or cool. Combined with the sense of partaking in an epic fight against the evils of the world, young minds may be vulnerable to messaging that divides society into dualistic camps of “good” versus “evil”. This may be drawn from valid grievances that sectors of the Muslim community have, particularly from the perceived continuous humiliation of Muslim societies. As noted by Evelin Linder in her 2006 book, Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict, “when a humiliated mind is left to reflect on its own destruction, it may become convinced that it must inflict even greater pain on the perpetrator.”
It is not surprising, therefore, to find occasional sympathies for ISIS among Muslims, who will either dismiss ISIS as an invention of Western nations or Israel through some conspiratorial charges, or to downplay the atrocities committed by ISIS by calling attention to specific “attacks against Islam or Muslim countries” such as the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the long-time issue of Gaza and Palestine.
This shows that tackling the issue of ideological sympathy and support for extremism may be more arduous than previously thought, given the complexity of the issue in an entangled world of geo-political violence. According to a recent Pew Global Attitude Survey (2015), some 11% of Muslims in Malaysia adopt a favourable attitude towards ISIS. One aspect of the attraction may be located in the popular apocalyptic discourse peddled in Malay religious discourse. Volatility in the geopolitical and domestic political landscape may heighten the sense of an impending threat to a known way of life. One possible explanation for the allure of religious violence is the “concept of salvation or redeeming humanity and the earth from a fallen state, either in this world or the hereafter”, notes author Selma Gregg, in the 2014 book, The Path to Salvation: Religious Violence from the Crusades to Jihad. Islamist discourse carries this theme, be it in the form of “defense of sacred space, the creation of a religious government, [or] the cleansing of society from threats to the faith.”
Amidst uncertainty and fear, individuals may be driven to support voices that position themselves as the messiahs of the world. ISIS knows this. Through its propaganda mouthpiece, such as the Dabiq magazine, it has harped on the millenarian aspects of its cause — one that will regain the “dignity of Muslims” through the implementation of “Islam in totality” via a caliphate system. For ISIS, the world is divided into black and white: “Islam/Muslims” versus the “unIslamic/kuffar (infidels)”. This is a common mental dichotomy that can be found in extremist movements across the world.
Understanding Extremist Discursive Strategies
Dealing with the social, and not just security threat that terrorism poses requires understanding why the message of violence is so attractive. A lot of focus has been devoted to identifying the platforms in which these messages are circulated, particularly through on-line sites and chat-groups. But to understand the lure of these messages, one must understand the discourse that extremists propagate and how they latch onto the general sentiment of the masses through heightening their grievances, whether these are valid or perceived. A person does not arbitrarily decide to commit acts of terror; they have to be mentally conditioned through a way of viewing and interpreting the world, before this framework is connected to their personal biography.
This requires us to move upstream to identify how extremists utilise certain ways of thinking to condition and influence the discourse they want. One obvious form is the strategy to polarise society into two opposing camps, denigrating one through appendages of dehumanising words and accusations, and eventually legitimising the domination of one and the elimination of the other. In the context of Islamist extremism, one should be wary of ways of speaking that generalise an entire concept such as “the West”, and appending this term with pejorative judgments like “anti-Islam”, “immoral”, “decadent” and “atheistic-secular”, while positioning “Islam” as the panacea.
At the same time, one must also be wary of the opposite generalisation that paints an entire concept of “Islam” as a religion replete with “violence”, “barbaric” and “anti-modern”. Extremists from both sides relish such fallacious ways of thinking as it fits into their underlying assumption of “a clash of civilisations”. This way of thinking has fuelled both Islamism — an ideology based on the politicisation of Islam — and Islamophobia — an industry of suspicion fuelled by right-wing groups across Europe and America.
A second form of extremist discursive strategy is what I term as ring-fencing. This is most obvious in internal debates within Islam. This operates at two levels. First, non-Muslims are excluded from a debate when one says, “this is a Muslim issue”. Of course, issues of theology may be best left to the adherents of the religion, but issues such as the public implementation of religious laws cannot be left to internal debates because they impact society as a whole, be it Muslims or non-Muslims. Second, dissenting voices within an internal debate will be subjected to silencing techniques or through proscribing parameters to the debate by way of fear. A common tool employed by extremists in internal debates within Islamic discourse is to level charges of heresy or takfir (apostasy/excommunication).
In ring-fencing, the first target is to silence internal critics who dare challenge extremist assertions, while ensuring moderate and progressive voices within do not get the support of non-Muslims despite both raising a common objection against extremism on humanistic grounds such as principles of justice, equality, compassion and others. In other words, solidarity along universal values are decried in extremist discursive strategy simply because exceptionalism is the order of the day for a black and white world that can then justify why one is superior and must obliterate the other. The domination of a single, monolithic view is the goal of the extremist discursive strategy of ring-fencing. This will then allow the extremist to claim sole authority in all matters of religion, which dismisses the deep diversity that has traditionally characterised the faith.
Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib is an interfaith activist and founding member of Leftwrite Center, a dialogue initiative for young professionals.
Top Photo from Twitter: Loveena Tandon