Countering campus extremism

Extremism has long been part of higher education. The suppression of Arabic and Jewish scholars in Spain during the 15th century, the Nazi persecution of Jewish and communist intellectuals and the mass murder of scholars in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, are potent reminders of the tyranny of intolerance.

Now, Islamic extremism on campus is troubling higher education systems around the world, including many Muslim nations. The storied Al-Azhar University in Cairo – a beacon of Islamic learning founded before Oxford or Cambridge – has just pledged to fight militant tendencies among its students. In acknowledging criticisms that it is fostering extremism, Al-Azhar President Abdel-Hai Azab recently ordered the formation of academic committees charged with revising textbooks to purge them of radical jihadist ideas.

In Southeast Asia, too, rising campus radicalism has led to campaigns to curb its influence. But the present extremism did not spring from nowhere. Radical movements in the region are decades old and in some cases linked to the desire for regional autonomy, or to fighting for Islam in far-flung places such as Afghanistan. Hundreds of Filipinos, Malaysians and Indonesians – an unknown proportion of whom were young university students – volunteered as Mujahideen warriors and returned radicalised.

Indonesia in the 1980s saw examples of radical Islamist movements, some associated with Hizb ut-Tahrir at universities such as Gadjah Mada in Jogjakarta and Bandung Institute of Technology. Hizb ut-Tahrir is currently banned in countries such as Germany, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt but legal in the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere, where repeated investigations have revealed no evidence of terrorist activities.

Most recently, a national deradicalisation blueprint was developed, with a national terrorism prevention programme that focused on the 13 most-affected provinces. It included strengthening the capacity of universities to resist terrorism.

Yet, Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict Director Sidney Jones pointed out recently that training 575 staff at Indonesian universities is of questionable value since campuses have not been a particular target of violent extremists – partly because organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir are active in keeping them out, and also since the details of the training module seem, at least so far, rather vague.

It is also not clear that the recent visit of radical clerics from Egypt to Indonesia, including their involvement in a conference at Universitas Indonesia, had much effect in tempering radicals. More successful have been visits to universities from members of groups – such as the Survivors Foundation (Yayasan Penyintas) and the Association for Victims of Terrorism Bombings in Indonesia, who have shared their stories with students and staff.

Afghanistan

Islamic extremism in the Philippines can be partly traced back to effects of the Afghan war, during which hundreds of Muslim Filipinos travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to join the mujaheddin. It is not clear how many may have been students. The militant Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, or BIFF, in the Philippines’ south has openly pledged allegiance to Islamic State (sometimes called Da’esh), while Abu Sayyaf members were reported among slain jihadists in Syria.

Nonetheless, the dean of the University of the Philippines’ Institute of Islamic Studies expressed concern that media sensationalism provoked fear and potentially worsened the situation. Like Indonesia, the Philippines has also recently used visits by prominent clerics, including from Egypt, at Mindanao State University. The visits have been attended by thousands of students and staff, with messages on the five pillars of faith, good governance and peaceful coexistence with other communities of faith.

In an eerie reminder, however, their visits paralleled a firefight between government military and the BIFF, which forced thousands of villagers to flee.

Thailand, too, has its problems with Salafist jihadist groups and with clumsy responses by the Thai military, although there is little evidence of extremist activity in universities in the southernmost border provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.

In Malaysia, an early example was Mohammed Fadly, a student at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, who, after taking an oath of allegiance to Jemaah Islamiah, sought to fight for Islam in southern Thailand. Recently, increasing tensions between Malaysia’s secular constitution and Islam as the state religion provoked a group of leading Malaysians, calling themselves the G40, to warn of increasing Islamisation.

In response to the radicalisation of its youth, the Malaysian Islamic Development Department established a cross-agency committee to explain misconceptions surrounding jihad, notably also to Malaysia’s universities. A Mahasiswa Islam Tolak Keganasan (Muslim Undergraduates Reject Violence) campaign hopes to use Muslim student leaders at universities to disseminate the real meaning of jihad.

Support has also come from clerics in the form of a nationwide fatwa declaring that the call of jihad and martyrdom by Islamic State is un-Islamic. Malaysians who fought for Islamic State and died could not claim to be martyrs.

Increased scrutiny

Malaysia has enhanced the scrutiny of international student applications, via the national agency Education Malaysia Global Services that manages all aspects of international student applications, including passport checks. As a result, rejection rates fell from 28% in 2011 and 24% in 2012 to only 3% in 2013. Nonetheless, despite these efforts, a captured Hamas terrorist recently revealed that the organisation is actively recruiting young Palestinians studying in Malaysia.

In another case, a captured Hamas terrorist revealed that he had been sent to Malaysia, with nine others, to train using hang gliders in preparation for terrorist attacks against Israel. Some 40 Palestinian students were said to have been recruited in this manner. The recruitment and associated activities are allegedly centred on the International Islamic University of Malaysia, with one or two of its professors named as having been involved.

Hearts and minds?

Such recruitment activities give cause for pause regarding the success of regional hearts-and-minds campaigns aimed at countering extremism. Of more than 12,000 foreigners who joined the fight in Syria last year, perhaps 10% or more came from Southeast Asia and show the problem remains real. While the above shows that some terrorist recruits are international students (and some domestic), just how many were from the higher education sector remains unknown.

Ultimately, a solid foundation in what it means to be a good Muslim, as well as acceptance of Muslims within the wider society (in the case of Thailand and the Philippines) are needed to counter the attractions of groups such as Islamic State within the region’s universities. But more work remains to be done to counter the effects of extreme Islamist ideologies in the region’s universities.

If universities are sources of ideas, there is a need to harness this energy to research the phenomenon more fully, work with communities to promulgate a moderate Muslim message of peace and understanding, and promote a more inclusive form of democracy – which can undoubtedly weaken the appeal of extremism to impressionable young university students.

Anthony Welch is professor of education at the University of Sydney, Australia, and is a visiting professor at the National Higher Education Research Institute in Penang, Malaysia. E-mail: anthony.welch@sydney.edu.au. This article was first published in International Higher Education Number 82: Fall 2015.