Far Right vs Islamists: A Vicious Circle of Extremism in Southeast Asia?

South China Morning Post

06 February 2021

The detention of a Protestant Christian teenage boy in Singapore who allegedly plotted terror attacks at two mosques has raised concerns of the danger of Western-style far-right extremism in Southeast Asia, where previously, attention had largely been focused on radicalisation affecting its Muslim communities. Experts say the significance of the boy’s arrest is about more than this single case; they say it raises the spectre of “reciprocal radicalisation”, a vicious circle in which extremist groups become increasingly violent as they launch tit-for-tat revenge attacks in response to each other’s activities. “The rise of the far right these days can be called ‘reciprocal radicalisation’, in which two sides – the Islamists and the far right – feed off each other,” said Dr. Noor Huda Ismail, a documentary filmmaker on terrorism and Visiting Fellow at RSIS in Singapore. Associate Professor Kumar Ramakrishna, Associate Dean and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at RSIS in Singapore said the circle of attacks went even further back. He noted that the Christchurch attacker had himself been motivated at least in part by the desire to strike back against what he perceived as Islamist extremist aggression against Europeans.

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Last updated on 06/05/2021