SINGAPORE’S proposal to conduct an East Asia Summit symposium on the deradicalisation of extremists is a contribution to a two-front war on the resurgence of the global terrorist menace. The first front is military, with a hot war being waged on Middle Eastern battlefields where theIslamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has entrenched itself. Singapore has committed limited but significant military assets to the military effort. The second front is ideological and exists anywhere – in North America, Europe or South-east Asia – from which ISIS seeks to draw its international fighters. Here, military means must yield space to a battle for hearts and minds.

Deradicalisation is an intrinsic part of the latter initiative. Its first task is to create a climate of religious opinion which sidelines radicals and deprives them of the dangerous comfort of believing that they represent the mainstream.

…The symposium would do well to examine how deradicalisation is itself threatened by developments on the ground. A recent article in Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis, published by the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, examines how a movement against deradicalisation has emerged in Indonesia.