Channel NewsAsia
21 January 2015
- RSIS
- Media Mentions
- West’s Defence of Charlie Hebdo Worries Moderate Asia Muslims
West’s Defence of Charlie Hebdo Worries Moderate Asia Muslims
KUALA LUMPUR: The West’s defence of Charlie Hebdo’s right to offend is testing the patience of Muslims even in moderate Indonesia and Malaysia, who fear it could fuel radical sentiment kindled by the Islamic State group.
Publicly, the issue has stirred barely a ripple in the Southeast Asian neighbours, underscoring their cultural and philosophical gap with the rest of the Muslim world, where it has triggered outrage.
But even some liberal Indonesians and Malaysians express resentment over the French magazine’s crude caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed and the “Je suis Charlie” reaction, while vehemently condemning the massacre at its Paris office.
…The Paris attack was likely quietly applauded among hardline conservative Muslims in the region, who feel Charlie Hebdo pushed too far, said Joseph Liow, an expert on Southeast Asian militancy at the Brookings Institute in the United States.
RSIS / Online
