Abstract:

The maintenance of a ‘moderate, mainstream’ Muslim community as a bulwark against the fraying of harmonious ethnic relations has become a key governance concern in multiracial, multi-religious societies post-9/11. In light of the global concern, and often paranoia, with diasporic Islam, Islamic religious institutions and civil society have been portrayed in the popular media as hotbeds of radicalism, promoters of hatred, and recruiters for a “conflict of civilisation” between the Muslim world and the modern world. Singapore has taken a broad-based community approach in advancing interreligious tolerance, including a subtle initiative to include the putative Muslim civil society in advancing the understanding of and the promotion of a moderate brand of Islam in Singapore. This tacit process of regulation (top-down, intra-community and inter-community), while effective, is ultimately conditioned and constrained by the unique governance context in Singapore where the state maintains a zero-tolerance approach to interreligious tension and conflict. However, the trouble with the primacy of a hard law, coercive, top-down approach is that it arrogates to the state and policymakers the power to control and define the “problem.” This paper examines Singapore’s counter-terrorism approach, one that still predominantly employs hard law but increasingly values the role of soft law and the imperative to mobilise society, especially people of faith. The challenge in keeping the counter-terrorism policy on an even keel is not to see religion primarily as a fault-line but instead to harness the power of faith to entrench religious freedom, respect and dignity for diversity.