Virginie Andre

'Neojihadism' and YouTube: Patani Militant Propaganda Dissemination and Radicalization

Abstract This article examines the use of YouTube by the new generation of Patani 2 Muslim militants in their dissemination of propaganda and radical identity formation. These fighters have now brought their neojihadist war to the ‘Virtual’. Videos of Patani shuhada and Buddhist beheadings are regularly posted on YouTube, with the aim of legitimizing their ‘defensive jihad’. While most of the efforts in countering virtual terrorist radicalization have focused on jihadist websites, forums and blogs, very little attention has been paid to the relationship between the ‘YouTube effect’ and neojihadist violence. This article offers an analysis of the use of YouTube by the Patani Muslim insurgency in order to extract the ideological themes which enable us to understand the process of glocal neojihadist radicalization in southern Thailand.

Mohamed Merah: From Petty Criminal to Neojihadist

The 2012 killing of three French soldiers and four Jewish civilians by a 23-year-old petty criminal turned neojihadist simultaneously manifested some of contemporary French societys worst fears, namely the radicalisation of its youth and home-grown terrorism. The attacks were the final step in Mohamed Merahs radicalisation, a process influenced during his family, accelerated during his time in prison and nurtured by divides within French society. This article aims to shed light on his radicalisation by examining the social and familial milieux he grew up in and the impact incarceration had on his identity and beliefs. More broadly, this article will demonstrate how in a country where the ultra-Rights hijacking of the Republican notion of secularity or laïcité is leading to an increasingly divided society, neojihadism is providing some Muslim youth with an alternative source of identity.

The Janus Face of New Media Propaganda: The Case of Patani Neojihadist YouTube Warfare and Its Islamophobic Effect on Cyber-Actors

Surfing on the Internet 2.0 revolution, Patani 2.0 has allowed Patani neojihadist militants to access new competitive spaces and create their own imagined online community by penetrating new realms of the Internet. This article discusses the use of new media militant propaganda by Patani militants and how it is Janus faced. It further examines how the Patani 2.0 social interaction enabled by social media such as YouTube leads to group cohesion among certain actors and the formation of a collective identity that is clustered around the notions of Muslim victimization and defensive jihad; and how, at the same time, it reinforces antithetical identities and fosters group identity competition, where one religious group is often pitted against another. As a result, the Janus effect of Patani neojihadist YouTube online propaganda, while it primarily seeks to radicalize, also generates a reactionary, often virulent, anti-Muslim response from the movements critics.

A Fragmented Discourse of Religious Leadership in France: Muslim Youth between Citizenship and Radicalization

Abstract At a time when public debates about radicalization of Muslim youth in the West are taking center stage and when questions about “home-grown” security threats are increasing in the wake of a number of terrorist attacks in many émigré societies, this article provides fresh empirical insights from the perspective of religious leadership. It outlines a picture of a highly diverse Muslim religious landscape where competing religious discourses are struggling to attract and support Muslim youth facing social dislocation and identity crises within increasingly contested social milieus. The article argues that a typology of religious leadership is clearly emerging where a spectrum of faith-based orientations and religious practice emphasize, to different degrees, notions of attachment to universal ethics and individual agency. The fact that conservative, sometimes radical, interpretations of such contestations represent a minority of voices is heartening even though the actual damage by such minority is often disproportionate to its actual size within the so-called silent majority. The empirical insights provided by the religious leaders interviewed for this study offer hope that the future of Western Muslims is more positive than we are led to think, if the possibility of combining devout faith with local political engagement becomes a real and sustainable conduit towards social inclusion and intercultural understanding and if necessary support and understanding are extended by the host communities.

Merah and Breivik: A Reflection of the European Identity Crisis

While the cases of Anders Behring Breivik and Mohamed Merah clearly demonstrate the impact of social networks and the role of the Internet and prison on the radicalization process, the killings in Norway and France in fact expose larger issues that exist within contemporary Europe, including profound identity crises manifesting as Islamist extremism in some quarters and far-right extremism in others. This article discusses the individual pathways towards extremism of Merah and Breivik, the interconnectivity of two extremisms and how these can be understood as mirrored manifestations of an identity crisis in Europe.1

Religious Citizenship and Islamophobia

The attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015, brought to the fore, yet again, the place of Islam in Western secular democracies and the questioning of Muslim citizenship. The hypermediatization of jihadist terrorism and its subsequent conflation with Muslim communities in general has led to both an increase in widespread popular fear of Islam and its followers, and the further marginalization and stigmatization of Muslim communities living in Western societies. In this issue of Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations we have brought together a range of studies and reflections pertinent to the contemporary, and arguably linked, issues of religious citizenship and Islamophobia. Sentiments of insecurity and uncertainty, which populist far-right movements ride on, are increasingly finding resonance among ordinary citizens. Some traditional political parties now flirt with demagogic discourse with respect to matters Islamic. Throughout, we see a hardening within Western democracies, manifested in the adoption of illiberal policies, the narrowing of their conception of secularity, and the alienation of a younger generation of Muslims. And yet there can be found, still, glimmers of hope and slivers of sanity. Stephane Lathion argues that, because of over-mediatization, Islam is now viewed problematically through the skewed lens of a highly visible and aggressive minority of Muslims. In Sweden, Ingemar Elander, Charlotte Fridolsson and Eva Gustavson examine how Muslims articulate their citizenship and express their faith, and this within a context where parts of that society can sometimes take an aggressive, typically ignorant, Islamophobic stance. Contrariwise, Robert Gould shows how, in Spain, following the banning of the burqa in France and Belgium, the Supreme Court nevertheless overturned the Catalonian municipalities’ similar ban. The Court favoured protection of a woman’s freedom of choice and constitutional protection of Spanish Muslim citizens’ fundamental rights. Virginie Andre argues that the relentless reduction of religious freedom under the increasing pressure of illiberal European laws results in some, at least, Muslim individuals identifying with narrow fundamentalist or extreme interpretations of religion that supersede their erstwhile European identities. Europe’s contemporary identity crisis is arguably highlighted by Islamist extremism in some quarters and far-right extremism in others. And there is a putative interconnectivity of these two extremisms, which can be understood as mirrored manifestations. For Douglas Pratt, such interconnectivity may be understood in terms of reactive coradicalization, an exclusionary reactionary process in which Islamophobia manifests as a new form of religious extremism whose ostensible aim is to counter Islamic extremism within otherwise secular Western societies. Danny Ben Moshe, on the other hand, points to another reactionary extremism, namely a “new anti-Semitism,” emerging from within European Muslim communities, which is adversely affecting Jewish–Muslim relations and, concomitantly, the sense of belonging to Europe of European Jewry.

Apostasy and Blasphemy: A Clash of Freedoms – Speech and Religion

This special issue examines, from a historical and contemporary perspective, notions of free speech and religious freedom within non-Muslim and Muslim societies and the ways in which these interact. Freedom of speech – the right to express freely one’s opinion – is a precious right. But too often we have seen it exploited to promote religious intolerance, such as Islamophobia, and hate speech. While most Western countries have a social environment in which racism and anti-Semitism are condemned and discredited in public life and the media, Islamophobia continues to be tolerated, depriving Western Muslims enjoying of the same rights and protections as other citizens. While not incompatible with free speech, the right to freedom of conscience and belief has also been used to curb free speech in order to protect religious beliefs and sensitivities and in some instances to prevent sectarian violence. A generation after Salman Rushdie, and some 10 years after the killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and the furore of the Danish cartoon controversy, the issue of freedom of speech in increasingly de-secularized societies remains as problematic as ever. The 2015 terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo brought to the fore lingering tensions within French society on the place of Islam within a secular state. What distinguishes this terrorist attack on the European continent from earlier ones is the symbolic value that Charlie Hebdo represents – the right to freedom of speech and the upholding of secular democracy. Islam is now an embedded feature in the Western religious landscape with the result that tensions have arisen between value-sets pertaining to “freedom of speech” on the one hand, and “freedom of religion” on the other. The former is seen in the West as an essential public value, the latter as belonging to the private sphere. But this does not always accord with the worldview of a given religious community. In consequence, with the two freedoms increasingly clashing, boundaries and identities are being pushed and redefined. While much of the contemporary focus is on Western democracies, little attention has been paid to the multiple and diverse voices in the Muslim world on the notions of free speech and religious freedom. Too often, the discourse has been dominated by a minority of voices, overshadowing those that do not necessarily see the two freedoms as being in contention.

Thai Cyber-Actors: Evidence of an Islamophobic Effect

The long-standing Patani Muslim separatist resistance of Southern Thailand is not one that is well known, and its contemporaneous spill over onto the Internet even less so. The more radical Patani online propaganda is in fact symptomatic of the relocation of the struggle within the sphere of influence of global jihadism, distancing itself from the ethno-nationalism characteristic of a previous generation of fighters. New media propaganda, in particular Jihad 2.0, has opened a new sphere of influence to the Patani neojihadist movement, allowing the militants to expand their propaganda campaign to a wider audience, while reaching out to a younger Melayu public. While Jihad 2.0 has presented the resistance movement with new ways to diffuse its message, in a more innovative and appealing manner, it also has enabled it to engage with its audiences more interactively. Because the message is no longer linear, anyone can contribute to the dialectics of the struggle, which in fine results in the alteration and reshaping of its ideological discourse in unprecedented directions. Arguably the ‘glocalisation’ of Islamophobia within Thai culture has resulted in the alteration of the Thai cultural stereotype of the Muslim khaek ‘Other’, transforming the khaek into an evil violent Muslim, both in real and virtual worlds. This further leads to discriminatory attitudes and behaviours towards Muslims, which causes the hardening of the views of the online Patani community of support towards the Thais and possibly its radicalisation.

Islam and Muslim–Buddhist and Muslim–Christian Relations in Southeast Asia

Studies of Muslim society and Islamic thought tend to focus on region-specific case studies and, where there is a comparison across regions, the comparison is generally between the centre and the periphery. Although the majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live in Asia, the vast bulk of scholarly writing focuses on Islam in the Middle East. In recent years, however, a growing body of scholarship has emerged that considers Islam and modern society in Asia in its own right. Much of this focuses on South Asia, which is understandable given that more than half a billion Muslims live there, but increasing attention is being given to the one-quarter of a billion Muslims living in Southeast Asia. Even so, there are relatively few comparative studies of Muslims living on the Asian periphery. This special issue of Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations contributes to this emerging pool of scholarship by offering an insight into the Muslim periphery of Southeast Asia. It focuses on Islam and Muslim communities in four Southeast Asian nations: two in predominantly Buddhist mainland Southeast Asia (Myanmar and Thailand), and two in archipelago Southeast Asia (in majority Muslim Indonesia and in majority Christian Philippines). In addition, the first of the five articles in this special issue makes a comparison between two Islamic movements in Indonesia and a prominent Islamic movement in Turkey. Whereas the other four articles focus on issues that complicate relations between Muslim minority communities and Buddhist and Christian majorities, this first article, by Greg Barton, makes a case for the three movements in question being understood as progressive Islamic movements that are very similar in many of their attributes, and much of their vision and activities, to Jewish and Christian religious philanthropic movements in the West that are concerned with providing modern secular education. Barton’s article compares broadly similar Islamic movements in Indonesia and Turkey. He looks at the Turkish social movement inspired by the writings of Fethullah Gülen, commonly referred to as the Gülen movement but known amongst the more than one million people associated with it in Turkey and around the world as the hizmet, which means “service.” Those working in the movement see their activity as being very much one of serving society in general – not just Muslim society. The movement began in the late 1970s in the overwhelmingly Muslim majority republic of Turkey, but in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it spread rapidly into Turkic Central Asian states, whilst at the same