Courting the Cham

via CAAI

A cultural revival gathers pace. So do worries about fundamentalism

Sep 30th 2010 | PHNOM PENH

New theatre of terror?

IN THE so-called war on terror, Cambodia is a sleepy outpost on a tense South-East Asian front that stretches from the Philippines to Thailand. Western governments are, however, worried that trouble may be brewing in this backwater.

Security experts fret about the possible perversion of a cultural revival by Cambodia’s Muslims, who mostly belong to the 400,000-strong Cham minority. In the genocidal 1970s the Khmer Rouge executed most leaders of the Cham and tried to exterminate both the tribe and Islam from the Maoist paradise they said they were building. Ben Kiernan of Yale University estimates that 90,000 out of a population of 250,000 died, a higher rate of loss than any other ethnic group. Only 21 imams survived out of 113, along with perhaps 15% of Cambodia’s mosques.

As they struggled from the wreckage, poor Muslim congregations came to depend on foreign charities for help rebuilding their mosques, whose numbers have risen tenfold to around 250 today, says Bjorn Blengsi, an anthropologist. They also became receptive to imported versions of Islam, which tend to be stricter than the traditionally relaxed local variety. Agnès de Féo, another anthropologist and author of “L’Islam au Cambodge et au Vietnam” says both Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia and Tablighi Jemaat from India are gaining adherents.

Nothing wrong with that, perhaps. Most Islamic charities teach the faith and help the poor. But not, alas, all. In one much-publicised incident in 2002, according to the American government, a local member of the Kuwaiti-based Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS) helped an Indonesian fugitive, Riduan Isamuddin (alias Hambali), the mastermind behind the nightclub bombings in Bali. Hambali, who is now in prison in Guantánamo Bay, reportedly said he had hoped to bomb the American and British embassies in Phnom Penh and to use Cambodia as a base for terrorist operations throughout South-East Asia. RIHS, which has been cleared of links with terrorism by Kuwait’s government, remains active in Cambodia. A local affiliate, the Kuwait-Cambodia Islamic Cultural Training Centre, recently met the president of parliament.

The influence of foreign religious organisations seems to be growing along with rising government loans from Gulf states. These loans include help for rebuilding religious institutions. In January, for example, Cambodia approved an agreement with Kuwait from 2008 in which the oil-rich state promised loans of $546m, mostly for energy and agriculture, and including $5m for new mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools). The only unusual thing about this was that the religious component was revealed. According to Milton Osborne of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank, most aid packages from the Gulf include such a component but do not make it public.

Nothing wrong with that either, of course. But suspect and banned organisations seem to be moving in the slipstream of genuine charities. According to Ms de Féo, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and the International Islamic Relief Organisation have both worked in Cambodia. Branches of these bodies appear on the United Nations’ list of organisations banned for their links with al-Qaeda. Several other Kuwaiti charities in Cambodia are on America’s list of groups which finance terrorism, including some local affiliates of RIHS.

The concern of security experts is not that scores of terrorist actions are being carried out or even averted just in time. The most recent example of a terrorist plot hatched in Cambodia was as long ago as 2004, when three people connected to a madrassa in Phnom Penh were convicted of planning to bomb embassies there.

Rather, the worry is that unsavoury organisations are coming into the country to take advantage of the Cham revival. Though the Cham themselves do not seem to be embracing extremism, they remain—understandably given their history—suspicious of outsiders (including Cambodia’s government). Few people really know what is happening inside the areas they control. Fundamentalism remains a force in South-East Asia, and lawless Cambodia is no safe haven.