By Shaun Waterman
WASHINGTON, July 22 (UPI) -- Indonesia is one of several Southeast Asian nations that are following the lead of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and launching programs to rehabilitate jailed Islamic extremists -- known as deradicalization.
But according to experts and two recent studies, Indonesia's deradicalization program -- a much smaller and less formalized affair than those run by its neighbors Singapore and Malaysia -- does not try to get the extremists to break with their radical, political interpretation of Islamic ideology, but rather to renounce violence, specifically suicide bombings and other mass casualty attacks on civilians.
The program "doesn't try to deradicalize them (in the sense of abandoning their interpretation of Islam) -- they're trying to get them to renounce violence," Zachary Abuza told United Press International.
Abuza, a professor at Simmons College in Boston, has long studied Islamic terrorism in the region and is the author of a forthcoming essay comparing all three nations' programs.
A study published last week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point comes to a similar conclusion. Read more ...
WASHINGTON, July 22 (UPI) -- Indonesia is one of several Southeast Asian nations that are following the lead of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and launching programs to rehabilitate jailed Islamic extremists -- known as deradicalization.
But according to experts and two recent studies, Indonesia's deradicalization program -- a much smaller and less formalized affair than those run by its neighbors Singapore and Malaysia -- does not try to get the extremists to break with their radical, political interpretation of Islamic ideology, but rather to renounce violence, specifically suicide bombings and other mass casualty attacks on civilians.
The program "doesn't try to deradicalize them (in the sense of abandoning their interpretation of Islam) -- they're trying to get them to renounce violence," Zachary Abuza told United Press International.
Abuza, a professor at Simmons College in Boston, has long studied Islamic terrorism in the region and is the author of a forthcoming essay comparing all three nations' programs.
A study published last week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point comes to a similar conclusion. Read more ...
Source: UPI
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