ABSTRACT
South and South East Asia have long been recognized for the complexity of their violent internal challenges, with a growing need for academic or policy-relevant work to enhance comprehension. Appropriate response to challenges necessarily extends beyond tactical considerations to address the drivers that propel the resultant insurgencies, terrorism, and violent extremism. The variation has become more acute with different political parties in power attempting to implement individual, parochial models of counterinsurgency. The leaders’ mind-set may certainly be labeled extremism, accompanied as it is by violence, but the followers’ orientation is best understood through the prism of recruitment as opposed to conversion. Neighboring Malaysia draws on a more traditional emphasis on law enforcement and intelligence-gathering in fashioning a twenty-first century approach to its present threat of religious violent extremism. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
