Islamic attacks threaten religious harmony in Southeast Asia

Jürgen Kremb:

Buddhist monks are being murdered, Christian schoolchildren beheaded and dissenters blown up. Southeast Asia's peaceful co-existence among religions is under siege, from Bangkok to Jakarta. Meanwhile, politicians and military leaders are using Islamic fervor to boost their own power.

Pheewat Tirasato is normally in a hurry to reach the scene of the crime when he's needed. After all, he only has to throw on a saffron robe and a pair of rubber sandals and hop into the car he is provided by the temple where he serves as a monk. But when his mobile phone rang on Oct. 16, he could only advise the caller to lock his doors and pray that the army would arrive soon. "I don't know if I can make it there alive," he says, and tells the caller that he'll be there the next day.

It's a cautiousness that has probably saved his life. By the time Tirasato, who provides comfort to the victims of violence, finally arrived at Promprasith Temple 20 kilometers from the southern Thai city of Narathiwat, large sections of the complex had been destroyed.

Local residents told the "monk of reconciliation," as Tirasato is called here, that about 20 masked men attacked the temple complex. "Allah is great," they shouted before killing two temple novices. When a 76-year-old monk stood in front of the attackers in an attempt to appease them, they slit his throat and threw his body into a fire.

The army couldn't help because fallen trees blocked the access roads to the temple. But Tirasato was also of little use to the surviving residents of the temple complex. "Hatred robbed them of their voices," he says.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in southern Thailand in the past two years in clashes involving the military, Muslims and Buddhist settlers. But the slaughtering of monks by Muslim holy warriors -- that was a first.

The news from Promprasith came as a shock to the rest of Thailand. It brings with it an unmistakable message: that dedicated jihadists who have been committing acts of terror in Southeast Asia for years have now set their sights on this primarily Buddhist country. The region's image of peaceful co-existence among more than 200 million Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus -- a peaceful co-existence among vastly different religions from Indonesia to Burma, which has made Southeast Asia a model of tolerance -- now exists only in tourism ads.

Terror is everywhere. Although Indonesia recently reported the death of dangerous bomb-maker Azahari bin Husin ("Dr. Azahari"), a member of the notorious Indonesian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah and the man believed responsible for the 2002 attacks in Bali, among other acts of terror, the whereabouts of the more than 40 suicide bombers he trained remain a mystery. In Australia, authorities reportedly managed, at the last minute, to prevent a group of Muslim extremists from staging "an attack on the scale of the London bombings." The would-be attackers had apparently singled out the country's only nuclear power plant as their target.

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