IN THE wake of the Manchester attack that killed 22 in the Ariana Grande concert, a French terrorism expert Olivier Roy puts out a very interesting observation. He looks into the profile of suicide bomber Sahman Abedi responsible for the carnage and finds out that he is the son of immigrant Libyan parents who fled the Gadhafi regime. Roy observes that Abedi, born in 1994, is divorced from both the Libyan culture of his origins in the same way that he is also alienated from the British culture he was born into as an immigrant.
Perhaps drawing from the pioneering observations of classical French sociologist Emile Durkheim, Roy notes that emergent European jihadists like Abedi exist in an “identity vacuum,” a social context where violent extremism thrives. According to him, this second generation Muslims who immigrated to Europe and who are now trapped in some-sort of cultural limbo comprise majority of those who espouse “violent jihadism.”
This observation is a throwback to Durkheim’s notion of social anomie where weak moral standards in a particular society give rise to certain aberrant human behavior like suicides. Although Durkheim lived in a time prior to the phenomenon of individuals blowing themselves up and take innocent lives with them, his category of anomic suicide provide a possible explanation. The weakening of social norms and solidarity in European societies comprised of an affluent sector and a significant poor mostly immigrant and colored population in the era of global capitalism provide the attraction to extremist and violent ideologies.
He then lays down a provocative thesis: “It’s the Islamification of radicalism that we need to investigate, not the radicalization of Islam.” In other words, extremist ideologies like the one espoused by the likes of Abedi and other groups like Al Qaeda and Isis are just the contemporary vehicles of social discontent. In another time, Roy may as well argue that the suicide bombers in Europe of today could have been the anti-Vietnam War protesters of the 60s, and the hippies and punks of the 70s given the post-socialist condition that we are in at present.
But is this true in the case of the Philippines, a country currently on the edge, with the attempted takeover of the Islamic City of Marawi by adherents of the same Isis ideology?
As of this writing, government attempt to recapture the city is entering its second week with fierce fighting and aerial bombardments in what is turning out to be an extended urban guerilla warfare that has so far killed hundreds of civilians and combatants from both sides as well as destroyed property amounting in the hundreds of millions of pesos.
It is clear that the attacks in Europe are characterized by attacks of lone wolf or a small band of perpetrators. But in the Philippines, these insurgents are capable of laying siege to a major Philippine city. A year prior, the same group was engaged in a skirmish with the Philippine military in the town of Butig where it was revealed that they had training camps and semi-permanent installations.
The reported arrival of Abu Sayyaff leader Isnilon Hapilon, the designated emir or leader of the Isis-affiliated group, in Marawi City to lead the extremist band said to be numbering in the hundreds which precipated the ongoing crisis, is a confirmation that the context here is different and somewhat more complex.
Disenfranchised youth like that of Abedi may have been radicalized courtesy of YouTube. However, the Maute group that is behind the attack on Marawi is actually a political family. This, in itself, reveals that the pathways to radicalism in the country, in this instance, still flows from the old traditional sources – a mixture of religious, clan, and ethnic identifications shaped by decades of conflict with the Philippine government.
The reported union of Abu Sayyaff, BIFF and the Maute group actually represent a consolidation of Moro forces excluded from the current peace talks with the government and manifest the most recent iteration of the radical Islamist agenda beyond what a modified regional autonomy under the Philippine constitution can offer. That they have managed to lay siege to Marawi confirm their increasing leverage not just locally but in the international sphere especially in the age of Isis.
The reported participation in the on-going siege of hundreds of foreign radicals from Indonesia and Malaysia and even from Singapore attracted by the prospect of establishing the first Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia is what binds the terror incidents in Europe and the Philippines. Like moths attracted to the flame, the lingering social unrest among a significant portion of the Muslim population in the Philippines provides pockets of geography where the dream of a caliphate can grow and take root.
Drawing from the Durkheimian observations made contemporary by Olivier Roy, the attacks in Europe and the Philippines are all fed by the same social condition of anomie and social discontent. Beyond this limited frame, it is really the era of global capitalism and its penchant for creating these deep and historical social divisions, proxy wars, and conflicts that is behind these contemporary manifestations of terror.
