Happy Women’s Month! I have been receiving a lot of questions about the prospects of peace in Muslim Mindanao, the links between the Moro Islamic Liberation and ISIS, the radicalization of Muslim youths, whether the Bangsamoro Basic Law will result in Muslim Mindanao becoming an Islamic state, among others. I thought to share with you an updated version of a paper that I had read at a conference in Washington, DC, a decade ago. It’s amazing to look back and realize how far we had gone and, after one incident, how far we have jumped back:

I CONSIDER myself a fortunate person (in so far as Muslims can count themselves fortunate). I am a Muslim woman born in Southeast Asia. Some of you may see us as the periphery of the Islamic world, but our region is home to the biggest number of Muslims in the world. Southeast Asia has a rich experience in homegrown democracy after overthrowing our colonial masters. We live in a multi-ethnic region that has a tradition of tolerance and peaceful coexistence, where men and women both play active roles in both public and private arenas. Southeast Asian Muslim women enjoy liberties denied many of our sisters in the Middle East, the heartland of Islam.

However, our world is changing and our liberties are at risk. It has been almost 15 years since 9/11 and we in Muslim communities are still grappling with the aftershocks. In the minority Muslim areas -- such as Thailand and the Philippines -- our liberties are at risk from internal conflicts with central government, taken to a new level and complicated by the war on terror. The radicalization of Muslim groups, the expansion of an extremist religious interpretation of Islam (by ISIS, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah and other terrorist organizations) does not help us. We are at risk from within and from without.

The radicalization of Muslim communities in Southeast Asia is rooted in the need to survive -- physically as well as culturally. It has been shaped by reaction to the impact of the “intrusive West.” Muslim communities are being radicalized proportionate to their failure to “modernize” themselves relative to their environments. Pressures on non-Western societies are gathering force under globalization -- seen as a threat, an imposition to a people’s identity and culture. Modernization can be traumatic, particularly if forced and hasty, and the transformation away from tradition puts societies under deep distress.

In its 2000 world development report, the World Bank identified two seemingly contradictory forces affecting the world order: globalization and localization. Globalization forces national governments to go beyond their borders in order to cope with the progressive integration of world economies, while localization manifests itself in the increasing assertion of local people for political or religious identities. This seems to be one of the paradoxes of globalization; as world capital, trade, finance become integrated, local identities tend to resist these homogenizing processes.

It is in this context that we should address the issues of democratization, radicalization and women’s rights in Muslim communities. I note that radical Islam has been fueled principally by the negative impacts of globalization. I can see that a global military war on terror may not be a sufficient response to terror threats. Killing the terrorists will not end terrorism. It is the same globalization forces that may provide the key to addressing this problem. I refer to the global wave of democratization -- genuine democratization (On the Web, a bumper sticker is circulating that says, “Be nice to Americans or we will come and democratize you”).

Genuine democracy, which will provide more space for the marginalized (like Muslim women) will be able to temper this inclination toward extremist advocacies.

Many political analysts conclude that Western dominance had impressed on the Muslim world a sense of its weaknesses, which has led to Islamism. Islamism is the expression -- in religious terms -- of frustration over the failure of modernization in much of the Muslim world. Islamism is a rebellion of the excluded, the marginalized, which feeds on the frustrations of impoverished peoples living on the margins of an unattainable consumerist world. The key emotion in this revolt is anti-Americanism. The US has become the surrogate of all the Western powers that have tried to shape the world in their image over the last 500 years. It is this rabid anti-Americanism that fuels global terror activities.

For marginalized minority Muslim communities in the Philippines, democratization is at odds with the state’s priority on peace and order, linked as it is with the global war against terror.

While the Philippines generally observes religious tolerance and accommodates the needs of ethnic and religious minorities, the worsening discrimination against Muslims and the socioeconomic conditions experienced by Muslims are barriers to peace and development. More so for Muslim women.

Muslim women in the conflict-affected areas are caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the state’s military operations (such as Oplan Exodus and the ongoing campaign against the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters), which reduce communities to unproductive conflict zones, all in the name of securing the peace. Ignorance about the Muslim faith makes many leaders tend to perceive our religion itself as a threat. The hard place is the aggregation of extremist fundamentalist groups who want to monopolize Islam. These groups accuse anyone talking of democracy, moderation, equality between men and women, of being un-Islamic or anti-Islam. These groups tend to focus on women’s obligations, and not on women’s rights.

A new wave of democratization is sweeping the Muslim World, even as the West is still embroiled in the war against terror. The imperative today is to understand what kind of democracy Muslim communities want, to determine the appropriate means for its achievement, and to work toward its realization. In the evolution of democracy in our communities, what role will women play, together with men?

A friend told me that women’s rights in democratizing or democratic Muslim societies are like canaries in a coal mine during the industrial age of the West. If the canaries are safe, so is the coal mine. Thus if women’s rights are strong, so is the society.

The widening of the democratic space throughout the Southeast Asian region, which allows for freedom of expression and pluralism, has also opened the door further to radicalism and fundamentalist ideologies. On the extreme end, fundamentalist interpretations of Sharia endanger the equality between men and women, as very orthodox ulama move for interpretations close to the Taliban model of Sharia.

However, if the democratization process is home-grown and nurtured, it will take root and balance the more radical influences. Witness the successes in Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia in discussions of women’s rights. Even as more fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence are entering Southeast Asia from the Middle East, our Malaysian and Indonesian sisters continuously engage the male-dominated leadership of the community to define a more gender-fair, more just, legal framework for both women and men. Even in the Philippines, as burdened as we are, Muslim women still have opportunities provided by law to participate as equals.

Unfortunately, many leaders have become adept at promising democratic reforms while delivering more oppression. This has created an environment of great disappointment and frustration, especially among women.

What can we Muslim women do, especially those of us who are in areas of conflict and who belong to minority communities?

(Part 2 next week)

Amina Rasul is the president of the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy (PCID). This article originally appeared in her column in BusinessWorld. Comments to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..