The Politics of Counter-Terror: Islam and Security in the Postcolonial Muslim State

There is a fundamental paradox in counter-terrorism: while Muslim state elites insist that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, the way Muslim states deal with terrorism has everything to do with Islam. In this theoretically innovative and empirically rich book with Stanford University Press, Nicholas Chan argues that Malaysia's 'Islamised' counter-terrorism is not just a product of Muslim states seeking to maximise their control over religion for regime security purposes. Rather, counter-terrorism is also an ontological-security seeking enterprise filtered through a matrix of factors, including postcolonial elite status-seeking, modernist state-building, and the immediacies of governmental problem-solving. The book fills a void in the Western-centric Global War on Terror literature that often fails to examine what happens when Muslim actors must wage a 'war' not of their making but strongly tied to their identity, security, and status. This book's original findings will interest scholars and students of security, international relations, area studies, and Muslim politics.

Author
Dr Nicholas Chan

Publication Year
2026