From the bottom-up, the region has been experiencing a growing politicization - a "deprivatization" if you will - of religious faith in general and of religious extremism in particular. In a sense, this rejuvenated link between piety and politics is a logical outgrowth of the broader trend of democratization that has taken hold, in varying degrees, in the region as a whole.

As predominantly postcolonial societies long defined by an enforced social conservatism and political authoritarianism in their formative years, recent periods of democratic transition have spawned a proliferation of voices and movements, including faith-based ones, in various domestic societies in the region.

While few if any would deny religion its rightful place at the table of civil society, concern has arisen over the indubitable link between religiously-inspired ideas of violent extremism and acts of extremist violence.

From the top-down, Southeast Asian governments have done either of two things, or both. On one hand, secular states have taken their natural circumspection of civil society a couple of steps further by upping their surveillance of particular religious communities, deploying internal security laws in the pursuit and capture of miscreants, and, as in the shootout that killed Noordin M. Top in Solo, Central Java, the application of "kinetic" approaches (that is, paramilitary force and tactics) to combating terrorism.

Such measures have their place in any comprehensive counterterrorism strategy, although instances of their gross misappropriation abound in the region, as was the case of the mail-fisted policy of former Thai premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, toward the Malay-Muslim provinces of southern Thailand.

On the other hand, in majority Muslim states, religious organs of the state have contributed occasionally to fomenting religious anger. As controversies such as the case involving Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad have shown, religious elements both official and nonofficial have joined in the politics of "scapegoating" against Western targets, fairly or otherwise.

This has in no small measure added to their populations' distrust of and hostility toward the West. Furthermore, the imperative of winning the Muslim vote has led some governments to "out-Islamize" their political opposition and to prove their religious credentials through upping the ante in religious discourse, vigorous enforcement of religious laws and codes, and the like.

Thanks to such vicious brinkmanship from below and above, civil society in Southeast Asia is at best a tenuous and ambivalent space whose existence cannot be taken for granted. As a consequence of the growth of religious narratives and practices that celebrate extremist dispositions at the expense of alternatives, and the equally draconian statist measures adopted in response, an already narrow democratic space has become narrower, considerably and alarmingly so.

Nevertheless, any hope that Southeast Asian civil society will, sooner than later, become active participants in counterterrorism, not least in the ways envisaged by the strategy, is premature at this stage. Despite the inroads made by civil society in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, it is clear that Southeast Asian governments as a whole remain skeptical toward the former.

At the recent ASEAN Summit in Cha-am, Thailand, for example, it was apparent that most regional governments are, generally speaking, still loath to dealing with civil society elements - even as the summit host, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, reminded his fellow leaders of their collective pledge, made at the 2003 summit, to build a "people-centered" ASEAN Community.

But as this discussion has implied, the challenge for civil society in Southeast Asia today is not just about negotiating an "autonomous realm of everyday life" apart from the state, not least when the state continues to play a vital role in the social and economic life of some Southeast Asian countries.

It equally has to do with the accommodation of protest counter-cultures with their at times radical alternatives, as well as the transformation of toxic narratives and practices that render society uncivil. Nor can civil society be about delimiting a secular space apart from religious influences, certainly not so for a region where the great religions of the world continue to thrive, more often for good than ill.

Well beyond just the specific requirements of counterterrorism, civil society must necessarily be a civilizing process which, as the Jewish-German sociologist Norbert Elias has put it, aims to remove violence from everyday life. Without this, no society can truly be civil, no matter its democratic credentials.

This article is published in conjunction with the international workshop on terrorism which will be held by Nahdlatul Ulama and the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation in Jakarta on Nov. 18-19, 2009.

The writer is head of research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS), an element of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. The views expressed here are his alone and do not reflect the views of the IDSS and/or RSIS.

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