
Last September, Malaysian police arrested more than a dozen people linked to the terror group Islamic State, or IS, as they were planning to carry out several attacks in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country. Authorities say that more than 100 Malaysians had left the country to live in the territory earlier held by IS in Syria and Iraq.

What’s behind this apparent growth of Islamism in Malaysia, and what could be done to check extremism? Kuala Lumpur-based Eugene Yapp, a senior fellow at the U.S. Religious Freedom Institute, answers these question in this video interview.