Although the Daesh terrorist group has been severely defeated in Iraq and Syria, its affiliates have made inroads in Southeast Asia where over 60 groups have pledged their loyalty to Daesh leader Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi and are planning to set up an “East Asia wilayat”. The region has seen a rise in the number of terrorist attacks that included a spate of suicide bombings in the Indonesian city of Surabaya in May 2018, and the fivemonth-long armed occupation of Marawi, a city in the southern Philippines in 2017. With the loss of Daesh territories in the Levant, some of the 1,000 battle-hardened and ideologically-committed Daesh foreign fighters who went to Iraq and Syria have returned along with militants of other nationalities, further raising the threat level for all countries in Southeast Asia. To address the continuing terrorist threat from Daesh and also Al Qaeda (AQ), which remains active and committed to global jihad, Singapore has adopted a raft of kinetic and non-kinetic measures, ranging from preemptive arrests and detention to protective security and counter-violent
extremism (CVE) programmes. This article focuses on Singapore’s CVE approach and its emphasis on counter-ideology, community engagement and the active promotion of racial and religious harmony.