Cambodia's Muslims as geopolitical pawns By Geoffrey Cain

The financial aid package made big business headlines, but what went relatively unnoticed were the millions of dollars earmarked for building Muslim institutions. The impoverished and marginalized Cham, estimated to number about 400,000, have long sought and received funds from Middle Eastern patrons in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and regional neighbor Malaysia to build mosques and religious schools, travel on the haj and study overseas.

With that assistance, an increasing number of Middle Eastern imams have taken up residence in Cambodia's traditionally moderate Cham communities and often promoted Wahabbi and Da'Wah Tabligh fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.

Concerns that foreign influence was stoking local terror risks first arose when four Muslim teachers from southern Thailand, Egypt and Cambodia were arrested at Phnom Penh's Cham-run Om-al-Qora school in 2003 for allegedly being members of the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror group and using the school as a terrorist training center.