Malaysia: The elusive Islamic
state By Yukiko Ohashi
Muslims the world over often affirm that Islam
is a religion of peace based on submission to God. Yet
opinions vary considerably as to how this Divine Will
should be actualized.
Cut off from centuries of
classical Islamic and legal scholarship, which requires
one to understand not just Arabic but the context and
evolution of Islamic history in the first place to be
able to render a sound juristic verdict, the legal
sensibility of Muslims has been severely compromised.
Muslims in Malaysia, not unlike those in the
Middle East, have resorted to appreciating Islam through
the narrow prism of al Halal wal Haram fil Islam
- which means abiding by the "lawful and prohibited acts
in Islam", and which is detailed in a book of the same
name by Yusuf Qaradawi.
In this philosophy,
submission to God is reduced to a series of dos and
don'ts - a binary moral code. This approach was
systematized by Qaradawi, dean of Islamic law at Qatar
University, and the methodology gained currency in the
Middle East, and subsequently in Southeast Asia.
Since 1960, when Qaradawi wrote his book in
Arabic, his narrow approach toward Islam has
predominated. In Malaysia, his influence is deep, even
among the governing Muslim elites. When former deputy
premier Anwar Ibrahim was the president of the
International Islamic University, Malaysia, he spent
considerable time with Qaradawi, expressing his support
for the latter's fiqh al aliyyah (introducing
Islamic law according to priorities).
In his
governmental post of deputy to prime minister Mahathir
Mohamad, Anwar was able to bring some of Qaradawi's
ideas into public policy. Eventually Anwar was dumped
from the government and jailed on charges of sodomy and
corruption; however, the thoughts and practice of
Qaradawi have not been totally excluded from government
policy, including the reductionist elements.
Islamic scholars and thinkers in Malaysia
continue to look to Qaradawi for various Islamic
interpretations and verdicts, such as on the legality of
suicide terrorism. More important, the inspiration of
Qaradawi is integral to the conceptual blueprint for an
Islamic state as held by the opposition Parti Islam
SeMalaysia (PAS), which controls the Kelantan state
government.
PAS's Islamic state is based on the
permissible and the prohibited as outlined by Qaradawi.
Observe the "Islamic state document" produced by PAS
last year, the first of its kind in the history of the
party, after much demand from Malaysians as to what a
PAS-style Islamic state would actually represent.
In this document, it was clearly stated that PAS
would implement "the Shariah [Islamic law] to achieve
the five imperatives of the Shariah; therein to protect
a Muslim's beliefs, life, intellect, dignity and
property".
In seeking to fulfill these five
imperatives, the document read: "In implementing the
Shariah all vices and crimes that pertain to the above
stated aspects would be controlled. Man-made laws have
been [proved] a failure in securing the security and
dignity of the human race."
From this line of
reasoning, it is clear that punitive logic is not far
from the implementation of Shariah as envisaged by PAS.
In fact, despite promising to keep true to the
five objectives, what is known as Maqasid al-Shariah,
PAS is totally silent on the jurisprudential methodology
and tradition that would be employed on how these
objectives can be fulfilled.
Yet anyone who is
vaguely informed on Shariah is aware that the recourse
to different methods or schools of thought on Shariah -
whether it be mazhab Shafii (as is customary in
Malaysia and Indonesia) or mazhab Maliki (as is
common in Northern Africa) - can produce variations to
each law.
PAS stated that the reason for the
creation of an Islamic state is a Fardhu Ain
(necessary Islamic obligation). To justify the creation
of an Islamic state, PAS quoted the Islamic maxim:
"Something becomes obligatory if an obligatory
injunction fails to be fulfilled without it."
Going by the above assertion, Islamic law, in
the words of M B Hooker, an Islamic-law specialist based
in Australian National University, is a creature of
"executive institution", something that the Islamic
state must create.
Hence, rather than based on
Islamic scholasticism, where religious scholars debate
on each point of law before it is deployed or
introduced, it is now the Islamic state that will decide
how Islamic laws are best made.
It is in this
context that Parvez Manzoor, a Muslim scholar based in
Stockholm University, argues that the Islamic state can
become an "all-watchful Hegelian state". This is because
it carries within it the administrative, theological and
bureaucratic reach, to sanction and approve every mode
of behavior.
How one practices Islam in
Malaysia, according to PAS, should boil down to
observing the prescriptions (the dos) and proscriptions
(the don'ts) of the Islamic state, and the kind of
restrictive Shariah conceived by it. Therefore, the
intermingling of men and women is banned, as are art
events deemed offensive.
Although Islamists
inspired by the clarity of Qaradawi's work often point
to the validity of his approach, since there is a phrase
in the Koran that encourages Muslims "to advocate virtue
and forbid vice", they fail to note that even Qaradawi
himself openly acknowledged the difficult and
unprecedented nature of reducing Islam to a set of
positive and negative deeds.
That this warning
is not heeded is largely due to a shallow understanding
of Islamic history, combined with even poorer
understanding of Islamic law, and the methods with which
laws are derived.
In seeking to create an
Islamic state to police and punish, the very position of
Islam itself is made controversial, especially in a
modern and multiracial society such as Malaysia, where
up to half of the population are non-Muslims.
Due to the tendency to assume that a punitive
Islamic state is the norm, when Islamists in Malaysia do
propose a legislative agenda, they are often predisposed
to an approach that rarely questions the spirit and
ethics laden in Shariah to satisfy the five imperatives.
Rather, the jurisprudence is based on sanctions
and injunctions of the Islamic faith, which in fact is
the most simplistic, if not crudest, rendition of Islam
into contemporary context.
Herein lies the irony
in Malaysia: Despite the clarion call of PAS to create
an Islamic society guided by moral awareness, the
current approach dilutes it. Instead, it is heavily
tilted toward creating an all-powerful Islamic state
rather than one fostered on ethical precepts.
Nevertheless, it remains PAS's contention that
an Islamic state must come into existence first before
an ethical Islamic society could come to be. Morality,
in other words, comes after power.
Although the
ruling party of Malaysia, the United Malays National
Organization (UMNO), is arguably "softer" on the
importance of Islamic state, even its Islamization
program is not without punitive elements, in some cases
even on par with PAS. Islamic laws passed by states
ruled by UMNO have been just as strong and harsh.
The only way out for Malaysia is for scholars
and students of Islam to be more sensitive to the
context of Islamic history, rather than to adopt it
wholesale, as is the preferred approach in Islamic
institutes and universities thus far. Unless Islamists
in Malaysia combine a perceptive reading of Islamic
history and Islamic jurisprudence, the reliance on a
punitive approach will continue to predominate.
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