Since September 11, 2001, the struggle
between militantly radical and progressive or
democratic tendencies - "ungentle" and "gentle"
Islam - has become a matter of urgent importance
not only among Muslims but to others beyond their
faith community.
Some observers suggest
that the course taken in Malaysia may be of more
than local significance because Malaysia has
demonstrated singular success among
Muslim-majority nations in achieving economic
growth and the various worldly attainments
associated with it; and because, in opposition to
the new militant
Islamism, its rulers have
promoted and identified themselves with modern,
progressive and liberal forms of Islam.
Islam Hadhari During his 22
years as prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad opposed
the Islamists with conviction and a stridency that
often served their political objectives more than
his. With more convincing religious credentials,
his successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has, in a
less contentious manner, pursued the same
objective, now embodied in the project of
promoting what his government terms "Islam
Hadhari".
This approach not only sees how
the Islamic faith has shaped the character and
ethos of Islamic civilization. It also recognizes
that, as it exists today, the Islamic faith
itself, rather than having been given once and for
all time in immutable form, has been shaped in its
historical evolution by that of Islamic
civilization generally and in which the faith's
human history has been couched.
Such
recognition of the "historicity"of faith (the
human history of whatever it is that a community
of believers has received, or believes it has,
from divine revelation - and therefore of the fact
and legitimacy of continuing religious change and
innovation faithful to the original divine
inspiration) is the essential foundation in all
religious faith traditions of any coherent and
persuasive "modernist" position.
So far,
so good, and so encouraging, perhaps. Yet the
outlook for modern understandings of Islam and
their champions in Malaysia is not bright. Several
disquieting indications and developments are
undeniable. Malaysian Islamist activists have long
targeted religious modernists and progressives,
seeking not so much to argue with or against them
as to stigmatize them as un-Islamic, apostates and
renegades. This is now the fate, too, of the
proponents of Islam Hadhari.
Attacks
from without and within Attacks against
this latest official restatement of Malaysian
Islamic modernism have been mounted not simply by
the militant Islamist radicals inside and beyond
the Islamic opposition party PAS (Partai Islam Se
Malaysia or Islamic Party of Malaysia). Nor have
the attacks only come from the legions of
sympathizers inside the bloated federal and state
Islamic affairs bureaucracies, which have swelled
in size and pretensions over the last 20 years as
UMNO (United Malay's National Organization) under
Mahathir and PAS engaged in unrelenting
competition to outbid each other in what has
become an escalating "Islamist policy auction".
Attacks have even been mounted from within
UMNO, the dominant Malay-based party in the
governing Barisan Nasional coalition, and by
members of the prime minister's own ministry.
These attacks have been carefully directed
not against the prime minister but against certain
less "protected" and secure surrogates, such as
the courageous and principled women's and human
rights non-governmental organization, Sisters In
Islam.
These onslaughts do not come only
from the supposedly "backward" and
"regressive"elements in Malay society situated
well beyond the communicative reach of the prime
minister's party and the UMNO's middle-class
appeals.
In September an organization
known as the Muslim Professional Forum held an
all-day event to give unbridled rein to such
criticism of the prime minister's religious
orientation and supporters under the banner
"Liberal Islam: A Clear and Present Danger".
Meanwhile, driven by righteous local and
state-level zealots and vigilantes, the hand of
government was forced into official action in the
state of Terengganu against the Sky Kingdom cult,
a fringe syncretist community led by Ayah Pin, an
amiable and apparently harmless old eccentric. Yet
the underlying issues involved here are not of
fringe but central concern for the nature of the
modern Malaysian state and its citizenship. Some
of these issues, long unresolved, are now before
the courts due to the arrest of Sky Kingdom
adherents.
Does the constitutional
protection for freedom of religious belief and
worship apply to all individuals? If so, how is
this to be reconciled with the constitutional view
that all Malays are by definition Muslims, subject
to ensuing legislation placing all Muslims, their
manner of life and inner beliefs under the
supervision of the religious (Sharia) courts and
religious bureaucracies? Can one cease to be a
Muslim, freely choose to leave the faith community
of Islam? A recent court decision held that a
person who purports to do so, renouncing Islam by
deed poll, does not have the right to have the
designation "Muslim" removed from their national
identity card or in the National Citizen Registry
System.
Freedom of religion Here lie profound yet long-unresolved issues.
Does the Malaysian constitution recognize, and do
the state's multifarious government departments
respect and are they obliged to uphold, freedom
of, from and also in religion? Long obscured, that
question is now before the courts. Civil, not
religious, court judges will have to decide in
cases involving Sky Kingdom followers whether
people are first of all citizens and only then
Muslims or in the "special" case of citizens from
the majority population, whether they are in the
first instance Muslims and only subsequent to that
also citizens. The religious authorities
understandably take the latter view; but
presumably the view of the constitution, its laws
and its courts is, or ought to be, the former.
Will the judges see things that way and
have the courage to say so? How far might any
decision they make be appealed? And what will be
the implications of the ultimate decision for
Mahathir's most fateful, yet ill-advised
innovation: his decision to raise the status of
the Sharia courts to a "co-equal" status with the
civil law courts, and so to make their decisions,
in their own area of jurisdiction, unappealable
in, and irreversible by action of, the civil court
system? (His decision was carried out via a
constitutional amendment in 1988. It was hoped the
move would enhance Mahathir's own standing in the
eyes of Islamists eager for further
state-mandating of Islam.)
Interesting
times lie ahead, not least because faith itself,
or rather the government's ambiguous and even
vacillating management of it, is now arguably on
trial.
Clive S Kessler is
emeritus professor, School of Sociology &
Anthropology, at The University of New South
Wales, Sydney. He has been researching and writing
on Malaysian affairs, especially on Islam and
politics, for more than 35 years.
