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 Saturday,
January 07, 2006
VIEW: Malaysia’s moderate Islam project off the rails? —Farish A Noor
Today in the wake of September 11 and the so-called war on terror,
Malaysia’s state-oriented top-down form of statist Islam is being
brought off the shelf and sold as a model for other countries, including
Iraq. Yet a closer inspection of the realities on the ground would
indicate that Malaysia is no closer to realising the goals of a
universal, humanist, tolerant, progressive and democratic Islam than it
ever was
Over the past few weeks it would appear as if Malaysia’s brand of
moderate Islam, hastily repackaged as it is, is going off the rails.
Among the more recent important developments is the case of a Malaysian
former commando, M Moorthy, a member of the Malaysian mountain-climbing
team that scaled Mount Everest. Moorthy was paralysed after an accident
during training. When he passed away his body was claimed by the federal
government’s religious authorities claiming that he had converted to
Islam. His Hindu wife and relatives were unaware of this. Moorthy was
thus given a Muslim burial despite his wife and family’s insistence that
his conversion was never revealed to them and their protest that he must
not be denied proper Hindu cremation rituals.
Then came the news of the new Muslim marriage and family law ordinance,
that apparently has made it easier for Muslim men to marry more than one
woman. It also makes it easier for men to claim a part of their first
wife’s property to support their second, third and/or fourth wife/wives.
Needless to say the passage of the law has caused an uproar among Muslim
women’s groups in the country who are arguing that the law marks a
return to the bad old days of patriarchy where men could marry several
wives with impunity.
The Malaysian public, jaded as it is by developments such as these for
so long now, seemed resigned to the fact that despite the froth and
rhetoric of reform and moderation there is little to show for as far as
Malaysia’s experiment with moderate Islam is concerned. During the
Mahathir era of 1981-2003, the Islamisation process in Malaysia had more
to do with the instrumentalisation of religion for clearly obvious
political ends. Islam was instrumentalised as part of the
establishment’s effort to create a school of thought similar to Japan’s
work ethic. At the same time it was intended to counter the
revolutionary thrust of political Islam that was sweeping across the
globe in the wake of the Iranian revolution.
But even then Malaysia’s Islamisation programme had little to do with
the universal values of Islam and its inclusive view of humanity:
Malaysian politics and its political culture remained mired in the logic
of institutionalised racism; its economic trajectory remained determined
by a decidedly capitalist compass; Malaysia’s civil society remained
suppressed and on the margins. Overriding all other concerns was the
desire to ensure the dominance of the Malay-Muslim political
constituency and the fortunes of the Malay political elite along with
their Chinese compradore partners.
Today in the wake of September 11 and the so-called war on terror,
Malaysia’s state-oriented top-down form of statist Islam is being
brought off the shelf and sold as a model for other countries, including
Iraq. Yet a closer inspection of the realities on the ground would
indicate that Malaysia is no closer to realising the goals of a
universal, humanist, tolerant, progressive and democratic Islam than it
ever was.
Islam can, and needs to, grow in the fertile environment of a free and
tolerant society where Muslims can develop their personal capacity and
exercise their individual agency to the fullest, realising the goal of
the insan ul kamil — the perfect being in all of us. Police states,
authoritarian regimes and maximalist governments bent on extending their
spheres of power and control to all areas of human life invariably
destroy the climate that normative Islam needs to flourish; yet the case
of Malaysia is hardly any different from so many other Muslim-majority
states today. It was hoped that the government of Prime Minister
Abdullah Badawi would mark a new beginning for the country at last and
perhaps allow for the true flowering of progressive Islam. But as the
latest developments indicate, despite the talk of a new school of
Islamic thought and the dawning of a new age of Islamic moderation,
Malaysia’s official Islam remains elite-oriented, communitarian,
patriarchal and divisive.
This in itself is no loss to Islam, but it certainly is a loss and a
shame for Malaysia and Malaysians.
Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights
activist, based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin
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