Politicisation of Islam in Malaysia

The politicisation of Islam, defined as the mobilisation of Muslims for political power, has become a key feature of the Malaysian political terrain in recent years. This process has found dominant expression in the so-called “Islamisation race” between the two major political parties who both look to derive legitimacy from religion – UMNO (Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Bersatu or United Malays National Organisation) and PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia). While Islamic resurgence in Malaysia has spawned a range of Islamic movements and organisations, it has been the UMNO-PAS relationship that has most fascinated scholars and observers of Malaysian politics.

Under Mahathir Mohamad, Islam was brought to the forefront of UMNO and Malaysian politics. While the PAS party elections witnessed reformist Islamists take over the reins of party leadership, the corresponding UMNO General Assembly witnessed the new leader’s pronouncement of a new strategy focused on “the struggle to change the attitude of the Malays in line with the requirements of Islam in this modern age”.

This was followed by a host of initiatives to emphasise the Islamic character of the Mahathir administration. Certainly, at one level, one could suggest that with these internal changes both parties had begun to see the advantage of mobilising religion for political mileage.

Even then, such was the increasing attention paid to Islam by the Malay-based parties, it seemed increasingly so that “the Malay political world . . . will now be battling for more than control of governments and the machinery of state. What has become the objective of political struggle is the soul of the people themselves”.

Beyond this concerted attempt to distinguish its Islamic discourse from PAS however, UMNO has in fact given extensive institutional expression to Islamic orthodoxy. This tension is manifested primarily in the bureaucratisation of Islam, particularly at the level of state governance, as well as the friction within the party between certain UMNO leaders bent on de-emphasising Islamic orthodoxy, and the Ulama of the party, many of whom are found in the religious authorities of state governance, whose ideological predilections often echo those of the Islamic opposition.

International consternation for militant and radical Islam in the aftermath of the events of September 11 have nevertheless appeared to avail UMNO the opportunity to further influence domestic and international propaganda against the Islamic opposition, just as the Malaysian government has harnessed international opinion for its political struggle against PAS by portraying itself as a model “moderate” Muslim state. This state of affairs has encouraged the opinion that the global war on terrorism has worked to UMNO’s favour against PAS.

While scholars are right to highlight the “discursive” nature of the UMNO-PAS conflict, there is also an element of institutional representation to this contestation that should not be dismissed.

In fact, one could argue that the matter of institutional representation, manifested in the bureaucratisation of Islam and the enactment and implementation of narrow Islamic policies by UMNO-run state and local governments, threatens an even more fundamental and far-reaching politicisation of Islam in Malaysia, where UMNO’s active attempts to give institutional expression to a more fundamentalist Islamist ideology in response to the PAS challenge brings the party’s policies dangerously close to the narrow conservatism it has demonised so vehemently in the discursive arena.

While the administration of Syariah law, which remained the cornerstone of an alternative legal system left untouched by British colonialism, fell under the purview of religious courts under the authority of the Sultan, it remains subordinate to Constitutional law in many instances.

A strong impetus to greater institutionalisation and bureaucratisation of Islam under the auspices of UMNO has been the increasing popularity of PAS. The Malaysian cabinet even attempted to enact a bill to make the study of Islamic civilisations a compulsory component of undergraduate education. Knowingly or otherwise, UMNO’s bureaucratisation of Islam has in effect put in place the infrastructure of an Islamic state run by “state-sponsored firebrands” and a Muslim intelligentsia sympathetic to the government.

Not surprisingly, such government-sanctioned policies resulted in a backlash from non-Muslim communities suspicious of government attempts to impose Islamic values on them. Legislation over the issue of religious proselytisation clearly illustrated this partiality. While the Constitution ensures the right of every person to “profess and practice his religion”, only Muslims are allowed to propagate their belief.

Beyond that, the Malaysian government has itself actively engaged in Dakwah or proselytising to non-Muslims through the establishment of Perkim (Pertubuhan Kebajikan Islam Malaysia or Malaysian Muslim Welfare Organisation). This has included the expansion of Islamic programmes over public radio and television, more stringent legislation controlling the building of non-Muslim religious buildings, and the curtailment of land plots for non-Muslim burial sites.

Indeed, the essence of popular concern, particularly from the non-Muslim population, is not so much with the introduction of Islamic institutions and practices, but the hegemony of Islam in public life in Malaysia.

UMNO must realise that whatever the ideological polemics involved, PAS has in effect profited from UMNO’s increasing alienation from its main support-base, the Malay-Muslim community, particularly when issues of corruption, cronyism, and authoritarianism are raised and related to Islam. Efforts must thence be made to address their own “credibility deficit” in order to counter PAS propaganda.

As Islamisation spills over into public space, the danger of over-zealous implementation resulting in Islamisation policies associated with conservative and exclusivist tendencies that threaten the traditional multi-ethnic and “moderate” fabric of Malaysian Islam, as some UMNO-sanctioned policies appear to reflect, will be detrimental to Malaysia.