Malaysia’s Islam: Bringing the “Progressive” Middle Ground Back In?

Malaysia’s Islam: Bringing the “Progressive” Middle Ground Back In?

Marzuki Mohamad

Debate on Malaysia’s Islam continues. In my previous posting in Malaysia Today (Zainah Anwar’s Hate Ideology: Desecularization or DeIslamization, or Both?, http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/guests.php?itemid=322), I argue that recent reassertion of religious identity among Malaysian Muslims, or desecularization as some will say, is a response to a particular de-Islamization force, the rise of which relates to a larger socio-political transformation that Malaysians have undergone over the past couple of decades. Suggesting that there has been widening gap between the Islamists and the secularists ever since, with both sides are moving further toward the extreme end of each side of the politico-religious spectrum, I proposed that the actors in the current Islamic debate moderate their stance and move back to the middle.

General responses to my argument, especially in the commentary section of the online news source, are furious, if not hysterical. This is understandable since increased reassertion of Muslim identity, which is often wrongly associated with religious extremism, has always been perceived as a problem rooted in the religion itself, rather than in the “progresses” that the modern society is now experiencing. Self-proclaimed progressive and liberal Muslims and non-Muslims alike could not accept this alternative perspective, let alone the moving-back-to-the-middle suggestion. For them, there is no such thing as the middle ground in Islam since the religion is immutable, non-negotiable, non-compromising, dogmatic and antithetical to the “progressiveness” of modern society. Contrary to what they think, this short article attempts at providing a glimpse of the progressive middle ground in Malaysia’s Islam - of what it has been, why it has changed and how it should fit into the present context of the Islamic debate. In short, it is a modest attempt at relocating the “progressive” middle ground, which is, perhaps, not too far from our historical past.

It is useful to clarify at the outset the contextual meaning of the term “progressive” that is used in this article. As the plain meaning of the word progress implies gradual change from a particular state of being to another, which is often for better, the application of the adjective word progressive to Malaysia’s Islam refers to, among other things, its evolution from a religion clouded by superstitious beliefs and practices to one which is deeply spiritual and highly rational; from largely informal to being essentially formal; and from inwardly conservative and orthodox to being receptive to progressive modern ideas and values.

At the heart of this progress has been a built-in mechanism in the vast corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology which asserts the compatibility of the divine religion with changing times and circumstances. While it inaugurates the Qur’an and the Sunnah as the main sources of Islamic law and theology, or the Shari’ah, it allows ijtihad (human reasoning) on matters which has no clear and unequivocal injunction in both sources. It also accepts new ideas and practices as long as they are not inconsistent with fundamental aspects of the Shari’ah. As Islam responds to changing circumstances but relies on its own internal built-in mechanism to progress, the process of departing from its orthodox past has been gradual and enduring. More important, the religion progresses because it is inherently desirable to do so, rather than being hard pressed to change.

Islam’s inherent ability to progress with changing times and circumstances has made possible the existence of wide space for moderation, or the progressive middle ground, within the religion. Along this middle ground, Islam accommodates new socio-political development while it retains its fundamental doctrines. This is particularly evident in Malaysia’s Islam’s encounter with modernization, the process of which, like progressive Islam, has been gradual and subtle. Along that process, the Islamic legal system has been formally modernized while it retains substantive elements of Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic banking and finance coexist with their conventional counterparts within the larger framework of modern capitalist market economy. Islamic education modernizes with the mushrooming of modern madrasahs and pondoks which incorporate in school syllabuses Islamic revealed knowledge as well as modern acquired knowledge in science and technology, mathematics, English language, geography, etc. From these madrasahs and pondoks, emerged Muslim technocrats and bureaucrats who participated in building the modern state and its economy. Young Muslim scholars - men and women - went to finest universities in the West, and in due course of time, acquainted themselves with the philosophies of Marx, Weber and Hegel. Some even traveled further down the road to find themselves entangled in the thought of Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard. In politics, Islamic parties took part in democratically held, though not necessarily free and fair, elections and, thus far, managed to form government at state level. Of late, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) has been an integral part of societal struggle for a wider democratic space.

Ironically though, government’s Islamization policy, which has been debunked by its secularist critics for its tendency to increase the role of Islam in the state and perpetuate Islam’s domination over the rest of other religions, paved the way for extra state funding for the purpose of modernizing Islamic judiciary and bureaucracy. Shari’ah court judges enrolled in professional judicial courses in which they learned how to hand down decisions based on written statutes passed by modern legislature, case laws and adduced evidences as much as the civil court judges do. Shari’ah prosecutors too were trained to handle cases according to formal court’s rules and procedures. During trials, they examine, cross-examine and re-examine witnesses similar to what public prosecutors do in conventional criminal courts. What determine Shari’ah court judges’ decisions are settled laws and evidences adduced before them in open courts rather than their own arbitrary substantive intuition of what is right or wrong. Islamic religious bureaucrats too were absorbed into the modern public service. They manage various religious departments according to government general orders much like what ordinary public officers do in other government departments.

In short, while Malaysian Islamic judicial system, with its elements of legal predictability, has departed far away from the Weberian vision of traditional Qathi justice system, its religious bureaucracy has also been at ease with Weberian formal-legal bureaucratic model which plays an integral part in a modernizing society. In both areas, there has been a sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity, which symbolizes Islam’s inherent ability to progress without abandoning its fundamental doctrines. Having said this, however, there are still rooms for improvement. Absorption of qualified women personnel into high ranking positions within the system has been slow and halting. Often, for being male-dominated, both Islamic judiciary and bureaucracy failed to escape allegations of gender bias.

While Malaysia’s Islam progresses and moderates, it also pushes to the fringe extreme elements within both the Islamist and the secularist forces. It ignores the conservative Islamists’ call for restoration of a full-fledge theocracy and, at the same time, disregards the secularists’ insistence for complete annihilation of the role of religion in the state. In between the two poles are the moderate and progressive Muslims who, beginning from the 1980s, increasingly played an important part in the government. Among them was Anwar Ibrahim, a former prominent Muslim activist who, before falling out with former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in September 1998, experienced a meteoric rise in the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the government. Others include the “old” progressive Muslims in the mainstream Islamic organizations such as Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) and Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM), and Muslim intellectuals in the faculties of Islamic studies at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and the University of Malaya (UM). Together with the old progressive Muslims, Anwar helped realize the progressive Islamization project under Mahathir’s administration.

Among important milestones of the progressive Islamization project, which under the premiership of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi assumed a new name of “Islam Hadhari” or civilizational Islam, include formulation of a National Education Philosophy which emphasizes spiritually, physically, intellectually and emotionally balanced education; establishment of Islamic higher education and research institutions such as the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) and Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM); introduction of Islamic banking, finance and insurance; and co-option of Islamist organizations into a host of “insiders” and government partners in nation building. This progressive Islamization project has also served as a religious logic of developmental state. With its promotion of economic development as a means to improve Muslim’s backwardness, it gives increasing state role in economic development a semblance of religious legitimacy. In regards to ethnic relations, the progressive and tolerant face of Islam allows harmonious interaction of Muslims with people of other faiths and cultures, making possible a relatively harmonious inter-religious and inter-ethnic relation.

In sum, until the 1990s, the progressive Islamic discourse primarily revolved around these themes: modernization of Islamic judiciary, bureaucracy, education and economy as well as rationalization of ethnic relations. These are the areas in which Islam’s built-in mechanism for progress could deal with swiftly. Along this process of progression, there has been a kind of benevolent ambiguity where it has often been hard to convincingly describe whether Malaysia’s official Islam is fully Islamic or fully modern. The case has always been like it is Islamic, and yet modern; or modern, and yet Islamic. Underlying this benevolent ambiguity has been a working “progressive” middle ground on which Islam encounters and emulates modern values, and yet retains vast corpus of its traditional jurisprudence and theology intact.

By the late 1990s, the terrain of progressive Islamic discourse underwent a tremendous change. The emergence of new universal libertarian human rights discourse and the worldwide Islamophobia posed new questions to and raised new concerns within the Muslim community. While the worldwide Islamophobia had in one sense resurrected the old myth of fictional mahound, the new libertarian human rights struggle emboldened the beleaguered Muslims who are now taking up a struggle to liberate themselves from the tyranny of the new mahound - Islam that is. The much celebrated view that individuals are the ultimate giver of meanings and definer of spiritualism has made the distinction between the image and the reality, the authentic and the aberration imploded in never ending public discourses. Progressive Islam has now to come to grip with, not modernization of Islamic education, economy or administration, but post-modernization of individualism. It has to deal with a whole range of new issues and concerns which primarily relate to the primacy of libertarian values over communitarian mores. These include the question of primacy of private space, legal enforcement of morality, the plight of Muslim gays, lesbians, transvestites and the subaltern, and Muslim’s right to freedom of, in and from religion - just to mention a few. These are areas in which the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology hold strictest stance, and seems unwilling to change.

Disenchanted with Islam’s built-in mechanism’s unwillingness to change, “new” progressive Muslims, many of them are more secular in their view about Islam, seek to deconstruct the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology. Some had offered unconventional interpretations of the Qur’anic text, while others dismissed vast corpus of prophetic traditions as unreliable and unauthentic. The basic contention of this new progressive Muslims is that Islam, being a universal religion, should accommodate the universalism of the new libertarian human rights discourse. This should be done by deconstructing the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, which broadly implies, among other things, legalization of apostasy, repeal of Islamic moral laws, ban on polygamous marriage, allowing women to lead Friday prayers, freedom to practice Islam according to one’s own interpretation of the religion, acceptance of the truth of all religions (religious universalism), etc. Resistance to change means perpetuation of an old religious construct which is oppressive and tyrannical. At its worst, religion is seen as a temporal system of oppression rather than a transcendental system of faith.

It seems that the new progressive Islam - or rather, post-progressive Islam - has traversed the parameters of progressive traditional Islam and modernity and moved into the post-modern realm of hyper realities and radicalism. The question now is not whether Islam should co-exist or operate within the framework of a modern secular state, an issue which permeates Islam and modernity discourse, but whether the whole corpus of traditional Islamic jurisprudence and theology is compatible with the new post-modernization of individualism. It is in this context that the new post-progressive Islam seeks to deconstruct the grand narrative of Islam - its traditional jurisprudence and theology. By doing this, it ignores Islam’s inherent ability to progress, at its own pace, but rather looks upon the new libertarian values as the benchmark for radical change. Within this new perspective of post-progressive Islam, there will be no authoritative interpretation of the religion, since authority represents oppression. In its place is a free for all Islam, in which everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion about the religion, and use it as guide to their behavior. It follows that the quest for absolute truth in and through religion is meaningless because there seems to be so many truths. There is no middle ground within this new vision of post-progressive Islam because its underlying tendency is radicalization of the discourse and deconstruction of the grand narrative, which means pushing its frontiers further left and left.

On the other pole of the politico-religious spectrum are the “old” progressive Muslims as well as broad range of conservatives who are now lumped together and labeled as the Islamists. The intensity of the radicalization of the post-progressive Islamic discourse has led to the convergence of the Islamist force of all persuasions in a common struggle to “defend” the Islamic faith. While the old progressive Muslims are trying to maintain the sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity, and be more moderate and civil in their encounter with the new radical post-progressive Muslims, the rest of the conservatives have shown a particular tendency to move further right. The directive against extending Deepavali greetings to Hindu fellow citizens, a fatwa condemning liberalism and religious pluralism, demonstration against open discussion on religious freedom and a death threat to a lawyer whose client had applied to court for a declaration that she had converted out of Islam are indicative of this move-to-the-right tendency. Adding complexities to this conundrum is the fact that Malaysia’s highly ethnicised politics also has the potential to rear its ugliest head. Thus far, controversies over a number of court cases on the right of non-Muslim/non-converting parent to child custody (Shamala’s case), the deceased’s status of conversion to Islam and the right of burial (Muhammad Moorthy Abdullah’s case) and the Muslim’s right to convert out of Islam (Lina Joy’s case) are sowing the seed of inter-ethnic and inter-religious discontent. Left unchecked, the present Islamic debate has the potential to heighten religious extremism within Muslim and non-Muslim communities alike.

It is quite apparent now that there has been in the past a “progressive” middle ground in the encounter between Islam and modernity in Malaysia. The shifting terrain of progressive Islamic discourse, from one which emanates from the sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity to one which revolves around fierce encounter between Islam and post-modernism, downplays the possibilities of reconciliation between the contending forces. As such, the question to be asked is not whether there is a middle ground, but whether or not the present actors of the Islamic debate are willing to move back to the middle. Moving back to the middle implies de-radicalization of the post-progressive Islamic discourse, as well as increased activism among the old progressive Muslim jurists to deal with the whole range of new issues and concerns.
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Marzuki Mohamad (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is currently a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).