MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The shifting sands of Islamic politics in Malaysian mosques

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) GOVERNMENT is furious that Friday sermons at some mosques throughout the country have a decidedly "political" - by its definition, anti-government - tinge. The only Islam it accepts is what it stands for, however vague or unacceptable it is to the Muslims in the community. Shamsul Akmar, in his political column in the New Straits Times, talks about it this morning (09 February 2004) but he narrows its focus to an irrelevant happenstance: that some mosque sermons equated the horrific rape and murder of a young girl as God's punishment for an UMNO official. The BN, and its predecessor Alliance, government, on the other hand, took it as a political decision since independence to control the mosques politically. But it took this position whilst ignoring how Islam developed in Malaya. There were three strands: in the Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negri Sembilan; the Unfederated Malay States of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu and Johore; the Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca. Islam and the mosques developed differently in the three areas, with the added confusion that the five UMS states moved at their individual pace. In the FMS and in the Straits Settlements, the Religious Affairs Department had total control of the mosques in the state, directly or indirectly.

But this is blurred in how the BN administers Islam in the 11 states in Peninsular Malaysia. It had formed the state administrations in all but two Malay states. That allowed the centre to dictate how Islam developed in the states. But even then it could not in Trengganu, where it was in power for all but seven years since 1955. Islam in the four northern Malay states - the other being Perlis, Kedah and Kelantan - developed to a different beat, especially in the two east coast states. In the national progress of Islam, there were then two distinct trends: that of centralised control of Islam subject to BN control, and of Islam fighting to rid itself of the central power to preserve it. The four Malay states were once under the Thai suzerain. The mosques in the states were political centres, to preserve Islam and to keep to their Islamic way of life in a Buddhist nation. It was the mosques that allowed PAS to seize power in Kelantan in 1959, and since 1999, in Trengganu. When the UMNO-led BN state administrations ignored the finer points of how Islam developed in the states they controlled, it became a matter of time before frission and fractures developed. As PAS spread its wings, it imported its political mosques, with its honourable history going back to the first days of Islam, into their new areas of control.

When the BN lost its head, after the Anwar Ibrahim affair in 1989, the disenchanted Malays in the Malay states distanced themselves from the state authorities. Nowhere was this clearer than in the mosques. Some mosques the Klang Valley - in Damansara Utara and in Section 14 in Petaling Jaya, for instance - were "anti-establishment" mosques. Try as it might, the government could not contain them. They represented the PAS view of a religion under challenge and attack. For years, it remained an odd presence in a sea of official conformity. It is not any more. The official view of Islam is challenged in even the old FMS states. It goes without saying that even in the 'official mosques' in Selangor and in the other states, Muslims gather in the evenings to castigate the government for its "wrong doings". The mosque in Ampang Jaya frequented by the late brother-in-law of Tun Mahathir Mohamed was one. He would, when when he was there, put up a strong defence of his brother-in-law's administration, but he was almost always shouted down by his fellow parishioners, several of whom, at least when I went there with a Muslim friends on occasion, had federal and state titles for which a Chinese business man would gladly have sacrificed an arm and a leg and lots of money. There it was the inescapable voice of the Establishment.

Since then, many solid pro-government mosques have become centres of challenge. In some mosques, the official sermon handed down by the state religious affairs department is cheerfully ignored, and replaced with one more topical and political. There is, as far as I can gather, no PAS direction. It is part of the system that PAS makes brilliant use of. But the BN cannot see how such a system can work if there is no central direction. That is its mistake. By castigating any sermon that challenges the official BN view as PAS-inspired, it ensures more support for PAS than the other way around. For those who go to these mosques go there not because they support PAS but that they are dissatisfied with how the BN conducts its affairs. In other words, these mosques becomes safe havens for those who disagree with the government. That it benefits PAS does not mean it is behind this phenomenon. Not even PAS could have organised an all-Malaysian angry Muslim community if it has nothing to be angry about. In fact, it is UMNO, by its intemperate dismissing of its deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998 lit the fuse for what worries it now. When the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, attempted to address the faithful at his mosque, the congregation saw it as an attempt to politicise it.

Finding no avenue to express his concerns and anger, the disenchanted Malay takes refuge in the mosques. Over time, even the official mosques became centres of anti-government discussion. The BN, especially UMNO, ignored it, and lost control of the mosques by default. The Selangor chief minister, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, says in two years, he converted the anti-government congregation in Selangor mosques to its side. He dreams he has. He says this anti-government trend has returned, now that general elections are around the corner. He is wrong. There is more of it now because the fundamental problems that upset the Malay is unresolved. The Anwar affair, for one. The refusal to stand up to the United States when Islam is attacked while happily putting Malaysian students alleged by foreign governments of involvement in religious extremism. Yet when the issue lands at its door, as in Malaysia exporting nuclear technical knowhow to Muslim countries, the issue is fudged, and the company is absolved of all wrongdoing for no reason than it is controlled by a son of the Prime Minister. When it suits Kuala Lumpur, when, for instance, it was not this company but another with no political links, it would have had all the key figures in Kamunting under the Internal Security Act. Look at what happened to Yazid Sufat. He is detained under the ISA for tenuous and obscure links to Arab militants. The US accused him of it. Malaysia detained him, and his two-year extension was recently extended. His links to Islamic militants is as tenuous as Mr Kamaludin to nuclear technology.

When the Muslim ummah, such as it is in Malaysia, is upset and angry, they discuss it in the mosques. It is the extent of the problems they face that even government mosques turn into anti-government hotbeds at night. The implications of this now dawns on the BN and UMNO. The BN insists it is an Islamic state, and played into PAS's designs. It does not have to do anything now. The UMNO Muslim can now in clear conscience choose which brand of Islam he wants to be associated with: the BN's or PAS's. When push comes to shove, when Islam is the issue, most Muslims would chose the path he wants to follow, irrespective of what his political party decrees. There will be a cross-over from one to the other as a natural consequence of this. So far, the move is one way, to the PAS's view of mosques as political centres to discuss issues of the day. There are not enough PAS controlled mosques in the country that the official government-run mosques provide space for such discussion.

Is this good or bad? The government insists that any public discussion which brings out differences in religion is bad. Rational discussion is not allowed. But it that how Islam, or indeed any religion or idea, has developed? It is the differences that firm the central view, whatever it is, in any debate. It is the minority that forces the majority to change. Sunni Muslim is the more stronger with the presence of the more aggressive Shias. The debate within the four Sunni schools have defined the character of the schools for centuries. But in Malaysia, the government believes that such debate inhibits the growth of Islam. Why? Because it cannot meet the challenge? Or because it fears the apposite view would be more supported? Islam as a religion does not allow a secular government in a religious society. This is what UMNO wants, in which the politicians, not the ulema, hold sway. But whether it likes or not, Islam is used by the Malay political parties to push the other into a corner. One uses religion per se for it, the other uses secular politics to rein in the Islamic politician. There is no clear winner. Not yet. But the BN's decision to declare Malaysia an Islamic state unilaterally makes an Islamic debate on its future inevitable. It is in this context that the use of the mosque becomes an issue. The fact is that both UMNO and PAS politicises it. That is why this would loom large in the coming years. Whether a Muslim preacher indeed did or did not suggest, in his sermon, the rape and murder of a young girl is punishment for her father's politics, is irrelevant in this debate.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com