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Is it Islam Hadari or UMNO Islam?

UMNO FIGHTS FOR its political life; what it once stood for slips from its grasp; is shunted into irrelevance as the Malay, its main support, cannot accept being told what is best for him. What was once the unquestioned political party of the Malay is reduced to re-work its political agenda to win back that support. Its troubles began in 1987, when the Gua Musang MP, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, came to within a whisker of defeating the UMNO president, Dato' Seri (now Tun) Mahathir Mohamed.

It led the High Court to declare UMNO the mass movement illegal the following year. In its place a new (or in the political currency of today, a progressive) UMNO, or UMNO Hadhari, took its place. It had one aim: to prevent Tengku Razaleigh ever again in a position to challenge the UMNO president. The 2004 UMNO presidential nominations had its origins in the convulsions of 1987. What is not stated is that it was Tengku Razaleigh who won, but what he did not know then was the presence of conspirators who sole aim was to ensure he was defeated at any cost.

But this UMNO had no intellectual force to keep it going, and depended on the strength of the president's advisors. That it lasted so long is that Tun Mahathir had one in a man he was once proud to tell anyone who would listen that it was he who brought him to UMNO but would cringe now at the mention of his name: the jailed former deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. When he was sacked and arrested in 1998, the UMNO Hadhari raison d'etre collapsed, with no one with any intellectual strength to keep it alive. For it fell foul of Malay cultural and feudal tradition, and nothing it does since ever seems right.

It is worse now. There is no one in UMNO who can repair this alienation. It sees the Malay ground shifting irrevocably to PAS, which encourages it for its larger political aim of turning Malaysia into a theorcratic Muslim country. But PAS itself is caught in its own political doubts, as over the years, many educated Malays who would once have joined UMNO are not preapred to, and moved body and soul to PAS, but is nevertheless worried about its fundamentalist agenda. What this wrought is a PAS that looks, on the surface, more like UMNO the mass movement.

PAS is strongest in a largely Malay constituency, and its strength is in the overwhelmingly Malay dominates states of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu. There is still in PAS the idealism that once was the hallmark of UMNO. This is a powerful political message that UMNO cannot counter with finesse, certainly in the Malay states. If UMNO wanted to break that, it had to return to what it once was, or challenge PAS on its ground. Its leaders would have to humiliate themselves for the first, and so decided on the second.

It went about it by first declaring Malaysia an Islamic state. It would not debate this in Parliament or obtain the consensus of the Conference of Rulers, whose assent on matters Islamic must be obtained. Instead, Dr Mahathir, then prime minister, viewed it as a natural consequence of Malaysia and its commitment to the ideals of Islam. It did not say what it was or how it changed Malaysian polity, only that it is now unchallengeable that Malaysia is an Islamic state.

Then it spouted Islam Hadhari, or progressive Islam, which it would not debate either, as a counterweight to PAS's Islamic agenda. While we know what PAS has in mind, we do not know UMNO's or the Malaysian government's plan. But the ruling National Front (BN) coalition, not knowing what it was all about, accepted it for no reason than that UMNO wanted it. We still do not know what it means. Or how it differs from Islam as we know it. But Islam Hadhari is spread far and wide as an ideal, without any explanation of what it is or stands for. We are told that Islam Hadhari is a better alternative to PAS's fundamentalist Islam.

But Islam Hadhari is concocted as an Orientalist version of Islam, in which the tenets of the faith are viewed through Orientalist spectacles, and then challenge the followers of the faith for centuries. Islam Hadhari now accepts the Orientalist belief that Islam should be peace-loving to the point that it must allow the West to destroy it at will if what it practices falls fouls of Orientalist perception. An Orientalist is a Westerner who has studied a native view and cast an ideology around it, and this takes precedence of what it actually means on the ground.

When this theory runs aground, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, it flounders to a degree that frightens the Orientalist. Osama bin Laden is criticised as a Muslim extremist, and his actions are poured on Islam. But is he not an extremist fighting to secure his space who happened to be a Muslim? Is it not strange that when Catholicism rears its ugly head in Northern Ireland, it is the Catholic extremists, not the Catholic religion, that is blamed. Could it not be so in Islam, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or whatever?

But Islam Hadhari in Malaysia runs into problems. When TV3 had its "Sure Heboh" carnival, with the government's blessings, the government-appointed muftis and religious leaders objected. It was resented as an unnecessary intrusion of religion in what is a business and cultural decision. TV3, in fact, defied the religious fraternity to insist it would continue with its "Sure Heboh" carnivals throughout the country. It was a warning to the religious authorities that they should interfere in decisions like this only when its opinions are asked for.

What then is Islam Hadhari? The government is silent. But supporters come with increasingly bizarre explanations on what it is. Islam Hadhari is around since the first days of Islam. One letter in the Internet newspaper, malaysiakini, even has a list of about a score of Muslims, from the Prophet Mohamamed to – and I kid you not – the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's grandfather, Ustadz Abdullah Fahim; the Prophet's followers and successors are on this list. So far it has not been challenged. When the government is quick to challenge malaysiakini when it disagrees with what it carries, one must assume this letter does spell out what Islam Hadhari is.

Why then is there this reluctance to tell us what Islam Hadhari is? Could it be UMNO wants a hammer lock on Islam Hadhari so it cannot be challenged, and PAS and the opposition cannot attack or decry it? Is it then that Islam Hadhari is not explained and kept deliberately vague so it is for UMNO's sole use? This is where the difficulty comes. When an Orientalist version of Islam drives a self-proclaimed Muslim party as UMNO, without the faintest idea of what it is, how could it challenge the religion that is practiced by its followers as it was ordained? More important, is not Islam Hadhari another name for UMNO Islam?

It is not a battle UMNO can win. In the 1970s, the Shah of Iran confronted the underground Islamic opposition led by the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini but repeatedly lost ground as his regime became more autocratic and dictatorial until he was forced out in the Islamic revolution. It has declared war on Islamic fundamentalist groups, not because it believes it but at the request of the United States, who in the 1970s, backed the Shah in Iran, in a society which is ripe for change because it has been ignored by the government for long. Unlike the Shah, Pak Lah does not have the thinkers who would put an intellectual gloss to his rants. That makes his position more precarious than it already is.

[This is my column in the latest issue of Seruan Keadilan, the official organ of Parti Keadial Nasional, published today, 15 August 2004.]

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