It’s ‘Fanatics Week’ in Malaysia!

By Farish A. Noor

For most ordinary Malaysians and those who have visited the country, Malaysia comes across as a rather dull, if tarted up gigantic shopping arcade that stretches up to its frontiers. Despite spurious talk of so-called ‘Asian values’ and Malaysia being a ‘model Islamic state’ (or so says Washington), it quickly dawns on the newcomer that the real national ethos is consumerism in its crudest, crassest form. Malaysians may not be able to agree on much, but they can at least shop together till they drop—even if that is the only national achievement to note thus far.

Life in this hi-tech ultra-modern shopper’s paradise can also be terminally boring at times. Compared to Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand or the Philippines, Malaysia has been spared the excesses of genocidal violence and warfare—save for the dark days of the Emergency when the departing British colonial powers were engaged in the ruthless pursuit and liquidation of the secular Leftists in the country. The only shootings we hear about these days take place when the police open fire on suspected criminals; and even the crime scene can be tepid in comparison to other countries—I still recall the time when a friend of mine was mugged by a thief who wielded a nasty-looking hairbrush.

But now it appears that ‘fanaticism’ has become a major problem in Malaysia—so dangerous is it that the powers-that-be have seen fit to direct the state-controlled media services to run a week-long series of mini ‘info-teries’ on TV (at prime time no less) to educate and warn the public about the dangers of religious extremism.

The short clips feature interviews about alleged fanatics who have since seen the light and repented for their errant days. Just how they were reformed and made to repent remains, as expected, an open question.

Upon hearing this news I was taken aback somewhat. Since when did Malaysia have a major problem with these so-called ‘fanatics’? Have they been hiding in the woods all along, like those fabled Japanese soldiers of past, who stayed in the jungle for years and never realized that the war was over? Are the fanatics about to take to the streets, or worse still, break into the trendy shopping centers and exclusive boutiques of the country?

One wonders about the rationale and timing of this latest government move. If fanaticism is as bad and pervasive as we have been made to think, then how can the leaders of the country explain the near-total collapse and defeat of the conservative Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) in the recent elections? For decades the Malaysian government has been spinning the line that PAS was primarily responsible for the escalation of religious tension and growing levels of religious intolerance in the country. If this be the case, then surely the defeat of PAS would signal that the Malaysian public has no stomach for hard-core conservative religious politics any longer.

Most interesting of all is total lack of historical depth in the reports themselves. Divided into short easily digestible segments, they feature reports on groups as diverse as the ‘Mahdi’s army’ (yes, even boring Malaysia has a Mahdi’s army!), the neo-Sufi revivalist Al-Arqam movement (banned in 1994), the crypto-survivalist martial arts-turned –fundamentalist al-Maunah group, the so-called mujahideen fanatics of the Kesatuan Mujahideen Malaysia (KMM), and others. Each group is given its fifteen minutes of fame so to speak—but here is where the problem lies specifically.

For a few minutes would hardly suffice to explain and analyze the reasons behind the emergence of such groups in the first place. What is more by dividing them into neat categories and creating a veritable typology of religious loonies, these groups have been compartmentalized, pathologized and demonized in turn.

None of this really explains how and why normal individuals turn to religion as a means of political mobilization; and it sheds even less light on how and why religious discourse can shift to a more radical, intolerant and even violent register. In order to understand this, one needs to connect these groups together, and locate them against the background of the changes that were taking place in Malaysia from the late 1970s onwards, when they first began to leap onto the national political stage uninvited.

Here a quick lesson in Malaysian history would be in order. It should be remembered that it was in the 1980s and 1990s that the Malaysian government—led then, as now, by the Conservative-nationalists of the UMNO party—embarked on their ambitious (and ultimately problematic and unpredictable) Islamization program. Under the leadership of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia propelled itself headlong into the globalization process (allowing for foreign capital penetration into the country’s economy and liberalizing trade while privatizing national assets at the same time). The psycho-social impact of this rush into the globalization process was clear to see: in the city centers and urban areas it led to class tensions, anomie, glaring differences of wealth and growing power differentials between the rich and the poor.

To cushion the impact of this reckless globalization process, ‘Islam’ was taken out of the hat and offered as a panacea for all the ills that global capitalism had caused. Malaysians were told that they could and should model themselves after the Japanese if they re-interpreted the values and message of Islam as a work ethic akin to the Japanese credo. Muslims were told that it was all right to seek wealth and to make big bucks, while paying lip service at least to the norms of Islamic religiosity.

But the problem with such a simplistic technocratic outlook is that it fails to note that Islam—like all religions—is not a predictable component, but rather a variable factor that cannot be shaped or guided by any political formula or equation. Technocrats and politicians sometimes display a child-like naivety when it comes to nation-building. They seem to assume that X amount of religion mixed with Y amount of repressive laws will produce the desired product: a disciplined society that cares little for political participation and more about making money.

But lo and behold, the Malaysian state’s Islamization policy led to the creation of a myriad of mutated hybrids, ranging from neo-traditionalist revivalist movements that rejected all forms of modernity outright to hardcore militants who dreamt of tearing down the structures of the state and rebuilding the fabled Caliphate of the past on its ruins. By the early 1980s it was already painfully obvious that the grand Islamist project dreamt of by Dr. Mahathir and his (then) supporter Anwar Ibrahim was heading nowhere fast.

To hold back this sudden proliferation of non-sanctioned alternatives and variant lifestyles and movements, the state used the oldest trick in the book: Label them ‘fanatics’ and have them persecuted instead! This then was the fate of the Darul Arqam movement, (whose leader, Ustaz Ashaari, claimed that he had direct contact with God and the Prophet and thereby proved that his ego was actually bigger than any politician’s in the country—a rare feat to say the least). Other groups were likewise labeled ‘fanatical’, ‘militant’, ‘deviant’, ‘criminal’, ‘terrorist’, etc—long before such language was even made fashionable thanks to the hegemonization of Washington’s ‘war against terror’ discourse.

This week’s ‘celebration’ of the wonderful world of fanatics in Malaysia therefore should be read with these provisos in mind. It is not an accident that these so-called ‘fanatics’ emerged at a time when Malaysia was being forced to undergo massive, radical and often traumatic changes thanks to the ambitions of a small yet powerful business-political elite. Everywhere in the contemporary Muslim world, Islamic activism reads as an index to the failure of the post-colonial state, and Malaysia is no exception to this rule. The ‘problem’ of fanaticism, so to speak, is not simply and solely with the alleged ‘fanatics’ themselves. Rather than focus the spotlight on these poor deluded characters, the governments of the Muslim world should look to themselves and examine their own conduct—particularly their failure to uphold human rights and fundamental equalities—that have contributed to the problem in the first place.

Dr. Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist.