Islam in Southeast Asia: Political, Social and Strategic Challenges for the 21st Century

7. LAW-MAKING IN THE NAME OF ISLAM: IMPLICATIONS FOR DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

121 Law-Making in the Name of Islam 121 7 LAW-MAKING IN THE NAME OF ISLAM: IMPLICATIONS FOR DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE Zainah Anwar INTRODUCTION: ISLAM AS A POLITICAL IDEOLOGY The rise of political Islam in countries throughout the Muslim world has posed particular challenges to democratic principles of governance, human rights and women’s rights.Most Muslim states are in crisis today, politically, economically, socially. Many remain under authoritarian rule of wellentrenched monarchs, despots, and autocratic elected leaders. The fact that the modern Muslim state is conceptualized and organized within the framework of modern political institutions which are regarded as western and secular, the state failure to deliver on the aspirations of the people is seen as the failure of these Western political models and processes. As they become delegitimized in the eyes of the discontented, disenfranchized and marginalized groups of society, the reactive search for an alternative governing ideology in Muslim countries often takes the form of religiosity. In these societies, Islamist activists have become the most vocal and effective opponents to the ruling elite as they successfully construct and package religion into an ideology for political struggle against the oppressive state. The political ideals of Islamism (Islam used as a political ideology) have found widespread appeal among disparate social forces in Muslim societies — young urbanites, upwardly mobile professionals adrift from tradition and 121 07 Islam Pt II_Ch 7 4/2/05, 10:40 AM 121 122 122 Zainah Anwar culture, the underclass left behind by the new prosperity and modernization agenda, and socially conscious citizens outraged by the corruption, mismanagement, and authoritarianism of the ruling elite and see no hope for change. Harnessing these discontentments, political Islamists whose objective is to topple the existing political order and replace it with an Islamic order, have crafted and packaged religion into an appealing political ideology of protest and resistance. The complexity and depth of religion is reduced to one fixed ideological worldview to determine and direct public behaviour.1 This worldview is constructed in opposite to an ideological enemy and the world is then interpreted based on these opposites.2 The ideology is moulded into a set of dichotomies, presented as the: Divine order vs. secular order Islamic state (no separation between religion and politics) vs secular nation-state (separation between religion and politics) Consultation (shura) vs. secular democracy Divine law vs. human legislation Sovereignty of God’s rule on earth vs. sovereignty of the people This packaged ideology made up of clear and unambiguous messages is then presented as the true authentic face of faith and piety where there is no separation between religion and politics. The objective is clear: to delegitimize the existing political order and political elites and replace them with an Islamic order. The ideology is then sold to societies undergoing massive transformations and dislocations from traditional to modern, from rural to urban, and from agricultural to industrial. It becomes appealing, either as an idiom of protest or as a source of faith and tradition to a people torn away from their own religious and cultural roots and are seeking refuge in absolute truths under modern conditions of uncertainty in their lives. THE ISLAMIZATION RACE IN MALAYSIA While Islamic based political parties in Malaysia, in particular PAS (Islamic Party of Malaysia), had called for the establishment of an Islamic state and shari’a rule in the 1940s and 1950s, this demand for an Islamic social order had always gone in tandem with Malay sovereignty and Malay nationalism. In fact PAS leaders in the first three decades of the party’s existence were better known as Malay nationalists, seen as no more Islamic than their rivals in UMNO. The ouster of the last PAS nationalist leader, Muhammad Asri Muda, in 1982 and the takeover of the party by a group of religious Young Turks educated in Islamic jurisprudence and theology from Middle Eastern universities saw PAS discarding its Malay nationalist identity to remake itself 07 Islam Pt II_Ch 7 4/2/05, 10:40 AM 122 123 Law-Making in the Name of Islam 123 into a party led by ulama pushing for the establishment of a theocratic state. It became unequivocal and strident in its call for an Islamic state with a constitution based on the Qur’an and Traditions of the Prophet, and the imposition of shari’a law. It declared the existing federal constitution a secular constitution designed by the infidel colonials...