Analysis of Dr Dzul’s Question
To me, Dr Dzul is a cut above the seething, frothing, ‘everyone is against us’ type Muslim fundamentalist (be they from UMNO or PAS) who dominate Malay politics at present. These fundamentalists are overtly against the democratic Malaysia which Pakatan Rakyat seeks to establish. Instead, they seek to realise a repressive regime which would resemble Talibanistan.
Dr Dzul wrote an essay in which he posed the question ‘Do you think Malaysia should be a secular or Islamic state?’ In this essay I found a few ambiguities which may show that Dr Dzul is simply ‘old wine in new bottles’, i.e. no different from the Muslim fundamentalist mentioned above.
The first ambiguity I found was his claim that he is an Islamist democrat, by which he means that he is ‘advocating Islam as a social and political order within the ambit of parliamentary democracy; besides being a religious conviction per se’.
When he says he’d like Islam as a social and political order, what is he seeking for exactly? If he’s seeking for a society or polity which obliges its citizens to care for the poor and to take measures to ensure poverty is not permanent (which is the crux of Quranic social justice), then I’m totally with that. If he seeks for a citizen-powered clean up of our streets from the mat rempits, gangsters or any Ibrahim Ali type guys, then I’m all for it as well.
The problem is, in recent times ‘Islam as a social and political order’ is about the moral policing of Muslims. Any Muslim couple who sit together in some park will get shamed and any Muslim who gets caught drinking will be given the right punishment. While this may seem ‘Islamic’ to some Muslims, it’s definitely not in line with the Quran itself. Does Dr Dzul agree with this? We will come to his answer later.
