‘Political Islam’ and Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad (Part One)
In particular many “middle of the road” Malaysian voters, mostly non-Malay and non-Muslim but also including many Malays and Muslims, harbour reservations about Islamist politics — and specifically about what has long been, especially since the rise of the “new Islamists” and their capture of the party in the early 1980s, PAS’s own “hardline” version of Islamist politics.
Clive Kessler, The Malaysian Insider
Dr Dzulkelfy Ahmad’s recent commentary on “Political Islam at the crossroads in Malaysia” (The Malaysian Insider, 28 December) was both encouraging and disquieting.
Encouraging, because it said, and quite directly, a few things that many people, especially with the national elections approaching, have wanted to hear from the “moderate” forces or wing in PAS.
Things, for example, such as his conviction that PAS must, and can, take its stand on “the middle ground”, and consolidate its appeal (or at least its acceptability) to centrist voters, by means of a consistent commitment to a moderate, conciliatory and “gentle” form or understanding of Islam.
And disquieting too, since, Dzulkefly’s own exposition, as much by what it does not say as through its explicit words, provides grounds for doubt that his bland reassurances may be confidently accepted.
It prompts some real concern, through what he fails to understand and acknowledge as much as by what he does acknowledge.
These are important considerations.
Not abstract but considerations of immediate practical political relevance. Why?
A need for credible reassurance
Dzulkefly is, or so it seems to a distant and detached observer, a very decent man, a politician of admirable attitudes and political impulses (I will not use here the contentious term “instincts”).
But is that enough?
Here and elsewhere Dzulkefly makes an argument and advances a position. He wants to provide reasons for people to suspend a number of the deep-seated doubts that they may have about the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition, and whether they should support it.
In particular many “middle of the road” Malaysian voters, mostly non-Malay and non-Muslim but also including many Malays and Muslims, harbour reservations about Islamist politics — and specifically about what has long been, especially since the rise of the “new Islamists” and their capture of the party in the early 1980s, PAS’s own “hardline” version of Islamist politics.
They are worried, in short, about giving their support to a multiparty coalition that might, if elected, eventually serve as the instrument for the creation of an explicitly Islamic state in Malaysia, or powerfully promote the demand for one.
They are worried that, with their well-intentioned but differently intentioned support, the Pakatan Rakyat coalition might become a vehicle in which the hardline political Islamists in PAS might ride to Putrajaya and from the “commanding heights” of government there push with unprecedented force for the further implementation in Malaysia of Syariah law, including the hudud punishment provisions.
That is their fear.
They want to be reassured.
Dzulkely wants to provide them with that reassurance, and people look to him, and to his “moderate” friends within PAS, for precisely that reassurance.
Dulkefly, as well as having his own political agenda and purposes (as all politicians do and must), may sincerely wish to provide Malaysians with that assurance. I think he does.
The question is whether people can accept that assurance, and whether they would be well-advised to do so.
As the thirteenth national elections approach, people are being asked to rely heavily on the trust that they place in, and in the reassurances provided by, Dzulkefly and his allies among the “moderate Islamists” in PAS.
It is a hugely important question, an enormously fateful choice — for them and for the nation as a whole.
That is why Dzulkefly’s argument and its adequacy, or otherwise, need some thoughtful consideration.
“Political Islam”?
Yes, correct. Dzulkefly is right. In this country PAS represents, or is the manifestation of, the worldwide phenomenon of “political Islam”, in its distinctive, and also historic, local form.
But what is “political Islam”?
It simply will not do for activist Islamist commentators to complain about so-called “Western” characterizations of Islam, both as a religion and civilization, as inherently and also threateningly “political”, and then to assert, as Dzulkefly now does, that they also see Islam as inherently “apolitical” –– and so must invent, with the provision of a further adjective, the notion and fact of something called “political Islam”.
Yes, in its outlook and history and civilizational self-understanding, Islam is inherently political.
Or, as Dzulkefly puts it, “The holistic paradigm of Islam includes its inherent and intrinsic interests in matters of ‘government and governance’, thus making it political from the very outset.”
That is what many, both Islamic scholars and Western writers about Islam, have long maintained.
So there was never any need, as Dzulkefly now wants to suggest, for “Orientalists” and others to invent the term “political Islam” so that Islam’s political dimension might at last be recognized, and so to call into being something that had not previously existed.
The question, as Dzukefly recognizes, is not whether Islam is political but what the politics of Islam should be.
And, specifically, what kind of politics should Muslims as Muslims in today’s world, and now here in current Malaysian circumstances, seek to affirm and pursue.
If there was no need “adjectivally” to invent a special notion of “political Islam”, or if that was not the reason, then where did the term come from and why was it devised?
Towards “Third-Phase Islam”
What is known in our time as “political Islam” has arisen not from the simple and gratuitous provision of an additional adjective to highlight (as if that were necessary!) Islam’s inherent and characteristic — some would say “defining” — political dimension.
It arises from, and is the product of, the history, both specifically religious and more broadly civilizational, of Islam itself. It is the consequence of, and a reaction to, its “career in the world”: of the entanglement of Islam in world history.
It is what we may term historically as “third-phase Islam”.
i. The first phase. The first phase in religious evolution is born of a specific moment, the formative moment of the faith and faith community.
It comes from that moment, first experienced in this “faith tradition” by Abraham and later re-experienced anew (and, for Muslims, in its ultimately definitive form) by Muhammad, though others prophets in between had also been struck by a similarly powerful intimation, of first sensing the compelling presence of the divine.
That formative moment is when an individual, a prophet, is seized by the sudden, absolute, and all-encompassing awareness — both intellectual and broadly existential and hence spiritual — of the “one-ness” of God. That awareness takes the form not simply of a weak realization but of a powerful conviction. It is a total, and totalizing, apprehension of the central reality of Tauhid.
The first phase of religious evolution is born of this revelatory moment and centres upon the implications of its prophetic experience, upon its humanly transformative impact: for the prophet and for those who, by following his insight and lead, seek to replicate in their own inner lives, if only in part, that same transformation.
In that first phase religion itself, in this case Islam, is centred and focused upon that direct, immediate experience and conviction of Divine Unity. It is an awesome and awe-inspiring realization.
It is what in this tradition faith, what religion, is all about. What more, some wonder, might ever be needed?
ii. The Second phase. The first phase generally lasts for the lifetime of the founding or focal prophet himself. Whether it was Moses on the mountain or Muhammad in the cave, he (and he alone) has had the extraordinary experience, originating and defining, of the Divine Unity. He communicates that revelatory experience, others reach towards it and follow him.
A problem arises, however, with the death of the prophet. Others may succeed to his mundane role and assume some of his worldly responsibilities and functions. But their experience is not his, nor is it authoritative in the same way. Their experience may be derived from his, but only as a small and partial replication of his personal experience of revelation.
After his death, the community has to deal with the problem of the “absent lawgiver”, of the vacuum of legal and spiritual authority, of their faith community’s distancing or separation from the authoritative personal source of spiritual authenticity.
New problems arise, and people must wonder and will naturally ask themselves “What would the prophet himself have done?”
Differences of opinion arise. Conflicts occur. Different groups, to assert their own position and to justify their rejection of others, promote — in all sincerity — their own views not just of what the prophet meant and intended but also of what his entire life and prophetic career, as well as his spiritual understanding, were really about.
With that the history of the faith community enters into its second phase.
This is the phase where the intellectual and also the emotional focus of the believers are in some way, if only in part, transferred from their original or primary object, from the defining apprehensions of the Divine Unity or “godhead”, and instead are attached in some measure to the now-absent founding prophet and to shared community memory of him.
This is generally done not as a diminution of their commitment to the Unity of God but as a reaffirmation of the community’s own human and historical connection through whom God, in his awesome and majestic unity, has become and been made known to them.
The sacred faith, as members of the faith community now understand and experience and live it, becomes to some extent “prophet-centric”.
