Are the non-Muslims in Malaysia the enemy of Islam?

PAS’s spiritual leader Datuk Hashim Jasin, in an interview with Utusan Malaysia, pointed out an entity or a movement within Malaysia which he referred to as the ““enemy of Islam”.

“Looking at the current situation, the Malay Muslims need to unite because subtly, the enemies of Islam are planning and moving,” Hashim said.

“Whether it is PAS or Umno, we must be aware of the threat from the enemies of Islam,” he was also quoted as saying.

Is there really an enemy of Islam in Malaysia and are they really plotting harm against Islam in Malaysia, as Hashim believes?

Well, in an article that I had recently written, I pointed out that the answer to the question is a little complex. It is a little complex, because if you take the non-Muslims as an example, and ask yourself whether the non-Muslims are the enemy of Islam, you will be both wrong and right regardless of whether you answer the question with a yes or no.

In response to my article, a reader commented that I am being unnecessarily obtuse in my explanation, because according to him, non-Muslims are not the enemies of Islam, because non-Muslims are not waking up every day, trying to plot the destruction of Islam – instead, the non-Muslim, according to him, are just aiming to go through the day, trying to “put food on the table.”

His answer is actually the typical answer that you will hear from the non-Muslims in the country. All of us don’t think we are the enemy of Islam because all of us do not see ourselves as consciously seeking the destruction of Islam. Like the commentator in my article, most of us just see ourselves as people who are “minding our own business” or just trying to “put food on the table”, while having no designs whatsoever for or against Islam.

The problem with this view is that non-Muslims have not been interested in “putting food on the table” for at least two or three generations. Three or four generations ago, you might say that all that the non-Muslims want out of life is to have 3 full meals a day, but today, 99.9 percent of non-Muslims in the country are not going through our day just trying to survive.

Instead, most of us wake up everyday with the desire to increase our wealth. Many of us don’t even have a a rational reason for possessing this desire, in the sense that even if we become millionaires and possess enough wealth to last us until we die, we will still be trying to accumulate wealth, simply because if we don’t try to accumulate wealth, we will have no idea what to do with ourselves.

The reason the vast majority of non-muslims, and even a great number of muslims are like this, is because we are capitalists.

Capitalists are basically people who believe that the purpose of life is in increasing the amount of capital or assets that you have. To a capitalist, your life only has worth and meaning, if you die with more assets to your name than when you were born. If you die having less land, car, house and businesses to your name than when you were born, a capitalist will deem such a life to be wasted and useless, that has no worth, purpose or meaning.

Most non-Muslims in Malaysia became capitalist because we have accepted the triumph of the West in the 19th and 20th century and conditioned our identity to be in line with the West’s ideological doctrine.

In the 19th and 20th century, capitalism and communism are the two main ideologies that have emerged from the West. Of the two, capitalism would later on defeat communism, and emerge as the sole undisputed ideology that defines the western civilization.

We, as well as many secular Muslims, have conditioned ourselves so intimately with the Western ideological concepts like capitalism, that the ideas behind capitalism appear to us today as innately true and natural. While at its core, capitalism is an ideology that promotes the idea that the purpose of life is to increase your capital and assets, in its extended version, capitalism also promotes such notions as individual right, private property and democracy, as well as a host of other notions and concepts, which together has created a way of life, that defines the world as we know it today.

Such things that we accept as being intrinsically true and natural today – like the nation state, elections, parliamentary democracy, copyright laws, the separation of religion from the state, equal rights for the genders, human rights etc, are all basically dependent upon the ideas propounded by capitalism as its basis and reason for existence.

It is because capitalism is so influential in the world today, that most of us don’t even think that we are being anti-Islamic even when the secular capitalist ideas and lifestyle that we adopt will inevitably lead to the decline and deterioration of the Islamic way of life. We just assume that the secular capitalistic ideas that we have embraced, are true and right in and of itself, simply because we see it manifest all around us from the time we were born.

We tend to think that we are not anti-Islamic although we are Hindus or Buddhist or Taoist, because we tend to contrast Islam with Hinduism or Buddhism or Taoist, and not see how us being Hindus or Buddhist is in any way undermining Islam, but the fact of the matter is that it is not us being Hindus or Taoist, so much as us being secular capitalists, that is what is truly posing a threat to Islam.

If we non-Muslims have our way, Malaysia will likely transform itself into becoming a secular capitalist country in the shape of the UK or Australia or Canada.

The conservative Muslims however, do not want us to transform into a secular capitalist country. If you ask them how they see the future of Malaysia, they will likely refer to the Islamic nations and polities that existed in the 16th and 17th century, when the Islamic civilisation and way of life dominated the world, before the West rose and replaced Islam, as the world’s paramount civilisation.

When Islamists refer to the past to indicate how they wish the future to be, they are not indicating that they want us all to abandon automobiles and go back to riding horses and camels, as their detractors tend to mock them. Rather they are simply advocating for the return to a time when Islam was the foundation of growth, progress, science, law, authority and prestige in the world.

In other words, Islamists in Pas today are like the loyalists to an old dynasty, even after it fell, while the non-Muslims in Malaysia, as well as the secular Muslims, are like those who have moved on, and accepted the dominance of the new dynasty that replaced the old dynasty.

When the Qing dynasty replaced the Ming dynasty as the ruler of China, do you know what the Qing dynasty called all those who remained faithful to the Ming dynasty? They referred to them as rebels, anti-establishment elements or triad organisations, and hunted them down as criminals.

These loyalists to the old way of life, on the other hand, likely also saw the people who submitted to the new Qing dynasty as traitors, and seeing them thus in such a negative light, probably saw no problem in inflicting them harm, which is likely why they were labelled gangsters, criminals and triad members by the new authorities that had replaced the old government.

Anyway, coming back to Malaysia, if you were to study tension between the conservative elements of Islam, as represented by such parties as PAS, against the non-Muslims and secular Muslims, rather than just see it as the clash of religious ideas between a Muslim and a Hindu or a Taoist, you also have to see it as a dispute between a side that is still faithful to an older civilisation and another side that has moved on and conditioned themselves to identify with the civilisation that has defeated and replaced the older civilisation.

When you see it that way, you will start to see another dimension to the tension between Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia, and it is only when you see it in this dimension, will you be aware enough of the problem, to truly appreciate the difficulties inherent in reconciling the difference between the conservative Muslims and the non-Muslims as well as the secular Muslims in Malaysia, even if the appreciation does not lead to a solution.