POLITICS-SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Moderate Islam Stands Tall

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 25 2004 (IPS) - The likelihood of Malaysia going in the direction of countries known for their intolerant strand of Islam – such as Saudi Arabia – has just been stopped in its tracks by ballots, not bombs and bullets, at the weekend’s polls.

In the Mar. 21 poll in Malaysia, the ruling National Front coalition, led by the softspoken moderate Muslim and Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, received 4.3 million or 64 percent of the votes cast. The opposition Islamic party called Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) got only 15.8 percent of ballots – and lost a key state.

Now all eyes are on Malaysia’s bigger neighbour Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country – as it goes to the polls in April.

The results of that vote will be a reality check if South-east Asia – home to nearly 200 million of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims – is to be seen as the heartland of moderate and progressive Islam.

The polls in Indonesia, which has over 170 million Muslims out of its 235 million population, will be the first there since Sep. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Already, Indonesian analysts are hinting that in the next battle for the soul of Islam in a Muslim country, the extremists might be vanquished like their brethren in Malaysia.

”Islamic parties (are) losing popularity in Indonesia due to their inability to accommodate modernity,” Saiful Mujani, an analyst with the Freedom Institute, was quoted in Wednesday’s ‘Jakarta Post,’ an independent English-language newspaper.

This prediction should trouble the region’s archly conservative Muslims, who have assumed that parties such as Malaysia’s PAS, which said it wanted to have ‘shariah’ in the country, speak a language with mass appeal.

Beyond Malaysia, where 60 percent of whose 25 million are Muslim, the landslide victory of moderate Muslims there has delivered a harsh rebuke to that expanding army of Islamic bashers across the world. In Malaysia and elsewhere, the Mar. 21 vote is being interpreted as proof that not all Muslims identify with the ideas of extremist Islamic groups.

The vote also exposes as wild exaggerations other theories about South-east Asia held by the ‘experts’ who have mushroomed in this post-Sep. 11 world.

Among these are conclusions that the voice of radical Islam is gaining appeal, that Islamic extremists are making key inroads in South-east Asia, and that the region is in danger of being converted into a pan-Islamic state pushed by fundamentalists.

These theories arose in the wake of the U.S. government’s ”war against terrorism,” with Washington identifying South-east Asia as the second front in its battle.

The impression that this region is in the grip of the extremist fringe of Islam was conveyed by acts of terror, such as the Bali bomb blast in October 2002. The presence of Jemaiah Islamiyah, a group that security officials say had plans to unleash violence in pursuit of its ideal of a pan-Islamic state, was also a factor.

The appeal among some Muslims of figures such as Abu Bakar Bashir, an Indonesian cleric who has been named as Jemaiah Islamiyah head by officials, was also interpreted as a sign of moderate Islam on the wane.

Yet in the most categorical test of what strand of Islam prevails in this region – the poll in Malaysia was also the first in this Muslim-majority country since Sep. 11 – there is little doubt about which Islam is dominant.

”Badawi’s practical approach to Islam gained legitimacy at the elections than the extreme line advocated by PAS,” Arong Suthasana, head of the Institute of Islamic World Studies, a Bangkok-based think tank, told IPS. ”The Malaysian voters also showed that the religious factor to rule a country is not significant.”

PAS in fact suffered double blows. It only won six of the 86 parliamentary constituencies where it fielded candidates, when it held 27 seats in the last parliament.

PAS’ call for Malaysia’s conversion into an Islamic state and the imposition of archaic customs under the guise of ‘pure Islam’ also found little takers among the northern states of Terengganu and Kelantan, which had been under a PAS administration till the Mar. 21 elections.

While PAS was defeated in Terengganu, it scraped through with a small majority in Kelantan.

By contrast, the National Front’s commitment toward a secular state with a mix of a moderate Islam led to its winning 198 out of the 219 seats in the expanded legislature. Badawi’s coalition also won 12 of the 13 state elections.

Editorial writers across the region breathed a collective sigh of relief this week at the Malaysian electorate’s judgement.

”In regional security terms and the wider war to win back Islam for its peaceable followers, this was the most important signal to come out of the election,” declared the state-controlled ‘Straits Times’ newspaper in Singapore, a Chinese-majority country that has always been wary of its neighbouring country.

PAS will feel its electoral setback even in Kelantan, the only state legislature that PAS controls. ”With Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s National Front occupying 20 seats of the state’s legislature, PAS has been deprived of the two-thirds majority it needs to pass state laws unopposed,” noted Indonesia’s ‘Jakarta Post.’

Echoing observations made by Malaysian analysts, the ‘Post’ also queried if PAS’ more dominant political life until the recent poll had less to do with its Islamic vision and more to do with a protest vote by Malaysians in 1999 over then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s clampdown a year before on his rival and then deputy, Anwar Ibrahim.

Anwar was arrested in 1998 on charges of sodomy and corruption. His camp says the charges were trumped-up ones designed to edge out a popular rival to Mahathir.

For the National Front, which Mahathir used to lead, this month’s victory was its most convincing in 14 years.

Yet analysts like Arong, a member of Thailand’s Muslim minority, advise caution in assuming that defeat at the polls would put an end to radical Islam in the region. Said Arong: ”You cannot disregard the religious parties, because they are determined to be in power. They will want to come back.”