Speaking Islamic: self-actualisation and justice in Malaysia and India

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights the contingency and epistemological heterogeneity of bottom-up calls for Islamisation in Malaysia and India. Using Shahab Ahmad’s conceptualisation of Islam as a language (Islam/ic), the paper investigates the plurality of meanings grassroots actors attach to common Islamic signifiers. In the case of Malaysia, the sociopolitical context of the Islamisation race between PAS and UMNO and the institutionalisation of Islamic piety, along with the global Islamist revival, provided the platform for the emergence of fragmented new Islamic ontologies. Among these, the paper focused on ISIS supporters and sympathisers expressing claims to self-actualisation and righteousness as conservative demands for the establishment an Islamic State, implementation of Shari’a and hudud. In India, the political context of an allegedly oppressing Hindu numerical majority, the prevalence of anti-Muslim biases and socially institutionalised discrimination, and the failures of Indian secularism, provided the platform for the emergence of new Islamic ontologies. With a focus on SIMI, the paper sketched out how Islam communicates calls for justice and recognition, a re-imagination also assisted by growing international prevalence of calls for justice framed in radical Islamic terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamisation
• India
• Malaysia
• extremism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Most Malaysian supporters of both ISIS and SIMI are either in prison or too afraid of potential consequences to speak. As such, this paper suffers from potential shortcomings vis-à-vis its lack of primary source accessibility and their interpretation.

2. Hindutva had often been defined as ‘Hindu nationalism as a cultural, religious and political force in modern India’ which produced a molecular transformation of the society, meaning it altered the entire social fabric (Davis 2005, 107).

3. On 28 June 2016, Gagak Hitam conducted a grenade attack on a nightclub, Movida, located in Puchong, Selangor, which resulted in the wounding of eight and no casualties. (http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/malaysia-arrests-16-suspected-militant-links) .

4. Dr Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman, Assistant Prof at RSIS, NTU Singapore, carried out this interview on 6 October 2016 in Ipoh, Perak, along with a field researcher who chose to remain anonymous.

5. This interview was carried out in Kuala Lumpur on 17 November 2016 with my driver. Following the discussion, I asked him whether I could cite him in a research paper on ISIS. He agreed, but chose to remain anonymous.

6. Interview was carried out in Singapore on 14 August 2017.

7. http://journals.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy1.ntu.edu.sg/doi/pdf/10.1177/0973184913411149.