Constructing the ‘liberal’ Muslim other: ethnic politics, competition, and polarisation in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

This contribution extends the sectarianisation thesis to analyse the construction of the ‘liberal’ Muslim other in Malaysian politics. It argues that political competition, rather than religion, motivated elite Malay state actors to otherise their political rivals as ‘liberal’. Elite state actors leveraged key periods of sociopolitical uncertainty between 1998 and 2020 to reaffirm dominant ethno-religious narratives and construct the meaning of ‘liberal’ as anti-Islam to retain political power. They framed ‘liberal’ Malays as a threat by associating them with non-Malay ethnic minorities and, by extension, with secular values. The contribution builds its argument with an analysis of competing ideas over three time periods, each constituting cumulative stages in the sectarianisation of the ‘liberal’ Muslim other: the 1998 pro-democracy Reformasi movement; religious freedom challenges in the 2000s; and the mounting electoral challenges to the Barisan Nasional government since the 2008 general elections. The analysis demonstrates that the construction of ‘liberal’ sectarian difference occurred despite the absence of a pre-existing ‘liberal’ Muslim identity available for manipulation. The contribution emphasises that sectarianisation can develop in different forms and over cumulative stages that are contingent on local-level complexities and political competition.

KEYWORDS:

• Ketuanan Melayu
• ethnic politics
• sectarianisation
• liberal Muslims
• political polarisation
• Malaysia

Acknowledgements

The author expresses gratitude to her PhD dissertation supervisors, Dr Karen Evans and Dr Leon Moosavi, for their support and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article. The author also thanks the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All ethnic Malays are defined as Muslims in Article 160 of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia. This paper uses the terms Malay and Muslim interchangeably when discussing the Malaysian context.

2. While the term bumiputera is not mentioned in the Constitution, it is used colloquially to refer to Malays and aboriginal natives in the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, who are mentioned as having a special position.

3. See Ostwald and Oliver (2020) for the geographic distribution of these two electoral arenas.

4. Ethics approval for this research was not required because there was no direct interaction with human subjects.

5. These studies provide an excellent account of the current contents of the different worldviews of the ‘liberal’ and religious Muslim groups in Malaysia.

6. A related intra-Muslim division, but one that stayed at the religious elite level, emerged during the nineteenth century under British colonialism; it was based on religious leaders’ different approaches to Islamic thought – i.e. kaum tua (traditionalist) and kaum muda (reformist) (see Rahim and Abd 2006). The religious polemics between these religious groups differed from the political polemics of the political groups discussed in this paper.

7. These three ethnic-based parties formed the core of the Barisan Nasional coalition that governed Malaysia till 2018.

8. The 1999 founding name of the party was Parti Keadilan Nasional; it was renamed PKR in 2003 after a merger with a smaller political party.

9. 121(1A) amendment stated that high courts in the civil legal system do not have jurisdiction in any matters that are within the jurisdiction of the sharia courts. The Malaysian Constitution uses the word ‘syariah’, the Malay spelling of sharia.

10. See Moustafa (2018) for an in-depth discussion of such cases.

11. See such arguments outlined by Malaysian solicitor Tommy Thomas (Thomas 2005), who later became the first non-Muslim Attorney-General under the PH coalition government in 2018.

12. This was conveyed in an official Friday sermon by JAIS entitled ‘Liberal Understanding Ruins the Islamic Creed’ in February 2016.

13. See Saleem (2020) for an analysis of key ethno-religious controversies in 2019 that contributed to a context of heightened interethnic distrust.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saleena Saleem

Saleena Saleem is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. Her research interest is on the political sociology of Muslim societies in Southeast Asia, with a focus on ethno-religious politics and gender. Saleena holds a M.Sc. in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She also holds a M.Sc. (Business and Economics Journalism) and a B.A. (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) from Boston University.