The inconvenient rationality of Islamism: Harakah during the Pergau dam episode

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Notes

For some analytical discussion of the impact of ‘Islamic threat’ writings on the Islamists' view of the West, see Ibrahim A. Karawan 1997: 53–55. On the manipulation of information about Islamism, by Arab regimes, for Western consumption, see Ibrahim A. Karawan 1997: 61. That ‘the clash which counts’ is that between Islamists and Muslim liberals, not between Islamic and Western civilisation, is a perspective cogently argued in Sivan 2003, and is more than implicit in some committed commentaries on gender inequality in Arab countries: e.g. Fadia Faqir 1997.

A recurring source for Mahathir's anti-PAS rhetoric, going hand-in-hand with his evolving nationalistic vision for Malay salvation through economic transformation (including struggle against Western economic hegemony), was the UMNO leader's annual keynote speech to the party's General Assembly. Among others, one could cite his first, of 1982 (Mahathir bin Mohamad 1992a); or, marked by even more powerful expression on both themes, his General Assembly speech ten years later (Mahathir bin Mohamad 1992b). For a short recent essay on Mahathir's strategy of co-opting Islamic revival on the side of economic resurgence, see Kershaw 2003. Aside from two minor corrigenda (a population statistic and Mahathir's solution for the 1998 financial crisis, righted in Kershaw 2004a), this article leans more to the historical side than the excellent and up-to-date Economist 2003: 5–9. Kershaw 2004a addresses Mahathir's resonant swan-song at the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference) in October 2003 (the month of his retirement), in which he extended his vision of salvation to the worldwide Muslim ummah (and in an idiom which somewhat belied his anti-Islamist principles).

The two anti-British campaigns are analysed in Kershaw 1983, and Kershaw 1997, respectively. Kershaw 2004b condenses and compares.

Albeit with decisive help from Spirit of 46 – the relatively short-lived breakaway UMNO faction led by Tengku Razaleigh.

In one of his lengthier disquisitions on religion in a party congress speech, Mahathir had recently compared the ulama of PAS with those of the Ottoman Empire who blocked its modernisation (and hence ensured its demise) by banning all except religious study (Mahathir bin Mohamad 1993). (Conversely, of course, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is a long-established hate-figure for the Islamist camp.) On the promotion of shari'a in Kelantan, see Seda-Poulin 1993. On the Amanat Hadi Awang, 1987 – an anathema on UMNO members which UMNO understandably did not feel able to view with complacency – see Martinez 2001: 478. For further insights on Mahathir's political relationship with Islam, and with PAS, see Martinez 2004; Maznah 2004; Funston 2004.

In the initial stages of the crisis with Britain, the author chanced to be passing through Malaysia. Harakah at that time was being allowed limited news-stand sales. So prompt attendance at Kuala Lumpur news-stalls twice a week yielded a complete run between late February and mid-April 1994. The editions between 4 March-15 April all carried reports and commentary (there was no edition on 17 March, on account of Hari Raya).

Syed Ahmad Hussein 2002: 104. The present study is derived from a chapter in Kershaw (1995), on which Kershaw 1997 also draws. Apart from his reading of Harakah, the present author's interpretation has no doubt been influenced in some degree by some very agreeable hours spent in discussion at the PAS headquarters in Jalan Pahang Barat, not only in 1994 but once or twice in the previous seven years.

Among Mahathir's motives in 1994 there may even have been an agenda to force Anwar Ibrahim into a public posture of loyalty by alleging British offence against the national leader. As for the hopes of international political and economic gain, the campaign did not take long to seem seriously miscalculated (Kershaw 1997: 11). For the twists and turns of the official media, the interested reader is referred to Kershaw 1997: 29–44, where an aggregating synopsis of themes is attempted.

‘Jangan bakar kelambu!’ [Don't burn the mosquito-net], Harakah, 4 March 1994. (The proverb invoked in the headline is roughly equivalent to ‘cutting off one's nose to spite one's own face’ i.e. don't go to destructive extremes just to get rid of one mosquito!)

On page 3 there is a shorter report, on the expression of similar sentiments by another PAS leader, and on the party's intention to take part in the parliamentary committee sponsored by Lim Kit Siang. See ‘PM disaran saman akhbar Britain’ [PM called upon to sue British paper], Harakah, 4 March 1994.

Lundang is a suburban constituency of the Kelantan state capital, Kota Bharu, where a State Assembly by-election was pending.

Subky Latiff, ‘PM belum bersih dari tuduhan’ [The prime minister is not yet cleared of the accusation], ‘Min aina ila aina’ column, Harakah, 4 March 1994.

Intan Baizura, Salman Halili, ‘Isu Pergau masih hangatkan media massa Britain’ [Pergau still a hot issue for the British media], Harakah, 4 March 1994. The writers do not quite understand the nature of a British parliamentary select committee, seeing it more as an ad hoc committee of inquiry.

As noted in footnote 8, above, a tour of sorts is laid on in Kershaw 1997: 29–44.

Ibnu Muslim, ‘Kerajaan Malaysia dicadang saman akhbar Britain’ [Malaysian government urged to sue British paper], 4 March 1994. (The English-language paper which reported Tengku Razaleigh was in fact New Sunday Times, 27 February 1994. It is probably significant for success in being reported by the ‘mainstream’ press, that Tengku Razaleigh, like Lim Kit Siang, had accepted at face value that the Sunday Times had indeed accused Dr Mahathir of corruption, and - unlike PAS quarters - had not betrayed a gleam, let alone ray, of doubt that the result of any official inquiry might be anything but complete vindication of Dr Mahathir.)

‘Pemimpin perlu peka dengan penindasan terhadap umat Islam’ [Leaders need to be sensitive to the persecution of Muslims], Harakah, 4 March 1994.

i.e. the government, in face of divine or other retribution?

i.e. in terms of the Malay proverb employed, ‘Missing the horns and painting the ears’.

‘Wajarkah ‘perang dagangan’ kerana media?’ [Is it right to have a ‘trade war’ because of the media?], Editorial, Harakah, 7 March 1994.

‘Akhbar British cabar Malaysia saman’ [British paper challenges Malaysia to sue], Harakah, 7 March 1994.

‘“Buy British at last”’, Harakah, 7 March 1994.

For extensive reports, and the texts of the resolutions, see New Straits Times, 24 March 1994. See commentary and summary of the keynote speech by Samad Ismail, in Kershaw 1997: 34 (fn. 28).

‘Awasi manipulasi media massa’ [Beware of manipulation of the mass media], Harakah, 11 March 1994.

‘Jangan babitkan negara dalam krisis peribadi’ [Don't involve the whole country in a personal conflict], Harakah, 11 March 1994.

Othman Muda, ‘Monopoli media Britain & Malaysia tiada beza’ [There is no difference between the media monopoly in Britain and Malaysia], Harakah, 11 March 1994.

‘Syarikat Britain cuba rasuah’ [A British company tried to bribe], Harakah, 11 March 1994.

‘Firma Malaysia dikhuatiri terjejas’ [Fear that Malaysian firms will suffer], Harakah, 11 March 1994.

Tindakan mahkamah sesuai selesai masalah' [Court action suitable for settling problem], Harakah, 14 March 1994.

Mohd Zainal Abidin Hussin, ‘Tema baru kempen Umno di Lundang’ [New themes in UMNO's Lundang campaign], Harakah, 14 March 1994.

Or in the Malay proverb, ‘The buffalo-herd will be perched on the buffalo's back again’. See Subky Latiff, ‘Akhirnya gembala bertenggek di belakang kerbau’ [In the end the buffalo-herd will be riding on the buffalo's back], ‘Min aina ila aina’ column, Harakah, 14 March 1994.

‘Perangai akhbar Malaysia sama dengan Sunday Times’ [The behaviour of the Malaysian press is the same as The Sunday Times], ‘Min aina ila aina’ column, Harakah, 21 March 1994.

Subky Latiff, ‘PM tak mungkin saman akhbar The Sunday Times’ [The Prime Minister is not likely to sue the Sunday Times], ‘Min aina ila aina’ column, Harakah, 25 March 1994.

See ‘UMNO belanja RM1.4j di Lundang’ [UMNO has spent M$1.4 million in Lundang], Harakah, 28 March 1994.

Subky Latiff, ‘Tuduhan rasuah yang tiada nilai undang-undang’ [A corruption accusation that has no value in law], ‘Min aina ila aina’ column Harakah, 28 March 1994.

‘Politik tipu muslihat kecundang di Lundang’ [The politics of deception was defeated in Lundang], Harakah, 4 April 1994.

Subky Latiff, ‘PM resah di dalam dan di luar negeri’ [The haunted mind of Dr Mahathir, at home and abroad], ‘Min aina ila aina’ column Harakah, 4 April 1994.

On the series ‘Whicker's World’, screened simultaneously in Britain on the Independent TV network, and in Malaysia on TV-3, on 3 April 1994. The veteran interviewer, Alan Whicker, had met Mahathir at Pulau Langkawi on the evening of a concert by Italian opera star Pavarotti.

Ibnu Muslim, ‘Bukan akhbar di Britain saja yang pandai berbohong’ [It is not only the British press that is good at lying], Harakah, 8 April 1994.

Ann Wan Seng (Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Malaya), ‘Mengapa takut dengan media massa Barat’ [Why so scared of the Western mass media?], Harakah, 11 April 1994.

Particularly readable are the often sardonic insider reports on UMNO affairs on the website HarakahDaily.Com.

See Economist 2004b. More precise information collected from the worldwide web indicates an average of 54 for Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (58), Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (52) and Partai Amanat Nasional (53).

PK is grouped as one of the ‘formalist’ Islamic parties (a group which garnered 16% of the vote in 1999) and simultaneously as one of a sub-category of ‘radical’ Islamic parties (a group gaining under 4% in aggregate in 1999) by Barton 2001: 250–251. He noted that such small parties, lacking the requisite 2% of the national poll which would qualify them to put up candidates in 2004, would inevitably have to coalesce into a larger party before then. In reconstituting itself as PKS, PK was no doubt constrained to some extent by the said constitutional threshold. With regard to the parliament of 1999, it should be noted that its 500 seats still included 38 representatives of military and police (Crouch 2000: 116).

These quotations are respectively from Fealy 2001: 101; Ferdinand 2002: 250; Economist 2004a; Stourton 2004. A piquantly cosmopolitan flavour is met, for instance, on the website of the North American branch of PKS, which issued a non-binding recommendation to its members to vote for Amien Rais of PAN in the first round of the Presidential election (held in early July 2004).

Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, speaking on a BBC programme (Stourton 2004): ‘The PKS on its surface seems like a moderate party. But you look at some of the legislative candidates that have been fielded by PKS, and many of them graduated from an institute here in Jakarata called LIPIA – which is the “Institute for the Study of Islam”, in Arabic. It was a Saudi-funded organisation and many of the graduates of LIPIA – which PKS basically controls now – are people who've gotten degrees in shari'a from Saudi universities. And that doesn't turn you automatically into a hardliner, but the core is more hardline than the moderate face of the leadership of PKS would suggest.’

Dr Bahtiar Effendy's case is argued in extenso in Effendy 2003. As the book is based on a PhD thesis submitted to Ohio State University, which was drafted (and presumed completed) before the 1999 elections, the latter appear in the book somewhat by way of an afterthought, and PK is almost entirely missing from the account. The parties on which Dr Effendy bases his case about the pressures for moderation in Indonesia are Masyumi (later Parmusi), Nahdatul Ulama, Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia, Perti (Persatuan Tarbiah Islam), and latterly the all-embracing Partai Persatuan Pembangunan. His definition of Islamic ‘substance’ is a politics which promotes the freedom of Muslims to practise their religion, and whereby Islamic values come to infuse government policies and the morality of society, without demanding theocratic ‘holism’ - i.e. the total integration of religion, politics and the state, under and through shari'a. There is no need to expatiate for readers of Indonesia and the Malay World on the less than hegemonic - indeed subjectively almost ‘minority’ - position of the santri (devout Muslims) in pluralistic or multi-aliran Indonesia, all too deceptively called ‘the largest Muslim nation in the world’. After taking the lead in nationalist politics through Sarekat Islam, explicitly Muslim leadership had already yielded its advantage to others by the late 1920s (cf Effendy 2003: 16, citing work by Ruth McVey, Harry Benda, et al.). Until the later years of the Suharto regime it was distinctly unfashionable for urban professionals to display a santri lifestyle (Barton 2001: 245).

In the radio documentary (Stourton 2004) already cited four paragraphs earlier (end of paragraph – with identifying reference in footnote 43).

See Fealy 2004 for the article on Islamic radicalism; Fealy 2001: 254 on his earlier anxiety.

cf The strategic scepticism represented by Kramer 1996 – none of which, presumably, will have been diluted by events in and since 2001.

Stourton, 2004 - interviews with Asumadi Asra of the State Islamic University, and Bulliul Absul Abdullah of Station 68H. The fact that Hidayat Nur Wahid had visited Abu Bakar Basyir in jail may have somewhat compromised his credibility for the BBC's correspondent (see previous paragraph). Nevertheless, emollient clips from the interview with the PKS President were heard on the subject of shari'a and an Islamic state, thus: ‘Islam teaches not only about how mankind should worhip God but also about having good relations with other mankind … What is more important to me is not talking about such a state, but how to practise the good teaching of the religion.’

The last three sentences reflect a reading of the both philosophically and empirically high-powered Ruthven 2004.