Approaching Islam and politics from political economy: a comparative study of Indonesia and Malaysia

Abstract

The article traces the trajectories of Islamic politics in Indonesia and Malaysia in relation to the changing political economy of these two countries. The approach adopted is to understand Islamic politics less on the basis of Islamic doctrine, or conflicts over its interpretation, than in connection with the changing social bases of politics, the context established by capitalist economic transformations, the evolution of the post-colonial state from the Cold War and its aftermath, and of crises of political economy in the 1980s and 1990s. The exercise reveals important convergences and divergences in trajectories that help to explain the complex historical processes which have shaped Islamic politics in these two cases and possibly beyond. It also reveals the entanglement of Islamic politics in very profane conflicts over power and tangible economic resources over time. In both countries a new form of Islamic populism has emerged as a major articulator of grievances against the secular state and perceived social injustices. However, the same historical processes have enabled the social agents of Islamic politics in Malaysia to contest state power more effectively than their counterparts in Indonesia.

Keywords:

• Islamic politics
• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• capitalism
• political economy
• Islamization

Acknowledgments

Vedi R. Hadiz is Professor of Asian Societies and Politics at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, and Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He was formerly Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: A Southeast Asia Perspective (Stanford University Press, 2010), and (with Richard Robison) Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets (Routledge, 2004).

Khoo Boo Teik, the author of Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad (Oxford University Press, 1995) and Beyond Mahathir: Malaysian Politics and its Discontents (Zed Books, 2003), is Executive Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba, Japan. Before joining IDE in June 2009, he was Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia.

Notes

1. Interview with Abdullah Fanani, Hiszbut Tahrir Indonesia, Jakarta, 26 January 2009.

2. At the general election of 10 May, the ruling Alliance coalition suffered considerable defeats. Amidst heightened pre-election ethnic tensions, groups of Malays attacked Chinese in Kuala Lumpur, sparking Malaysia's most serious incidence of ethnic violence. The regime later gave poverty and Malay economic disaffection as the causes of ‘May 13’.

3. Tun Abdul Razak, the NEP's architect, was proud to call state intervention a form of ‘nationalist socialism’ (Khoo 2003: 196).

4. Darul Arqam was suppressed for being ‘deviationist’ in 1994. Some of its leaders were detained without trial.

5. ICMI primarily incorporated the Muslim intelligentsia and members of the new urban Muslim middle class.

6. However, PPP parliamentarians did challenge a 1970s marriage bill thought to contravene Islamic precepts.

7. Pancasila consists of belief in God, humanism, national unity, deliberative democracy, and social justice.