Fascism is not a nightmare involving Germans and Italians wearing silly oversized boots and monocles. Fascist tendencies can be found among right-wing groups practically everywhere in the world: be they the neo-con militarists in Washington, extremist Hindu fundamentalists and Aryan racial supremacists in India or the Taliban and Saudi-Wahhabi elites in the Muslim world
Where is Malaysia’s ‘moderate Islam’ project going? —Farish A Noor
There was a time, not too long ago, when I could tell myself: “No matter how bad things are in Malaysia, thank God we don’t live in a country that resembles Afghanistan under the Taliban.”
Just when we thought we had seen the back of the radical religio-politics of the 1970s and 1980s, there came embarrassing blunders to remind us that we, too, have our fair share of wannabe Taliban. In the year 2000 we were treated to the Islamiah Aqidah Protection Bill of Perlis, that proposed — among other things — that Muslims found guilty of ‘deviant’ and ‘un-Islamic’ behaviour be sent to so-called ‘faith rehabilitation centres’ so that religious ideologues of the state can somehow correct their understanding and practice of faith.
Despite all the talk of Islam hadari and the attempts to promote the agenda of ‘progressive, moderate Islam’ it should be painfully obvious to all by now that there remain very real repressive undercurrents in Malaysian society. This is particularly true for the Malay Muslims, who are forced to live under the constant threat of myriad increasingly-repressive, intrusive and constricting laws governing their practice, understanding and expression of normative Islam.
The latest proof of this slide towards an increasingly nasty brand of authoritarian social policing came some days ago (January 13) when about a hundred Malay Muslim citizens were rounded up by ‘moral guardians’ said to be working for JAWI (Jabatan Agama Islam Wilayah Persekutuan) at a nightspot in Kuala Lumpur. (Sunday Mail, ‘Seeing red over JAWI raid’, January 23, 2005). According to some of those arrested, the JAWI officials were ‘overzealous’, ‘abusive’ and ‘rude’ and behaved in a ‘high-handed manner’ ‘like thugs’.
Details of the incident give us a glimpse into the not-so-pretty Malaysian psyche. At around 12.55am a group of about 50 people dressed in plainclothes entered the club. They were accompanied by some wearing JAWI uniforms. The officials ordered the music to be turned off, and segregated the crowd. An announcement over the club’s public address system instructed the non-Muslims to proceed to another part of the club and ‘enjoy themselves’. The about 100 Muslims were ordered to crouch on the ground, then herded into a caged space in a lorry and driven off to a detention centre at the JAWI headquarters. Some of those arrested said the lorry was driven recklessly without regard to screams from those in the cage who panicked. At the JAWI headquarters, they were locked in cells, some of them so small that the inmates were forced to stand throughout their six- to ten-hour ordeal.
Some of the victims said “the officers were paying attention only to the girls” who were abused and humiliated. Some were even asked to ‘twirl’ in front of the ‘moral guardians’ so that the latter could get a better look at them and decide if the girls were ‘improperly dressed’. Among the highlights of the evening was a girl being forced to urinate in her clothes because she was denied access to the toilet. Another was asked to lower her handbag which she used to cover her chest. Another female student was asked if she had had her genitals pierced. (Sunday Mail, 23 January 23, 2005)
Some of the victims felt so thoroughly humiliated that they said they had been “soured against their own religion”. So much for Malaysia’s promotion of its long-awaited ‘progressive, moderate’ Islam Hadari. If this is the sort of behaviour we should expect from the ‘defenders of Islam’ the electorate might as well have voted for the PAS.
The goings-on on the night of January 13 should leave Malaysians in no doubt that what is being done in the name of ‘safeguarding Islam’ has serious repercussions for their rights and the country’s international image.
Before we begin to solve the problem we need to understand its nature. It has a name. It’s called Fascism. In case we have forgotten, it is not a nightmare involving Germans and Italians wearing silly oversized boots and monocles. As an ideology and a mode of political conduct, it is characterised by the following salient essentials:
1. The valorisation of power, force and violence as a means to achieve political ends;
2. The use of a defensive, parochial and introverted rhetoric that constantly warns of ‘dangers and threats’ to the community;
3. The active cultivation of fear, paranoia and prejudice that presents difference as threat to the cohesion of the whole;
4. The wilful and deliberate identification of ‘other’ groups (usually religious, ethnic, racial and gender communities) as ‘external threats’ and ‘contaminating’ influences; and,
5. The tendency to promote and foreground a singular, simplistic understanding of unity predicated on an oppositional dialectics that sees others in negative terms.
Fascism or fascist tendencies can be found among right-wing groups practically everywhere in the world: be they the neo-con militarists in Washington, extremist Hindu fundamentalists and Aryan racial supremacists in India or the Taliban and Saudi-Wahhabi elites in the Muslim world. They share a worldview and value system. Their fascist inclinations often manifest themselves in terms of violent moral police, witch-hunts and demonising of their enemies and rivals as ‘deviant, corrupt, evil’ etc.
In Malaysia, the first signs of the rise of authoritarianism were to be found in the dominant political culture of the state itself. By the 1970s, it had given birth to local oppositional groups that were a mirror image of the authoritarian culture they opposed. On the campuses there had emerged right-wing Malay-Muslim student groups who claimed to be ‘Islamist activists’, but who were concerned most about isolating the Malay-Muslims from the rest of the student body and to policing fellow Muslims. It was during this period that hot-headed thugs began policing campus life, to the point of breaking into hostel dormitories and checking on fellow students to ensure that they were ‘behaving properly’.
Today, the logic of popular authoritarianism has come full circle, with the state playing a role it has no business playing: namely, policing the values, beliefs and private lives of ordinary Malaysians. The bottom line is that the so-called ‘moral campaigns’ are nothing more than an exercise in expanding the power of the state. Behind the ‘Islam in danger’ slogan we have witnessed the rise of so many authoritarian movements, from the Taliban in Afghanistan to Lashkare-e-Taiba/Jamaat ud Dawa in Pakistan and groups like the Laskar Jihad, Fron Pembela Islam and Majlis Mujahideen in Indonesia. Similar right-wing currents are gaining ground in Malaysia as a passive public sits by and does nothing. Never has ‘Islam’ been so sullied by those who wish to expand their share of power.
Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist, based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin |
