In the 19^th Century, tiny Britain was able to humiliate the great Chinese Empire and subdue its masses by making opium readily available to them.  It was also highly lucrative for the British, with the poor Chinese bearing the heavy burden.  To be fair, Chinese leaders from the Emperor on down were fully aware of the dangers, but despite their valiant efforts they were unable to prevail against the British.

            Today Muslims, Malays in particular, are being similarly narcotized, not by opium but by an equally potent agent:  religion.  Unlike the Chinese of yore who were victims of a malevolent foreign power, with Malays it is our leaders who are doing it to us, and with good intentions too.  They want us all to end up in Heaven!  Touching!

            The Muslim masses today, like the Chinese of the 19^th Century, were not unwilling victims.  They are not to be blamed, just like we cannot blame a patient who is in great pain wanting a powerful painkiller.  It may not cure the underlying disease but at least it relieves the suffering.  Likewise when your daily existence is terribly painful – the fate of the vast majority of Muslims – you too need immediate relief.  It would be cruel and inhumane to deny them that.

            The familiar official indices readily reveal the targic reality of daily existence of the Muslim ummah:  high mortality and low literacy rates, pathetic per capita income, gross abuses of human rights, women deprived of their basic dignity, and oppressive governments.  It is obvious to all, except the leaders.  Visit the slums and squatters of Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, and the anguished reality of unbelievable depravation will hit you hard even if you try to avoid it.

            Muslim leaders should worry less about their followers ending up in Heaven and focus more on the monumental task at hand of lifting the masses out of their current living hell.  It may be argued that if religion brings relief to their daily struggle, so be it.  That is a delusion; the narcotizing effect of religion is even more destructive.

Hard Work of Leadership

Making sure that your citizens are fed, educated, and housed so they could have a reasonably decent life to pursue their dreams and realize their potential is no easy task.  While there are well-established and proven principles out there, there is no simple solution or ready path for a particular society.  Each has its own unique challenges; its leaders must carve their own distinctive path.  That would demand, aside from the mandatory diligence, intelligence, and integrity, an even greater sense of humility on the part of leaders.

            The problems and challenges are infinite in their manifestations, and great intelligence is required in recognizing and elucidating them.  The humility is for the inevitable pitfalls and failures that would humble you and sap your confidence.  Humility is also needed so you could learn from your failures and from others, including your adversaries.

            These necessary leadership qualities do not come naturally, nor are they easily acquired.  Consequently and far too often, the tendency is for incompetent leaders to resort to simplistic solutions or endlessly mouthing meaningless slogans:  “Bring back the Caliph!” “Implement the Sharia!” “Establish an Islamic state!”

The masses pick their cue from the leaders.  No surprise then that they are only too willing to senselessly “martyring” themselves.  Working hard to acquire the necessary skills to make themselves useful to society is much more mundane but necessary undertaking.  Nor does it grab the headlines.

            The American scholar Abdullahi Naim wisely observed that the experience of the vast majority of Muslims across the world today is about “struggles for constitutionalism and human rights, economic development, and social justice, not about the quest for Islamic states to enforce sharia.”  Naim’s words should be emblazoned all over our masjids, ministries, and country.

First Tie Your Camel

Allah will not change the fate of a people unless they first change themselves, goes the wisdom of the Quran.  That in turn takes leadership.  Islam recognizes the supreme importance of leaders.  At Friday and other congregational prayers, it is customary for the Imam to lead the dua (supplication) seeking Allah to provide wisdom and health to the Sultans and leaders so they could lead their people along the path of righteousness.

            Our culture too recognizes the importance of leadership, hence the observation:  Endah negri kerana penghulu (Great leaders, great society!).  It is not enough for us to pray that our leaders would lead us along the straight path.  We must also do our part and exercise due diligence in choosing our leaders and then attentively monitor their performances.

As per the wisdom of our Prophet Muhammad, s.a.w., first tie your camel securely, then pray to Allah that it does not escape.  To put that in current political perspective, we must first choose our leaders wisely, meaning, scrutinize them thoroughly before casting our votes, then pray to Allah that we get leaders with integrity and competence.  Praying alone will not secure your camel, or guarantee you honest leaders. Nor should we assume the one who could lead us in prayers is the one most competent to lead the nation.

Even a determined and wise Chinese Emperor could not withstand the narcotizing power of opium.  Religion is even more so.  Given a leadership woefully lacking in integrity and competence, religion can have a stranglehold more tenacious than the most potent opiate.

To Malays today, religion is less a salve for the soul and more a narcotic to make us escape the world and perversely, as God is everywhere in this wonderful universe, away from Him.

Secularism Is Not Our Enemy: A Muslim’s Open Letter

An Open Letter To Malaysian Islamists Seeking A Project To Call Their Own.

Farish A Noor 

(Note: This article/letter was first published in 1999. I’m not sure exactly where, but it first appeared in the Usenet Newsgroup, soc.culture.malaysia in March 1999. Strangely, most of the points made are still relevant today. Yusri)

Dear friends,

In the midst of the economic and political crises that have overtaken our nation over the past two years, there emerged a number of debates and contentious issues that were once sidelined in the political arena. Issues related to the question of civil society, democracy and human rights, trajectory of the nation’s development, and the ideological basis of the founding constitution, which were once regarded as the exclusive purview of intellectuals, party ideologues and academicians, have now resurfaced and come to the center of the public discursive forum.

One debate in particular has taken on an animated life of its own: the issue of Secularism and whether Malaysia is fundamentally a secular or Islamic.

This issue has arisen of late in the vernacular Malay press, championed by the newspapers and journals (not to mention the Web pages) of the opposition movement. It has now spread to the government’s mouthpieces and private sector-controlled media, both of which amount to basically the same thing.

It is interesting how this debate has been structured and how the concepts “Secularism” and “Islam” have been constructed by the different parties. It is also interesting to study the underlying logic that frames the contestation and confrontation between the two sides.

I do not wish to address the issue of PAS’s opposition to UMNO here. Nor do I wish to look at the Reformasi movement and the role that it plays against the backdrop of the struggle between the two Malay-Islamic parties. What I wish to look at is the trajectory of the Islamic movement in Malaysia in general, its basic premises and worldview, and how it locates and identifies itself in the context of its struggle against the ‘menace’ of secularism in the country.

If I may be forgiven for simplifying a little, I would venture that the Islamist opposition has identified its movement as one that is ideologically committed to pursuing a political agenda that is predicated on Islamist terms and opposed to secularism in all its forms. In the writings and commentaries found in many of the contemporary journals, newspapers and magazines that are partisan to the Islamists’ cause, one sees a particular portrait of secularism being sketched. ‘Secularism’ is defined in the following terms: It encompasses ideologies and thought-systems that are man-made and thus anthropocentric, particularist, historically-specific, context-bound, arbitrary, and historically contingent.

Juxtaposed to this is the Islamists’ own view of their religio-political project which is predicated on the values, beliefs, ethics, cosmology and metaphysics of Islam, found in the sacred narrative of the al-Quran and Hadith, which are divinely-ordained and thus seen as fundamentally universal, essentialist, totalized, fixed (semantically and semiotically), hermeneutically sealed and exclusivist.

The contrast between the two is as clear as can be imagined. At no point is there any possibility of compromise, we are told time and again by some of the leaders of the Islamic parties and movements. Islam for them is a total discursive system that rejects any form of borrowing, interpenetration and discursive contamination, hybrid, or cohabitation between discursive economies. The PAS party campaign to promote the slogan “Only Islam is the solution – Nothing else can work” (Islam sahaja yang boleh – Yang lain tidak boleh) seems to sum it up for many of the Islamists. (Needless to say, such unbounded optimism is not likely to be shared by those who do not subscribe to the worldview that is Islam’s.)

But here I am not concerned with the problem of PAS’s appeal to the non-Muslims. I am not interested in the practical problems that will inevitably arise when the Islamists of the various camps begin to forge instrumental coalitions with non-Muslim groups for the sake of toppling the National Front alliance. What concerns me the most is the manner in which the ideological frontier between Islam and Secularism is being drawn here.

I hope that I will not have to continually restate my belief that Islamism is a genuine political project and that it deserves to be understood and acknowledged as such. I would be the last to claim that Islam has no place in politics or that a religio-political enterprise is a contradiction in terms.

But I do have to express my utmost concern about the manner in which some Islamists in Malaysia have begun to construct feeble and simplistic caricatures of their opponents and their beliefs, and in the process of doing so have done untold damage to the understanding of “secularism” within our society. This was only possible, I would argue, thanks to a neglect on their part about the manner in which discourses and narratives operate, both on an abstract and practical level.

Let us return for a moment to the beginning of things: Islam, we contend, is a divinely-ordained and inspired creed and civilization. No understanding of Islamic civilization is possible unless one looks into the religious, spiritual and metaphysical foundations that underlie every adjunct of Islamic life from its arts and letters to economics and politics. Everywhere there is the trace of the concept of the divine and the transcendental Other: God. But while the foundations of Islam lie in the sacred narrative of the al-Quran and Hadith, we cannot deny that the daily reality of Islamic life, culture and society is infested by men and their machinations. While God is the creator and the prime mover of the universe and all that is in it, it is Man who inhabits the Islamic world here on earth as its primary agent and character. Man plays the central role in the divinely-inspired drama and it is man who is both the supreme hero and the most dastardly villain – All else is scenery, albeit crucial and indispensable scenery.

The fact that Man is at the center of the profane universe is of crucial importance here, for it must be noted that practically every avenue of Islamic thinking has been predicated upon a broad understanding of humanism. Ibn Khaldun regarded Man as the center of the socio-political universe, as the primary agent responsible for the emergence of society and the rise and fall of civilizations. Generations of Islamic mystics and metaphysicians grappled with the central question of freeing Man’s soul from the chains of worldliness and the Body, where again Man was the axis of the struggle for liberation and emancipation, caught between God and beast. Islamic politics and economics were founded on notions of rational agency, free choice and liberalism, once more predicating its basic values and concepts on the category of the Human.

And thus it cannot be denied that while the founding sacred narratives of Islamic civilization were divine, its interpretation and modus operandi were invariably colored by the hands of Man. In short, from sacred text to the objectification of the ideas and values within the texts, there was (and is) invariably the rational agency of Man at work.

This in effect means that the practice of Islam throughout the ages has always been ‘contaminated’, if you will, by the clumsy hands of men and women. It is not enough to say that the essence of Islam lies in the al-Quran and Hadith: Islam is also what we Muslims have made of it. Islamic civilization is thus the sum total of the greatest feats and the worst disasters caused by us and visited upon us. It includes the Mantiq-al-Tair, the Shahnameh, the Javidnama, Kushrau va Shirin, Layla wa Majnun. It includes the works of al-Ghazalli and al-Biruni, Ibn Rush and ibn Khaldun. It also includes the Taj Mahal and the Alhambra, the Dome of the Rock and the towers of Al-Azhar. But it also includes the tragedies ranging from Karbala to Chaldiran, when Sunni and Shia blood was spilt, the murder and regicide of countless Kings, tales of betrayal and ignominious defeat. It includes countless episodes of defeat and self-hate and countless examples of apologias and rabid paranoia and hatred for all things alien and new.

If we accept as a premise the very basic and simple idea that Islamic civilization (like all others) was created by men and women, then we need to accept the simple fact that much of what has happened in the course of Islamic history has been the result of human agency as well.

Even a cursory reading of Islamic history will show that Islamic nations, dynasties and governments have always been aware of the fact that they live in a world populated by human beings of different cultures and civilizations. They have had to interact with these different cultures and societies on a practical and pragmatic level. Not all of their actions were motivated solely by religious beliefs and ethics, though they may have been influenced and shaped in part by them. The Moghul Emperor Akbar’s attempt to forge his syncretic creed (the Deen-ilahi) was motivated by realpolitik considerations more than anything else. Likewise his ancestor Babar’s conversion from Sunni to Shia Islam was a result of strategic considerations and not a genuine change of belief and worldview. Countless Islamic nations and kingdoms such as the Ottoman dynasty practiced a division between religion and state, long before the concept of a non-religious state system was introduced by the West: This is why the Ottoman Sultans ruled with a Vazir (Vizier, or Prime Minister) and a Sheikh-ul-Islam (Grand Imam) on either side of the throne.

What does all this prove? For a start it shows that Islamic societies have always developed along two parallel tracks. On the one hand, they derived their basic ethical norms, moral values, cosmological and metaphysical worldview from the creed of Islam. On the other hand, the application and practice of these values and ideas were left to mortal hands that worked in a profane (and more often than not, less than ideal) world.

This accounts for both the splendors and disasters that have dotted the pages of Islamic history. There have been times when the understanding of Islam was beautifully translated into concrete forms such as architecture, philosophical treatise, systems of law and government, that managed to capture the spirit and intention of the sacred narratives of the al-Quran and Hadith in such a way that it had relevance and resonance to the Muslims themselves. On the other hand, there were also monumental mistakes and aberrations such as the hybrid Deen-ilahi of Sultan Akbar.

But underlying these triumphs and disasters was a common concern: To translate the message of the al-Quran and Hadith to a realizable and practical level where it could truly become a living faith in a profane world that is governed according to the vicissitudes of time, space and innumerable contingencies.

There has never been a time when a ‘pure’ Islam was realized on earth. This is a simple fact that most Islamists fail, or do not want to, address.

Islam may be pure conceptually, but once its message is read through the eyes of Man who is inevitably a creature born and living in time and space, conditioned by history, blinkered by his ethnocentric and culture-bound biases and prejudices, it will invariably pass through a filter which re-constructs and distorts at the same time. Nor will there ever be an intellectual class that is somehow free from such solipsistic perspectivism: Being in time means residing in a world that is shaped by historical contingencies that we cannot elude or escape from entirely.

This is why countless generations of progressive and enlightened Muslim thinkers like Maulana Muhammad Iqbal were wont to advice and remind Muslims, again and again, that Islam was not a simple blueprint formula that can be taken out of a book, drawn on a blackboard, and applied to any given situation. The al-Quran, as Iqbal was never tired of pointing out, is not some guidebook or ideological manifesto. Its reading requires intelligence, sensitivity to prevailing circumstances (as well as the circumstances of its revelation), and a genius to translate its universal intent within particular circumstances.

Every reading of the al-Quran and Hadith is therefore particular, historically-specific, context bound, and finite. Ironically, these are exactly the very same features that some Islamist groups in the international Muslim movement have ascribed to the phenomenon known as ‘Secularism’ as well.

But has not the time come for us to accept that our reading of Islam in the immediate present is bound to be configured to the needs that we face at the moment? Can we not accept that our understanding of the sacred narrative of Islam has changed and that it will continue to change as the years go by? Must we always keep to the belief that ours is a pure discourse that somehow escapes the rules of narrativity, discourse and language use? Will we always regard Islamic discourse as something totally fixed, closed, hermeneutically sealed and synchronic, and by doing so neglect the polysemic over-abundance of the Sign in Islamic discourse in general? Will we never evolve an understanding of Islam that is diachronic, dynamic and evolutionary?

This may well be the case if the Islamists of the present continue down the road towards constructing an Islamist discourse that is closed upon itself, exclusive in its referents, and fixed in its interpretation. In the long run, we know where this will lead to: An increasingly insular and pedagogic reading of Islam that opens the way to theoretical hair-splitting and conflicts within increasingly fragmented schools of thought. One is reminded of how the dogmatism of Maudoodi led him to being criticized by some of his own followers for not having a beard of the right length and shape, and thus not meeting the ideal Islamic criteria!

Islamic civilization is and remains a reality on a number of levels for a vast section of humanity today. Islamic teaching continues to shape the development of art, culture, architecture, law, economics and politics in the Muslim world.

But the promoters and defenders of the Islamic movement have also taken upon their shoulders the task of interpreting Islam for others and defending the name of Islam on their own terms. I would argue that in their zeal for doing so they have created enemies both within and without, some of whom are real while others are undoubtedly imagined.

‘Secularism’ as defined by some sections of the Islamist movement in Malaysia today, is rapidly being turned into an ideological nemesis just so that the Islamists have a convenient target to direct their combined forces. I have tried to argue that this is not only strategically wrong, but also conceptually erroneous. For the fact remains that everything which the Islamists claim about the so-called ‘secular’ trends is also true of the rest of society as well, and this includes Islamic society too.

Secularism is not the enemy of Islam in the way that some Islamists have imagined it to be. If by ‘Secularism’ they refer to the tendency to base our cultural, social, economic and political considerations upon genuine pressing needs of the present in the profane world around us, then this tendency was there even before the Islamic world fell under the yoke of Western imperialist domination from the eighteenth century. And if by ‘Secularism’ they refer to all human worldly phenomena that is time and context-bound, particular and anthropocentric, then practically all Islamic societies have been ‘secular’ on similar terms for the simple fact that they exist in this world and not some ideal realm.

Secularism is thus not evil or antithetical to Islam per se. It is the particular definition and interpretation of secularism as being fundamentally anti-religious that is. But Secularism is too big a concept to be reduced to such simplistic features. Islamic civilization, which has grappled with major ideas and revolutionary concepts before, ought to rise to the occasion once again and address the challenges of secularism for what it is, rather than battling with its own imagined enemies in an internal war governed by a monochrome ethical logic of heroes and villains. There is more at stake here than a simple drama.

Dr. Farish A Noor is a political scientist and historian at the Zentrum Moderner Orient and guest Professor at Sunan Kalijaga Islamic University, Jogjakarta. He is also one of the founders of the research site www.othermalaysia.org.

PART II            Basic Building Blocks

Chapter 6:  Great Nation, Great Leaders

Negara endah kerana penghulu (Great nation, great leader)

—Malay proverb

A narration attributed to Prophet Muhammad (bpuh) has it that when two people are traveling together, one should be the leader. This wisdom recognizes two universalities. One, humans are essentially social beings; we like to be with one another. The other is that when in a group, someone has to assume leadership or take responsibility.

Even in a group of two, one has to serve as the leader, implicit or otherwise. The role may be interchangeable, but at any moment or event, someone has to assume leadership. Absent that and the pair could not even organize a two-car parade. There would be endless arguments on who should go first, and whether the honor goes to the leading or following car.

There is another relevant saying of the Prophet (pbuh): A day of anarchy is worse than a year of tyranny. Today’s Iraq is a severe demonstration of that wisdom. Anarchy is the absence of effective leadership. Tyranny is cruel leadership, but at least there is still leadership. The importance of leadership is encapsulated in this wisdom of the Prophet, “When power and authority are in the hands of the unfit, then wait for the Hour of Doomsday.” It may not be the biblical doomsday, but certainly the end of your world as well as that of the nation.

Leaders include not only political leaders but also others whom the community considers as such: traditional leaders as sultans and nobility, as well as religious and business leaders.

The aphorism that people deserve their leaders means just that: the type of leaders is reflective of the followers. Leaders and followers influence each other (as well with the other two elements—culture and geography—of my diamond of development). The Iraqis may have deserved Saddam, but it is also true that Saddam’s sadism has also rubbed off on his people. He is lucky to have been captured by the Americans, for had it been the Iraqis he would have received his own brand of justice. He would be butchered and his remains desecrated. The Iraqis have not always been like this, but after a generation under Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, this is what happens.

Malay sultans behave like feudal lords because the citizens treat them as such, and the sultans in turn act accordingly. During the brief period of the Japanese Occupation, the authorities did not recognize the sultans. The people in turn were so destitute that they could not bring the usual material tributes to their sultans. With no hangers-on and dutiful subjects to fawn on them, these sultans quickly behaved like ordinary peasants in having to eke out a living.

If Malaysians were intent on trimming the excesses of their sultans, a good place to begin would be to stop treating them so royally. Mahathir had difficulties reining in the sultans in the 1980s and 90s because he and the citizens were sending out conflicting signals. On one hand they wanted to curb the sultans’ powers, on the other, the citizens continued to grovel before the sultans, kissing their hands and generally sucking up to get their Datukship and other royal honors. Mahathir would have sent a far stronger and more effective message had he declined the various royal awards heaped upon him and at the same time cut down on the number of royal awards.

This illustrates the other pairing of my diamond of development, the equally crucial leader-culture dynamics. Mahathir may want to emasculate the sultans, but the cultural milieu of revering the royalty remains. He would have had a better chance of success had he also changed the cultural environment of blind obedience to the sultans. Apart from trimming the royal honor lists (that would also save money and resources), he should have prohibited ministers and others from accepting royal titles while they are in office, and restrict the use of royal titles and honors only on ceremonial occasions. Titles like Datuk and Tan Sri should not be on official documents like passports or loan applications. After a few years of such incremental changes, Malaysians would soon treat their sultans as the Mindanao Filipinos do their Sultan of Sulu.

One dramatic move would have been not to bail out these sultans whenever they incurred massive gambling debts abroad. Imagine one of these sultans being handcuffed and led to a Las Vegas jail for not honoring his gambling debt! Such actions would have a powerful impact on the collective Malay psyche, driving home the important concept that these sultans are mere mortals. Or to put it in the earthy language of my kampong folks, their (royal) fart still stinks.

Instead, Mahathir resorted to unleashing his hound dogs in the media to expose the shenanigans (real and imagined) of the royal families. As usual, the media types went overboard, and with their already stretched credibility, the whole exercise backfired, with the citizens sympathizing with their sultans instead.

This leader-culture dynamics is well displayed in many Arab countries. The Arab culture, in particular its belief in predestination and excessive adherence to tradition, feeds Saddam’s egomaniacal tendencies and the belief that he had been divinely destined to rule. Saddam in turn feeds on the Arab culture of tribalism by favoring his relatives and tribesmen in dishing out his country’s bounty. Likewise with the leader-geography dynamics; for without Iraq’s oil wealth Saddam would not have been able to afford those expensive and powerful armaments with which to threaten his people and neighbors, as well as feed his massive ego.

Of the three, the leader-follower dynamics is most pivotal, followed by the leader-culture, and leader-geography. A sophisticated and educated citizenry would not likely elect incompetent rabble-rousers as leaders. In America, Saddam would not have a chance being elected dogcatcher. Responsible citizens provide effective checks and balances on the powers and behaviors of their leaders. Likewise enlightened leaders will bring out the best among their followers, striving them to greater heights.

The bulk of the literature on leadership focuses on leaders, but as indicated, it is equally important to understand the other half, the followers, as well as dynamics of the interactions between the two. The Quran clearly defines this relationship. Followers are to follow their leaders, but only if those leaders follow the commands of God, meaning, they are just. If they are not, followers are obligated to change their leaders.

Next:  Evolution and Patterns of Leadership