Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📕

and leaflets judged contrary to Islam, and refused to allow Shi'a Muslims to practise openly, regarding their teachings as deviant.[57] It also allocated RM40 million to build two Islamic faith rehabilitation centres, which were "urgently needed" by the mid-1990s.[58]

While Dr. Mahathir preferred to persuade, cajole and implore to enforce the official interpretation of Islam, he did not hesitate to threaten or use coercion when deemed necessary. Some leading UMNO politicians were even more heavy-handed.[59] A deputy minister said the Internal Security Act, which provides for indefinite detention without trial, would be used against persons promoting religious fanaticism among Muslims. He identified several PAS chiefs allegedly guilty of it, among them Kelantan Chief Minister Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, who served as the party's spiritual adviser.[60]

For its part, PAS proved more than a willing participant in what turned out to be one of the nastiest features of Dr. Mahathir's tenure, a conflict with UMNO over Islam that tore apart the Malay heartland. Known as kafir-mengkafir, accusations of apostasy, it describes the fury of mutual condemnation. After an internal upheaval in which the so-called ulama faction took over in 1982 and established a supreme council of 12 religious scholars, PAS presented itself as the only true Islamic political party in the country. Leaders resorted to takfir, "the ultimate polemic in Muslim politics", by calling UMNO politicians not only infidels but apostates, persons who have abandoned their faith.[61] A journalist who visited rural communities in Trengganu, Kelantan and Kedah found PAS propagating "an extremist ideology of hate", which led to separate prayer services and burial grounds, boycotts of feasts and even family break-ups.[62] As government attempts to curb "extremism" increasingly involved questions of religious authority and the toleration of divergent views, the two sides engaged in recurrent cycles of abuse, slander and hate-mongering, all in the name of godliness.

The government outlawed several Islamic groups after branding them deviant, though the circumstances served as a reminder that politics informed the definition of deviancy. In 1985, 18 people died, including four members of a police raiding party, as they attempted to arrest a PAS Islamic preacher named Ibrahim Libya, who had established a following in the remote village of Memali, Kedah. Tough action was also taken against the Al-Ma'unah cult, 15 of whose members attacked two army camps in Perak in 2000, seizing weapons and taking hostages, two of whom were later murdered. Government officials linked PAS to both groups, though many Malays believed otherwise, convinced that security forces mishandled the incidents or were implicated in them.[63]

Even more suspect was the crushing of the passive Darul Arqam in 1994, a full 26 years after it was founded by a charismatic religious teacher, Ashaari Muhammed. The movement followed a traditionalist approach to Islam, with members eating Arab-style, the men wearing green robes and turbans and the women in purdah most of the time. Followers established self-contained communes with houses, mosques, schools, clinics and vegetable plots, their factories producing items for sale in their own shops. Nation-wide, Darul Arqam ran 250 kindergartens and grade schools, and operated enterprises spanning food processing and property to textiles and health services, with assets of about RM300 million.[64] In the years before it was banned, the government quietly cleared the way for the group to expand to counter PAS.[65] When the National Fatwa Council, a government body, declared Darul Arqam a deviant Islamic sect, its leaders were detained under the Internal Security Act for allegedly endangering national security. They were not charged with sharia violations. In the absence of any evidence to support a host of fuzzy accusations, including one that the organization was training a military wing in Thailand to wage war on the Malaysian government, analysts concluded that the reasons for the ban lay elsewhere. With a membership of tens of thousands and attracting upwardly mobile and professional Malays, not to mention founding a dynamic business conglomerate without NEP patronage, Darul Arqam presented essentially a political challenge to the government. Ashaari's claim, that he was more popular than Dr. Mahathir and would one day lead the country, could not be ignored.[66]

The export version of what sometimes was called the Malaysian model of Islam sold well in other Islamic countries.[67] What Dr. Mahathir devised for Malaysian Muslims, welding Islam with modernity, he essentially prescribed for the worldwide umma, the community of believers. At the same time, however, steps were taken to ensure that the many progressive Islamic books and articles being produced in Indonesia since the 1970s were not circulated widely in Malaysia. Leading Indonesian Islamic intellectuals, such as Nurcholish Majid, might have enjoyed good personal relations with figures as senior as Anwar Ibrahim, but their innovative ideas were regarded as too controversial for Malaysia.[68] In regular visits and speeches abroad, Dr. Mahathir said that if historically Islam had rescued the world from the Dark Ages and set it on course for modern civilization, Muslim society currently faced an aimless future. And while it was possible to see the hand of Islam's foes at work, the fault lay primarily with Muslims themselves. It was the same old problem of Muslims interpreting Islamic teachings "so that the bounties of Allah fall beyond our reach". Identifying with the major Islamic issues of the time, Dr. Mahathir used them as case studies to drive home his points. The plight of the Palestinians and Soviet-occupied Afghanistan showed "how frequently Muslim countries fall into the hands of non-Muslim enemies because of the weakness or incompetence of Muslims". As for the Iran-Iraq war, it was tragic proof that in the Middle East more Muslims were killed by Muslims than by their infidel enemies. Dr. Mahathir said violence had achieved nothing for Muslims, and their governments should be funding education rather than buying arms.[69] He urged them to embrace science and technology and build dynamic societies equal to the best in the West. The way for Muslims to regain respect was to seek knowledge, work hard, be thrifty, acquire wealth and achieve economic progress.

From the periphery of