http://www.othermalaysia.org/2009/09/29/islamism-between-the-hard-and-soft-variety/

 

A year ago I was present at a dialogue session in my beloved adopted city of Jogjakarta and had the opportunity to listen to an Islamist politician answer questions that were put to him by a group of Indonesian gender rights activists.

One of them asked the following question: “What is your Islamic Party’s stand on homosexuality????

To which the Islamist politician replied: “As an Islamist I cannot condone homosexuality, and I cannot render halal that which is seen as haram in Islam, anymore than I can declare alcohol to be halal. But this I can say: when confronted by things like this, we have two choices: the hard choice or the soft choice. We can take the hard line and say that homosexuals are wrong and they ought to be punished. Or we can take the soft line and say that they are a gendered minority, and while they are practicing something we do not approve, we should defend them when they come under attack and we should counsel them. As an Islamist, I choose the latter, because for me Islam is still the religion of love, not hate.???

As I know the Islamist politician personally, I had no doubts that he was sincere in his reply. Furthermore he is one of the few Islamist politicians whom I know has been at the forefront of the struggle to present a moderate and progressive face of Islamist politics in his country.

This brings us to the dilemma that we see all over the Muslim world today, and which affects almost all Muslim countries including Malaysia and Indonesia. All over the Muslim world we see that the forces of political Islam are still on the march and working to find their way to achieving political power. But the doubts and concerns that many of us have lies in the question of what the Islamists will do when they come to power. Will this power be used for the betterment of all, or will it simply be accumulated and monopolised at the hands of the few? And when it comes to the question of Islamic politics and jurisprudence, have we taken the step towards a more humane understanding of Islamic law and justice? Or are we still at the primordial level of public executions, floggings and stoning to death?

In Malaysia a Muslim woman is about to be whipped for drinking alcohol, despite the fact that she has paid her fine and admitted her guilt. Islamist politicians talk about banning music concerts, pop events and more and more moral policing into the private lives of citizens. In Indonesia radical Islamist groups are calling for the virtual extermination of groups like the Ahmadis, Churches have been burnt in West Java and radical Islamists call on their brothers to take their jihad to the streets. In both countries secular politicians are paralysed and unable to comment or reject these demands outright, leaving the debate in the hands of a few self-appointed guardians of the faith. Books are banned, women mistreated, minorities marginalised - and yet secular liberals and democrats remain unable to do anything.

In the midst of this, the question of which direction political Islam will take in Malaysia and Indonesia is an important one. Both countries wish to present themselves as model Muslim states for the world to follow, yet in Indonesia’s Aceh province the Islamic authorities have sanctioned the stoning to death of adulterers. How, pray tell, will this reflect on the image of Islamists, Islam and Muslims?

Faced with this question one can only hope that common sense and reason will be re-injected into the debate and that the progressive Islamists we see in Malaysia and Indonesia will triumph in the end. The Muhamadiyyah movement of Indonesia, for instance, pioneered modern education and was among the first to insist on a logical, rational and objective understanding of Islam; while the Nahdatul Ulama have continued to insist time and again that Indonesian Muslims need to be proud of their culture and heritage, and not embarrassed about being Indonesians rather than Arabs.

The ’soft’ approach that was counseled by the Islamist leader I mentioned above therefore is needed more than ever now. For as groups like the Fron Pembela Islam or Majlis Mujahidin Indonesia continue to rant against minorities and speak of conspiracies against them, the fact remains that Muslims worldwide are subject to real problems that stem from real institutional weaknesses in their own societies. To simply blame everything on the so-called ‘evil West’ or the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ is too simple and easy a solution to what is really an endemic problem of bad governance, poverty, social injustice, gender bias, racism and abuse of power among Muslims themselves.

For Islamism to even remain relevant today, Islamists (like the ones I mentioned above) will have to understand that we live in modern democratic societies where laws and governance are measured in the public eye in terms of concrete long term results. All the hate-campaigns and pogroms of groups like Fron Pembela Islam in Indonesia have done nothing for Muslims there, but only worsened the prejudice against Islamists in toto. Rather than hot air and fiery rhetoric, Islamists need to demonstrate that they can govern justly in plural societies and learn to live with difference and diversity. Demonising gays, non-Muslims, women and other minorities is no longer a gimmick that works, and in fact is now counter-productive.

To this it should be added that the ’soft’ Islamist approach to dealing with real social issues should not be seen as the ‘weak’ approach neither. Just because an Islamist renounces violence and violent hateful rhetoric, doesnt make him/her a lame Islamist with no teeth. In fact, the reality is precisely the opposite: It is only when Islamists stop wasting our time with silly bans on concerts and movies, and stop scaring us with threats of demonstrations and pogroms, that they will be taken seriously. If Islamists really want power, then they ought to demonstrate an adult and rational ability to deal with power and its mechanics. Anything else is just empty sloganeering and posturing, and ought to be left on the soap-box with the other peddlers of nonsense and hype.