Without meaning to be irreverent, I would describe political Islam as the chicken, Islamic state as the egg and Islamisation as the hatchling. But like the axiomatic chicken-and-egg situation, its schematics are open to interpretation.

And when the Islamisation programme runs to excess as reflected in the unconscionable treatment of Revathi (indirectly vindicating Lina Joy's wariness of Islamic authorities), the chickens will come to home to roost. It's happening now.

This round of public outcry may only serve to reinforce some Muslims' siege mentality. Why are Muslims I'm to all intents and purposes referring to Malaysian Malays barricading themselves behind Fortress Islam as if the enemy is at their gate? Malays enjoy total domination of this country. How can a minority whose political leaders are incapable of saying boo to Chicken Little pose any threat to the Muslim majority who make up almost entirely the police force and army?

The minorities did have a capable leader until 1965. His name is Lee Kuan Yew. With Singapore's expulsion, Malaysia whose population at that time was about eight million divested itself of more than 1.3 million Chinese undesirables. Population transfer is helpful to governments aiming for national homogeneity, writes Mark Mazower in his book Dark Continent .

He was commenting on the repatriation of nearly 1.2 million Greeks and half a million Turks in 1922, an exchange welcomed by both national authorities. "Since religion was used as a marker of identity, thousands of Turkish-speaking Orthodox villagers were expelled to Greece, even though they spoke no Greek, while Greek Muslims, many of whose families converted to Islam, embarked for Turkey," writes Mazower, describing the lengths to which the two states went in their measures.

The largest and bloodiest population transfer in history was the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Today, Pakistan is 96 percent Muslim. It is minorities whose feet rest on unstable ground. One million Armenian Christians were killed in Turkey's genocide of this minority group in 1915. Poland had 2,700,000 Jews, or 8.5 percent out of its population of 32 million in 1931. Sixty years down the road, there were 15,000 Jews left. In the 1991 Polish population of 36 million, that's zero percent.

Though national homogeneity is not yet on the cards, falling birth rates and continued emigration of Malaysia's minorities are a fact of life. The minorities leave because the state has intentionally inflicted on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their departure.

Lina Joy is reportedly living abroad now. As Christian, she has turned herself into a religious minority. In this she is an anomaly as the pervasive trend is for minorities to be absorbed into Islam. Bureaucracy and state-sponsored organisations facilitate this as well as proselytise to the non-Muslims. Some of the converts are genuine, others are opportunists. While I can't speak about spiritual rewards, in Malaysia it is more materially rewarding to bear a Muslim name.

Joy however belongs to the ethnic majority. But true to the country's Malaysia Boleh slogan, it is technically possible to 'constitutionally' strip the Malay off her skin.

Reap what we sow

Politics meets religion, they salaam and do not let go of each other's hand. It's not disputed that the faith has been hijacked by politicians of the Malay supremacist breed.

However, Islam is also in itself political. It has been from the very start. Prophet Muhammad was an exceptionally successful political and military leader. As some learned Muslims have taken great pains to educate us, Islam is an entire, encompassing way of life, i.e. no separation of 'church' and state. Though there are indeed secular Muslims who diverge to the 'render unto Caesar' formula.

Which point of view is it that permeates the near-homogenous Malay civil service? Looking at the encroaching of backdoor Islamisation in government bodies and the corporate sector (e.g. GLC functions which commence with a recitation of Quranic verses) I would plump for the former viewpoint the blurring of boundaries between religion in public and private spheres.

The reach of syariah, religious institutions and zealots (more on this in Part 2) is inexorably stretching. The minorities and non-Muslims have brought this scenario upon their own heads by signing a Faustian pact with the Barisan Nasional (BN) and renewing the contract every five years. Read the fine print under Terms and Conditions and find Islamisation there.

It's pointless for the Hyphenated People (Malaysian-Indian, Malaysian-Chinese et al) to gainsay lending their conscious will to this Islamisation process. The denial is like complaining they don't like omelette after having cracked the eggs. In fact, Islamisation is the already hatched chick that cannot be shooed back into its broken eggshell.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 nailed its colours to the Islamic mast because the mullahs were the last opposition left standing. The Shah of Iran had ruthlessly crushed his political opponents but largely left the ulama untouched. He did not dare crack down on the religious bloc and hence dissent gravitated to the Ayatollahs.

Malaysia is not the Islamic Republic of Iran but our God Squad is almost as untouchable, as witnessed in the recent Mufti of Perak flap. Both the ruling party and the opposition have played the religious card and in doing so, elevated Islamists of whatever political stripe to Tier One status. Furthermore, the state's pro-Islam (or pro-Muslim, if we wish to be pedantic) policies have conspired to nurture this into a very influential vote bank.

Unintended consequences

Silence is consent; inaction is enabling. By their indifference to political processes and participation, the minorities have enabled Islamisation. By their collusion with the self-serving coalition purportedly representing their communities, they have been complicit in giving Umno carte blanche to pursue its own patented Hadhari (or Anwari or Mahathiraj) Islamisation.

By allowing national life to degenerate into the obscene morass it is now, the minorities have shored up the moral high ground upon which Islamist parties stand. If PAS tells me the BN incumbency is beyond redemption, I won't argue. BN brand politics failed us all because the rakyat has in bending to expediency endorsed generations of awe-inspiring politicians and their dynasties and the Little Napoleons we are so richly blessed with.

To clean the Augean stables, Islamists offer political Islam. In a March 2004 pre-election analysis , I mentioned that my relatives from Kota Bharu are PAS supporters and have a great reverence for PAS spiritual leader Nik Aziz. To them, a more Islamic form of governance reads as less corruption, more integrity, less high-handedness, and more accountability and transparency in public office. Of course anything is better than BN but being more cynical than my Kelantanese kin, I would factor human fallibility into their matrix of ideals.

In my last column on Rushdie, I had to pick my way very gingerly around the hair-trigger minefield that is The Satanic Verses and at the same time apprehensive too that whatever I might say could be exploited by unscrupulous elements out to make political capital. [*] As long as politics is the clogged vein in the tangle, Islamisation will be unfairly cast as a frightening spectre.

I write out of empathy for those caught under the unforgiving glare of this process and had highlighted Revathi's plight in early April. It's perhaps in the nature of writing such as mine to show stronger feeling for hapless individuals backed into a corner rather than for the comfortable classes. Just as Anna Karenina would not be a compelling story if she were not a tragic figure but a bored Russian belonging to the Mak Datin Club.

Nonetheless, I'm mindful that for the vast Muslim middle ground, Islam is the gentle and meaningful quotidian of an ordinary believer living his daily life shaping his prayers, his thoughts and his charity. I do see the belief system from which its own fashion of chivalry, such as that of Sallahuddin (Saladin) draws. For all our sakes, I pray the decent Good Eggs will begin to reclaim this facet of Islam from those implacable wardens who would force Revathi to eat beef and take away her child.

Note:

* Salman Rushdie, in a 1990 essay In Good Faith writes that 'the controversy over The Satanic Verses needs to be looked at as a political event, not purely a theological one'. He writes: "In India, where the trouble started, the Muslim fundamentalist MP Syed Shahabuddin used my novel as a stick with which to threaten the wobbling Rajiv Gandhi government. The demand for the book's banning was a power-play to demonstrate the strength of the Muslim vote " Rushdie continues: "In South Africa, the row over the book served the purpose of the regime by driving a wedge between the Muslim and non-Muslim members of the UDF. In Pakistan, it was a way for the fundamentalists to try and regain the political initiative after their trouncing in the general election. In Iran, too, the incident could only be properly understood when seen in the context of the country's internal political struggles."

Minorities under political Islam (Part 2)