COMMENT There is nothing amusing in reading Malaysiakini reports on what I would perceive as rising extremism following the revived interest by PAS in enforcing its Hudud and Qisas state enactment in Kelantan.

I wonder if the good people in PAS are wary of particular groups who appear to support its stand on hudud, but are probably extremists and racists; groups I hope the PAS of today, would want to distance itself from.

Politicians in this country should be wary of riding on this wave of extremism to help champion their political causes. Is this a strategy to win the Malay vote as some may assume? If so, which kind of Malays or which generation of Malays does PAS want to win over?

Several academic works may shed some light on this query.

Megat Hanis, writing in Projek Dialog offers a view that the Malay groupthink of respect to elders, loyalty to those in authority, being good neighbours, caring for your family, the "virtues" of Malay-ness, are in fact, the Malay downfall.

He claims that historically, Malays are not used to open critique, preferring instead to voice their disquiet through indirect means, like through poetry.

'Blind followers of king and country'

This, he says, has led to generations of Malays being ambivalent of change, leaving social inequalities to God/fate, relegating thinking and kissing-up to those in power, accepting of familial cronyism in government and public administration.  

They have become blind followers to king and country, believers in their ethnic superiority and tradition. They are caught between upholding the status quo and developing an alternative.

While sharing this sentiment of the polite and unquestioning Malay, Azhar Ibrahim has a taken a no-holds barred approach ("a critical sociological standpoint") of the Malay-Muslim thinking in his book, 'Contemporary Islamic Discourse in the Malay-Indonesian World', a compilation of papers written over a span of five years (2014, SIRD).

He provides a scrutiny of the literature on religion and social thought of Malay society with the aim of understanding the social origins of ideas.

His observations, I believe, would easily offend a generation or two of Malays in this country (including our Malay politicians, I might add), fed uncritically on the likes of S M Naquib al-Atas, Uthman El-Muhammady, Siddiq Fadhil (ABIM) or Muhammad Kamal Hassan (UIA).

I am not rehashing the analysis. Read the book.

But simply put, Azhar exposes the literature as traditionalist, revivalist, conservative thought. The traditionalist sees progress as a return to the past and this leaves no room for the idea that things could be otherwise.

Conditioned to obey and imitate, traditionalists are unable to cope with values that appeal to reason.  Reform is impossible in the face of "pervasive religious traditionalism among the population at large, as well as in the religious establishment".

Resisting secularism

Separate to the traditionalists is the Islamic revivalism of the 1970's, which first birthed the idea of the Islamic state, the role of ulama in leadership roles, the application of syariah-which for the most part is hudud.

It is a post-colonial phenomenon with the state assuming a more active role in the promotion, adherence and projection of Islamic religious symbolism and identity.

Active in university campuses, revivalists embarked on a "cultural islamisation of society, covering all aspects of life in order to resist secularism, impiety and immorality".

Revivalists claim that a social order that is created on the basis other than Islam is unnatural, but there are no serious efforts in building better Sunni-Shiite relations.

According to the revivalists, Malay culture and practices must be returned to pristine Islam and purged of un-Islamic influences, and this includes “Western” and colonial influences.

Revivalist writings require Muslims to convince all quarters that the demand for the Islamic syariah has a religious, constitutional and historical justification.

Azhar implies that the (Malay-Muslim) ruling establishment today finds the adherents of conservative Muslim thought less politically harmful compared to those perceived to want to wrest control of political power.

However, many of the current Malay politicians, regardless of political divide, too, have been schooled and exposed to the two tracks of religious traditionalism and Islamic revivalism of Malay society.

It is quite possible to imagine that one outcome of that history is the rise of state authoritarianism and extremism (in terms of intolerance of different opinions and world-view) in the populace.

SALBIAH AHMAD is a lawyer who interested in Islamic reformation and has returned to the region from a three-year stint in Afghanistan.