The dream of total control and perpetual surveillance has been the penchant of many a despotic ruler. Amidst the ruins of Angkor Wat, we find the crumbling statues with the static face of Jayavarman the Seventh, staring in all directions of the compass, keeping his kingdom and subjects under his relentless and penetrating gaze till today.

During the Victorian era the heralds of the modern age spoke of the wonders of global communication and surveillance. They dreamt of the era of the 'Panopticon', when a benevolent state apparatus would be able to view all the subjects within its domain and to govern their lives according to a regime of tutelage and care.

One century later, after the ravages of two world wars and the Cold War which witnessed the rise and fall of totalitarian regimes and authoritarian governments, we are less inclined to celebrate the creation of an all-seeing, all-knowing state. The rulers who dreamt of monitoring their subjects were less altruistic and benevolent in their concerns: they included men like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Pol Pot.

Living as we do in a country where civil liberties and fundamental rights are tightly controlled already, the last thing we need in Malaysia are more attempts to monitor our speech and activities. Yet this is precisely the outcome of the latest move to control 'inflammatory' language and political activity in the mosques of the country.

This week it was announced that several key mosques in the state of Kedah will be fitted with surveillance devices like cameras and recording instruments. Other mosques will be also monitored, to ensure that the imam resident there do not stir up 'anti-government' sentiments or preach a more radical and/or militant form of Islam.

While one would agree that it is high time that a dose of sanity is injected into the normative practice of religion in the country (Malaysian politics has already been distorted enough thanks to two decades of intra-Muslim antagonism), one can only wonder aloud if any of these new measures will do anything to curb the excesses of some of the more hot-headed religio-political leaders in the country.

Furthermore, there remains the question of where the whole Islamisation process in Malaysia is taking us, and where this country will end up in the near future.

Practical concerns

There are, obviously, some practical concerns that have to be addressed: Granted that some of the mosques in the country (and this is not confined to Kedah, by the way) may have 'fallen' into the hands of some opposition Islamist leaders, one still wonders how monitoring the activities in the mosques will put a stop to this.

If the mosques have become the final battleground in the battle for the hearts and minds of Malay-Muslims, this has more to do with the nature of the vicious conflict between the ruling Umno party and its arch-nemesis PAS.

Since the 1980s, Malaysia has experienced the Islamisation race where both Umno and PAS have been trying to 'out-Islamise' each other. The net result of this discursive conflict has been the narrowing of discursive space within Islam itself and the propagation of a more narrow, literalist and exclusivist form of Islamic thought and practice in the country.

If the nominal and sartorial symbols of Islam ranging from the tudung (headscarf) to the jubah (robe) and janggut (beard) have become normalised and commonplace in the country, it has as much to do with the creation and enforcement of socio-political boundaries as with anything else.

Anyone who still thinks that these are the markers of a genuinely Islamic society should think again: the rising number of corruption, murder, rape and incest cases among the Malay Malaysians would suggest that despite the cosmetic appearance to the contrary, Malay society remains in a state of moral crisis.

But over the past two decades we have also witnessed the relentless march of the state apparatus into practically all areas of public life. The control of the media, the regulation of workers and students activities at the workplace and on campus, the limits imposed on free speech and the narrowing of private space have all contributed to a growing feeling of resentment and frustration among the people who think that the state has grown too big for comfort.

In the midst of all this, the mosque remains as the one sacred space that has not been violated by the state.

Shattered by reformasi

This feeling of relative isolation and security was shattered by the events of 1997-98, when during the height of the reformasi struggle the state's security apparatus (in the form of riot police) were allowed to entered the sacred precinct of the mosque to root out 'dissident elements'. Though few of us may remember it now, during that time the sight of riot police (some with their boots on) charging into the mosque in Kuala Lumpur aroused the anger and disgust of many. There were many ordinary Malay-Muslims who felt that this time the police had gone too far, and that a privileged space had been violated and lost its innocence for good.

Today the mood among a significant section of the Malay-Muslim community is the same. Though many ordinary Malaysians may be worried about the activities that take place in some of the mosques, surau and madrasah (Islamic schools) in the country (and they should likewise be worried about what happens in some other churches, temples and other holy sites too), there will be those who will resent the intrusion of the state security apparatus into the mosques nonetheless.

(As a point of comparison, just imagine what the public's reaction might be if the same measures were introduced in churches or temples in the country. The most likely result would be massive protests on the part of the other religious communities.)

So the immediate political cost of this move will be a heavy one indeed. For a start, it will merely reinforce the impression held among some quarters that the government is going all out to erase and eradicate all independent spaces and sites for alternative discursive and political activity.

We have already seen the various attempts to monitor and control the alternative websites in cyberspace. The latest move to control the activities in mosques comes at a time when the state is seen as being scared and on the defensive, which does little to improve its image.

Umno's main rival PAS will undoubtedly jump upon this issue and use it as another weapon in its massive arsenal against Umno, to accuse the Umno leadership of being 'un-Islamic' or opposed to Muslim interests.

Ideological concerns

Linked to this is the other related concern which, in this author's opinion, ought to be given more attention: This is the question of the form and content of normative Islam in Malaysia itself.

If the government is really worried about what is being said and done in the mosques and madrasah in the country, then what it really needs to do is set about understanding and analysing the contents of Islamic teaching in Malaysia in the first place. Radicalism and extremism, it must be remembered, does not simply appear out of a vacuum.

Radicals and militants no matter how irrational and incoherent they may be still possess a system to their apparent lack of systematicity. There is order in the chaos of the demagogues and hate-mongers, and for us to be able to take on the polemics of the Pharisees we must at least be able to understand them. That is what has been singularly lacking thus far.

Despite the talk of 'terror networks' and 'underground militant movements' all over the country, the real disaster that has befallen Malaysia is the steady erosion of fundamental liberties and rights because of the creation of an all-encompassing religio-political bureaucracy. Due to the introduction of so many personal laws and regulations related to matters of personal faith, belief, expression and lifestyle, the Malay-Muslims in the country are among the most monitored and controlled citizens in Malaysia.

We now live in a country where the 'religious police' can enter your home at night, demand proof of your marital status, question your beliefs and persecute you for 'crimes' against Nature or God.

Surely as far as the rights and entitlements of individual citizens is concerned, this has been the heaviest blow so far?

Yet this erosion of liberties has taken place in broad daylight, without the help of some unseen cabal of underground extremists.

Steady radicalisation

The other major development in Malaysia of late has been the steady radicalisation of Islamic discourse and teaching itself. Anyone who has followed the debates in the Muslim academic and governmental circles would know by now that what has happened over the past few decades is the systematic erasure and marginalisation of alternative approaches and readings of Islam.

The more pacifist, mystical and spiritual aspects of normative Islam found in the Sufi tradition, for instance, has been sidelined in favour of a more literalist approach to the faith and its teachings.

Likewise the rationalist tradition of Islamic thought embodied in the works of thinkers like Ibn Khaldun, al-Ghazalli, Ibn Rush and others have given way to a more conservative interpretation of Islam at the hands of men like Ibn Taymiyya, Saqqid Qutb and Ab'ul Al'aa Maudoodi of the neo-Wahabbi school.

All of this has taken place under the noses of the state Islamic administrative and educational institutions themselves. And yet these were the very same institutions that were charged with the task of foregrounding a vision of 'moderate Islam' that was progressive, open, tolerant and pluralist.

If the state's religious authorities really want to stop this slide towards religious intolerance and close-mindedness, then why don't they promote the ideas of progressive Islamist thinkers like Rachid Ghannouchi, Fathi Osman, Nurcholish Madjid, Hashim Kemali and Chandra Muzaffar?

And if the Malaysian government is really worried about the so-called threat of 'radical Islam' appearing in the country, then surely it should do more to control some of the most repressive and undemocratic laws and regulations that have been formulated by the state's own religious functionaries, all in the name of political Islam.

(When one compares some of the laws and regulations that have been issued by the government's religious administration, such as the Perlis Aqidah bill, one wonders how the 'official' brand of Islam is meant to be more 'moderate' or 'democratic' than PAS'.)

Breeding grounds

Under these circumstances, is it a surprise if the mosques have now become the 'breeding grounds' of anti-government activity? For more than two decades it was the Islamisation race between Umno and PAS that had led to the inflation of Islamist discourse in the country and which had made 'secularism' a dirty word. For more than two decades the state's own Islamisation apparatus in the form of TV programmes, educational modules, teaching syllabus has promoted a vision of Islam that is increasingly narrow and exclusive.

After such a long (and unchecked) process of state-sponsored indoctrination (made worse by the upping of the stakes by PAS), it is hardly a surprise that the mosques have become the latest battleground in the ideological war for the soul of Islam.

To sum up, one could argue that the move to introduce surveillance equipment in the mosques will be an own-goal in the short to medium term. For a start, if such 'dissident elements' do exist at all, they are quite likely to possess some common sense as well.

Rather than stage their protests in full view of the camera, they will probably find other spaces and sites to engage in their polemics. Does this mean that the state will then start putting cameras everywhere else as well, such as in restaurants, cafs, bus-stops, cinemas and even our homes?

In order to solve the problem of the radicalisation of religious discourse in the country, we need to get our premises sorted out first. Radicalisation, even in its most extreme militant variant, still requires ideological, doctrinal and even theological support. To check the growing extremist tendency among some Islamist circles we will all have to enter the fray and engage with and within that same discursive space.

For the so-called 'moderate Muslims' in Malaysia, this means having to read and understand Islam and Islamic discourse better. One should also go one step further by pointing out that the discourse of Islam should never be seen as an exclusive communitarian concern: As political Islam is bound to have an impact on all our lives, the site of discursive activity has to be opened to all, including non-Muslims as well.

(Islam is, as I've said many times before, simply too important to be left to Muslims alone.)

Opening up spaces

If the Malaysian government and public is really worried about the trends we see today, the answer lies not in more regulation and control, but in opening up spaces for alternative and different ideas and approaches to emerge. No state no matter how 'benevolent' it may think itself to be can ever promote a singular brand of progressive Islam on its own terms.

(Particularly if the state in question is hardly a paragon of democratic and liberal values.)

What is sometimes called 'progressive' or 'moderate' Islam will not appear at the end of a barrel of a gun, or from some politician's speech: It can only emerge from a truly open, plural, democratic and free society where citizens are allowed to think and question their beliefs openly without fear. But for that to happen, Muslim governments must first and foremost commit themselves to the one principle upon which all else rests: democracy.

One thing is for sure: Radicalism and extremism in any religion will not be solved or contained by mere force and threats of violence. No single repressive regime in the Muslim world has managed to contain the rise of radical Islamists for the simple reason that the state's own repression is precisely what the extremists feed upon.

Thanks to the hounding and persecution of so many Islamists in countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere, we have witnessed the resurgence of militant communitarian Islamism with a vengeance.

Putting cameras in mosques to scare away hot-headed imams may make sense to some securocrats with little understanding of the dynamics and internal logic of political Islam, but it will only help to feed a persecution complex from which thousands of other 'extremists' will emerge. This is not the way to deal with 'extremism', this is the way to cultivate even more resentment for the future. And we will all pay the price, believe me.

Farish's 'The Other Malaysia' columns have been compiled and will be published soon by Silverfish Books under the title The Other Malaysia: Writings on Malaysia's Subaltern History .