A cartoon that appeared in a Swiss newspaper following the recent victory of moderate Islamists in Turkey sums up the situation that prevails today. At the top of the cartoon read the blurb: " Les Islamistes gagnent les lections en Turqueouf! Ils sont mod r s ." (The Islamists have won the elections in Turkey Ouf! Thankfully they are moderates.) In the middle of the cartoon was the image of an imam performing the azan (call to prayer) from the minaret of a mosque. The imam cried out: " Allah est moyennement grand! " (Allah is moderately great!)

Humour aside, the message of the cartoon was clear for all to see: 'Moderate' and 'progressive' Islam was acceptable as long as its message was diluted and its impact minimal.

In countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, progressive Islam was seen as an acceptable alternative to Islamism for the simple reason that it did not question or jeopardise the political status quo. o­n the international scene, progressive Islam was seen as the acceptable face of popular Islam for the simple reason that it did not block the advance of Western (especially American) hegemony.

For the Islamists, o­n the other hand, progressive Islam's appeal to the West and statist elites was precisely the thing that robbed it of its appeal and credibility: Described as relativist, minimalist and limited in its scope and ambitions, progressive Islam was seen as a watered-down version of the 'authentic' and 'pure' Islam. The Islamists, like regular drinkers of Coca-Cola, preferred to go for 'the real thing' instead.

Today 'progressive Islam' has become a convenient catch-all phrase and by-word for any kind of Islam that is accepted and preferred by the governments of Muslim nations and their Western allies. To put it simply: 'Progressive Islam', when left at the hands of George W Bush and company, has come to mean whatever kind of domesticated, user-friendly, non-confrontational, emasculated Islam that is no longer a threat to either oppressive Muslim governments or Western (and more specifically, American) hegemony.

The latest deployment of the term progressive Islam has been at the hands of the Western (notably American) media, which posits the claim that progressive Islam can and should be equated with certain liberal-capitalist notions of democracy and human rights. In the wake of Sept 11, progressive Islam has been pit against the 'forces of darkness' embodied by the media stereotype of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

But it is precisely here that the contradiction lies: That in the present neo-Cold War climate created in the wake of Sept 11, Muslim states and regimes with the most appalling human rights records can actually gain kudos and earn the honorific title of 'progressive moderate Muslim state', by aligning themselves to the West (not to mention their invested business interests).

Fearful of losing much-needed foreign investment and tourist dollars, these states are falling over themselves to prove just how 'moderate' and 'progressive' they are, by arresting as many Muslims as possible and in many cases without even the slightest shred of evidence save what has been handed to them by the US intelligence sources. It is ironic, to say the least, that the military officer responsible for some of the worst abuses of human rights against Islamist activists and ordinary Indonesian civilians General AM Hendropriyono (photo right) has not o­nly been absolved of his crimes in the past but has also been promoted to head the National Counter-Terror Intelligence Services of Indonesia by President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Notwithstanding the pathetic attempts to curry favour with the US, the fact remains that 'moderate' and 'progressive' Islam will not thrive and prosper under repressive and dictatorial conditions. While some Muslim states and governments may think that by arresting the 'bad Muslims' they have earned for themselves the title of 'good Muslims', they need to be dissuaded of the notion rapidly.

Preaching in the wilderness?

Earlier I have looked at the origins of the progressive Muslim current in Malaysia and Indonesia. I have argued that it was precisely this constituency of progressive, modernist Islamists who paved the way for political mobilisation in the 19th-20th centuries, and they were directly involved in the anti-colonial struggle during the interwar years.

But, as I have shown, it has to be noted that this constituency was always small and isolated in many ways. The progressive Islamists of the Kaum Muda generation were mostly urban-based professionals who were themselves of cosmopolitan outlook and mixed racial origins. Many of them were of mixed Malay-Indian, Malay-Arab or Eurasian ancestry, and they lived and worked in the British Crown Colonies of Singapore, Melaka and Penang. This meant that they were doubly disadvantaged from the start, and seen as outsiders by both sides.

From the outset the progressive Islam was seen as a hybrid discourse that emerged as a result of cross-cultural contact and discursive interpenetration. The earlier generation of modernist Malay and Peranakan Muslims concerned themselves with the questions of modernity, scientific progress, economic development and political independence more than their counterparts in the traditionalist camp. Their concerns were neither accidental nor unexpected: They were themselves colonial subjects who had to live under foreign and secular colonial law, and had to negotiate the particular politics that prevailed in the colonies then. But this also meant that their sphere of concerns and interests were in many ways different from that of their more traditionalist counterparts. Their position and status as liminal figures gave them the ability and opportunity to articulate ideas that were deemed unacceptable and/or novel at the time, but it also placed them in a precarious state of perpetual dependency and vulnerability that affected the form and content of their work and ideas.

Being colonial subjects also meant that the first generation of progressive Islamists had to seek protection from the colonial authorities themselves. Freedom of speech and the freedom to disseminate their teachings was granted to them not by Islamic or traditional law, but by the secular constitution of the Crown colonies. This meant that from the outset their own relationship with and understanding of secularism and secular law was radically different from the traditional Islamists as well.

The experience of post-colonial Malaysia and Indonesia has been the same as with the rest of the Muslim world. In the wake of decolonisation, this constituency of progressive modernist Islamists had to seek new avenues for speech and new structures of patronage and protection. In the case of modernist intellectuals in Egypt and the rest of North Africa and the Arab world, many chose the option of giving up o­n traditional Islam and turned to the complex project of nation-building instead. In other parts of the Muslim world, the modernists and progressives turned to the state itself for help and support to sustain their modernising programmes. Many of them became the targets of radical fundamentalist Islamist groups, and were ultimately betrayed by their own governments and political leaders, as was the case of the ill-fated Fazlur Rahman of Pakistan, whose support for successive Pakistani leaders o­nly led to his hounding by the Jama'at-e Islami and his betrayal by President Ayub Khan.

In both Malaysia and Indonesia, the governments' tight grip o­n all Islamist movements and forms of public discourse meant that the progressive Islamists were monitored, controlled and policed all the time. o­n the o­ne hand they had to contend with the ever-present threat of persecution by the radical fundamentalists, and o­n the other they were forced to develop and spread their ideas in a society where freedom of speech and the free circulation of ideas was constantly under threat. Hardly a surprise, then, that the progressive Islamists of Malaysia and Indonesia have hardly been given a chance to develop and grow in numbers.

As I have shown, many of the ideas and values of the progressive Islamist current were also tapped and instrumentalised by the states themselves. In both Malaysia and Indonesia, the concerns of the progressive Islamists were harnessed by statist elites and functionaries who used them to justify developmental policies that were lopsided and myopic. The other related concerns of the progressives o­n issues like democracy, freedom of speech and belief, etc. were conveniently relegated to the margins of the state's official developmentalist rhetoric.

In some cases, the progressive-modernist Islamists themselves were willingly co-opted and brought into the state apparatus. In the Indonesia case, this was clearly evident in the complex relationship between the Soeharto government and Islamist movements like the Muhamadijjah and Nahdatul Ulama. In Malaysia, the co-option of the Islamists led to the entry of the founder-president of the Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement (Abim), Anwar Ibrahim, into the Umno party and government in 1982.

Till today, many Islamist movements, NGOs and intellectual-activists are being actively courted by the state, but at the cost to the credibility of the progressive Islamist project itself. What has made things worse is the active courtship of Islamist organisations and intellectuals (particularly in Indonesia) by Western (especially American) foundations, NGOs and academic institutions all of which further dilutes the credibility of the progressives and weakens their already tenuous links to their own societies.

(This was certainly the case with the Indonesian Islamist intellectuals Nurcholish Madjid and Ulil Abshar Abdallah, who have recently received the laudatory paeans of the American media. Needless to say, such treatment does little to improve their own standing at home in the eyes of their domestic public.)

But progressive Islam cannot and will not succeed until and unless it breaks from its own dependency complex and learns to stand o­n its own two feet. The success of mainstream orthodox and traditional Islamist organisations and parties in Malaysia and Indonesia lies in the fact that these movements (like PAS in Malaysia) have learned how to develop their own grassroots support network without state patronage and support.

In the context of today's present-day realities, any form of support or patronage from the state will spell the end of any progressive Islamist project; and any support given or shown by the West and the United States in particular will spell the death of any rising progressive Islamist thinker, activist or organisation.

It is doubly ironic that the progressive Islamists themselves many of whom have also been schooled in Western political theory and philosophy have not understood the fundamental lesson from Antonio Gramsci (photo right): That the need to build and cultivate organic links to society is vital for any project of mass-based social transformation. Despite their aversion to all things western, the more radical and fundamentalist ulama and Islamist organisations have at least learned this lesson well, which explains why they still maintain their monopoly o­n that indispensable variable factor: cultural capital.

The poverty of riches

We have argued thus far that progressive Islam has always been an elite phenomenon that is very much caught between the vectors of class, the urban-rural divide and the violent hierarchy between state and citizenry. Being as it were the adopted orphan of developmentalist-statist elites, progressive Islam has also inherited some of the prejudices and misconceptions of this exclusive constituency.

From Morocco to Indonesia, the plaintiff appeals of the liberal progressive plays like a static and monotonous monologue: Islam is in crisis because of the traditionalist ulama who are overly dogmatic and obscurantist; Muslims are in need of modernisation and reform; Muslim nations need to be economically competitive and socially dynamic; effort must be put into revitalising the spirit of rational enquiry within Islam; extremism has reared its ugly head because Islam has fallen into the hands of the Mullah, etc.

Many of the concerns of progressive Islamists are genuinely felt, and many of them also happen to be true. Yet progressive Islam has not been able to make a dent in the armour of the twin juggernauts of globalisation and religious extremism over the years. Progressive Islam has not been able to give birth to a counter-hegemonic discourse that can halt the advances of market capitalism, with all its attendant social evils and disruptive effects o­n society. Nor has it been able to attract a wider following from the subaltern Muslim masses who still fall prey to the charms of the Osamas and Mullah Omars among them. Why?

One of the main reasons for the failure of progressive Islam has been the inherited biases and prejudices of the so-called progressives themselves. Being themselves a limited and exclusive community whose own status and standing in society is radically different to that of the ordinary Muslim masses, they have internalised many of the prejudices that are inherent in the project of secular modernity.

For many progressive modern Islamists, the vernacular discourse and normative expression of Islam as understood by their traditionalist-conservative counterparts has been dismissed as mere axiomatic effects and epiphenomena from a bygone era. Most progressives reject the complex rites and rituals of mutuality and association that are the norm for ordinary believing Muslims in their own society. From the use of charms and amulets to the lure of the Osama bin Laden T-shirt and poster, these forms of daily lived Islam is often deemed (by the progressives) as superficial and irrelevant. Yet this is precisely where the progressives' mistake lies.

Traditional Islam succeeds and maintains its hold o­n its captive audience precisely because it does not underestimate the power and value of cultural capital. Traditional and orthodox Islamists the world over realise that to surrender their hold o­n such capital would effectively rob them of a vital discursive resource that might otherwise fall into the hands of their co-religionist competitors and adversaries. What is more, they fully understand and realise the potential that such cultural capital has when it comes to ensuring the loyalty and support of the subaltern constituencies under their control. Coupled with the rites and rituals of mutuality and association which they utilise to maximum effect, traditional Islamists have been able to construct a normative discourse of Islam that is complete with a transcendental meta-discourse that the progressives simply do not possess.

We are not, of course, suggesting that progressive Muslim thinkers and activists should abandon their auto-critiques and adopt the politics of magic water and holy charms. What we are saying here is that the full potential of cultural capital has to be appreciated if we are to understand how and why the progressives have not been able to make headway in other constituencies apart from their own converted audiences.

The eschatology of the traditionalists reaches its final and logical apotheosis with the creation of a cult of leadership, notions of divine assurance and authority invested in spiritual leaders and a persecution narrative of selfless martyrdom. Progressive Islam lacks all of these qualities and elements, thanks to its focus o­n the here-and-now; and what is more this relatively profane focus also renders it vulnerable to the barbed accusations from the traditionalists that progressive Islam is merely a secular system of ideas and values dressed in the garb of religiosity.

Progressive Islam therefore has failed to make the crucial 'leap beyond', from the register of the everyday to the register of the other-worldy. It has yet to be able to convince the masses that being a progressive, liberal, rational Muslim ensures o­ne a place in heaven which, in the end, is what counts most for millions of ordinary believers, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. It has yet to evolve and develop a discourse of salvation: o­ne that guarantees paradise to the faithful and o­ne that ultimately overcomes the shortcomings and injustices of today.

In short, it does not possess a grand narrative that can at least match the grand narrative of the fundamentalists and traditional conservatives.

Progressive Islamist intellectuals may be mesmerised by the claims of post-structuralist discourse and deconstruction theory. But it must be remembered that the ulama haven't read Derrida (left) or Foucault (right), and probably never will. In an age of global uncertainty and peril, ordinary believers (of any religion) require certainties that they can depend o­n: They do not want to be told that good and evil are relative concepts and that the discourse of Islam is diachronic and overdetermined. There lies the Achilles heel of 'progressive Islam' in a nutshell.

The future of progressive Islam

My argument thus far has been that progressive Islam as it is understood and expressed today in the abovementioned countries cannot hope to succeed as it is for the simple reason that it has been held hostage to politics and the agendas of the state. If there is to be any form of progressive Islam that is meaningful and of currency, it has to be organic, popular and rooted not o­nly in the lived experience of normative Islam but also the needs and aspirations of the people as a whole.

In the case of Malaysia and Indonesia, the long march of progressive Islam has been hampered by a number of crucial factors: Its apparent lack of organic linkages to society; the absence of an equivalent of a metaphysical-theological discourse; its obvious close links to the institutions and exercise of power at the hands of the state; its deployment by both Muslim and Western governments as a political weapon in the battle for hearts and minds vis- B -vis the Islamists and local opposition groups; and finally, its own alientation from the mainframe of orthodox Islamic discourse and theology which leaves it open to the critiques of Islamists and opponents to the project.

This does not, and should not, however be read as a condemnation of the entire progressive Islamist project. We have shown how the discourse of progressive Islam was born in a hybrid and liminal third space as a result of the complex and difficult encounter between Islam, Modernity and the West. It is from this experience of cross-cultural discursive inter-penetration that the corpus of what is today referred to as progressive Islam emerged. But being a mongrel discourse that finds its home everywhere and nowhere at the same time, the heralds of this new school of thought have been forced to endure the trials and persecution of anyone and everyone.

One factor that might tip the balance in favour of the progressive Islamists is the eventual collapse of the oppositional dichotomy between East and West, Islam and its constitutive Other that may come sooner than we think. Living as we do in a time of global crisis and uncertainty, the sphere of undecidability has expanded ever wider, bringing everything into question and forcing communities to engage in an auto-critique of their own identities and future whether they like it or not. Globalisation has brought the world closer, bringing cultures and civilisations into close proximity that is discomforting and dislocating for many.

But it is precisely during such moments of radical dislocation that the structures of power, violence, force, class, race and religion can be opened up and overturned. The Muslim world today awaits its yaumul qiamah (day of reawakening), though nobody can predict what form this will take.

The Pharisees among the ummah may wish to lay the blame for all that is wrong in Islam o­n every conceivable enemy, within and without; but from North Africa to Pakistan to Malaysia and Indonesia, it is clear that the ossified structures of Islamic education and social reproduction are in a state of crisis. The thought of living in a world divided between George W Bush and Osama bin Laden is too horrific for many to even contemplate, and as the public reaction in Malaysia and Indonesia has shown, popular support for Islamic militancy (particularly after the case of the bombings in Bali) is simply not there.

Now, more than ever, the truly progressive and moderate face of Islam must show itself. In the Malaysian and Indonesian context this would mean developing a new voice of Islam that is committed to universalist and humanitarian principles that would critique the abuse of power both at home and abroad. It would mean a school of Islamic thought that is prepared to take up issues and concerns like democracy, civil society, gender politics and economic justice under its wing. It would also have to be a school of Islamic thought that would consistently condemn the machinations of power o­n the global scene, and expose the ways through which the workings of geo-politics have an immediate and deleterious effect o­n domestic politics.

Progressive Islam may be fighting for its life and survival in some parts of the Muslim world, but it has not quit the arena of combat and contestation yet. To quote the words of o­ne of the young leaders of Indonesia's Muhamadijjah: "It's time for the moderates to become radically moderate! We have nothing to lose and everything to gain."

Endnotes:

(1) Antonio Gramsci (b 1891- d 1937) was a leftist intellectual and activist whose work was developed during the political struggle in Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. His theory of hegemony was developed while he was in prison thanks to his persecution at the hands of the Italian Fascists. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1937, partly due to his mistreatment while he was in custody. But his works remained and have been used by a number of progressive political activists and thinkers like Ernesto Laclau. See: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks , International Publishers, New York, 1971. Translated by Quitin Hoare.