After reading the replies to the columns that were written by Fathi Aris Omar and myself that made the pages of malaysiakini , I was struck by an overpowering sense of paralysis, despair and hopelessness. It appears that - to quote the letter by Brenda S - some of the supporters of the reformasi movement have such 'thin skins' that they are not able to take any kind of criticism whatsoever, even when it comes from those who were - and remain - sympathetic to the reformasi cause.

What is worse, some have even gone as far as claiming that 'established' academics, writers and activists like myself have nothing to say or do for the long-term cause, which is precisely why I have decided to address the matter in this, my final column, for malaysiakini .

For those who still remember - or actually read - what we wrote, the essential questions remain: for those who believed in the transformative potential of the reformasi project, the aims were clear. This was a moment where a radical dislocating rupture had set in Malaysian society, opening the way for a re-invention of Malaysian politics that would go all the way and overturn the violent and divisive hierarchies of power, race, class and gender that had divided our society for so long. So great was the impact of the 1997/98 financial and political crises that many of us believed that the moment of change had finally come.

We genuinely believed that if we stuck our necks out, took the necessary risks and paid the price for the time being, we could actually reinvent a new Malaysia that would truly be worth our admiration and faith. Many of us paid the price for our convictions, and some of them remain in prison till this day for those very ideas and ideals. My colleague Dr Chandra Muzaffar lost his job at University Malaya as a result of his support for the movement then (though the university authorities have never admitted that his removal had anything to do with politics), and o­n the same day he was kicked out, I sent in my letter of resignation and quit in protest.

A number of us lost our jobs and were left with no income or support - though we were still thankful that we were not the 'special guest' of the IGP, to be given free boxing lessons while handcuffed and blindfolded. Some people may think that we have not made enough sacrifices for our political beliefs, but my own conscience is clear - my o­nly regret being that I did not make a bigger ruckus out of my decision to quit my teaching job then.

Institutionalised racism

Those of us who did speak out then believed that despite the institutionalised racism, oppressive laws and restrictions, draconian laws like the ISA, OSA, UCCA and the repressive tools that the state has at its disposal, o­ne big push was all that was needed to bring the whole structure down like a pack of cards. From the rubble of a decrepit failed state apparatus, we could perhaps have built a new political order and invent a new form of politics that would, for o­nce, serve the people of Malaysia in toto: o­ne that went beyond the narrow parochialism of race, ethnicity, religion, class and gender differences.

What was needed then, as now, was a socially transformative project that could restore to the country and the nation its own proper sense of internal diversity and difference but without the divisions that were enforced and perpetuated through the use of laws that were discriminatory, divisive and oppressive.

But this project could o­nly succeed if the fundamental premises of the reformasi movement itself were sound. For no project of socio-political transformation can succeed unless and until it develops a coherent strategy and philosophy of its own, and for it to maintain its radical impact it must also make sure that it does not become the mirror image of the order it wishes to replace. (This, in a sense, sums up the failure of the Iranian revolution - which merely replaced the tyrannical order of the Shah of Iran with the equally oppressive order of the mullahs.)

For terms like 'justice', 'equality', 'reform' to have meaning and not be reduced to overdetermined empty signifiers, they need to be grounded in sound categories of signification where the signified itself has to be present and clearly identified. So when we talked about justice and equality for Malaysians, for instance - we had to ensure that the fundamental category of 'Malaysian' itself was not a derelict throwback of the bygone era.

The very fundamental category of the Malaysian subject/citizen had to be reinvested with new meanings so that it denoted not o­ne privileged class or ethnic grouping, but rather stood for Malaysians of all races, ethnicities and religious backgrounds. Apart from that, every single category in the vast political project had to be re-inscribed with new meanings and the reconstructive project was therefore a comprehensive o­ne.

This was, in a sense, partially established during the early stages of the reformasi movement when the blueprint for reformasi - the Permatang Pauh declaration which I have written about before - was first articulated. But sure enough in time the followers and supporters of the movement began to bicker and stumble over issues such as Malay special privileges, the privileged place of Islam before all other religions, ethnic quotas, etc.

The leaders of the Keadilan party could not even issue a coherent and consistent statement to defend the right of Muslim women who did not feel compelled to wear the tudung , and likewise similar concessions were made by the component parties of the BA just so that they could divide their respective constituencies among themselves (which they did not win, in any case).

The politicisation of the reformasi cause was o­ne of the major factors that retarded the momentum of reform itself, and whatever we may say or think this has become a reality today. O­ne does not have to take my word for it - a cursory overview of the opinions of ordinary Malaysians will show that most Malaysians still identify reformasi with certain parties and political leaders. Worse still, some of the most outspoken supporters of reformasi themselves have fallen into the trap of idolising their leaders to the point where a cult of leadership and personality has emerged.

When some of the letter writers to malaysiakini issue statements like "the o­nly man who can change this country is in jail" or refer to Anwar Ibrahim as the "man who began and led" the reformasi movement, then reformasi itself is doomed. For what this does is rob ordinary Malaysians of their right and opportunity to engage in the political process or to think of the political arena as a space where they too have every right to contribute and struggle.

The cult of leadership - be it dedicated to 'Maha' Mahathir or 'Maha'Anwar - can o­nly serve to rob politics of the moment of contestation, rendering it sterile and subservient to the wills and egos of demagogues and dictators. If reformasi was going to change anything, it was the cult of leadership - that is deeply ingrained in the neo-feudal political practices of this country - that should have gone first.

Instead all we have now is a reformasi-variety of the same BN ideology, and the choice before us is like choosing between Coca-Cola or Diet-Cola. Hardly a choice indeed. For many of us discarding the ISA o­nly to have it replaced with other penalties like stoning to death, public floggings and amputations is hardly a change for the better - but it is precisely frustration with a political order that refuses to reform itself that drives people to such extremes in the first place.

What is reform?

What, then, is reform? This is the fundamental question that ought to have consumed our collective mental energies from day o­ne, yet it remains the essential question that has not been raised. Reform does not - and should not - mean a mere cosmetic change of something that has outlived its usefulness or relevance.

Nor should it mean trying to correct or improve something that is fundamentally flawed, unjust or downright evil. Reform of global capitalism, for instance, has not made it more humane or just, but rather merely more efficient in its exploitative practice and nature. The fundamental ideological roots of capitalism, which lie in the exploitative practice and function of capital accumulation, remain unchecked.

Had the reformists wanted to reform this society of ours, they could and should have begun from the bottom up by addressing the fundamental contradictions of Malaysian society itself. Malaysian society and political culture remains o­ne that is profoundly affected by the logic of racism and communitarianism, which is in turn consolidated by convergent class interests among the ruling elites of the respective communities. It is this inter-communal elite consensus which has created and perpetuated the racial, ethnic and class distinctions within our society, dividing Malaysians against o­ne another and pitting Malays against Chinese, Chinese against Indians, and so o­n.

Yet the contradictions of this political set up are painfully obvious; it creates a political order that can o­nly be maintained and defended by recourse to state violence and coercion; it remains fundamentally unstable and precarious; it renders impossible the melding of a truly multicultural national space; and - from an Islamist point of view - is totally haram as racism and communitarianism have no place in Islam. Yet this is the sad state of Malaysian politics today, and we have yet to transcend this.

One of the ways that we can overcome this divide is to make the transcendence ourselves, to free ourselves from the fear and loathing of difference and alterity, and to accept and celebrate the internal diversity that exists in our own society as well as ourselves. The productive ambiguities that exist in this multifaceted, diverse and complex society of ours is something that we can both celebrate and exploit in order to open new vistas and avenues for political thought and mass mobilisation.

We should not be ashamed of our shared and inter-penetrating collective past; but rather develop and enrich it instead to build a more pluralist and democratic future. We are, like it or not, a hybrid nation without 'pure' essentialised identities, and we all share a common history that is hybrid and cross-fertilised which we ought to recognise as our own.

This, in fact, has been the guiding principle of most of my columns for malaysiakini over the past three years: to attempt a sustained auto-critique against the racialised and lopsided writing of 'official' history and politics that we see here in Malaysia and to pave the way for a deconstruction of Malaysian political culture where we can at least begin to imagine a new way of looking at things.

Domestication of reformasi

Today the reformasi movement seems to be breathing its last - not because the ideas and ideals of reform have died but rather because reformasi itself no longer appears o­n the public arena and has been moved from the space of public contestation to the realm of institutional politics instead. This domestication of reformasi means that the productive and transformative potential of the reformasi movement has been curtailed thanks to the needs and whims of realpolitik.

Politicians in turn are a nasty breed of people, most of whom are motivated mainly by their own quest for power and driven by their egos. The rhetoric of politicians compared to the discourse of the everyday and subaltern is like what military music is to music: it may look the same o­n the surface level but it plays according to rules that are entirely its own. At the hands of politicians even the noblest of ideals soon becomes sullied as they can o­nly manipulate them for their own ends, this being the rule of politics and political engagement.

It is the responsibility of everyone of us - myself included - to continue to critique and interrogate the use of political discourse by politicians all the time, lest we allow them to do the thinking and judging for us. That is why some of us have chosen to level our critiques at the reformasi movement as well, to ensure that it does not become a hostage to the interests of politicians and their parties, and to make sure that the discourse of reformasi is kept within the open public domain.

My detractors may not like it when I take shots at opposition parties like Keadilan or PAS (though they have been surprisingly silent when I criticised the goings-on within Umno and the BN for some reason), but I for o­ne believe that these parties would benefit more from honest and open criticism coming from non-aligned writers and activists than their own self-serving propaganda that they get from their own party publications.

The critics are wrong when they claim that my articles have always been against PAS in particular, and their sweeping general statements shows that they have spent little time to read what I have actually written in the past. I would like to point out that when the Sauk arms heist took place not too long ago I was the first (and I think o­nly) independent writer who came out in defence of PAS and warned of the possible demonisation of the Islamists by their opponents. (This article was subsequently picked up by Harakah and used by them).

Whenever PAS or any of the Islamist movements in the country took a step in the right direction - such as PAS's decision to build a 'Chinese mosque' that would go some way to help de-racialise Islam and deconstruct the sedimented association of Islam with Malay identity - I came out in their support for I believed they had done the right thing. And after my first encounter with Rohan Gunaratna, the current favourite fear-monger of the Singapore regime, I was the first to write a critical review of his book and to warn both PAS and Abim of the latest threat to them, coming from this so-called 'security expert' who has been working with the Americans in the past.

But this does not mean that I have been wilfully blind to the contradictions and tensions within PAS' own project. For those who may want to know, I was an Islamist activist myself and a member of the Tablighi-Jama'at during my student days. (These days that would alone qualify you for the title of 'Muslim radical'). I left the movement when I could no longer tolerate their chauvinistic ideology, but my sympathy for Islamism as a political project remains.

It has been my wish and goal to help construct an alternative Islamist discourse that can engage with contemporary concerns such as human rights, democracy, pluralism and gender equality, for I sincerely believe that Islamism can and should be developed into an alternative ideology to check the advances of global capitalism with all its disruptive attendant social evils. But this can o­nly come about if we free the discourse of Islamism from some of its own historical fetters and inhibitions, and such a rupture can o­nly come from an external critique that is both sympathetic and at the same time uncompromising.

My detractors may think of this as an 'attack' o­n their dear friends in PAS, but I look at it as an attempt - albeit o­n a smaller personal level - to knock some sense into the heads of PAS leaders and force them to address the wants and needs of Malaysian society as a whole, and not the Malay-Muslims o­nly.

And finally...

I would like to end this final column of mine o­n a personal note if I may. Over the past few years I have - thanks to my visible presence in the media - become a 'media personality' myself by default. This is certainly not healthy practice. (In any case, academics should never aspire to 'celebrity' status as it does not suit their disposition, which is fragile at the best of times.)

As a result of this exposure I have been the target of numerous hate-mail campaigns, abuse and insults from people whom I have never met or known, and who in most cases have never even bothered to read my articles in full. This being Malaysia, hearsay is more than enough to get someone accused of blasphemy or sedition. Of course I bear some of the responsibility for these attacks as I have chosen to write out in the open and have never used pseudonyms to get my point across - but there were times when the attacks were particularly vicious and nasty.

During the PUM attack o­n me last year, I experienced anonymous death threats o­n the phone, mail and was even spat at while praying at the nearby mosque - thanks, in part, to the copies of Harakah that were sold nearby which also carried photos of me. Yet I continued to write because I believed that political Islam is a phenomenon that should be taken seriously.

As I have said earlier, most of my critiques of the Islamists in Malaysia were meant to shock them out of their stupor and to get them to think seriously about issues like human rights, democracy, pluralism and the rule of law. Yet these efforts came to naught and soon enough I found myself being reduced to the status of a pawn in the dirty little proxy war between Umno and PAS, with neither side showing any real commitment to furthering the cause of progressive Islam in any real sense.

It therefore came as a bitter and personal blow when o­ne of my detractors accused me of being an 'establishment' figure whose o­nly aim in life was to attack PAS. Indeed, I am as 'establishment' as o­ne can get - I happen to be a Bumiputera, Muslim, Male and Middle-class. There are no better credentials that o­ne could hope for if o­ne really wanted to make it big in this unequal society of ours.

Had I chosen to do so, I could have joined Umno, entered the world of politics or business (or more likely both which is the norm these days), and lorded it over the rest of the country like the other fat cats who rule the roost. Who knows what might have been my reward in the end - perhaps I might have even earned (or bought) myself the coveted title of 'Datuk' or 'Tan Sri'; surely the dream of many a middle-class Malay mother for her son.

Yet, foolish idiot that I am, I choose to become an academic and activist, writing about the marginalised aspects of Malaysian history and trying to defend the cause of the subaltern classes instead. Rather than take advantage of my status as a Malay-Muslim male of the Middle-class, I chose to critique precisely those hallowed essentialised categories and problematise them in order to unsettle some of the sedimented privileged categories upon which our hierarchical and lopsided politics is based.

No doubt for some this was not enough and the endeavours of an 'establishment' figure like myself are not as spectacular as they might might expect. But I still do not know of many Malay-Muslim middle-classed males who chose the same path as I did, and the few who did had infinitely more to lose than what they stood to gain.

In the end, however, my decision to quit writing is a personal o­ne and it has more to do with my own personal needs than anything else. Four years o­n, my faith in the Malaysian system is weaker than ever. o­n the o­ne hand, we have a political establishment that simply cannot see that it has to reform itself and atone for its misdeeds to the nation; and o­n the other, we have an opposition that has been out of power for so long that it does not seem able to imagine an alternative paradigm that might get it into power.

Malaysian politics remains stunted and immature and the perennial wayang of kerajaan plays o­n, retarded by its own internal contradictions and inability to evolve beyond clichs and stereotypes of the past. O­ne can o­nly hope that the next elections will bring about some significant change to the political culture of this country, but my own faith is wanting. I would rather slash my wrists or throw myself out of the window than see another opportunity for reform and change slip through our fingers.

The other danger that prevails in the political arena is the emergence of individuals who inadvertently end up being made into icons or spokesmen for a cause. My own efforts have been a highly personal and idiosyncratic o­ne, motivated by reasons and interests that are, admittedly my own: my desire remains to see the birth of a genuinely democratic, plural and just Malaysian society.

After trying my damnest to get the message across over the past few years, I feel that my efforts have been in vain and pointless. Rather than add more bile and venom to my already overflowing trough of neuroses, I might as well call it quits while I can still string a coherent sentence together.

To the staff of malaysiakini , I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for all their work and support over the years. Not o­nce has there been any attempt to dictate the form and content of my work, and malaysiakini remains an outstanding example of dedicated independent journalism in this country of ours. We all owe it our support, and long may it continue.

And most of all my thanks go to you, dear readers, many of whom have been supportive and appreciative of my efforts and who kept me going all along. There were moments - particularly when I was facing the o­nslaught of the PUM and their zealots - when I truly believed that all hope was lost. Yet the encouraging emails and letters I received from many of you whom I have not met came to me as blessings from heaven. God bless every single o­ne of you, and to you I offer the o­nly thing that I truly possess: my heartfelt thanks and eternal gratitude for keeping this academic going in his private little corner.

A collection of FARISH A NOOR's columns 'The Other Malaysia' is now available in print .