Those who have been going through much of the Islamist material that has been produced in Malaysia over the past few years would, by now, have grown familiar with a number of terms and phrases which they might not have known otherwise.
Apart from words like "Mahafiraun", "Mahazalim", "Qarun" and a host of other nasties, Malaysians were also taught words like "munafikin" - which quickly became one of the standard accusations levelled against the government of the day.
Muslims accusing each other of being "munafikin" (hypocrites) has become the norm these days. Thanks to the advent of the Internet, and the growing popularity of a number of wired-up conservative ulama like Yusuf Qardawi with their dial-a-fatwa service, we now live in a world where accusations of being bad or hypocritical Muslims are flying around us on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
Those who have the audacity to question the rulings of some prominent religious leader may well find themselves the target of hundreds of nasty hate e-mails, many of which will bear the pointed accusation of "munafikin" as well.
This situation has reached almost saturation point by now. In practically every single Muslim country in the world today, we see governments and ruling elites living under a state of siege and Malaysia is no exception.
Barricaded within their cosmopolitan capitals of steel and glass, they remain surrounded by the army of the poor and dispossessed. In the past, the masses were forced to endure their lot in comparative silence. But today, thanks in part to the advances in communication technology, they are more vocal than ever before.
Their critiques come hard and fast, going deep within the bowels of the ruling establishment itself. From Morocco to Indonesia, we see a host of Muslim governments trying to keep the ship of state afloat despite the relentless polemical barrage thrown in their direction by those from the Islamist camp.
Looking closer at the socio-economic and political terrain of these societies it is easy for us to imagine how and why such a situation has come about in the first place. In many, if not all, Muslim countries today there exists a painfully obvious discrepancy between political rhetoric and the hard realities of life.
The gulf between the rich and the poor; the educated and the illiterate; the empowered and the disenfranchised, are growing much bigger all the time. Some Muslim countries like Indonesia and Pakistan have even been relegated to the category of "messy states" which are totally disfunctional, and which can neither recover nor fall apart for good.
Muslim governments the world over are among the top in the list of oppressive regimes who regularly torture, imprison, execute and abuse their own citizens too. No wonder the masses have run to the mosques for refuge, and it is there that they find their solace and deliverance in the discourse of political Islam or Islamism.
But the Islamists, it must be said, are just as good at playing the game of hypocritical realpolitik. And upon closer examination of the political discourse of the Islamists, we see precisely how and why terms like "mushrikin", "munafikin" and "kafir/kufr" play such an important role in the political universe that they have constructed around themselves.
For the Islamists to accuse the government and anyone else they don't like of being "munafikin" is perhaps the easiest shot they could take. Political Islam, predicated as it is on a theological discourse of absolutes, already draws a clear dividing line between Muslims and non-Muslims; between Muslim concerns and that of non-Muslims.
From the perspective of this religio-political ideology, there are no grey areas or space for doubt. Variability and contingency - two factors that find a safe haven in the world of post-modern politics, have no place here. Islamism is all about certainties and absolute goals.
It is for this reason that there can be no such thing as "moderate" or half-hearted Islamisation. One either accepts the need for an Islamic state or not. Those who do not are dismissed as unbelievers, and if they happen to be Muslims who reject the call of the Islamists, then they are unceremoniously dubbed "munafikin" or secular "kafirs" for good measure.
Act of hypocrisy
But who exactly are the munafikin here?
If by the term "munafik" we refer to those hypocrites who say one thing and do another - just like the original munafikin who pretended to be Muslims but were actually in league with the forces conspiring against the early Muslim community - then it would appear that there are many others who qualify for this somewhat unflattering term.
For a start, one could argue that for the Islamists to claim that they are somehow situated radically outside the political process itself would be an act of hypocrisy. Yet they continue to do this all the time - witness how so many Islamist intellectuals and leaders continue to jockey for political positions, tactical advantages, make political concessions, form instrumental coalitions, make and break alliances and broker deals - while pretending to be above the cut and grind of politics per se.
The followers who make up the rank and file of the Islamist camp hardly fare any better. In Malaysia, a country that has long since been regarded as one of the hotbeds for new Islamist resurgence in the Muslim world, we see countless examples of Islamist activists and advocates of Islamisation who are nonetheless contaminated by the very things they condemn in others.
Living in a society where religion and religiousity are currently en vogue means that the outward expression of religious commitment and religious identity are foremost in the minds of these Islamists. Wearing the tudung (headscarf), kopiah (skull cap), songkok , sporting a janggut (beard) - these have all become the symptoms of Islamic identity and they have also become trendy of late.
Yet over the years we have also been treated to stories about bearded religious teachers and activists who rape and abuse women and children, kopiah -wearing Islamists who don't mind getting involved in the odd financial scandal, Islamists who dress one way at home and another way while on holiday abroad, etc.
Recently we even heard of a prominent Malaysian ulama who openly admitted that he could be sexually exited by the sight of girls who exposed their belly buttons. The list of ever-so-human contradictions goes on forever. Once I even came across a wealthy Malay-Muslim entrepreneur of the new Islamically-oriented generation who proudly told me that although he possessed a Rolls Royce, it was painted green - "the colour of Islam", of all things. If that is not hypocrisy than God knows what is. (It was certainly proof of bad taste, in any case).
Them and us
The root of the problem here lies not in double standards or people being somehow schizophrenic in a collective way. Islamically-inclined Malay-Muslims are no different from anyone else. Like everyone, their identities are plastic and they occupy a number of different, sometimes contradictory subject-positions which are relative and subjective.
However, it is this failure to relativise their own subject positions and to see things in subjective terms that makes the position of the Islamists a problematic and untenable one. Their tendency to view the world in black-and-white terms, framed within a logic of dialectical oppositions where everyone who is not on their side has to be the "enemy" is precisely the thing that leads them to accusing others of hypocrisy in the first place.
But lest it be forgotten, we need to remind ourselves of the fact that we all possess identities that are relational, plastic and negotiable. We all negotiate and adapt our religious beliefs and moral values according to the needs of the time and the social topography we inhabit. And we all exist in time, which means that we are bound by the vicissitudes of history, temporality and culture as well.
As Muslims, we need to remind ourselves that our moral beliefs - absolute though they may be for us - remain relative and particular for others. This is something that the Islamists simply do not, cannot or will not understand. For instance, it is well known that we Muslims have an almost pathological obsession with food and things which we regard as haram .
Our hatred for pork, for instance, has become so well known that it is almost legendary. We condemn those who eat pork and those who do not clean their meat properly on the grounds that they contaminate their bodies with the blood and meat of unclean animals.
But pause for a moment and think of how we must look to those vegetarians and vegans who regard the consumption of meat in general - pork, beef, chicken, crocodile or whatever - as disgusting per se. How often we forget to relativise our beliefs and the moral positions we take, as if we were the only ones who existed on this planet and that ours was the only final moral vocabulary for all of humanity.
It is this lack of broad-mindedness and relativism that compartmentalises our way of thinking and looking at the world around us. Convinced of the truthfulness of our convictions, we have failed to make room for the convictions of others. In such a climate only the Pharisees could thrive and prosper, and with that the universalism of Islam meets its rigidly enforced limits. Ironically, these boundaries are of our own invention.
But beyond the narrow confines of the Islamists' mindset, there remains that other Malaysia made up of Muslims and non-Muslims of many shades and hues. These differences exist because of the natural differences between human beings, which Islam itself has always recognised and celebrated.
The irony is that the Islamists themselves are the last ones to recognise this. Which is why some of us would prefer to deal with honest "hypocrites" rather than those who don't even know that that's what they really are.
DR FARISH A NOOR is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist who is currently visiting professor at the Department of Islamic Studies, Freie University of Berlin. "The Other Malaysia" tries to unearth aspects of Malaysia's history and culture that have been erased or relegated to the margins, in order to remind us that there remains another Malaysia that is often forgotten.
