When he first came to power, the millions of Pakistanis who supported him thought that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto represented a few face and a radical departure from the bad old days of Pakistani politics.

For the first time in decades, a civilian had come to lead the country and the military elite who had made a mess of the national economy and government were forced to make a hasty retreat. Zulfikar's meteoric rise to power in 1971 could not have come at a better time for him.

After years of corrupt and inept military rule by the Generals Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, the public were desperate for a change in Pakistan's politics.

But Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was no mere politician. Perhaps the most articulate, visionary, charismatic and, in the final analysis, flawed character to grace the country's hall of fame, he was a mass of contradictions and uncertainties.

The man who claimed that he wanted to create a freer society where 'the man in the street can tell me to go to hell' would soon show his true colours, and pity the poor man in the street who would dare to tell him to go to hell (or wherever, for that matter).

Little green book

As part of his reformist agenda, Bhutto immediately put the country on a course of rapid material and capitalist development. He nationalised the most important sectors of the national economy on the grounds that this was part of his 'Islamist-Socialist' project, something that his long-time ally and friend, Muammar Ghadaffi had also done in Libya.(1)

Not to be outdone, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan also came up with his own brand of 'Islamic-Socialism' after careful consultation with such theological luminaries like Mao Tze-Tung, Chao En-Lai and Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania.(2)

Zulfikar also collected his profound insights in a handy little green book, which bore the prosaic title Bhutto Says: The Book of Thoughtful Quotations and Writings of Chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto .

Both Ghadaffi and Zulfikar were keen to tap into the local belief and value systems of their respective societies (which were based on Islam) and to use them as a platform for their own nation-building projects (which invariably cast Europe and America as the negative external Other).

It is hardly a surprise that both men were close and fond of each other, and Zulfikar even went as far as naming the new stadium in Lahore after his Libyan counterpart, despite the obvious temptation to name it after himself.

Miracle cures

Ten years later, another revolution of sorts took place in Malaysia when Dr. Mahathir Mohamad came to power. Like Bhutto, Mahathir was widely regarded as a radical and 'ultra' in many respects.

His outspoken remarks against the Chinese business community, his theories of racial difference and Social-Darwinism and his fervent defence of Malay communal rights cast him in a negative light and made him the bugbear within his own party, the United Malays National Organisation (Umno).

For his attacks against the establishment during the late 1960s, his controversial book The Malay Dilemma was banned and he was temporarily kicked out of his own party.

But Dr Mahathir's reforms did not take the leftward turn of Bhutto's. Unlike Bhutto, Mahathir was not in any way persuaded by the arguments of the Left. (Indeed, if there was one thing that he admired even less than the West, it was the ideology of socialism and communism, which he regarded as being just as euro-centric.)

Dr Mahathir's reforms led instead to the opening up of the national economy, the liberalisation of trade and the de-nationalisation of many key industries.

He opted for privatisation and he tried to court foreign investment from abroad (mostly from Japan and the other Far Eastern economies) in order to kick-start the economy and get the country on the road of rapid economic development along liberal-capitalist lines.

Despite their obvious ideological differences, both Bhutto and Mahathir believed in the miracle cures of economic development. Both leaders believed that their respective countries would never be able to survive unless they were able to compete in the international economic arena.

Slow to budge

The Mahathir era which began in the 1980s started off well enough: political detainees were released and the press was given more freedom than ever before. Money also began to flow into the country and this led to an immediate (and visible) increase in terms of infrastructural development and the launch of a number of mega-projects.

Dams, industrial centres, trade parks, ports, bridges were built while the urban landscape was irreversibly altered by the arrival of hundreds of huge (and ugly) shopping centres, malls and golf courses.

The only people who seemed to be upset at the time were a motley crew of environmentalists who claimed that all of this development was leading to the untimely destruction of the odd endangered species or two.

But both Mahathir and Bhutto were acutely aware of the fact that theirs were also societies that were steeped in the past and traditions that were slow to budge and change with the times.

What was more, Malaysia and Pakistan were both predominantly Muslim countries with an identifiable Islamic character that did not relish being marginalised by the tide of MacDonalds and Burger King restaurants on the rise.

In time, both of these leaders would find that their biggest adversaries were from their own Muslim constituencies.

Mullahs at the gates

Bhutto knew that his reforms were bound to anger and frustrate the Islamist parties and movements that were vying for control of the country.

Almost as soon as he came to power he found himself and his PPP party the target of numerous polemics from the local ulama and mullah s of the various Islamist parties like the Jama'at-e Islami, the Jami'at-ul Ulema-i Islam and the Jami'at-ul Ulema-i Pakistan.

In a desperate gamble to stay in power and keep his Islamist credentials intact, Bhutto chose to cut cards with the Devil and began to court the Islamist opposition instead.

In 1972 Bhutto made a deal with the Jami'at-ul Ulema-i Islam (JUI) under Maulana Mufti Mahmood. He promised to allow Maulana Mahmood and the JUI to expand their activities in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) as long as they would support his own PPP party in the national and regional assemblies.

In the same year he managed to convince the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to hold its summit in Lahore (3) which did wonders for Bhutto's own image as a 'world-class' Islamic leader. (His philandering ways with numerous Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) stewardesses, singers and movie stars were obviously not on the summit's agenda).

But the concessions to the Islamists did not stop there. Bhutto also promised Islamist parties like the JUI and Maulana Maudoodi's Jama'at-e Islami (JI) that he would introduce new laws and constitutional amendments that would make Pakistan an Islamic state.

On March 3, 1976, the scotch-drinking Bhutto inaugurated Pakistan's first International Seerat Congress, to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad and to study the life and ideas of the Prophet. (He left the Congress soon after giving his welcoming speech.)

Bags of cash

When Dr Mahathir came to power, he too, felt the need to address the forces of resurgent Islam in his country. Like Bhutto, he also chose to play the Islamic card in the same grandiose terms.

Dr Mahathir's government scored its first goal (some might say own goal) by courting the popular and charismatic Islamist activist and student leader Anwar Ibrahim into its ranks in 1982.

Other equally spectacular achievements followed; the launch of the International Islamic University (UIA) in 1983, the opening of numerous Islamic think-tanks, research centres and educational facilities, the opening of the Hajj Fund (Tabung Haji) for Muslim pilgrims, etc.

Dr. Mahathir also attempted to do something that had never been done by any Malaysian politician before. Through his network of religious functionaries, religio-technocrats and advisers, he attempted to forge a new school of Islamic thought that would present Islam as something that was compatible with capitalism and material development.

He tried to show that Islam was not against material progress or the personal pursuit of wealth. (In time some of his own ministers would take this idea a tad too literally, to the point of getting caught in foreign airports with bags full of cash in hand. Perhaps in that case the personal pursuit of wealth was beyond the Islamic injunctions themselves).

It would take nearly two decades before the consequences of these moves would become public, but at that time it seemed to many as the right idea and the best way to out-manoeuvre the opposition.

When push comes to shove

Politics, as the Indonesians say, is elastic ( politik karet ). Politicians need to be flexible and they have to know how to play the game of give-and-take. At least this is how it works in the messy and disreputable world of secular realpolitik.

But one factor that neither Bhutto nor Mahathir took into account was that dealing with Islamists is not like dealing with politicians of other political orientations. Islam, like all religions, is not based on relativist truths and its claims are hardly ever local or particular.

Like the other Semitic faiths, Islam is global and universal in its outlook and monochromatic in its moral epistemology. This, in fact, translates into a very clear-cut, if dogmatic, form of politics. One does not play around with Islam, for as a variable factor it is one of the most uncontrollable.

Islam has always been an uncontrollable factor in politics because Islamic discourse (for the past ten centuries at least) has been at a state of impasse and under the monopoly of the Ulama , who will not allow a here-today, gone-tomorrow politician to fool about with its contents.

Since the time of the Crusades and the Mongol invasions, the Ulama have been at the vanguard of the defence of Islam and this has made them increasingly conservative, dogmatic and reactionary.

So when politicians like Bhutto and Mahathir were trying to play the religious card and use Islam as a variable in politics, what they were really doing was walking into the lair of the Ulama and falling into the trap of the Islamists. The stage was set for confrontation and conflict.

Architects blamed

It is therefore hardly a surprise that both these men who tried to utilise religion for political ends ended up being taken hostage by the same discourse they tried to dominate. Throughout the 1970s in Pakistan and the 1980s in Malaysia, we witness the escalation of the use of Islam by both the government and opposition in both countries.

Islam became the primary discourse of legitimation for the state and the discourse of de-legitimation for the opposition.

In Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Islamic-Socialist project was being undermined by the mullahs of the Jama'at-e Islami, the Jami'at-ul Ulema-i Islam and the Jami'at-ul Ulema-i Pakistan.

In Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir's Modernist-Islamisation programme was being attacked by his critics from PAS, Abim, Darul Arqam and others. The Islamic Bank was denounced as fundamentally capitalist and un-Islamic in nature.

The activities of the Hajj Fund were exposed and some of its more embarrassing escapades were made public. (The Lembaga Urusan Tabung Haji (Luth) was involved in the operations of the Malaysian Rare Earth (ARE) company along with the Japanese concern Mitsubishi Chemicals. The company was later accused of dumping radioactive waste in Perak.)

Bit by bit, the neat and ideal picture of progressive Islam was being torn to pieces, and the architects of both projects were blamed for it.

Endnotes:

(1) Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi took over the government of Libya after a coup in 1969 which led to the fall of the hugely unpopular ruler Sultan Idris. Ghadaffi later launched the people's revolution ( jamahiriyah ) in Libya in March 1977.

The country's name was changed to the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah. Working according to the economic policy formulated in his Green Book, Ghadaffi later turned the country into a decentralised people's socialist collective where workers were encouraged to take control of factories and businesses.

Private retail trade was wiped out, and citizens and workers committees took over local government. Ghadaffi also promoted his brand of 'socialist Islam' and attacked the Ulama who he regarded as being backward and reactionary. The Ulama in turn attacked Ghadaffi's version of socialist Islam as being bida'h .

(2) Bhutto's reforms were inspired in part by the example set by Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya, and his close contacts with China. During his trips to China, Bhutto had been advised by Mao Tze-Tung and Chao En-Lai on crucial matters of economic and foreign policy.

The sudden and unexpected nationalisation of Pakistan's economy caused the country's already weakened economy to collapse completely, sending the stock market downwards and causing the flight of capital from the country.

It also sparked the first exodus of Pakistani elites, who took their capital and investments abroad with them. Fearful of losing the support of the population, Bhutto then began to play the Islamic card as well.

He assured the Islamist leaders that his own brand of 'Islamic Socialism' had nothing no do with communism per se and that it was not an atheistic ideology.

(3) In 1972, Malaysia's second Prime Minister Tun Razak was invited to visit Lahore to attend the second OIC summit hosted by Pakistan. During the visit Tun Razak had the opportunity to meet with other prominent leaders like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Muammar Ghadaffi and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia (who was there on another unrelated but official state visit).

The OIC summit had a tremendous impact on Tun Razak, who congratulated Bhutto for his adroit handling of the event. But it also convinced Tun Razak of the need for Malaysia to play a more visible and active role on the international scene and the Islamic conference in particular.

Tun Razak was undoubtedly impressed by the way that Bhutto (known for his political manoeuvrings and carnal excesses) had nonetheless managed to orchestrate such a high-profile event that did wonders for his own Islamist credentials.

If the scotch-drinking Bhutto could open the first International Seerat Congress to commemorate the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, then surely the politicians of Malaysia (and Tun Razak was clearly a drier character than Bhutto) could surely do the same.

It was at this time that the Malaysian government began lay down the foundations for what would later become its own state-sponsored Islamisation programme. Umno, under Tun Razak, was already boasting that it had managed to facilitate the conversion of 75,000 Malaysian non-Muslims to Islam thanks to its own dakwah (missionary) activities.

(4) The Asian Rare Earth (ARE) company was a multinational concern that brought together the Japanese Mitsubishi Chemicals company and the Malaysian BEH Minerals company.

The Lembaga Urusan Tabung Haji was also one of the partners in ARE. The company was first set up to extract rare trace elements from tin tailings. But the factory that was based in Perak was also producing thorium hydroxide which was a radioactive waste product.

This radioactive waste had to be disposed of, and in the end, dumping sites were found in the state itself - first in the area of Papan and later near Bukit Merah.

Local residents and environmental groups protested against the dumping of radioactive waste in the area and this led to an international outcry from local and foreign environmental groups. [See: Tan Sooi Beng's The Papan-Bukit Merah Protest. In Tangled Web Carpa, 1988. pp. 28-29.]