16-31 January 2002

Harakah Column

Islam as the new enemy

M.G.G. Pillai

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahatir Mohamed, is caught in a conundrum: he wants to be Islam's saviour as its enemy. And he cannot decide from one day to the next where he stands. Like most heads of state pressganged into this war on terror, he turns it into his own political advantage, finding Islam revolutionists in his own backyard, and certain that the worst of them are with his political arch-enemy, PAS. He found one set in those who raided an army camp, put them on trial for treason, and all were convicted. What he could manage was to link them to PAS. The courts have pronounced their judgement, the convictions of death and life sentence on appeal, but he cannot leave well enough alone. When PAS leaders questioned the Al-Maunah findings, he went into an irrelevant diatribe of such unthinking comment that it raises doubts of his sanity.

He did not score political points on the judgement. Nor the events of 11 September either. No one address its frightening impact. It is not as modern myth allows, the collapse of the World Trade Centre in New York and the damage to the Pentagon, but for what they represent: the implied destruction of the world's most powerful economic nation and its superpower war room. It is the classic replay of David with a catapault against the mighty Goliath. The David here of course is Osama bin Laden. Its impact, as in the Bible, reverberated throughout the world, and as they aligned with the Goliath of the modern world intensified their search for the Davids in their bailliwick. Dr Mahathir looks out for David clones among his flock. By running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.

And he finds it in the Kesatuan Mujahideen Malaysia, since changed to Kesatuan Militan Malaysia. No one knows what it is, but since the chairman of it is a PAS-leader's son, it must be linked to PAS. It does not matter if it is or not. Nor even if KMM exists. It comes in handy, especially after 11 September, to label his enemies with it. The arrests and detentions do not stop in Malaysia. In Singapore, the authorities have found a few Islamic Davids hell bent on revolution. Could all this be true? Of course, it must be true. Would the police make arrests on mere suspicion? You may think they would, but the home minister would deny that. After all, even Jane's Intelligence Review reveals insidiously the Al-Qaeda network wormed its way into the countries of the world that even even the mighty United States has no clue about it.

But the Prime Minister's world view is not believed by his flock. This does not mean that he cries wolf yet again. Far from it. What he says could well be true, and this Islamic revolutionaries pose a fundamental threat to one's way of life, as we were once told the Communists did. Why is it then that most people who do not, like sheep, accept the official explanation and ask embarrassing questions? One is if Nur Misuari is as dangerous an Islamic fundamentalist rebel to the Philippines as Ustadz Nik Aziz Nit Mat's son is to Dr Mahathir, why is one treated with kid gloves and the other with the mailed fist? Has it to do with the unpalatable fact that in the current definition of terrorism, Malaysia supported a terrorist group as it indeed it did when it backed for decades the Misuari plan for Muslim Mindanao to secede from the Philippines?

So, like the United States, Malaysia is confused on what it should do. Washington, in a replay of the Soviet occupation, outdid even Moscow in its devastation of Afghanistan. And justify its action as Moscow did, putting the screws on in the name of democracy as Moscow did in the name of communism. Washington is also careful to say that all this is not to denigrate Islam, but to protect it from the rascals who give it a bad name. Dr Mahathir uses the same argument, insisting he is the Islamic Goliath as Washington insists it is the Christian Goliath. Each country isolates what they term Islamic fundamentalists in their own country to rein in political debate and dissent. Once the common denominator was communism. Today it is Islam.

The difficulty is, globally and locally, how to do it, as it could with communism, so that it becomes a world enemy, with those who supported it easily isolated. That is not possible with Islam. Neither Mr Bush nor Dr Mahathir can explain why Islam would get a bad name should Osama bin Laden or Mullah Muhammad Umar or Ustadz Haji Hadi Awang are damned. Is Islam so insecure that its future must be held hostage to the actions of an individual? Is Hinduism to be despised because some fanatics destroy an Muslim shrine? Or Catholicism because Castro is a Catholic? So why is Islam framed in the public mind of its deviousness because one man looks at it from a perspective that makes many uncomfortable. Even the devil quotes the Scriptures, but does it make him right. As the United States, and its satraps around the world, quotes the Quran to damn the religion.

Communism is a byproduct of the industrialised society, and its dominance lasted barely 150 years. Islam had been the way of life for a millennium. Even those Muslim regimes in the Middle East who should have jumped on the Bush anti-terror bandwagon would not. Not because they disagree with the Bush aims but that the Washington-defined terrorist is more potent in their backyard than Washington ever could. This campaign of Islam as the enemy will fester, with Washington's guidance, and spawn myriads of local tyrannies around the globe, as anti-communism once did. It has nothing to do with Islam or Christianity. It is the naked use of power to control the meek and the weak. It is an attempt to fudge the realities to cushioning those in power from the results of their recklessness. This is as true in Washington as it is in Kuala Lumpur or Manila. And as misplaced. All this would spawn is a new confrontation in which Goliathian power would be felled by an angry David. It would not be Islam that would triumph, although it could, but the meek who uses Islam to launch a catapault against the Goliathian might.

What helps it along is the uncomfortable feeling that if the meek empower themselves with Islam in a deliberate alliance around the world, it globalises a conflict that can have devastating consequences. The logic of this is not challenged, but the shock of 11 September also frightened the rulers of what could happen in their bailliwick. This irrationality has its own logic framed in shock and fright. In Kuala Lumpur, in Singapore, in New Delhi, in Ougadougou, as in Washington. The way out, in fear and self-preservation, is to make Islam the enemy. The worst is yet to come.