Islam, and Muslims, are constantly in the news nowadays, generally for unfortunate reasons, primarily associated with terrorist attacks attributed to Islam, wars in Muslim-majority countries, or, recently, immigration that is perceived to be swamping Western countries with Muslim populations which will nurture terrorists and attempt to change their host countries’ cultures. Especially since the 9/11 attacks, mountains of material have been produced attempting to explain why all this is happening, but it is a very complex topic and coming to grips with it is difficult, particularly for non-Muslim, Western audiences who generally start from a very low knowledge base about Islam. What is Islam all about? What exactly is Islamisation, and political Islam? How can Islam be a “religion of peace” when it is linked to so much violence? If the extremists represent a tiny minority of Muslims, why do the rest of them largely remain silent, and not condemn their actions, if not prevent them? Do Muslim women willingly go along with what appears to Western eyes to be relegation to second-class citizenship? The questions go on and on. This book, and the research behind it, represents my first step towards developing answers to those questions. But first I should explain how I, a non-Muslim (baptised Catholic, but not practising), Caucasian, Australian born and bred, came to write such a book, and my credentials for so doing.
I was sent to Malaysia in early 1989 to be the Regional Head of an international management consultancy, having worked for that company for the previous nineteen years in Australia and Hong Kong. After five years in that role I set up my own business in Kuala Lumpur, a high-level recruitment (or “executive search”, or “headhunting”) company. It became for some years the largest of its kind in the country, consequently with assignments carried out for a big proportion of the major organisations in Malaysia, both local and international. This gave me extensive exposure to many of the senior people in these organisations, including board members, Chief executives and the two or three layers of management below them. I largely wound down my involvement in the company and moved back to Australia at the end of 2018, by which time I had lived and worked in Kuala Lumpur for thirty years.
Around the year 2000, I decided to pursue an old passion of mine, and enrolled in a part-time degree in history and politics at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, my home town. My honours thesis was, not surprisingly, concerned with Malaysian politics. I was subsequently encouraged to tackle a Ph.D., and after some consideration of the fairly daunting task that would present to someone who was Executive Chairman of a business I decided to take the plunge, under the umbrella of the University of Western Australia, where I had done my original science degree decades earlier. Having made that decision and having then being accepted by the School of Political Science, I had to decide what I would research.
Having lived and worked in Malaysia for twenty-three years at that point, it seemed to me an obvious choice that it should be my focus of study. And why not? It is a complex and fascinating country. It is Muslim-majority, but has a large non-Muslim, multi-religious minority, which creates religious tensions. It is multi-ethnic, with Malays in the majority, but with large minority Chinese and Indian groups, which creates ethnic tensions. It was colonised for a long period by the British, who ran the entire country from the mid-nineteenth century to Independence in 1957, and the impact of colonisation was profound—prolonged exposure to Western influences, the widespread introduction of a new language, the modernisation of the economy, and devastatingly for the Malays, a dramatic change to the demography of the country. The consequence is that, while some Malaysians may resist the idea, Western influences have penetrated deeply into the psyche of the country, and this creates further complications and tensions. Adding to this complexity is the fact that Malaysia has been, for nearly fifty years, in the throes of an Islamic “Revival” (which I’ve termed “Islamisation Phenomenon”), which, while it is a worldwide phenomenon, reflects Malaysia’s unique set of circumstances.
This revival had increasingly aroused my interest, as some of the changes associated that directly impact on the daily lives of the Malays in particular appear quite at odds with the generally modern, sophisticated and tolerant behaviour of the local people with whom I was mixing. I was especially surprised at how it seemed to be proceeding with little public debate, apart from the odd entry in the press from a relatively small group of people. The changes are significant, and for many members of the group I’ve described, involve a curtailment of activities that they find enjoyable—what some of them have described as an intrusion into their day-to-day private life. In particular, Malay women of this class seemed to enjoy a status and way of life that seems (from a Western viewpoint) superior to what appears to be the case for women in most Muslim-majority countries. The Islamisation Phenomenon carries with it the potential to reduce this status. So, why do they appear to be content to let it proceed, almost without a murmur? Finally, again at the risk of imposing Western-based judgements on the issue, some of the manifestations appear to be undesirable for any country that openly aspires to be a developed country in the near future, and which is already an active member of the international economic and political community, a community which may limit its dealings with a country they deem “Islamically extreme”.
So, I decided that my research would be aimed at finding out how the senior group of people I described above felt about the changes that were occurring. As this group typically includes many of the people who have a significant influence on the way in which a country operates it seemed a worthwhile objective. As a still quite moderate country, Malaysia was an ideal place to conduct such research, which involves probing some very sensitive issues—this could be quite dangerous in most Muslim-majority countries. Additionally, because I was quite well-known in the Malaysian business community, I felt that I could win the trust of this group and get them to open up with me.
My fundamental hypothesis was that a significant proportion of this group (which I have termed the “professional classes”) are not comfortable with many of the outcomes of the Islamisation Phenomenon, and the direction it appears to be taking, but for a variety of reasons do not want to, or feel they are unable to, speak out and debate the issue.
While I was confident that this was the case, no-one had formally canvassed individuals to find out whether this was true. In fact, it appears very little in-depth probing of what Muslims, especially the more educated classes, think about the move to greater conservatism in their societies, anywhere. There have been surveys such as “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think”,1 “Inside Muslim Minds”,2 “Are Muslims Distinctive?”,3 as well as others by the Washington based Pew Research Centre, and these provide very useful insights as to views individuals have on various issues. But they do not directly address the changes that are occurring in those individuals’ own societies, and whether they agree with them, and why. There are some valuable research projects conducted within Malaysia where the researchers have engaged with individuals, all of which are referred to later in later chapters, but all have been concerned with the issue of “women within Islam”. The Kuala Lumpur based Merdeka Center for Opinion Research has conducted some interesting surveys that at times touch on Islamisation, but like the global surveys mentioned above, are addressing different issues than those addressed in this research and target a different subset of the population. A few of the academics in the research group confirmed that they were unaware of any similar study having been carried out in Malaysia (or anywhere else). In fact, one, who is a well-known academic and political observer, made the following comment: “Your study is very important, because no-one’s done a study of the group you’re researching. It’s hard for me to get a feel for these things, because people are wary of me.”
In addition, the aim was to probe the reasons for not speaking out, my hypothesis being that these were primarily:
- External pressure that comes in a variety of forms: an aggressive minority within the Malay community that can at times be physically intimidating; an inherent capacity that religions have to invoke fear within their followers; peer pressure within the Muslim community; and the (previous) government’s desire to suppress any form of debate that even indirectly questions their legitimacy.
- Internal pressures that arise from issues of Malay and Muslim identity that make them reluctant to question changes that are propagated as enhancing the role of Islam in Malaysia.
- Economic self-interest, as religion is inextricably tied up with politics in Malaysia, and one way or the other many Malays were doing very well economically under the previous government regime and do not want to “rock the boat”.
Finally, the research aimed to explore the target group’s thoughts about what the future may hold for Malaysia, in terms of the trajectory of the Islamisation Phenomenon. It was an excellent opportunity to find out what a quite well-informed group of Malaysians, which includes prominent political observers and academics, privately think about such issues as:
- Whether there is a real possibility that Malaysia could become an “Islamic State” (in the commonly accepted sense of that very vague term i.e. Shari’a law, hudud, curtailment of women’s rights, etc.); and
- The reaction of the non-Malay population to the possibility of the pace of Islamisation continuing, particularly if Malaysia does indeed become an Islamic State.
The survey I eventually conducted involved face-to-face in-depth interviews with a sample of 100, of which 61 were males, and 39 were females. The ethnic mix was 66 Malays, 21 Chinese, 8 Indians, 1 Indigenous East Malaysian, and 4 Caucasians. This was roughly representative of Malaysia’s three major ethnic groups, and of gender. (A more detailed breakdown of the composition of the research sample is provided in Chapter 6.) Important to the success of the research was the way the interviews were conducted—the participants were all quite (or very) senior in their various professions, and the subject was quite sensitive. As mentioned earlier, my profession for the twenty-three years prior to beginning this research had been that of an executive search consultant, retained by large organisations such as banks to search for and convince senior executives to join their organisations to fill a specific position, such as board director, Chief Executive, and positions reporting to the Chief Executive. Most of the people targeted for this research were these same people—the remainder were not dissimilar, simply in different professions. So, I adopted the same interviewing style, which was quite unstructured in order to allow a free-wheeling two-way conversation, but which in fact was gradually working through a well-thought out (and University of Western Australia approved) range of issues. As it turned out, the participants were indeed very open with me, and most of them allowed me to record the interviews, which reflected a great deal of trust on their behalf, both in me, and the rigorous process the university insisted on regarding confidentiality.
One issue I should raise is that of researcher bias, particularly in this case where the subject is concerned with Islam, and I, the researcher, am not a Muslim. It is quite common for Muslim academics to suggest that anyone who is not a Muslim should not presume to write about a subject with which they cannot identify, and in these days of identity politics, and Islam being one of the most sensitive of subjects, I’m sure such criticism will accompany this book. However, I dispute the idea that it is not possible for a non-Muslim to dispassionately observe a Muslim society and make useful comments about it. Of course, all researchers have a certain amount of bias, no matter the subject, but the key thing is to be aware of the possibility of bias and do one’s best to avoid it. I certainly did my best to do this, and my Supervisor helped by noting any instances of such bias that occurred in my writing. As it happens, prior to commencing this project, I sought the views of some Malay acquaintances, including academics, as to the feasibility of someone with my background conducting the research envisaged, and their response was highly encouraging. One of the points they made was that they felt that as a non-Malaysian and non-Muslim I would bring an increased amount of objectivity to the task. They also made the point that having lived so long in Malaysia I would have credibility with participants, as someone who had a quite good understanding of the country, and the complex social dynamics at play.
So, this book is based primarily on the research I carried out to obtain my Ph.D. (which I did, in late 2018), which as well as the interviews described above, involved extensive reading encompassing many aspects of Islam and political Islam, not only in Malaysia, but around the world. It was carried out over more than seven years, from early in 2011 to early 2018. It is important to note that it was concluded before the election of May 2018, which produced the earth-shattering result of toppling the UMNO-led government which had been in power since Independence in 1957. Whether the change in government will result in any significant change to the trajectory of Islamisation which is described in this book only time will tell, although I have my doubts, as I will discuss in the ninth chap...