Mehmet Özay 13.05.2019
In
his book, Mahathir’s Islam: Mahathir Mohamad on Religion and Modernity in
Malaysia, Sven Schottmann provides a detailed analysis of Dr. Mahathir’s
statements and commentaries on Islamic principles, guiding the reader through a
particular era in modern Malaysian politics, and analyses Dr. Mahathir’s
modernization process in the light of a process of institutionalized
Islamization. This review both summarizes and critically evaluates the author’s
main arguments.
Swan
Schutmann. (2018). Mahathir’s Islam:
Mahathir Mohamad on Religion and Modernity in Malaysia, Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press.
The
book titled “Mahathir’s Islam: Mahathir Mohamad on Religion and Modernity in
Malaysia” refers to Dr. Mahathir Muhammad’s personal viewpoints on religion. It
is a quite timely work emphasizing the impact and significance of Dr. Mahathir,
not only in Malaysian context, but in greater spheres such as Southeast Asian
politics and in the Islamic world as well.
Swan
Schutmann, a sociologist of religion, evaluates Dr. Mahathir’s policies during
his tenure (1981-2003) based on the implementation of Islamic principles and
relevance to modernization in Malaysia. Two salient concepts emerge here as
important, Islamization and modernization as significantly structured by Dr.
Mahathir. The writer applies an analytical approach to evaluate both these
concepts.
The
writer considers the era of Dr. Mahathir in a way designed to comprehend this
period in the form of social, political profile of Islam in Malaysia. This is
no doubt quite different from the early approaches put forth by various writers
dealing with ‘export-oriented industrialization, the curtailment of democracy
by Dr. Mahathir’s presidential style of leadership,’ etc.
The
book analyses Dr. Mahathir’s modernization process in the light of
institutionalised Islamization. In terms of this title, there is no doubt that
this is a novel approach to understanding this particular period in modern
Malaysian politics.
For
common readers the title seems to be attractive enough to satisfy the feelings
of religious nationalism, but for those who are familiar to modern Malaysian
politics they would probably be surprised to witness, to some extent, the
exaggeration contained within it.
What
is striking about the title of the book is that it is contrary to the common
description of Dr. Mahathir as a ‘chauvinist’ or ‘ultra’ Malay politician. Even
in the writer’s interview with Dr. Mahathir, the latter describes himself as a
“Malaysian nationalist”. This
statement by itself explicitly seems to be a counter-claim against the argument
of the writer.
Schutmann
argues that this process of Islamization occurred as a result of the ideas and
policies of Dr. Mahathir himself. And this phenomenon as seen in his
description of ‘properly understood Islam’ has not been explored accordingly.
His ‘articulations of Islam’ are explored by the writer’s analysis of certain
statements of Dr. Mahathir obtained from private talks, interviews and official
speeches.
There
is no doubt that these need to be discussed accordingly based on the type of
audience and the aims of Dr. Mahathir. In addition, it is right to call this
book as a personal archeology of Dr. Mahathir through the eyes of a sociologist
of religion. This is clarified by the writer when he asserts that his intention
is to articulate notions of Islam unexplored.
Through
this analysis, the writer appears to expose the role of Islam in Dr. Mahathir’s
personality and beyond this in his policies. Trying to support his argument, he
argues that almost all previous works dealing with Dr. Mahathir era had significantly
neglected the perspective of Islam. In this regard, the writer criticizes and
implicitly labels those who have written about Dr. Mahathir’s era as
incompetent and ‘reluctant’ to
understand him “as an agent of late 20th
century Islamic thought”.
Though
he seems to be clear in his argumentation, one can assume that a leader like
Dr. Mahathir, merging both charisma and rationality in his personality,
possesses distinct characteristics in his policies. Because of this reason,
trying to differentiate between aspects of rationality, Islam and nationalism
to understand his policies and what these policies mean to Malaysian people may
mislead us, since all these components make up the personal features and
ingredients of Dr. Mahathir’s policies.
The
1980s and 1990s are important because of the economic modernization processes
throughout the
several five-term ruling governments of Dr.
Mahathir. In fact, this feature can be
observed almost in the whole region of East
and Southeast Asia when Malaysia followed the same track of development like the Asian Tigers, pertaining to
economic development with the significant investment on small and medium size
industries and strong manufacturing sectors to transform into lead export
economies.
Hence,
there is a difference between the economic modernization and embeddedness to
global capitalism playing its rules in bilateral and international agreements
and the narrative of applying of Islamization
in various institutions at the national level.
What
makes this book peculiar is the narration based on the strong tendency of Dr.
Mahathir towards
institutionalized Islamization. And the writer seems to base his argument on
assumptions such as the follows, “… Mahathir as a
Muslim thinker or perhaps better, Muslim statesman…”. These two concepts are too distinct to be pronounced in the
same sentence. Beyond this, it is also observed in various passages of the book
that the writer compares Dr. Mahathir with some distinguished ‘Muslim thinkers’
which is no doubt irrelevant to the
discussion.
Though
Dr. Mahathir is a vanguard of Islamization policies, it cannot be contended
that he was the only sole constituent of all ideas about Islamic
institutionalization. Indeed, what makes Dr. Mahathir peculiar is his own self-encouraged derived approaches to find a solution to some significant social
problems relevant both to Malay-Muslim communities and also, to some extent,
the nation-state establishment.
Since,
Dr. Mahathir aimed to remould the Malay Muslim community starting from the
civil servants, bureaucrats and then general public whenever he found opportunities either in social settings such as, ceramah or official meetings in UMNO
general assemblies or governmental sessions he disseminated his discourse of functionalization of Islamic creed. He
intended to give ideas on dominating their social life and views in Islamic
values.
The ‘foreword’ describes Dr. Mahathir as “a truly modern
Muslim democrat’, and it seems that this
approach is quite an exaggeration in understanding of the position of Dr.
Mahathir in Malaysian politics. Calling him as
“Muslim democrat” does not reflect the reality. Instead this attribution
can be remarked for Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy
of Dr. Mahathir, till Dr. Mahatir forced him
to be sacked from the UMNO and the government post in the end of 1990s. Another misleading discourse is to compare
him with some distinguished Islamic thinkers in the 20th century. Dr. Mahathir is a politician and he, like every political
leader, consults with a group of experts in relevant fields. But this
does not make him an Islamic thinker.
It
should be remembered that there were reformists and distinguished Malay
thinkers in 1950s and 1970s such as Dr. Burhanuddin Al-Helmy, a reformist, and
Naquib al-Attas, an influential and smart scholar. As observed in relevant
pages of the book, the writer supplies some clues from Kaum Muda movement etc. about how and why Dr. Mahathir chose this
path of representing a modernist Islamic perspective. Besides, the mentioned
eras were the one which witnessed post-colonial discourse and methodology were
being discussed significantly in both Western and Eastern campuses and
intellectual life. These could have significantly influenced the thoughts and views
of politicians like Dr. Mahathir.
It
is understood that the writer questions Dr. Mahathir’s commentary of Islam and
argues that the latter has a strong tendency to be very practical. And he
openly argues that his stand and his commentary of Islam is opposed to that of
the mainstream religious scholars in the country. Since he is a politician,
what he asserts should be understood as an invidual view or opinion, not as
a rule, in particular, in the field of religious sphere.
It
should be clarified that Dr. Mahathir is not a religious scholar. However, it
is observed that the writer compares him with Malay religious scholars, in
particular when regarding the approaches of PAS circles and the contemporary
globally recognized Muslim scholars.
What
separates Dr. Mahathir’s Islamic view from PAS is that he functionalized
Islamic principles in the form of policies and implementations in public life
without emphasizing on ideological discourse which has been observed to be
highlighted in the PAS
political discourse. And while Dr. Mahathir was initiating his policies on the basis of Islamic perspective, he attempted to prove
intentionally that these policies could be solutions
to weaknesses of global capitalism. This approach seems to have dual aims
-firstly to prove
that a country like Malaysia can be a developing country while being a Muslim majority country, and quite industrialized;
secondly to give a message to the international circles to pay attention to an
alternative modernization based on a religious approach.
Mahathir’s Islam is based on detailed analysis of Dr. Mahathir’s
statements and commentaries on Islamic principles which helps the reader to
figure out a certain era in modern Malaysian politics. However, it
is also important not to be trapped in some exaggerations about the role and
function of Dr. Mahathir because of his being as a mere politician not a
religious scholar or thinker.
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