National Security and Malay Unity: The Issue of Radical Religious Elements in Malaysia

Abstract

Introduction Islamic revivalism and its possible effects on global security and culture have received considerable attention in recent years from many scholars. One such scholar is Anwar-il-Haq Ahady who has argued that religious assertiveness among Muslims and the strength of Muslim radicals are in fact declining.(1) However, recent developments in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, where the majority of the populations are Muslim, suggest the opposite. Islam remains one of the most dominant factors influencing politics and, in some countries, it has a major influence on socio-political victory of Necmettin Erbakan's Islamist political party in the 1996 Turkish general elections, and the strong sense of brotherhood among Muslim countries in the Balkan crises show that the wave of Islamic revivalism is still prevalent. To many people, Islamic revivalism is a sense of going back to the basic tenets of Islamic teaching, purifying oneself from evil doings, and discarding materialistic values imported from the West. Yet, it is more than that. Islam is no longer seen as simply a creed but as ad deen waduniah or both and a way of life. As Jansen argues, Islam is ... a vast and integrated system of law, it is a culture and a civilization; it is an economic system and a way of doing business; it is a and a method of governance; it is a special sort of society....(2) Moreover, the conviction that Islam is a faith as well as a method of governance/a polity (Islam deen wa dawla)(3) has become the salient theme of Islamic revivalism world-wide for the past two decades. It is a belief that Islam does not recognize any separation between politics and religion. power of the Islamic language became more obvious during the pre-independence struggle in many Muslim countries. Even today, the struggle to uphold Islam as deen wa dawla still continues and is a major issue in many Muslim countries, particularly Pakistan, Egypt, and Malaysia. This article attempts to examine Islamic revivalism in Malaysia - known as the dakwah(14) phenomenon - since the early 1980s, as part of a socio-political movement. main focus is the effect which this revivalism, and the Malaysian Government's and various political parties' response to it, have had, and may continue to have, on Malay unity and Malaysian societal cohesion. Another focus of the article is to inquire whether there is a systematic linkage between Malay unity and national security. Malaysia's national security is defined here as the security of the in domestic terms (as opposed to security from external threats). For the purposes of our inquiry, however, the aspects of national security which will be discussed include those relating to the cohesiveness of Malay and Malaysian society: Malay unity is of crucial importance for the security of the polity, as the Malays dominate the political system and form its backbone. Questions remain, however, whether if we accept internal threats as part of the national security problem, the distinction between the security of the government and the security of the state or nation would be a controversial notion. Furthermore, the government may use it to justify and legitimize its actions in using force against political opposition. But the Third World's security equation is different.(5) Once internal threats are accepted as part of a national security problem, questions arise about making a distinction between state security and regime security. This is essentially because internal threats are generally associated with threats to governments or regimes. To quote an analyst of Third World security: The fate of the government cannot be wholly separated from the issue of national security...(6) government is a symbol and manifestation of the Although the collapse of the government may not directly affect the state as a whole, the congenital weaknesses of government can bring into question the integrity and the existence of the state. …