Demobilizing Islam : institutionalized religion and the politics of co-optation in Malaysia
Date
2005
Authors
Hamayotsu, Kikue
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Abstract
Why do some Muslim nations confront more radical religious mobilization, but
not others? This study provides insights into the answer to this question through
focused analysis of the Malaysian case. In contrast to some other nations with
active radical Islamist movements, Malaysia is characterized by weak religious
activism of both the radical and liberal varieties. This study explains this relative
tranquility by focusing on the particular quality of state intervention in Islamic
affairs: the process of institutionalization of religious bureaucratic authority
structures within the state. The study argues that the key to understanding
outcomes in Malaysia in a comparative context lies in the extent to which Islamic
institutions are institutionalized in the state as well as in how institutionalization
takes place.
Malaysia, one of the Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia, offers an
intriguing case for debates about religious political mobilization and state-religion
relations. In Malaysia, the process of state intervention in Islamic affairs was
carried out via a strategy that contrasted starkly with that used by many other
Muslim nations. The government dominated by the Malay-Muslim party UMNO
expanded bureaucracies to carry out religious functions such as administration of
Syariah and the running of religious schools along Weberian lines. It has managed
to control and channel religious political mobilization by incorporating many
theologically-trained Muslims into the state bureaucracy. This study asks why and how the institutionalization of the religious
bureaucracy took place in the manner it did, and what the effects on the
mobilizational capacities of oppositional religious movements were. Conventional
wisdom claims that state intervention in Islamic affairs occurs in response to
growing external pressures from societal actors, especially the Islamist opposition
in the context of growing Islamic consciousness among the Muslim urban
middle-class. My study takes this society-centric argument to another level by
highlighting another critically important force: state actors. The study focuses on
strategic interactions among Muslim politicians within the ruling party and argues
that they are motivated not only by their need to combat the Islamist opposition
but also compelled to cultivate patronage networks in order to rise within their
own party. Such incentives-against the backdrop of intense intra-party
competition-shaped the way in which the state intervened in Islamic affairs. I
also argue that the manner in which the government incorporated religious
authorities-ulama-into the state bureaucracy has correlates strongly with a
state's capacity to control various religious activities, including radical
ones-both in ideological and organizational terms.
The study makes some comparisons between Malaysia and other Muslim
nations (especially its neighbor Indonesia) to suggest that the mode of state
co-optation of religious authorities is a crucial factor to explain the state capacity
to regulate oppositional Islamist mobilization in general, and religious radicalism
in particular. Concurrently, this study also contends that the institutional exclusion
of religious authorities from the corridors of state power often has the opposite
consequence: persistent radical religious mobilization at the societal level. The
Malaysian case confirms that when religious authorities become part of a more or less Weberian state bureaucracy, radical religious elements tend to be tempered.
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