Demobilizing Islam : institutionalized religion and the politics of co-optation in Malaysia

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.