I generally avoid discussing local politics as it really doesn’t interest me. I skip reading local news altogether apart from occasional glances at the MKini RSS feeds on the right column. There is seriously nothing to take from in terms of debates on public policy apart from silly banter over race and religion.

But, as rumor has it, expect the general elections to loom above the horizon anytime soon. My local politics mindset is very out-of-date and rusty after not reading these political blogs for some time. So I guess a dose of politinking (meaning political-thinking, not politicking) should be enough to get me going again, and this is all that’s being attempted in this post.

The big question that everyone will ask is of course my partisanship. My conviction dictates that, historically-speaking, PAS is the most prominent (perhaps the one and only?) and viable organization in Malaysia culturally-rooted in an indigenous nusantara Islam. I admit though that recent developments inside the leadership over the last two decades indicate otherwise. Yet the legacies of Burhanuddin al-Helmy on one end of the spectrum and Asri Muda on the other are symbols powerful enough to let sail the history boat.

The cultural imperative, as iterates the prominent American Muslim scholar, Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, carries legal weight. On this, I casually observe ABIM and JIM has its origins as being of an imported nature, though it has localized over the years. I admire ABIM’s degree of intellectual capacity to culturally engage in society and a keenness towards civilizational dialogue. Yet, I do not here intend to inflare heated inter-jemaah debates apart from staking general observations to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Moving on, we often think of the sufi-antisufi, bidaah-sunnah, kalam-salaf debates, but these arguments have been a mainstay debate throughout Islamic history and is nothing new. Instead, it is the tussle of loyalty between religion and the nation-state that is in my opinion the single most crucial debate on Islam and modernity, for the emergence of nation-states have made us Muslims mad confused. It is a phenomena without precedence and represent a radical departure from the Caliphate system and agricultural economy of yesteryears.

The nation-state by definition is an autonomous entity that wages sole sovereignty over a defined territory. This system is undoubtedly global in scale such that there is probably not an inch of habitable land on earth not under the sovereignty of a nation-state.

Such autonomy, of course, needs to ensure security, for how else can a hegemony assert legitimacy over a people? Taxation mechanisms are then interplayed with the dynamics of legitimacy to produce a hegemony backed by a military force, or its potential capacity thereof.

The logic is stretched on that the military is a costly unit to maintain and cheaper mechanisms utilizing modern communications technology should be explored. Thus the mass media is borne out of this need to bombard us with propaganda that seeks to ensure continued loyalty to — if absent — a meaningless and arbitrary dilineation of nationalities.

Therefore it is not very hard to realize that — between the lines of propaganda coming from Zam, KJ and their cohorts — what lies hidden is the implied message of solidarity in the mutual consent to perpetuate hegemony. This is the order of the day for post-colonial nation-states that has no escape.

Observed within this context, I lean to agree with fellow Kakiblogger Najwan Halimi that a movement for Reformasi has to transcend such superficial rhetoric. This was succintly elucidated by liberalist Fathi Aris Omar, where he laments specifically on the language of our political discourse,

..bahasa yang digunakan untuk menyalurkan idea bukan bahasa ilmu dan bahasa idea, tetapi bahasa politik, bahasa propaganda, bahasa “nak menang”.

Bahasa seumpama ini bukan bahasa untuk menggalakkan dialog, bukan bahasa untuk mencungkil kelemahan sedia ada dan kemungkinan baru, bukan bahasa untuk rakan komunikasi yang setara/setaraf. Tetapi bahasa yang bertukar fungsi sebagai penyalur ideologi, kuasa dan penundukan psikologi.

Dalam perbahasan mutakhir tentang demokrasi dan masyarakat sivil, sarjana kini bercakap tentang “modal budaya” atau “modal sosial” sebagai prasyarat awal untuk membangunkan demokrasi dari bawah. Jadi, bagi saya, bahasa politik yang wujud pada hari ini belum membentuk modal budaya/modal sosial ke arah Reformasi.

Going back to the debate on loyalty between religion and state, the general pattern of history is that extreme action breeds an opposite reaction. The radically anti-Islamic policies of Kemalian secularism necessitates the reaction of an extremely politicized version of Islam, as contrast to the ideal that it is Islam that should dictate the course of politics. This is the mad confusion of extremes that I observe has been a mainstay of twentieth century debates by Muslims and Muslim nations.

And today we witness Tariq Ramadan and Umar Faruq Abd-Allah on the periphery of “Islamdom” leading the way in advocacy for a middle ground of being as “Good muslims as Frenchmen”; both culturally concious and scholarly adept in the tradition of Islam. As an extension, with Malaysia on the east pole periphery of “Islamdom”, it is my hope to see a PAS looking back at its history and reviving the same legacy.