Muslim political culture

Most notably, the occupation of Iraq by US and its allies has been interpreted as a ploy to both perpetuate Israeli hegemony as well as gain control of oil resources in the Middle East. The US-favoured Fatah (Palestinian National Liberation Movement) party unsurprisingly failed to win majority seats in the Palestinian parliament. The opposition Islamist political movements have gravitated towards militancy in nation-states that are known to be close allies of the US (for example, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan).

Although in their early experimental and evolutionary stages, the Islamic ideologist movements of the last couple of decades have been gaining exponential popularity, as they are highly critical of repressive ruling regimes and state-sponsored religious establishments (‘ulama). The authentic populist movements throughout the Muslim world today promote Islam as an ideology, which has proved to be a powerful vehicle of expression that co-opts traditional vocabularies to protest against social injustice and state oppression. These movements often face intense marginalisation from both the ruling regimes, which fear loss of power at the prospect of liberalisation, and the Western powers, owing to clashes of socio-economic, and strategic interests.

It is noteworthy that a fringe of ‘ulama themselves speak out against the state monopoly over policy, and co-option of the establishment ‘ulama, and they have abandoned the umbrella of the state to increasingly become involved in Islamo-nationalist struggles (for example, Nahdatul Ulama in Indonesia).

Indonesia

The nation-state of Indonesia clearly exhibits a prognosis of a democratic model of governance since the fall of Soeharto regime. Indonesia bears an historical template of pluralist communal structures that remained autonomous from a weak and decentralised state. The historical states in South-East Asia were firmly legitimised in cosmopolitan cultural terms.

A parallel could be drawn here with the Mogul empire, which ruled over a large non-Muslim segment in the Indian subcontinent, and sought legitimacy by promoting a syncretistic cultural Islam. Indonesia’s historic cosmopolitan cultural identity yielded a secular society in the 20th century. Muslims from diverse socio-economic backgrounds in post-independence Indonesia, including conservative rural ‘ulama, independent landowners, and liberal merchants, held varying interpretations of the sacred texts so as to promote diverse ideologies concerning the nation’s ideal polity.

Influenced by a number of Islamist thinkers, Indonesian Muslim youth during the 1980s favoured a secular democratic model of governance over an Islamic democratic model, which were promoted by the preceding generation. Owing to its historical power dynamics between the state, religious, and parochial communities, the presence of significant non-Muslim minority and their cosmopolitan worldview, and philosophies of influential Muslim thinkers including Mohammad Sjafaat Mintaredja (b. 1921), Nurcholish Madjid (d. 2005), Amien Rais (b. 1944), and Tunisian Muslim thinker Rachid al-Ghannouchi (b. 1941), Indonesia has yielded a prognosis of secular democratic model of governance.

Conclusion

The mixing of religion and politics does not inherently produce the antithesis of a progressive political order. Islam is but one of complex and multifaceted elements that build a national polity. Religious traditions are capable of having multiple and major ideological interpretations, which is evident by the wide diversity of philosophies of Islamist movements worldwide. The governments in Muslim societies use the strategies of co-optation, competition, or suppression to deal with the Islamist elements.