Welcome Back, Dr. Burhanuddin?

Farish A. Noor
10:50pm 06 Jun 2005

Now that the results of the PAS General Assembly and party elections of 2005 are known to all, there will undoubtedly be many Malaysians and PAS-watchers who will breathe a sigh of relief. Despite all that has been said of and about the party, PAS’s leadership – and perhaps more importantly, its membership – has shown time and again that this is a party that is capable of making reforms and changes, no matter how difficult, when they become necessary.

The election of a number of younger activist-oriented politicians, such as Ustaz Nasharuddin Mat Isa, Husam Musa and Dr Hatta Ramli to key posts within the party’s leadership structure has checked, for the time being, what was seen as the steady encroachment of the more conservative and traditionalist ulama in PAS. Though it is still too early to speculate about whether these changes will radically alter the form and content of PAS’s political rhetoric and its ideological leanings, it does register the simple fact that PAS’s members are aware of the pressures that the party is under, as well as the very real geo-political and geo-strategic realities of the world they currently inhabit.

That Islamists parties such as PAS can and do undergo transformation is something that is often overlooked. Despite the constant media demonisation of political Islam in toto, it should be remembered that in practically all parts of the Muslim world today Islamist parties are often the only counter-hegemonic forces left to offer both a legitimate form of political opposition to the ruling regimes, as well as a gathering point for societies traumatised and dislocated by the rampant march of globalisation and economic liberalisation. Recognising this simple truth has prompted Islamist movements from the progressive Muslim parties of Turkey to groups like Hamas and Hizbollah to alter their tactics and take to the road of constitutional democratic politics instead. In some cases, such as that of Turkey’s Islamists and the Hizbollah, the transformation from grassroots organisation to legitimate political party has brought not only political success at the polls, but also increased credibility and respectability. PAS, which has always been a law-abiding party working within the framework of the Malaysian constitution, should therefore not find the reform agenda too difficult to pursue. Indeed, a closer look at its history will show that PAS has already managed such a transition before, and with considerable success.

The precedent of Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy

PAS, it should be remembered, has always been a grassroots party that has had to labour against the grain of Malaysian politics. When it broke off from UMNO, its mother-party, in 1951 and sought to find a place of its own in the Malaysian political arena, it was a party that was under-funded, under-staffed and practically leaderless. Its first and second Presidents, Fuad Hassan and Dr Abbas Alias, were both men who were humble in their own estimations. In an interview I conducted with the late Dr. Abbas in 2000, he admitted to me that “I knew that we (PAS) needed a better leader as I was then a medical officer working for the (then) British colonial administration. I could not be a civil servant and a leader of the party at the same time, and I knew that I had to give way to someone more qualified than I.”

Dr. Abbas’s position as a doctor in the British colonial service meant that he was constantly under observation and supervision. The colonial authority maintained its velvet grip, reminding him time and again of his medical duties and obligations and warning him of the consequences of dereliction of duty. Dr. Abbas was therefore not in a position to travel widely in the country, much less abroad. For this reason, the party remained a home-grown, local affair, cut off from the developments in other parts of the Islamic world. Isolated as it was, PAS was not able to win the recognition, sympathy or help from other Islamist parties and organisations that it so desperately needed. Dr. Abbas and other PAS leaders therefore directly appealed to Dr. Burhanuddin, and invited him to take over the leadership of the Islamist party. Their pleas were answered when Dr. Burhanuddin said ‘yes’ at the fifth party congress on 25 December 1956.

Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy remains, in the opinion of this writer, the greatest leader that PAS ever had and possibly one of the leading intellectuals and politicians of Southeast Asia. His progressive, universalist and pragmatic approach to Islam and questions of Islamic politics meant that during his period of leadership (1956-1969) PAS developed to become what it is today.

During the time of Dr. Burhanuddin PAS offered its ordinary members a consistent critique of capitalism and neo-colonialism, along with an intelligent and rational analysis of their own economic and political problems in the immediate present. Unlike the UMNO nationalists then who saw the problems of the Malay-Muslims mainly in terms of inter-ethnic competition, Dr. Burhanuddin attempted to explain the dilemma of the Malay-Muslims in terms of class conflict and contradictions in the economic and political system installed by the departing colonial powers. It was the radical nationalists of the leftist-Islamist camp who had managed to make Islam a national political issue and related it to the broader struggle for political independence and economic rights.

This open and pragmatic approach had allowed the PAS leadership to form instrumental coalitions with other non-Islamist and non-Malay parties and organisations of the left, and had afforded PAS an ideological perspective different from UMNO’s. While UMNO leaders continued to rally the Malays behind the banner of ethno-nationalism and communitarian politics, Dr. Burhanuddin and the PAS ideologues tried to convince the Malay-Muslims that the root of their problems lay in an unjust economic and political system developed by neo-colonial powers, international capital and the local compradore élite working hand-in-glove with them.

The combined leadership of Dr. Burhanuddin and Dr. Zulkiflee (PAS’s Vice President then) also gave the party something it had sorely lacked in the 1950s: a global worldview that also encompassed the developments in other parts of the Muslim world. While PAS in the mid-1950s was very much a local phenomenon confined to the boundaries of British Malaya, the entry of Dr. Burhanuddin and Dr. Zulkiflee opened up the minds of the ordinary members and also turned their attention to developments abroad. The party began to see itself as an organisation that was no longer an isolated phenomenon but rather part of a global movement.

The political philosophy of Dr. Burhanuddin stood in stark contrast to the position held by the later leaders of PAS in the 1980s. Under him the PAS leadership had openly committed the party to the struggle for an Islamic state, but the party’s president grafted together elements of Islamist, nationalist, socialist and reformist thought in keeping with the intellectual current in the post-colonial world. Unlike the conservative ulama, Dr. Burhanuddin did not resort to the use of sanctimonious religious phrases or obscure esoteric terms to beguile his followers and opponents alike. Ahmad Boestaman once described Dr. Burhanuddin as the only Malayan Islamist leader who did not use the language of the ‘lebai kolot’ or ‘fanatik agama’

It is important to note that while PAS under the leadership of Dr. Burhanuddin developed a clearer notion of the Islamic state it was fighting for, party leaders did not take it in the direction of cultural politics. Despite the formal establishment of the Ulama Council during the time of Dr. Burhanuddin’s leadership, during the 1960s PAS did not fight for the Islamisation of society along culturalist lines. Its leaders were men and women less concerned about the politics of Islamic dress and customs, or with the definition of what constituted a good Muslim or proper Muslim behaviour. Instead, their focus was on changing the economic and political circumstances directly affecting the lives of ordinary Malayans, so that they would be free to exercise their will and rational agency and by doing so be able to realise their full potential as independent subjects.

Dr. Burhanuddin’s practical approach to political and social struggles was one that placed human will and rational agency at the centre of the world. Human beings were, for him, the primary actors of history and his was a political universe where the conflict of power and interests was paramount. He was, like many other Islamist reformers and modernists of the 20th century, an Islamist who struggled in the ‘here and now’. Unlike the more conservative Islamist thinkers of his time who continued to rely upon their invented traditions and history of the past ‘golden age’ of Islam, Dr. Burhanuddin’s heroes and models were men of the day like President Soekarno of Indonesia and Gammel Nasser of Egypt. Dr. Burhanuddin’s attempt to develop a progressive approach to political Islam addressed the problematic dynamics between universals and particulars within the religion itself and was nothing less than an attempt to demonstrate Islam’s relevance in the arena of contemporary modern politics. His notion of the ideal Islamic society and political order was also one rooted in the developments of the present. Rather than the Muslim community of Medinah during the time of the Prophet, he looked to the Bandung conference and the Pan-Arab alliance as models of collective political action.

Yet despite his achievements in broadening and pushing forward the agenda of political Islam, Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy’s reforms were dismantled in later years as a result of the manoeuvres and compromises made by the party while under the leadership of Mohammad Asri Muda from 1970–82, who turned PAS into an ethno-nationalist party and sought to make it ‘more UMNO than UMNO’. Dr. Burhanuddin’s legacy was later eroded even further in the post-1982 era, when the ‘ulama faction’ took over the party and brought with them the culture of takfir (Muslims accusing each other of being ‘kafirs’) and an increasingly confrontational and exclusive communitarian rhetoric.

Can the Ghost of Dr. Burhanuddin be revived?

One should not fall into the trap of short-sighted nostalgia, and entertain the dream of the ‘golden age’ of PAS under the leadership of Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy as if it was a moment of essential purity to be returned to again and again. Rather, what many PAS-watchers hope and long for is the return of the spirit of the times of Burhanuddin al-Helmy, when realism, pragmatism and intelligence stood over political calculation, short-term goals and self-defeating empty rhetoric.

Can the new leadership line-up of PAS do this? Are we about to witness yet another discursive shift in the ideology and praxis of PAS? Well, the answer to that question can only come from the members and leaders of PAS themselves, for in the final analysis it is their party and it is they who will decide the party’s trajectory and its place in the history books of Malaysia.

But these factors are, for now at least, certain: Taking into account the multicultural realities of an increasingly cosmopolitan Malaysia that is open to the currents of global news and opinion; and taking into account the increasingly assertive demands of both the country’s non-Muslim communities and the increasingly vocal stand of the country’s (erroneously labelled) ‘liberal Muslims’; and taking into account how PAS’s overheated rhetoric in the recent past (notably its Ulama’s support of the Taliban and calls for jihad against the West) have backfired and contributed to the demonisation and marginalisation of the party, - PAS will need to expand its circle of association and reduce its circle of alienation much, much more. Above all, PAS has to realise that it can never (for both demographic and political reasons) come to power on its own and it will therefore have to begin creating instrumental coalitions with other cultural/racial/political groupings in the country.

The success of political Islam thus far has been due to Islamism’s bonding capital, i.e. its ability to bond Muslims closer together; but often at the cost of alienating other constituencies. Can PAS now revive the spirit of Dr. Burhanuddin and focus on its bridging capital, i.e. the need to reach out to a broader audience? Only time will tell, and the Malaysian public shall be watching.