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The banning of Darul Arqam in Malaysia

Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid

On 25 October 2004,the Malaysian government made a historicdecision by releasing Ustaz Ashaari Muhammad,the former leader of Darul Arqam,the Islamic movement which had been controversially banned nationwide through a ruling issued by the National FatwaCouncil on 5 August 1994.He was freed from restrictions imposedupon him since being arrested under the Internal Security Act on 2September 1994.

The release ended what had arguably been one of the longest,ifnot the longest,detention orders applied in Malaysia onleaders ofindependent movements and organisations who hadmounted a challenge to the state.Speculation about the release hadspread for two months,

especially since the momentous decision by the Federal Court to quash the conviction on former Deputy PrimeMinister Anwar Ibrahim for sodomy,thereby granting him freedomafter six years in prison.Despite the government’s insistence that thejudiciary had come to its decision independently,the Malaysian public widely saw the liberal hand ofthe executive influencing the court.

Since assuming power in late October 2003,Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has made an effort to establish ‘good governance’anda ‘people-friendly image’as hallmarks ofhis administration (KhooBoo Teik 2004:8–10).Despite the official purpose ofdetaining,under the HomeMinister’s authority,anybody who ‘has acted or is about to act or islikely to act in any manner prejudicial to the security ofMalaysia’(ALIRAN 1988:24),the Internal Security Act has often served as aconvenient tool for ruling politicians to stifle opposition,whethercoming from within or beyond ruling party circles.A detainee underthe Act can be held without trial for a preliminary period ofsixty dayspending investigation,followed by a two-year period ofconfirmed

Review ofIndonesian and Malaysian Affairs

,vol.39,no.1 (2005),pp.87–128.

detention,renewable indefinitely on a two-yearly basis,subject torecommendations from the Special Branch and an appointed Advisory Board (Lent 1984:443–4).Upon release,detainees may have a furtherrestriction order imposed upon them,effectively confining theirmovements to a designated locality and circumscribing their publicrole (Barraclough 1985:808).In Ustaz Ashaari’s case,his movement was confined to the Gombak district in Selangor from the end of October 1994 until February 2002,when he was forcibly transportedto Labuan,offthe coast ofSabah,where he remained until October2004.Throughout the period,he had to report to the nearest policestation once a week and was not allowed to be outside his residence atnight.The identity ofhis visitors and the subject ofconversations hehad with them were closely monitored.Having established Darul Arqam,a seemingly innocentreligious study group in the lower middle class Dato’Keramat suburbin Kuala Lumpur in 1968,Ustaz Ashaari rapidly developed themovement by means ofintense self-purification and soul-searching activities.Early recruits were generally young,first generation rural-urban migrants who formed the upcoming Malay middle class.Suchurban spiritualism laid the foundation for a powerful sense of solidarity and commitment among adherents,who were prepared tosacrifice material comfort in order to create model Islamic villages which sprouted around the country after the founding ofDarul Arqam’s pioneering Sungai Penchala settlement in the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur in 1973.The settlements became bases where courseson the essentials ofIslam were organised,missionary activities wereplanned,economic enterprises were set up,schools were built,medicalfacilities were offered and publications were produced.In the 1980s,Darul Arqam expanded internationally,as shown by Ustaz Ashaari’sdecision in 1988 to travel abroad more or less continuously.By theearly 1990s,Darul Arqam had burgeoned into a self-styled businessempire with an extensive global network whose influence penetratedmainstream socio-political circles.The clampdown on Darul Arqam in1994 involved persistent vilification in the mainstream media,raidsinto Darul Arqam communal villages by the security forces,wantonconfiscation ofproperty,job and scholarship suspension,state-incited

Ahmad Fauzi

social boycott,a ban on overseas travel,detentions ofDarul Arqamleaders under the Internal Security Act and mass arrests offollowersfor minor criminal offences such as failing to register marriages anddistributing illegal publications.The wholesale proscription ofDarul Arqam,by necessitating the closure ofits economic activities andinstitutions,led to its 8,000 strong workforce almost instantly becoming unemployed.The former Darul Arqam members had toundergo special classes ofthe state Islamic Centre (

Pusat Islam

),laterrenamed the Islamic Advancement Department ofMalaysia (JAKIM:

Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia

Having had their livelihood disrupted ifnot destroyed,Darul Arqam’s former followers paid a heavy price for its dissolution.TheseMalay-Muslims,despite the anti-establishment tag put on them,had infact contributed to Malay economic development,thus realising amajor target ofthe New Economic Policy (Nagata 1984:107,113;1997:138).But in the true manner ofneo-feudal Malay patronagepolitics,these achievements were not acknowledged by the statebecause they took place outside the network ofstate institutions andparties dominated by ruling elites.Independent Malays wereconsidered dangerous because their power base and loyalty would benecessarily independent ofofficial corridors ofpolitical,economicand social influence (cf.Nidzam Sulaiman 2002).The demise ofDarul Arqam abruptly stopped a bold attempt to create Malay-Muslims whocould develop independently from the state,though the state’scrackdown on Darul Arqam was undertaken in the name ofguarding the sanctity ofIslam. Throughout the ‘Darul Arqam versus the state’saga,thegovernment consistently stressed that the stern measures againstDarul Arqam were based on religious rather than political grounds(Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid 2000:36).As we proceed to examine thisclaim in the following sections,it will become clear to readers that thegovernment’s strategy ofdemonising Darul Arqam relied significantly upon a compliant mainstream media,whose freedom had experiencedconsiderable erosion throughout Dr.Mahathir Mohamad’stempestuous Premiership (1981–2003).Steady restructuring ofmediaownership since the 1970s meant that by the late 1980s,major

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