The Underestimated Man

Jason Soon points us to an article on ongoing efforts to reform Islam from within, and Jason pays particular attention to the "Islam Hadhari" initiative of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.

As Jason notes, it was easy for many to dismiss Badawi as just a lightweight who could be trusted to carry on in the vein established by his more dynamic predecessor, but in Badawi's case, that would seem to be a grave mistake. To quote the New Statesman article:

In a general election last March, the Malaysian prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, argued that Islam was almost totally associated with violence and extremism and needed to be formulated anew. He called his new concept "Islam Hadhari", or progressive Islam. It was pitted against the "conservative Islam" of the main opposition party, the Islamic Pas ... Badawi, who is a trained religious scholar, took the term "hadhari" from Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century Muslim historian and founder of sociology. The term signifies urban civilisation; and Islam Hadhari emphasises economic development, civic life and cultural progress. When Muslims talk about Islam, says Abdullah Mohd Zain, a minister in the prime minister's department, "there is always the tendency to link it to the past, to the Prophet's time". Islam Hadhari gives equal emphasis to the present and the future. "It emphasises wisdom, practicality and harmony," says Zain. "It encourages moderation or a balanced approach to life. Yet it does not stray from the fundamentals of the Koran and the example and sayings of the Prophet."

Islam Hadhari - fully explained in a 60-page document published by Badawi last month - emphasises the central role of knowledge in Islam; preaches hard work, honesty, good administration and efficiency; and appeals to Muslims to be "inclusive", tolerant and outward-looking. It advocates that Muslims should attend secular and not religious schools. Committees have been set up to spread the message throughout Malaysia, and mullahs have been instructed to preach it during Friday sermons.

This is leagues away from the kind of fanaticism associated with the Taliban or the Salafists of Saudi Arabia, and what is especially encouraging is that it is coming from the leader of arguably the most successful* Islamic nation of our day. Malaysia is hardly perfect, as the article notes, but we'd all be sleeping easier in our beds if the rest of the Middle East and North Africa were doing as well.

*By which I mean more than just Kuwait-style prosperity based solely on resource-extraction.