For PAS, ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ is wajib

By Wan Saiful Wan Jan

16 June 2009

PAS is obviously not homogenous. There are more than one school of thought in the party. The two most obvious schools are the conservatives and the “more-liberals”. I hesitate to call the latter “liberals” as many of them stop short of believing in classical liberal ideas. But they are definitely more liberal than the conservatives.

And I also hesitate to use the term “ulama group”. There are those who are not religiously educated but still hold to a conservative worldview. In reality, some of the ulama are just a subset of the conservatives, and not all ulama are conservatives.

Anyone who denies the existence of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ in PAS is, to put it bluntly, either ignorant or lying. ‘Jamaah dalam jamaah’ exists in PAS. Fullstop.

It is not just the conservatives and the more-liberals. If we take a step back we will find that there also those labelled as “ex-IRC” (Islamic Representative Council) or “ex-JIM” (Jamaah Islah Malaysia), those who came from ABIM, the Jamaat Tabligh, the Sufis and followers of individual leaders.

But the concept of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ is something that the conservatives have tried to curb for so long. They say that the existence of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ is wrong, un-Islamic, and dangerous for the party. Of course the arguments are peppered with religious logic. This concerted effort to curb the spread of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ have been so successful such that, among some people in the party, being accused of participating in a ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ becomes a big hurdle for their political career progression. Just ask those who were formerly with JIM.

(Please forgive me for repeatedly using the term ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’. Here I am discussing a very specific concept in PAS such that if I were to translate it into English - i.e.: "groups within the party" - the message I am trying to convey may be lost in translation)

Conservatives' success

Without doubt the most established ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ is that of the conservatives. They successfully institutionalised their group within the party, forming the Majlis Syura Ulama and the Dewan Ulama. Even the Dewan Pemuda now looks more like a youthful Dewan Ulama, after conservatives won many top posts.

The conservatives jealously guard their power base. Take the recent party elections. The conservatives conducted what could have been one of the most two-faced campaigns in the history of any political party in the world.

On the one hand they tell party members that open campaigning is against the Islamic spirit, but on the other hand they ran a very blatant campaign. They even organised a national convention to promote the notion of “leadership by ulama” i.e.: leadership by their camp. Yes, it may have been dubbed as a Jubli Perak celebration of ‘kepimpinan ulama’. But the actual Jubli Perak was two years ago in 2007. I am sure the conservatives know how to calculate. And the convention was a very well calculated part of their campaign strategy.

On the one hand they lecture members about the importance of fighting for Islam and only Islam. But on the other hand some of these conservatives are more Malay chauvinists than anything else. How many times have we heard them defend the Malay race as if it is the same with defending Islam? Use of religion to defend a race is even more dangerous than merely being a racist.

It really bugs me to read the conservatives’ proposal that only one of them can contest for President and Deputy President. What’s the point of having an election at all then? They might as well say bismillah and play lat-tali-lat-tamplong among themselves to choose a leader.

The conservatives can do these because they know they monopolise the debate. They can do what they like, just like the behaviour of any monopoly in an unfree market.

Competition is good

I believe that the way forward is to introduce competition in PAS. Others in the party should do exactly what the conservatives have done – they should institutionalise different internal schools of thought.

The concept of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ must be propagated among PAS members, despite denunciation from the conservatives, which we should only expect because competition threatens them.

I do not have enough space to give too many examples so it would suffice for now to look at just one example of a political party where internal groupings resulted in a competition of ideas – the British Conservative Party.

Like in many other parties, there is more than one school of thought in the Conservative Party. The internal groups have full freedom to propagate their ideas and attract supporters. Some leadership hopefuls even make it a point to speak to the bigger groupings, in the hope of gaining endorsement in leadership contests.

Let’s look at just a few of these internal groups. Policy Exchange is widely regarded as the favourite of the current leader, David Cameron. Policy Exchange operates as a think tank, producing proposals for the party. On a similar vein, there is also Ian Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice.

Separately, groups like The Selsdon Group, The Bow Group, and The Cornerstone Group also campaign for their own ideas within the party. Then there are the likes of The Bruges Group, The Freedom Association and the Centre for Policy Studies. They claim to be independent but are traditionally associated with the Conservative Party. Party leaders and activists can join any of these groups.

These groups compete to produce and propagate ideas within the party. They sometimes even hold talks as part of party annual meetings. As established groupings, they get to debate ideas among like-minded people first. The ideas can be brought to a certain level of maturity before presentation to the wider membership, or killed off altogether if they feel it would not gain support.

The institutionalisation of these different groups enables party members, and more importantly party leaders, to have access to a variety of ideas. They can choose the ideas they feel are best for the party.

PAS needs 'jamaah dalam jamaah'

I do wish the same would happen in PAS. It is only when these ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ flourishes that PAS can benefit from a healthy competition of ideas. Let the internal groups compete in the open so that the party can then make an informed decision on what is the best way to proceed. This will push the party forward and make it a more credible political force.

Like any other types of monopoly, the monopoly of ideas and power by the conservatives is unhealthy. Years of conservative monopoly in PAS have resulted in the party being strangled to just one point of view. And, as I said previously, we can expect the conservatives to resist internal competition. They will quote Quranic verses and hadiths to denounce ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’, because they know they will not stand long if they have to compete in the battle of ideas.

It is time to create an open market of ideas in PAS by recognising and institutionalising the different groups. It was reported on Nik Aziz’s blog that he recently said he was happy if the “Erdogan” group really existed because this group could help his struggle against secularists. Well, let’s take Nik Aziz’s joy a step further. Let’s institutionalise the existence of that group to compete against the conservatives’ Dewan Ulama.

Please, could the more liberal leaders break the monopoly of the conservatives and create ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’?

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Wan Saiful Wan Jan is Director General of the Malaysia Think Tank (http://www.WauBebas.org). He was previously President and Mursyid of HIZBI, an organisation that once existed in the United Kingdom affiliated to PAS. This article was published by The Malaysian Insider (16 June 2009)