From The New Yorker
May 14, 2009-In this week’s issue of the magazine, Ian Buruma writes about the Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar was poised to succeed Mahathir bin Mohamad as Prime Minister until he denounced the government in 1998 for “cronyism”; Mahathir accused Anwar of sodomy and corruption and jailed him for six years. Anwar—who has forged an unlikely coalition between Malaysia’s Islamists, liberals, and ethnic minorities—will likely challenge Mahathir’s successor in the 2010 election.
Buruma answered a few questions related to his article (which is available online to subscribers).
You’re working on a book about Islam and democracy—what drew you to Malaysia? How does its encounter with political Islam differ from what’s happened in the Middle East or other Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia?
I was drawn to Malaysia partly, I must admit, by the pure zaniness of its politics: the main opposition leader jailed for sodomy, the Prime Minister accused by bloggers of having a hand in the murder of a Mongolian model. But the deeper reason for my interest is the complexity of racial and religious politics. In Malaysia, unlike Indonesia, race and religion are almost identical, since all Malays are considered to be Muslims. The same is not true of Indonesians—or indeed of Arabs or Persians. What is interesting about Anwar Ibrahim is that he is both a devout Muslim, with deep roots in Islamic organizations, and a democrat. He feels close to the Turkish Islamic party. What they are trying to forge is an alternative kind of politics to the Iranian autocratic, theocratic model, or the secular dictatorships of the Middle East. If it works, this would offer some hope, not only to Malaysians, but to the world, which is struggling with various forms of Muslim radicalism.
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