Ibrahim Talks Islam, Politics

A former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister turned political prisoner told a packed John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last night that Islam and democracy are compatible ideologies.

The charismatic Anwar Ibrahim criticized the “democracy deficit” of many Muslim nations, but also questioned the wisdom of spreading democracy “at the barrel of an M-16.”

Noting that the moderate democracy of Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, Ibrahim warned against identifying Islam solely with autocratic regimes like that of Saudi Arabia.

Ibrahim, who is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University, was forced out of the Malaysian government in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Authorities beat him and imprisoned him on trumped-up sodomy and corruption charges, according to Amnesty International documents.

The charges were widely seen as the result of a political battle with then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Ibrahim successfully appealed the sodomy charges and was released in 2004 after six years in prison.

Last night, Ibrahim said he believes that the aim of Islamic sharia law has a distinctly “Jeffersonian” focus on freedoms of expression and property.

But Ibrahim was frustrated by the state of many predominantly Muslim nations. He said that the challenges of instituting freedom of speech and the rule of law are not limited to Muslim countries, but that these problems plague much of the Muslim world.

“The issue of governance has yet to be resolved,” he said.

In Asian countries, Ibrahim said, this may be a result of a tension “between Asian values and democracy and freedom.” He suggested that a traditional insistence that “leaders know best” may have contributed to the prevalence of autocratic rule in these nations.

At another point, Ibrahim said last month’s Iraqi constitution failed to create appropriate boundaries between religion and the state. He said that many Muslims interpret “secular” as “anti-religious,” leading them to resist the Western emphasis on secular government.

Ibrahim stressed that terrorism “must be condemned universally,” saying that extremist interpretations of Islam demonstrate “a failure to comprehend the religion, an obsolete understanding, a truncated view.”

Many Malaysian students attended the talk and asked Ibrahim questions afterward—a sharp contrast with some of Ibrahim’s past experiences.

In Malaysia, there is still a “media blackout” on Ibrahim’s speeches, he is not allowed on university campuses, and he is not allowed to hold political office until 2008, said Aasil Ahmad, Ibrahim’s chief of staff.

Ibrahim said Malaysian students had been warned by government officials, “don’t be seen talking to Anwar.”

Aida Rahim, a Malaysian graduate student at MIT, told The Crimson after the speech that she received warning e-mails in the late 1990s, when she was a student in England.