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HOME ARTICLES STEALTHY ISLAMISM RIDING ON MAT KILAU’S STELLAR SUCCESS

Dato Adi Putra as Mat Kilau, the titular character in

Malaysia's highest grossing local lm. (Screengrab:
Studio Kembera / Youtube)

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Stealthy Islamism Riding on Mat

Kilau’s Stellar Success
PUBLISHED 12 SEP 2022

AZMIL TAYEB

A controversial movie has raised pertinent questions about the

reach of extremist Islamist views across various sectors in
Malaysian society.

T he recent movie “Mat Kilau” raised both furore and adulation in equal measures when
it was screened nationwide in Malaysia several months ago. The resulting controversy
provided cheap publicity for the movie, so much so that ticket sales reached RM96 million
(USD21 million) 40 days after its release, making it the highest-grossing local lm in
Malaysian history. What made the movie a political lightning rod was its unabashed ethno-
religious framing of Mat Kilau’s short-lived struggle against the British colonial
government.  

The movie’s overt ethno-religious messaging, while successful at pulling in the

predominantly Malay audience, sparked heated debate in public discourse, particularly on
the way it depicted non-Muslims and non-Malays. The British were inhumanely cruel and
parasitic, the Chinese were greedy and treacherous, and the Sikhs were foot soldiers ready
to do the murderous bidding of their colonial master.  

This demeaning and grossly oversimpli ed characterisation of non-Muslims and non-

Malays is intended. The ethno-religious agenda becomes apparent when one traces the
nancing of the movie to the producer, Abdul Rahman Mat Dali. He is the managing
director of the Az-Zahrah Islamic hospital in Bangi, Selangor. More importantly, he is the
former vice president of Malaysian Muslim Solidarity (Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia, ISMA), a
non-governmental group that advocates the supremacy of Malays and Islam (Ketuanan
Melayu dan Islam) in Malaysia. Abdul Rahman spent RM8 million (USD1.77 million) of his
own money to bankroll the movie, which was clearly used as a medium to spread the
extreme right-wing ethno-religious agenda espoused by ISMA.  

Compared to other major Islamist groups such as ABIM (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia)
and IKRAM (an Islamic grassroots NGO set up in 2009), ISMA ideologically stands much
further to their right. Among ISMA’s stated objectives are shaping Malay Muslims’ minds
and defending Islam as Malaysia’s national identity. Its mission is to lead the ummah to
revive the dominance of Malays and Islam. ISMA is not popular among non-Malays and
Malays who do not share their exclusivist views. For ISMA to spread its agenda beyond its
conservative urban Malay demographic, it needs to diversify and operate surreptitiously.
Abdul Rahman is one of ISMA’s proxies; producing the movie “Mat Kilau” is one of ISMA’s
tools.  

Other proxies are less well-known and thus less controversial. They share ISMA’s agenda
and aim to mainstream ISMA’s views in public discourse and the government. ISMA and
these proxies share the same prime movers behind the scenes. To use a non-syariah
compliant analogy, the proxies are simply old wine in new bottles. These proxies are
typically professional associations, think tanks or anodyne-sounding NGOs that help to
paint a veneer of legitimacy and acceptability over the extreme agenda of ISMA. Examples
of ISMA’s proxies are the Malaysian Alliance of Civil Society Organisations in the UPR
Process (MACSA), the Centre for Human Rights Research and Advocacy (CENTHRA), the
International Women’s Alliance for Family Institution and Quality Education
(WAFIQ), IRIS Institute, and iPeguam (a Muslim lawyers’ association). (UPR, part of
MACSA’s name, stands for Universal Periodic Review, an evaluation process by the United
Nations Human Rights Council of its member states’ human rights records.) 

It begs the question whether Malaysia should draw the line

when it comes to tolerating groups that promote hate speech
and undemocratic views and follow Indonesia, which has
banned radical Islamic groups that oppose the country’s
democratic constitution and principles.

The creation of these proxies allows ISMA to have a wide reach in the arena of public
discourse. First, their innocuous names and image make them more amenable to unaware
urban liberals and non-Malays, who are all too eager to engage and collaborate with
“moderate” Islamists on common causes, a rare opportunity in today’s highly polarised
Malaysian society. Malaysiakini, for instance, whose readership is predominantly urban-
based and non-Malay, has Aminuddin Yahaya, former president of ISMA, as its Malay-
section columnist. However, few know that Aminuddin Yahaya is anything but moderate. 

Second, ISMA utilises these proxies to hijack discourse on human rights. The inclusion of
the words “human rights” and “civil society” and the omission of “ethno-religious”
markers on the organisations’ names eased their entry into public discourse and purported
advocacy of human rights, democracy, and decolonisation, which has long been the
domain of the liberals and the left. Groups like MACSA, CENTHRA and WAFIQ frame their
agenda within the language of freedom of religion and other individual rights that are
central to liberalism. That is ironic because ISMA and other like-minded Islamists have for
many years demonised “liberalism” and its af liated ideas such as “secularism” and
“pluralism.” 

One example of ISMA employing human rights language to advance its agenda is the
publication of the MACSA Inaugural Islamophobia Report: 2017-2020. The report
documents alleged incidents of Islamophobia in various sectors of Malaysian society such
as education, media, workplace, and politics, importing a trend from Western countries to
Malaysia. The incidents MACSA charges as “Islamophobic” are mostly those of criticisms
of how Islam is practised and politicised in Malaysia. The report aims to silence opposing
views and to place its version of Islam beyond reproach. It is ironic and even galling for
MACSA to claim that Muslims in Malaysia suffer from hate speech in a country where
statements deemed even slightly offensive to Islam are already heavily policed — and
considered seditious.         

The philosopher Karl Popper coined the term “paradox of tolerance,” where an open
democratic society that promotes unquali ed tolerance even for the vilest views would
soon turn into a repressive intolerant society. The prime example of this paradox was
democratic Weimar Germany’s tolerance for fascism that ultimately gave rise to Hitler and
his Nazi party and turned Germany into an authoritarian state. It begs the question
whether Malaysia should draw the line when it comes to tolerating groups that promote
hate speech and undemocratic views and follow Indonesia, which has banned radical
Islamic groups that oppose the country’s democratic constitution and principles. Perhaps a
hate speech law is urgently needed in Malaysia to regulate extremist groups such as ISMA.
ISMA might not advocate violence but its ideas and means of disseminating them are
insidious and dangerous. It is a paradox that Malaysia must resolve, for nothing less than
democracy itself is at stake.      

2022/265

Azmil Tayeb is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia and
a Visiting Research Fellow at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute.

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