Of the Muslim political leaders who came to the fore from the 1980s, two stand out: the late Turkish President Turgut Ozal and Malaysia’s retiring Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. The two stand out both for their character and their political vision. Neither used power to amass personal fortune or pave the way for relatives and cronies. Both managed not to become the subject of a cult of personality, a disease that has destroyed many Muslim leaders.
At the same time they were arguably the only senior Muslim politicians to rise above the day-to-day management of affairs and to develop a strategic political vision. Not surprisingly, Turkey and Malaysia are, perhaps, the only Muslim states today that could be regarded as relatively successful in both economic and political terms. Many see them as the only Islamic models worth looking at. The two leaders have much in common. Both were sincere believers and, thus, did not suffer from the schizophrenia that afflicts some Westernized Muslim politicians. The peddlers of political Islam could not accuse them of impiety. This writer has had an opportunity to interview them on a number of occasions. Despite all that they had in common, Ozal and Mahathir had two different visions.
Ozal continued the reform movement that began with the Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. The Tanzimat led to the constitutional movement that introduced such Western concepts as citizenship, national sovereignty, and secular law into the Muslim political discourse. The men who had inspired the Tanzimat and the constitutional movement, in both the Ottoman Empire and Iran, saw them as instruments for creating powerful states.
Ozal had a different reading of the Tanzimat and the constitutional movement. He believed that Europe had become strong not because it had powerful governments and large armies but because it had a strong civil society. Thus the answer was not to increase the already disproportionate powers of Muslim governments. The way forward, for Ozal, was to strengthen civil society, especially by creating a robust private business sector.
In traditional society, power flowed from top to bottom. Ozal insisted that the process must be reversed, with power flowing from the bottom to the top. When he became prime minister in 1983, Ozal inherited a republic based on autocratic structures. The state controlled virtually all major sectors of the economy, and the army stood at the heart of the decision-making process.
Ozal’s reforms, introduced without fanfare, changed that. The army’s role was defined and limited in the context of a constitutional amendment. The economy was opened up to domestic and foreign investment and competition. A massive privatization program ended almost all state monopolies. Changes of government through elections, rather than military coups, became the norm. Despite some shortcomings, notably in the case of its Kurdish minority, Turkey is now acknowledged as a mature democracy, with the credentials to become part of the European Union. Also, Turkey is one of only three or four Muslim nations that are richer today in real terms compared to 1980.
Mahathir shares Ozal’s conviction that only a free-enterprise system can produce the material wealth without which no nation can progress. But Mahathir believes this can be achieved only through strong government.
In a recent talk, Mahathir insisted that Muslim nations should not be seduced by the siren songs of Western-style democracy. “We are weak nations,” he said. “We need strong governments.”
Malaysia is the only Muslim country to have one or two industrial brands that feature in the list of the 5,000 or so global industrial brands. It is also a reasonably peaceful and stable society that, ethnic divisions notwithstanding, has not suffered from violence in the past three decades.
My guess is that once Mahathir is retired, Malaysia will abandon its obsession with strong government and become more like Turkey. If it does not, its fundamental fragility could expose it to untold dangers next time it is hit by the downside of the economic cycle.
Fortunately, more and more Muslim intellectuals and politicians are beginning to understand that the key to the spectacular material and cultural success of the West is its acceptance of freedom as the central organizing principle of society. Contrary to what some in the West believe, the Muslim world is the scene of many political experiments, with the idea of pluralism steadily gaining ground.
Arab News Opinion 9 May 2003
