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By Asad Latif
THE opposition Parti Islam SeMalaysia (Pas) is often associated with greying ulama - Islamic religious scholars - who promote a narrow brand of Islamic teachings.
Equally comfortable in Eastern and Western ways, Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, nevertheless, is committed to setting up an Islamic state in Malaysia. -- ALBERT SIM Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, director of the Pas Research Centre - the party's think-tank - in Kuala Lumpur does not fit that mould.
With a doctorate in toxicology from Saint Mary's Hospital, Imperial College, London, the urbane 47-year-old is equally at ease with the East and the West. He can discuss scientific principles and quote passages from the Quran.
He is the kind of professional who modernises the image of Pas even as it presses on with its goal of setting up an Islamic state in Malaysia.
Dr Dzulkefly, deputy head of Pas in Shah Alam, Selangor, and a member of the party's Central Committee for International Affairs, admits to this as much.
He said professionals like him have changed the image of the party, which, he claims, has one million members.
The party's central working committee has equal numbers of professionals and ulamas, he said, adding: 'The party needs professionals to go mainstream.'
IRONICALLY, it was a government scholarship which paved the way to his religious awakening and led him to join Pas.
After his O-Levels in 1973, the Negri Sembilan boy was awarded a scholarship by Mara - a government agency set up to help bumiputeras - to study in Britain.
He read medical biochemistry as an undergraduate at Birmingham University. There, he met Muslim students from Malaysia, Egypt, Sudan and Iraq, who were caught up in the Islamic revivalism of the 1970s.
He came to see Islam as a way of life that encompasses politics and the law.
He was not alone. Unlike an earlier generation of Malaysians who studied abroad and returned home Westernised, professionals like him returned to Malaysia with an 'entrenched Islamic world view'.
Although a government scholar, he did not join the ruling United Malays National Organisation because he said that the party turned to Islam only when it was politically expedient to do so.
Pas, he said, was different. It was 'serious' about Islam. He felt a 'calling' and joined in 1998, during the reformasi movement.
Dr Dzulkefly is more than willing to countenance an opposing point of view, so long as he is free to propagate his own.
He propagates his views with much passion, leaving no doubt that he is dedicated to the party's vision.
He was in Singapore last week to speak at a seminar on the Islamic state organised by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Pas Continuous for modern times
Dr Dzulkefly said this of Malaysia's secular parties in an interview: 'I follow God, even when God doesn't listen to me. But they like to follow God only when God listens to them.'
If pressed, he said he would prefer to live in a Christian state than a secular state.
'If Christianity can provide that jurisprudence, can provide that law and this is heavenly revealed, I would like to live under your kind of governance than to live in a secular, permissive, promiscuous society because I know that at least your laws come from God Almighty.'
His four sons and three daughters went to Islamic schools. Three of his children are either law graduates or studying law. One son is working while continuing his degree course in multimedia studies. The rest are in secondary school.
He believes in integrating religious and secular studies and founded Jaipetra, a private college in Kelantan, in the mid-1990s, to provide such a brand of education.
The college offers a double diploma after the O levels. Students major in Islamic Studies and another subject, such as electronic or electrical engineering, business and finance management, or psychology. Those with good results get into public universities.
He also works as an adviser to Global Capital Holding, an offshore fund-management company incorporated in Switzerland which uses Islamic investment principles.
'That's where I earn my bread and butter,' he said, adding that his positions in Pas do not pay the bills except for 'expenses on petrol and parking fees'.
He lost narrowly to the Barisan Nasional candidate in the Kapar constituency of Selangor in the 1999 General Election. In that election, Pas wrested control of Terengganu to add to its rule in Kelantan.
He remains committed to Pas' vision of an Islamic state notwithstanding opposition from the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP).
The DAP quit the Barisan Alternatif opposition alliance, which includes Pas, soon after the Sept 11 terror attacks over Pas' goal of setting up an Islamic state.
He said: 'We cannot be twisting the words of the Quran for them.
'Within a democracy, allow Muslims to at least be subjected to what we believe in. That's the bottom line,' he said.
And that bottom line, in Dr Dzulkefly's professional opinion, is not open to bargaining.
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The Prophet has related that Allah says "Oh My servant. I look on high handedness as something not permissible for myself, and I have forbidden it for you. So do not oppress each other".
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