The banning of Darul Arqam in Malaysia

On 25 October 2004, the Malaysian government made a historic decision by releasing Ustaz Ashaari Muhammad, the former leader of Darul Arqam, the Islamic movement which had been controversially banned nationwide through a ruling issued by the National Fatwa Council on 5 August 1994.

He was freed from restrictions imposed upon him since being arrested under the Internal Security Act on 2 September 1994. The release ended what had arguably been one of the longest, if not the longest, detention orders applied in Malaysia on leaders of independent movements and organisations who had mounted a challenge to the state.

In Ustaz Ashaari’s case, his movement was confined to the Gombak district in Selangor from the end of October 1994 until February 2002, when he was forcibly transported to Labuan, off the coast of Sabah, where he remained until October 2004. Throughout the period, he had to report to the nearest police station once a week and was not allowed to be outside his residence at night. The identity of his visitors and the subject of conversations he had with them were closely monitored.

Having established Darul Arqam, a seemingly innocent religious study group in the lower middle class Dato’ Keramat suburb in Kuala Lumpur in 1968, Ustaz Ashaari rapidly developed the movement by means of intense self-purification and soul-searching activities. Early recruits were generally young, first generation ruralurban migrants who formed the upcoming Malay middle class. Such urban spiritualism laid the foundation for a powerful sense of solidarity and commitment among adherents, who were prepared to sacrifice material comfort in order to create model Islamic villages which sprouted around the country after the founding of Darul Arqam’s pioneering Sungai Penchala settlement in the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur in 1973.

In the 1980s, Darul Arqam expanded internationally, as shown by Ustaz Ashaari’s decision in 1988 to travel abroad more or less continuously. By the early 1990s, Darul Arqam had burgeoned into a self-styled business empire with an extensive global network whose influence penetrated mainstream socio-political circles.

The clampdown on Darul Arqam in 1994 involved persistent vilification in the mainstream media, raids into Darul Arqam communal villages by the security forces, wanton confiscation of property, job and scholarship suspension, state-incited social boycott, a ban on overseas travel, detentions of Darul Arqam leaders under the Internal