1. The Star Online (http://thestar.com.my)
Use of ‘Allah’ should not be a problem, 17 November 2009
I JOIN Wong Chun Wai in prayer too in “Let’s pray for understanding” (Sunday Star, Nov 15).
Malaysia, being a plural nation, must always strive to be a modern, multi-ethnic country where we are truly seen to be practising moderation. Our way of approach in life should show understanding in how others live, learning their culture and religion.
We have to show respect for each other’s religion. Moderate Malaysia means we must respect others as we would want others to respect us.
We have to show by action and deed that we are united and any differences we may have on matters of religion or race can be settled peacefully.
We have tackled many religious issues. Just see how our forefathers handled it, we can too.
The controversy over the use of “Allah” and seizure of Bibles have made something unpleasant in a pleasant land where we embrace people first in the spirit of 1Malaysia.
If it is people first, then their problems too should come first. It is time for us to do away with outmoded, primitive ways and practices.
Sikhs all over the world too use the word “Allah”, including those in Malaysia. The word is mentioned many times in our Holy Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The Sikhs also call God by other names like Rab, Khudha, Har, Hari, and the like.
And these words are also mentioned in the Granth Sahib, and have been used since the inception of the religion. Why the use of the word “Allah” should be a problem in Malaysia is beyond my understanding.
BULBIR SINGH,
Seremban.
© 1995-2009 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No 10894-D)
2. The Nut Graph (http://thenutgraph.com)
(1)“Islamic focus on punishment misguided”, 2 November 2009
by Shanon Shah (shanonshah@thenutgraph.com)
PERTH, 2 Nov 2009: The focus on punishment of personal sins in Islam is misguided, a professor of Islamic Studies said.
Professor Abdullah Saeed was partly referring to calls from certain Muslim groups to uphold the caning sentence on Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno in Malaysia for consuming alcohol. Saeed is currently the Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies and director of the Asia Institute at Melbourne University, Australia.
"The idea that an Islamic state's first job is to punish or safeguard the personal morality of its people is parallel to what happened in Europe in the 14th to 17th centuries," he told reporters on 29 Oct, on the sidelines of the Fifth Regional Interfaith Dialogue, held in Perth, Australia from 28 to 30 Oct.
Saeed explained that both the state and church in Europe at that time would try to force conversions of Jews and Muslims to Christianity and even imposed an Inquisition on those who did not comply.
"This is so similar to what some Muslims seem to want to impose right now," he said.
"The question now is, will these punishments solve all the problems in Muslim societies? I, for one, am sceptical," he said.
Saeed was a keynote speaker at the dialogue, which was initiated by Indonesia in 2004, and is now co-sponsored by Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. The dialogue's theme this year is Future Faith Leaders: Regional Challenges and Cooperation, and involves the participation of 14 countries from Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, including Malaysia.
Saeed reiterated that there was no punishment prescribed in the Quran for drinking alcohol, but somehow in the Islamic law-making process, many Muslims now believe that punishments in Islam were objectives in themselves.
The Quran does not focus on punishment (© Asif Akbar / sxc.hu) "The Quran does not focus on punishment, but on internal transformation and an internalisation of values. The question remains: Will Muslim societies be perfect if more and more punishments are carried out?" he said.
He gave the example of the period of alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, during which the consumption of alcohol actually increased instead of declined.
"Unless people genuinely accept a concept or idea from within, the state will not be able to control the behaviour of society," he said.
Room for argument
Saeed also stressed that there was a lot of room provided by the foundational texts of Islam to argue for justice and human dignity.
"Take the example of Sisters in Islam in Malaysia, who argue for gender equality. The Quran, a whole [lot] of other supporting texts, and the traditions of the prophet Muhammad all uphold gender equality," he said.
However, he explained that in the development of Islamic laws over the centuries, women were marginalised, and this was subsequently institutionalised.
Debate on gender equality in Islam is bound to continue (© Ruth Livingstone / sxc.hu)"And so, contemporary Muslims are relying on these institutions that have marginalised women," he said. "So, even though I would say there is plenty of room to argue for gender equality, we will now hear counter-arguments from the Islamic religious establishment that such arguments are Western-driven to destroy Islam."
Saeed, however, said that the debate on gender equality in Islam was bound to continue over time.
"Right now, scholarship on this subject might be on the margins, but these ideas might be acceptable later in the future," he said. "For example, in the 1930s, there were debates on whether democracy was compatible with Islam, but nowadays it's a non-issue as far as debate is concerned."
He said he was optimistic that there would only be more discussion and debate on such issues.
・Shanon Shah was selected and sponsored by the Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as part of its International Media Visits Program, to cover the dialogue. Four other journalists were also selected, from Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. Shanon is an associate member of Sisters in Islam.
(2)The role of intra-faith dialogue，3 November 2009
by Shanon Shah(shanonshah@thenutgraph.com)
DISCUSSIONS on religious issues, or a lack thereof, are increasingly defining public policy and society in Malaysia. A few key words are enough to jog memories — the cow-head protest, the whipping sentence on Muslims for drinking alcohol, Christians and the word "Allah", concert banning, and conversions of minors to Islam by one parent, among others.
Perhaps all these could be solved with healthy, solution-seeking interfaith dialogue. And yet, when the attempt was made to initiate an Interfaith Commission in 2005, many Muslim-based organisations, political parties and individuals attacked it as being "anti-Islam". Given the volume of protests, then Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi eventually called off the setting up of the commission.
The protests from these Muslim groups, parties and individuals could be hastily interpreted as Muslims in Malaysia feeling insulted and challenged by certain claims or actions by Malaysians of other faiths. But upon further scrutiny, it is also clear that these do not reflect the views of all Muslims and all non-Muslims. Some Muslim groups often protest and threaten other Muslims for having dissenting views related to Islam. For example, the police reports made against Sisters in Islam for opposing the whipping sentence on Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno for drinking alcohol.
And what about the precedent-setting arrest of former Perlis mufti Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin by the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department on 1 Nov 2009, allegedly for "speaking without authorisation"?
Where then does this leave the issue of interfaith dialogue? Is it as crucial right now to have intra-faith dialogue, especially among Muslims in Muslim-majority Malaysia? Does the larger political and social environment even enable or encourage such dialogue to take place?
Respect, outside and within
"The nastiest fights are often fought within religious groupings," says Professor Emeritus Gary D Bouma of Monash University, Australia. "Therefore, intra-religious dialogue is as important as inter-religious dialogue, since if we are to learn to respect people who are outside of our respective religions, you'd think we'd want to learn to respect those who are different from us within our religions."
Bouma, who is also an Anglican clergy, points towards moments in Anglican history when the church tried to force agreement among all believers, to the extent of executing dissenters. "Those who think they have a mission to purify their religion — these are the ones with the biggest problems and cause the biggest problems," he says in an interview with The Nut Graph on the sidelines of the Fifth Regional Interfaith Dialogue, which was held in Perth, Australia from 28 to 30 Oct 2009.
Abdullah Saeed, a professor of Islamic Studies at Melbourne University, agrees. "Interfaith tensions usually only arise when large chunks of people are affected by a particular problem, which is usually political, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is painted as a Muslim-Jewish conflict," he tells The Nut Graph.
But in many Muslim-majority countries, for example, he says there is often ongoing conflict between established religious groupings of Muslims and newer Muslim groups which challenge the status quo.
The state's role
This in itself would not be a problem if the state could play the role of a neutral facilitator and manager of conflict. It is when the state decides to empower claims made by certain groups at the expense of others that problems begin.
Professor Samina Yasmeen, director of the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia, gives the example of the grassroots of both PAS and Umno targeting Sisters in Islam (SIS) and the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality, which SIS is part of. "The Malaysian government then needs to be very careful not to empower these voices that seek to ban organisations like Sisters in Islam, because it would end up empowering rigid interpretations of Islam," she tells The Nut Graph.
Such a situation where the state takes sides in this manner would also kill any opportunity for real dialogue to happen among Muslims. As it is, Samina says that there is already a perception that "orthodox Muslims" are seen as the upholders of "real Islam" by both Muslims and non-Muslims.
In order for real intra-Muslim dialogue to emerge, she says the state should refrain from showing or approving of only certain ways of being Muslim. "An example is if the only image of a Muslim is a woman who covers her hair, or a man wearing a beard," she says.
Different secularisms
Does this imply that true religious dialogue — both inter- and intra-religious — can only occur once the state dissociates completely from religion?
Bouma says this is not necessarily so. "There are places where the state and religion are closely connected, but where there is a lot of religious dialogue happening. Just look at Lutheran Denmark and Anglican England," he says.
However, Bouma thinks religious groupings that seek support from the state are actually behaving from a point of weakness. "What kind of religion is it that needs support from the state in order to make people belong to it?" he asks.
Saeed concurs. "I don't want the state to get involved in what I believe, in my freedom of expression and my intellectual freedom," he says. "I have a right to my own conscience which is clearly justified in Islamic terms. The Quran itself defines that the prophet Muhammad's job was to tell people what was right from wrong, not to force them to believe as he did."
This, Saeed says, is the basis of a secularism that allows religious communities to grow and thrive. He says Australia practises this sort of secularism. "If a particular version of secularism is anti-religion, in which the state restricts how an individual dresses, worships and believes, I would be against it," he says.
Saeed adds, however, that these nuances in secularism are often lost when they are debated in Muslim-majority societies. Muslim ideologues, for example those in Malaysia, tend to equate secularism with being totally anti-religion.
Perhaps it is important for multi-religious Malaysia to pay just as much attention to intra-religious developments as to inter-religious tensions. This is especially important when religion — in Malaysia's case, Islam — becomes the source of public policies. Because then which sub-group's "Islam" is being used to create policies that affect not only other religious adherents, but the other sub-groups found under the broad umbrella of "Islam"?
"In my ideal world," says Bouma, "the state would not be used to impose the moral views of sub-groups of the population on everybody else."
・Shanon Shah was selected and sponsored by the Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as part of its International Media Visits Program, to cover the Fifth Regional Interfaith Dialogue in Perth, Australia, 28 - 30 Oct 2009. Four other journalists were also selected, from Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. The interviews in this feature were made possible by this visit. Shanon is an associate member of Sisters in Islam.
(3)Leaving religious extremism, 11 November 2009
by Deborah Loh(deborahloh@thenutgraph.com)
Maajid Nawaz (Pic courtesy of Quilliam Foundation)
FORMER British Muslim extremist Maajid Nawaz told The Nut Graph in an interview published yesterday about how he embraced radical Islamic thought. In this second and final part of an e-mail interview, the former Hizb ut-Tahrir member talks about how he began renouncing extremism after his arrest in Egypt following the 9/11 attacks.
Maajid, who is today the director and co-founder of the London-based Quilliam Foundation, says Islam is compatible with a secular democracy. He also argues that Islam's diversity of thought precludes the establishment of syariah as state law.
"Traditional Islamic and Muslim history never obliged the authorities to enshrine syariah as state law due to its many possible interpretations," notes Maajid, who is planning a speaking tour next year to Southeast Asia, which may include Malaysia.
TNG: How did you end up in prison in Egypt?
Maajid Nawaz: I was sent to Egypt by my university for the language year of my Arabic and law degree. It was my misfortune to have arrived one day before the 9/11 attacks. Unaware as to how 9/11 would affect the security environment in such a dramatic way, I continued to propagate Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) ideology to friends undeterred. This earned me the ire of the authorities.
After a long cat-and-mouse chase, I was eventually, and for the second time in my life, arrested at gunpoint. They wanted information from me about Egyptian members of HT. They tortured one man in front of me. It was unbearable. If I talked, they would catch my friends on the outside; but in the meantime they drove my companion crazy right before my eyes with an electric cable. Eventually, I was sentenced to five years for membership of HT.
What caused you to change your views while in prison? What was that process like, and who facilitated it?
It was during my detention in the Egyptian prison that I began to utilise my time by studying as much as I could about the ideology that I professed to be working for. My aim was to study Islam to such a depth that once released, I would be even more potent at propagandising than before.
Arrested in Egypt (Pic courtesy of Maajid Nawaz)As I studied various branches of traditional Islamic sciences, however, I grew more and more surprised. The sheer breadth of scholastic disagreement that I found, on issues I had believed were so definitive in Islam, surprised me. Where we had been willing to challenge, even overthrow, regimes on certain issues, traditional jurists of Islam had treated these as academic disagreements to be debated through books.
It slowly dawned on me that what I had been propagating was far from true Islam. I began to realise that what I had subscribed to was actually Islamism sold to me in the name of Islam. And it is with this realisation that I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became. My studies, alongside my being adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience, greatly aided my intellectual reform. Amnesty's efforts taught me that even those who knew that I considered them my "enemies" had the capacity to stand for justice in my case.
Did you find the answers against extremism within the Quran itself? Please share.
Absolutely, the Quran is full of messages that contradict the extremism I previously promoted, like: "We created you from a single male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know each other (49:13)." However, more important is the realisation that the Quran is only ever interpreted by limited human beings. The mindset that we bring to the Quran, and the lens that we use to interpret its passages, have more to do with the message we learn from it than the literal words themselves.
Hardly ever does the Quran speak for itself, every word is subject to much disputed principles and methodologies of interpretation. It is by delving deeper into the theological sciences and scholastic disputes surrounding the methodology of interpretation that I realised [something]. That the theo-political message espoused by extremists has more to do with their own social-scientific biases than with what the Quran actually says or does not say.
As the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law Imam Ali is reported to have explained when challenging those who said that "the rule is for none but God": "The Quran is merely lines between two covers, it does not speak for itself and requires an interpreter".
What is the difference between Islam and Islamism, and how is Islam compatible with secular democracy?
Islamism emerged with Hasan al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s. Further developed by al-Mawdudi and Qutb, it was crystallised by al-Nabhani in the 1950s. It is the modernist attempt to claim that political sovereignty belongs to God, that the syariah equates to state law, and that it is a religious duty of all Muslims to create a political entity that reflects the above.
Islamists are of varying shades, and differ in exactly how to bring about this utopia. Most are socially modern yet politically extreme. Islamists usually hold some contempt for Muslim scholars and sages; disdain for most normal Muslims, and a hatred of the West.
In short, Islamism is the belief that Islam is a political ideology. Islamism is not compatible with democracy because it insists that political sovereignty does not belong to the people.
Islam, on the other hand, is entirely compatible with not just democracies, but monarchies and dictatorships. Islam did not invent any of these, but can survive in all of them. This may come as a surprise to many "moderate" Muslims who claim that Islam is inherently democratic. However, again, I believe that such "moderates" make the same mistake as Islamists by imposing their own very modern political ideals on centuries-old religious scripture.
The truth is, like all religions, Islam does not prescribe any one mode or system of governance. This is its strength and the secret behind its survival through all sorts of regimes in the past. The result of such a realisation is that the political system that we call for as Muslims has more to do with our own preferences than with definitions in Islamic scripture. Hence, the solution would be to honestly detach scriptural justifications for our own modern political ideals, and simply have a political and intellectual debate instead. In such a debate, I would come down on the side of liberal democracy.
Maajid engaging youths in Pakistan (Courtesy of Quilliam Foundation)
Tell us what you know of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Malaysia. Are there links between HT in Malaysia and Britain?
There have been historical links between HT in Malaysia and the UK. Many Malaysian students who came to London to study were recruited by HT in the 1990s, and then went back to Malaysia to set up HT activities there. HT in Malaysia was greatly bolstered by this London connection and such activists continue to operate till this day.
Malaysia has a dual-track legal system where civil law and syariah law co-exist. What is the basis of Quilliam's argument against equating syariah law with state law?
Syariah is the religious code of Islam but it has no specific prescriptions for modes of governance; traditional Islamic and Muslim history never obliged the authorities to enshrine syariah as state law due to its many possible interpretations.
Unlike Christianity, Muslim history did not battle for church and state separation since the clerics were almost always a separate entity from the rulers. Each school of thought was free to adopt and follow its own theological interpretations at will, and the regime rarely co-opted any one school of interpretation. From the earliest of times, there has been a plethora of approaches to government, with early Muslim rulers (Imam Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, for example) even fighting those who claimed "rule is for God", and Muslim scholarly giants such as Ibn al-Qayyim (died 1350) condemning those who claimed to rule in God's name.
We should remember that what is important is not the means used in the seventh-century understanding of the syariah, but rather its maqasid (goal or purpose) — aims which need to be sought, such as justice and protecting religious practice. Modern scholars like Dr Sherman Jackson have stated that these maqasid are safeguarded within liberal democratic political entities. Therefore, there is no need to impose seventh-century understandings of syariah as state law.
A subject of great debate in Malaysia is a preventive law that allows detention without trial. What is your stand on detention without trial for terrorists, and non-violent extremists?
Having spent five years in an Egyptian jail cell for my activities with HT, I have very strong views on such human rights issues. If somebody is involved in terrorism, then they should go before a court and be held to account for their crimes.
When it comes to non-violent extremists, we should not be criminalising their beliefs. Rather, their views should be challenged and debated, as my organisation Quilliam does. If we are to make the case for liberal democratic values, then we must not compromise them for short-term gains.
(End)
