Creeping Islamization in Malaysia

Creeping Islamization in Malaysia


Letter from Malaysia: Nation's secular vision vs. 'writing on the wall'

Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune

Published: August 28, 2006


KUALA LUMPUR 'The idea of a secular state is dead in Malaysia," says Farish
Noor, a Malaysian scholar who specializes in politics and Islam. "An Islamic
society is already on the cards. The question is what kind of Islamic
society this will be."

It is hard to square this view with a drive through modern Kuala Lumpur, its
downtown bars and nightclubs not exactly the symbols of a budding theocracy.
Yet as Malaysia marks 49 years of independence from Britain on Thursday,
lurking behind a cosmopolitan facade is a tense and divisive battle over the
country's future.

Those who want to maintain the country's secular roots are fighting what
they call creeping Islamicization. Muslim women who at the time of
independence often wore silky, tight-fitting outfits today do not leave the
house without a head scarf, which is now also required for female police
officers of all religions during official functions.

Muslim prayers are piped into the loudspeakers of government offices in the
new administrative capital, Putrajaya. And Islamic police officers routinely
arrest unmarried couples for "close proximity."

"I see the writing on the wall," said Ivy Josiah, the director of the
Women's Aid Organization, a group that lobbies the government on women's
issues. "It's only a matter of time before Malaysia becomes another Taliban
state."

Malaysia, a multiracial country where just over half the population of 26
million is Muslim, is testing the limits of compatibility between
traditional Muslim beliefs and Western- style democracy.

In Europe, the threat of terrorism posed by disaffected Muslims has spurred
religious leaders and politicians to wonder whether there is a better way to
assimilate Muslim and Western traditions. The experience of Malaysia appears
to show that there is no easy solution, even after five decades of trying.

In recent years, a number of high- profile court cases have highlighted the
clash between Muslim and secular laws, but none so much as the lawsuit
brought by Lina Joy, a computer saleswoman, who is challenging the Malaysian
government over its refusal to officially acknowledge her conversion from
Islam to Christianity. After two lower courts ruled for the government, Joy
awaits a judgment from the country's highest court.

The case has aggravated already mistrustful relations between Muslim,
Christian and Hindu communities. It has led to death threats against one
prominent lawyer, large protest gatherings and a ban by the government on
any further public debate. At the heart of the case is the fundamental
question of which is supreme in Malaysia: Muslim law or the country's
secular Constitution.

Malaysia has a hybrid legal system that incorporates both Islamic and civil
laws for personal and family matters: Muslims are governed by religious laws
against drinking, eating during the daylight hours of Ramadan and having
close proximity between unmarried women and men. Marriages, divorces,
funerals, and inheritance are governed by Islamic laws.

For non-Muslims - Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs - civil laws
apply. But the hybrid system is now in crisis and the multiracial fabric
could fray.

Critics complain of Islamic influence in day-to-day governance. When the
government recently debated whether free needles should be distributed to
drug addicts, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said he would first check
with the Muslim authorities for guidance on whether this followed Islamic
principles.

"You are seeing worldwide a common thing happening," said Malik Imtiaz
Sarwar, a Muslim lawyer. "Muslims are defining themselves by their religion
instead of their country." Malik recently asked for police protection after
receiving death threats for his role in the Lina Joy case: he submitted a
brief in defense of Joy's right to convert.

"Lina Joy is important because it's finally brought to light the tensions
that exist between those who favor an Islamic state and those who believe in
the universal values entrenched in the Constitution," Malik said in an
interview.

Lawyers who back the government's position in the case say Muslims in
Malaysia are subject to Islamic law. "We are not saying you do not have any
choice of religion. But if you want to convert out you must do so in the
Islamic court," said Zulkifli Noordin, a lawyer who submitted a brief in
support of the government's position.

In reality, converting out of Islam is frowned upon if not actively
discouraged in Malaysia. Only one state, Negri Sembilan, allows apostasy and
usually after ordering the person through a lengthy rehabilitation program -
an attempt to keep them from converting.

Zulkifli says 18 people have successfully left the faith, although many
others are thought to have done so unofficially. In the country's most
conservative state, Kelantan, local laws call for the death penalty for
apostates. The law has not yet been applied.

The context of the tensions in the Lina Joy case is a Muslim community that
says it feels under siege and threatened by a thriving evangelical Christian
movement. Newspapers cite wild estimates of mass conversions if Lina Joy
wins her case and call for a strengthening of religious law.

Over the past 30 years, the percentage of people who call themselves
Christians has doubled to 10 percent, according to Wong Kim Kong, secretary
general of the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship. Wong says the
growth in the church has come from Christians "sharing their faith in a very
natural way."

"People experience God and naturally tell people about God," Wong said. "We
don't have missionaries coming from overseas and doing that kind of work. No
more." Josiah, the director of the Women's Aid Organization, says the most
regrettable consequence of the Lina Joy case and other inter-religious
disputes that preceded it is the strain it is placing on personal
interaction between people of different ethnic groups.

"The whole thing about being multicultural, multiethnic is not just a
tourist attraction," Josiah said. "We live it and breathe it."