NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
On 19 June 2007, one Malaysia Today reader who goes by the nickname of anon sent in a letter under the heading of There is THEM and there is US (read the letter here). Anyway, the bottom line is there was this Malay teacher who chided Malay students for getting to chummy with the non-Malay students.
Now, I know how angry anon must be feeling and I am sure this particular situation appears puzzling to someone not of the Muslim faith. I hope, through this piece, I can help non-Muslims better understand the Muslim mind, in particular the Malay mind. After you understand how the Malay mind works, meaning Muslim mind of course, you may actually end up pitying Malays rather than hating them. I hope you will then better comprehend the confused state of mind the Malays are in and how Islam, or rather their version of Islam, has led them up the garden path. Religion is supposed to enlighten one. In the case of the Malays, Islam has shackled their minds instead of opening it and allowing them to think.
It is not the fault of Islam though, if that is what you are thinking. Ideologies are never at fault. Even Communism is good in theory. It is the application of Communism that invites disaster. Well, you may argue, if ideologies are good in theory but not in practice then that ideology can’t be any good in the first place. Yes, I suppose you can use this argument. But then that argument would apply to Democracy as well. Hitler was voted in democratically. Does that mean we abolish democracy? It is not democracy that is at fault but those who wrongly apply or in some cases abuse democracy. If democracy is restored to what it was supposed to be there would be nothing wrong with it. And that applies to all ideologies, including Islam. It is the wrongful application and misinterpretation that is at fault. And I hope this piece will help enlighten you on the real problem, which may differ from the perceived problem.
Islam, to the Malays, is basically Arabisation. This is the very narrow viewpoint of the Malays. They look up to the Arabs as the perfect example and role model of Islam and anything Saudi Arabian is considered the best example of the Prophet Muhammad, which should be emulated by all good Muslims. Dressing the way of the Prophet, eating and drinking the way of the Prophet, in short, conducting your entire life the way of the Prophet is virtuous and scores points. The only thing is, they do not really know what it was like in the time of the Prophet other than that he was an Arab -- so what is Arab today must then be what it was like in the time of the Prophet.
At one point the Saudi Arabian ulama (religious scholars) refused to allow aeroplanes to land in Saudi Arabia because they considered it un-Islamic seeing that there was no such thing in the time of the Prophet. The same thing went for radio and television as well. The ulama refused to allow Saudi Arabian soil to be ‘contaminated’ with these non-Muslim inventions. It took a long time for the rulers to slowly persuade the ulama to ease up on the ruling and allow western inventions onto ‘sacred’ Saudi Arabian soil. Even then they agreed reluctantly and with very strict conditions attached. It also took a long time for the ulama to agree to allow western magazines and publications into Saudi Arabia. Magazines and publications that were eventually allowed into Saudi Arabia were heavily censored though. The government employed hundreds of people to go through each and every copy of the magazines and publications and paint out pages after pages of offending material using paint brushes and pots of black ink. Some pages were torn out entirely if there was too much to censor, in particular advertisements featuring women not covered from head to toe.
Now, why is it like this? Why is the Saudi Arabian version of Islam so intolerant? You, anon, are just faced with the problem of Malay teachers telling Malay students to not mix with non-Malays. You might not realise that the majority of Muslims are actually not like this at all but are really very tolerant. It is those people who believe they are holding dear the true version of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad’s version, who are resorting to this intolerance. And these people are those who look to the Saudi Arabian model of Islam in moulding their opinions and beliefs. In short, they are following the Wahhabi version of Islam.
Let me at this point give you a brief history lesson on Wahhabi Islam. Wahhabi Islam did not always exist. The Arabian Peninsular was not even a nation or country until less than 100 years ago. For more than 1,000 years it was a peninsular inhabited by various tribes that were perpetually at war with one another. This scenario was no different from that of North America before the coming of the whites. War was a way of life and caravan raids plus attacking each other’s communities, killing the men, and taking the women and the children as slaves, was an accepted and normal way of life in the Najd Desert. No one actually ruled the Najd or the Arabian Peninsular. One of the many tribes was the Saud tribe that around 1500 settled in the area where Riyadh is now situated.
In the 1700s, a local tribal chief by the name of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab tried to introduce a very strict version of Islam. No doubt Mekah and Medina were the centres of Islam and which were then under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire based in what is known today as Turkey. But the other tribes living farther away from these two Islamic centres had reverted to pagan practices steeped in superstition and a corruption of what Islam really stood for. In that sense Islam had deviated and had been reduced to what it was in the pre-Muhammad days. So the Arabian Peninsular, other than Mekah and Medina, was not Islamic at all. And this al-Wahhab wanted to change.
Al-Wahhab was actually a child prodigy who had memorised the entire Quran at the age of ten. He married at the age of 12, which was quite common in many parts of the world until even quite recently (and I believe is still practiced in some parts of Indonesia). Al-Wahhab travelled to Iran and Iraq to learn about Islam and he eventually came back to the Najd to preach his version of Islam. His students and followers called themselves mujahideen and this was when the term started to become popular. But of course their enemies called them Wahhabis and until today this is how they are referred as. Al-Wahhab’s interpretation of Islam is that Islam is militant and political and that is how Islam must be propagated.
Al-Wahhab and his followers began to destroy what they viewed as pagan sites and he was soon enough sent into exile in an area known as Ad Dirayah. That was when he attracted the attention of Muhammad Saud, the head or Emir of the Saud tribe that had established itself 200 years or so earlier. In 1744, Muhammad Saud and Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab took an oath of alliance. If I may be so dramatic as to say that this oath of alliance changed the entire course of Islamic history after the first change of course in 656 soon after the death of Uthman and the election of Ali as the Fourth Caliph of Medina. It took Islam about 1,100 years to finally ‘find its roots’, if I may be permitted to put it that way for want of a better phrase.
When Muhammad Saud died 21 years later, his son, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, took over as the new chief of the tribe. By then the Saud family, through its army, was already in control of most of the Najd region. In 1801, the Saud-Wahhab army attacked Hussein’s shrine in Karbala and destroyed it. Hussein, the son of the Fourth Caliph Ali, is revered by his followers who are now known as the Shias, which is the short term for ‘The Party of Ali’. Those the Wahhabis considered as ‘deviant’ Muslims were massacred by the thousands. They then attacked the city of Taif and massacred its inhabitants. After that Mekah and Medina surrendered without a fight. Monuments were destroyed, graves desecrated (including shrines of saints), and thousands of books which did not fit the Wahhabi version of Islam were burnt.
The two holy cities of Mekah and Medina then came under the Ottoman Empire and at first the Ottomans did not know how to deal with the Wahhabis. Eventually, the Ottomans sent the Egyptian army to take care of the problem and the Wahhabis retaliated by declaring the Ottomans and Egyptians as infidels (kafir) and apostates (murtad). In 1811, a bloody battle ensued which resulted in the defeat of the Sauds-Wahhabis. The Saud-Wahhabi imam was arrested and brought back to Istanbul where he was beheaded in public. Ad Dirayah was burnt to the ground and until today still remains in ruin.
The Sauds retreated to an area north of Ad Dirayah into a small town called Riyadh, which they proclaimed as their new capital in 1824. However, instead of consolidating, they spent the next 60 years engaged in tribal and interfamily conflicts, which weakened them even further. By 1890, they had to retreat to Kuwait because they had lost control of Riyadh to the more moderate Muslims who moved into Riyadh and soon outnumbered the Wahhabi Sauds.
By 1906, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, Muhammad Saud’s grandson, had restored the influence of the Saud tribe in the Najd. In the merciless battle for control of Riyadh, the detractors were beheaded and their heads placed on spikes in a ring surrounding the gates to the city. 1,200 others were burnt alive and the young women captured as slaves and some given away as presents to friends of the Sauds. Mekah was captured in 1924 and Medina the following year. By 1932, the Sauds had control over the entire Arabian Peninsular. Abdul Aziz then proclaimed himself King and declared the Arabian Peninsular as his personal fiefdom. Thereafter, he made an announcement that his family was of royal blood and, on 22 September 1932, he renamed the Arabian Peninsular the United Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And so a country was born.
Abdul Aziz then declared Wahhabi the official religion of the land and all other religions and other versions of Islam were banned. Tolerance was not on the agenda as what Abdul Aziz said, “The Arabs understand two things only; the Word of Allah and the sword.”
The majority of the Malays in Malaysia accept the Saudi Arabian version of Islam as the correct and true version. Just like the Sauds of 100 years ago, the Malays too regard all other versions of Islam as deviant to the true Islam. All other Muslims are apostates and infidels. The Sauds solved this problem of ‘deviant’ Muslims by massacring all the men and capturing the women as slaves. Through ethnic cleansing the different variations of Islam were wiped out from the Arabian Peninsular. But other variations of Islam still remain in other countries in the Middle East as well as in countries like India, Indonesia, etc.
Most Malays actually have no inkling about the history or origins of Wahhabi Islam. Many Malaysian ulama acquired their religious knowledge through Wahhabi schools, so invariably they end up following Wahhabi Islam. And since Malays have been taught to never do any independent research on religion but just take the word of the ulama without question or dispute, then what the ulama teach would be accepted as the gospel without challenge.
But religion is one thing and history is another. Granted, only the ‘experts’ should be allowed to interpret religion. You do not, however, need to be a member of the cloth to study history. Researching Wahhabi Islam is not about studying religion. It is about studying history. And if you research Wahhabi Islam then you will know the movement is about militancy and politics. That was exactly what the Wahhabi movement was set up for. So you need to study history, not religion, and analyse Wahhabi Islam from the historical angle; where it came from and how it emerged. Malays believe that Islam is a peaceful religion. The Wahhabis do not. They believe that Islam is militant and political. That one fundamental issue contradicts what Islam stands for.
So, anon, Malays sincerely believe that when they tell their kids to not mix with non-Muslim kids this is what the Prophet Muhammad preached and this is what Islam is all about. Actually, what they don’t realise is, this is what Wahhabism and not Islam preaches. Therefore, in that sense, you must pity the Malays for they are grossly misguided. And let me assure you that what I have written here will be disputed by 99% of Malays who will accuse me of running down Islam. The Arabs, to the Malays, are the best example of the Prophet and to insult the Arabs tantamount to insulting Islam and the Prophet.
If the Malays only knew the truth! But they refuse to recognise the truth because they are worried that the truth may erode their akidah whereas this has nothing to do with akidah, or even religion, but has everything to do with history and reality.
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