Failing to be a bridge: Dr. Mohd Ridhuan Tee Abdullah of Malaysia

By Kenyan Nomad

That he is controversial can be seen from the words written on the upper part of his poorly attended to English blog. “You have absolute rights not to continue reading or to discontinue accessing this blog immediately if you are disagreeable with the personal views provided by Dr Mohd Ridhuan Tee”. It is clear that he is less inclined to engagement and even correction. You don’t agree with me: you leave, that’s what he says. How far from Calipha Omar (ra) who used to say: I love good advice.

Islam is the official religion of Malaysia and Muslims constitute the majority at 60%. Most of these Muslims are Malays, the dominant race in Malaysia which is also defined as Muslim constitutionally. In fact, the Malays apart from the Maldivians and the Somalis of the collapsed Republic of Somalia, no other Muslim society is constitutionally defined as Muslim.

Dr Ridhuan Tee’s own race; the Chinese who are about 25% of Malaysia are overwhelmingly Buddhist with relatively large Christian presence too. Indians account for 7-8% and most of them are Hindus. For those who know Islamic history, the role Muslim converts played in being a bridge between Islam and their people is quite well known and they have done it well.

Those who come from non-Muslim majority countries like me get shocked when we see a man who has converted to Islam, who hails from a people who have less interest in Islam or misunderstand it, and rather than engaging them, appealing to them, explaining Islam to them in a good way, having good manners to have an impact on his own people behave like a nasty tribal warlord from an enemy enclave. He has been politicized so much, or he wants it so much (for personal gain I guess) that he has forgotten his higher call.

May be it is because of Utusan Malaysia, the paper he writes for. My Malay is not good, therefore I rely on translations offered by some news blogs, personal blogs and Google translations. Utusan is so racialist and tribal that even for a foreigner, you will feel chocked. It lacks sense and integrity. It lacks vision and fairness. It lacks honesty and the truth. It lacks God’s fear and good judgment. It lacks morality and mannerism. And the man seems to lack what Utusan lacks. They have become of mutual bargain and that’s dangerous.

Malaysia has a relatively troubled history like any other nation and the May 13, 1969 racial riots that claimed hundreds of lives define this nation. The atmosphere is so charged that behind the veneer of tolerance and harmony, there is deep animosity, hatred and anger. No race is exempt from this. The Malays are it, the Chinese are at it and the Indians too are at it, but each one blames the other.

Dr Mohd Ridhuan Tee is immersed in this mess. I would have preferred if he was an scholar, a distant observer to this poisonous racial talk and engaged with his people on issues dear to them and became a bridge between them and the Malays who are Muslim and the government with whom which he has a good relations. But that’s not the case. He lambastes them weekly; he uses obscene words against them. He calls them names, ultra kiasu and other nasty labels. He humiliates them. He even threatens them!

Dr Tee fails to understand that he has an Islamic duty to take Islam to his people. And one way of taking Islam to them is to engage them, take their issues into consideration, sympathize with them, treat them well and handle them with care and compassion. Take their grouses to the ‘Islamic’ government he serves as a lecturer and a columnist. It is mandatory upon him to return to his people and preach to them with wisdom.

Siding with one group vs another while you have a higher role to play is wrong. He doesn’t have to agree with everything the Chinese in Malaysia demand nor is he obliged to be their spokesman, but he has a duty to call them to Islam with beautiful preaching and better engagement. A concerned person shares with his people the beauty of the higher call like al Habib al-Najjar who did so even when he was killed by his own people.

As Allah (sw) tells him to enter Paradise after they brutally killed him, he says: “He said: O would that my people had known. “For that my Lord has granted me Forgiveness and has enrolled me among those held in honour!” (Holy Quran 36: 26-7) Ibn Abbas said this man advised his people both when he was alive and when he died. His concern for his people is clear that he even regrets that his people might not have known about Allah’s message when he has left the earth.

On the other hand, Dr Tee lashes at his own people. Rather than engaging them and becoming a bridge, he patronizingly preaches to them about tribal politics and Malaysia’s social contract. He even calls them names. He says they drink, gamble and fornicate. That’s not Islamic etiquette. And it is immoral. Muslims drink, gamble and fornicate and they have been expressly forbidden from engaging in all these vices yet they do. I’m not vouching for the Chinese doing this, but denouncing them as if that’s unique to them doesn’t help.

I have met with many Chinese and I have asked a number of them why they have not considered Islam. The response I always got was simple: I don’t want to be a Malay. In Malaysia, there is this obnoxious thing called masuk Melayu (to enter Malayness) where Malaysian Muslim converts have to become Malays culturally. Now this is both un-Islamic and dangerous.

No religion has given due attention to a convert’s culture than Islam. This was part of Islam’s accommodation mechanism that has served this great faith very well. While Islam itself is a culture, the universal culture that unites all Muslims, you will find that respective cultures of Muslim communities have coloured Islam. This is because culture always colours religion than religion colouring culture.

It was Scottish Orientalist and one time Harvard professor H.A.R. Gibb who in appreciation of Islam’s unique cultural accommodation of diverse people and communities wrote: “But Islam has a still further service to render to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a magnificent tradition of inter-racial understanding and cooperation. No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavors so many and so various races of mankind… Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of East and West is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relation with East. If they unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably enhanced. But if Europe, by rejecting the cooperation of Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue can only be disastrous for both.”

I’m a Muslim, my people are 100% Muslim (at least that’s what we claim), I’m Sunni and belong to the Shaf’I School yet my culture is so different from that of Muslim Malays who are Muslim, Sunni and Shaf’I (syafie) like me, but we are still Muslims despite our different cultures. One doesn’t become a better Muslim by embracing the culture of another community.

One is supposed to enter Islam and not a race, Islam repudiated race and it has no place in a supposedly believing society. Allah (sw) orders Muslims to enter Islam wholeheartedly. “O ye who believe; enter into Islam whole-heartedly; and follow not the footsteps of the Evil One.” (Holy Quran 2: 208)

Read more at: http://kenyannomad.blogspot.com/2010/06/failing-to-be-bridge-dr-mohd-ridhuan.html