Religious freedom and Malay Muslims
(CPI) – During the past few months, partly arising from the widespread public reaction to the hudud issue, a debate has taken place on the side in relation to the subject matter of apostasy among Muslims in the country. One of the most forthright public advocates for greater religious freedom for the Malays is the Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF), which unlike its sister Islamic NGO, Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma), has eschewed the tactics of crude Islamic sloganeering and race baiting, in favour of measured dialogue and discussion with other stakeholders (including non-Muslim) on contentious issues facing the Malay and Islamic community.
Although IRF has publicly declared on several occasions that Malaysia is a secular state and that it supports religious freedom for Malays and Muslims, there have been concerns that its support for the right of Malay and other Muslims to leave their faith is conditional, and that the explanations it has provided to date on the issue are disingenuous.
We reproduce below an exchange between the CPI, Dr Ahmad Farouk and a reader which we believe will be of interest to a larger circle of readers. We look forward to posting any further clarification that Dr Ahmad Farouk and his colleagues in IRF may have on the subject.
1. The response of Dr. Ahmad Farouk Musa, chairman of IRF, to the initial communication from CPI on the subject of whether the IRF is “prepared to publicly voice that Malaysian Muslims should be allowed to leave their religion and to be free thinkers or to convert to any other religion of their choosing?”
Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa’s reply
“Yes…. I have said this publicly on many occasions like the forum at the Bar Council on ‘How Secular Is Our Constitution’ and the most recently at the forum organized by Pemuda PAS Lembah Pantai on Human Rights with panelists from PAS, Isma and IRF. You can read the report here ….”
2. Reader’s initial response to IRF’s position on apostasy in Malaysia
Read between the lines. Farouk argues for space to enable a Muslim to practice their religion independently and unimpeded by the State (and presumably unimpeded by the ulama and Islamic peer pressure from PAS and fellow Malays). He dare not state that Muslims should be free, in that space, to select another belief system should they so desire. The space is meant to validate Islam as an individual belief system, independent of external stimuli, fine and noble as far as it goes.
But that’s as far as it goes. Farouk reaches the limit of what Islam can sustain. What he advocates is what Turkey had from 1960-1990, where Turks practiced Islam mostly on their own volition. What Farouk is unprepared to advocate is the right to apostasise, as Kemal Ataturk was the only Muslim leader, in history, to allow under his secularised Islam, the right of a Turkish Muslim to become a Christian, a few of whom did. Indonesia has such apostasies, but they are illegal (even in ‘moderate’ Indonesia) and are done quietly. Indonesia is not quite as liberal as many Malaysians think it is, simply because Indonesia is more liberal than Malaysia overall.
How can any practicing Muslim advocate the right to apostasise, and remain a non-heretic? It is impossible, because Islam has no Vatican II. It did not undergo a liturgical and philosophical revolution that Catholicism had undergone, as well as Judaism (but more slowly). Ataturk did not argue for the right to apostasise from an Islamic perspective; on the contrary, he bravely (and rather riskily) argued that Islam impeded the HUMAN right to choose their religion, which was between God and man, and not through the vehicle of an organised religion. You can see how Ataturk was a brilliant man ahead of his time, for liberals and free-thinkers, and the bane of existence, for the Turkish ulama and devout Muslims.
It is no coincidence that Farouk’s group is the ‘Islamic Renaissance Front’. His goal, which is to liberate Muslims from the State and from ideological interference, is similar to that of people like the late Gus Dur, in Indonesia, and other Islamic reformers, like Said Gannouchi and some other Arabs. Their goal IS NOT to liberate the Muslim from Islam, as that would break at least one of the five pillars of Islam. They cannot do that, unless they themselves are prepared to apostasise (and never mind that most of the ulama in Malaysia don’t have a clue about Islam at all, based on some of the patently false statements they have made about the Quran and Islamic history). In order to allow for apostasy, the Quran and the Hadiths have to be re-interpreted as allowing for that. I am unfamiliar with any passage in the Quran that would allow apostasy, and I do not believe any Islamic scholar would ever advocate it.
YES, the Quran states that religion is not a compunction, and those who advocate the right to convert out of Islam, have quoted that passage as justification. The rebuttal has been exactly what Farouk is saying (which I do not agree is a real rebuttal) that what the passage ‘really’ means is that “NO person can force Islam and how it should be practiced on any Muslim, who should choose their own way of practicing Islam, as long as it is consistent with the Quran and the Hadiths”.
Well on that basis, it could mean simply that Islam should be practiced unimpeded by external factors, and I understand that Farouk then would oppose Hudud and the stricter applications of Shari’a Law. My answer? Any reform is better than none, but unless you allow the right of a human being to pick their faith or pick non-faith (agnosticism and atheism), how big is that ‘space’ you claim to provide the individual to have the freedom of free will and convictions? Ms. Jailani who became Ms. Joy, obviously felt that space was not big enough for her. As each person must choose their own space, is it too rude of me to say that Farouk is engaging in a bit of sophistry?
