13 - Islamic Praxis and Theory: Negotiating Orthodoxy in Contemporary Malaysia

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Malaysia, and the greater Malay world, has a rich history of syncretic religious and cultural traditions that have seen disparate theological norms and theories wedded with culturally inflected actions and practices. Islam in the Malay world, accordingly, has a rich syncretic and pluralistic history (Ellen 1983). Traders and Sufi missionaries (Islamic scholars of the Muslim mystical and spiritual tradition) are credited with bringing Islam to the Malay world from India, China, Persia, and the Arab peninsula and as such introducing a range of interpretations as well as practices in a diffuse manner that only slowly and regionally displaced earlier practices of animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism (Federspiel 2007). Sufism is attuned to otherness and a communion with the divine that goes beyond prayer or orthodox Islamic praxis and thus is seen as instrumental in the process of conversion from other spiritual traditions to Islam. The mode of transmission is debated with some arguing that Islam penetrated the region often through elites who acted as advisors to royal households (Milner 1982), whereas others focus on the emancipatory power of Islam for ordinary Malays (Wertheim 1956). Another debate focuses on whether it was traders or Sufi missionaries who were the first and most important for Islam's successful entrée into the region (van Leur 1955; Johns 1961). One moment many agree upon as pivotal is the conversion of the ruler of Malacca in the fifteenth century (even if debates still surround whether the first or second ruler converted and precisely when). Upon the ruler's conversion, his subjects would also convert; however, religious praxis and cosmological thinking were often syncretic, merged, and connected by adherents, religious leaders, and rulers. Thus, a long history of religious pluralism and hybridity continued in the Malay world with the advent of Islam.

Over time, Islam in the Malay world became interwoven with local adat (custom) into regionally distinct traditions that often accommodated pre-existing beliefs, rituals, and customs. These processes have produced an abundance of locally distinct customary practices that complement Islam (Sharifah Zaleha Syed Hassan 2000). There continues a long and sometimes fierce debate about the impact of Islam on the Malay world, its rulers, and people.