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December 2, 2008

Exclusive: Interfaith Dialogue – A Dangerous Road down a Slippery Slope

Susanne M. Reyto

I recently attended the pre-event to the new nationwide “Twinning” program, “Confronting Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism Together.” Fifty Synagogues and 50 mosques from around the country met for interfaith dialogue. The program was described as, “American Jews and Muslims, reaching beyond the Middle East conflict, are joining hands to battle prejudices within and against their communities.” While this sounds reasonable, there are potentially more problems than solutions.

Anti-Semitism and hostility toward Jews predates the Arab-Israeli conflict and has been around for centuries. Jews have suffered, have been persecuted, yet have never advocated killing, blowing up mosques or sending suicide bombers to Saudi Arabia. Their goal is to protect Israel and its people, to contribute to a better world by their scientific, technological and medical knowledge and to enrich the world with their literary and musical talents.

Islamophobia, the fear of Islam, is a newly coined word as a result of words and deeds prior to, but particularly since 9/11. The West is constantly being threatened, not only by radicals but also by Iran’s leader. It is not bigoted or racist to fear their actions.

The program was held at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills in cooperation with the King Fahad Mosque of Culver City, both in the Los Angeles area. An additional sponsor was the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, MPAC, which according to their website is “A public service agency working for the ‘civil rights’ of American Muslims and for the integration of Islam into American pluralism.” Their origin was the Muslim Brotherhood but of course that is never mentioned.

As an immigrant and naturalized American, I have a problem with such an organization – why should they need such an agency? What civil rights have they been denied? When immigrants arrived in this country before, they simply assimilated and no organization was established to fight for their rights. They accomplished their goals by hard work. I am one of those proud and grateful naturalized citizens.

In her opening remarks, the host, Rabbi Laura Geller, noted, “This is the first time that mosques and synagogues are giving their full support, and we are in this for the long haul.” Then she introduced the Executive Director of the Mosque, Usman Madha who also expressed his hope in his welcome. “Together, Jews and Muslims can send a message to the purveyors of hate and bigotry.” Then with extended arm and clenched fist he led the 200 or so attendees in a rousing “Yes, we can; yes, we can” – the Obama campaign’s mantra.

The first speaker was Rabbi Marc Schneir of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding who co-created the Twinning Program, and the one who brought the two congregations together. He urged Jews to reclaim some of the passion they invested in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that a similar outreach to Muslims “can serve as a paradigm for Europe,” and perhaps even for the Middle East. He overlooked an important fact, this paradigm created the current European conditions where locals have less rights and protection than Muslim immigrants.

The main speaker was Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, head Imam of the Islamic Society of Orange County, California, and a former president of the Islamic Society of North America. He mentored and helped convert Adam Gadahn from Judaism to Islam. Following his conversion, Gadahn traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train at Al-Qaeda camps and later became an Al Qaeda spokesman.  

Both speakers expressed their hope for better understanding as a result of these interfaith dialogues. But before we sit down to interfaith dialogues, we must establish open dialogue requiring total honesty from both sides. This may be difficult for many Muslims because according to Islam, followers can say one thing and do the opposite – or, say one thing to us and say exactly the opposite to their people in their language. It is perfectly permissible to lie or deceive as long as you advance the cause. This practice is called taqiyya.

In Koran 3:28,” it is written, “Whoever at any time or place fears their [infidels’] evil, may protect himself through outward show.” Muhammad’s companions said “Let us smile to the face of some people while our hearts curse them.” or “Doing taqiyya is acceptable till the Day of Judgment [i.e., in perpetuity].”

Taqiyya is fundamentally important in Islam and practiced by all sects. Since Islam is not only a religion but a political ideology, Taqiyya is prevalent in modern day politics in Arab countries. Under these circumstances, how can there be open and totally honest dialogue?

The Temple event was a perfect example. There was no dialogue, challenge or Q and A – only presentations from the podium. These programs must be interactive in order to offer some form of education to the public. Sadly, many Jewish leaders

do not recognize the danger of uninformed and one sided interfaith dialogue.

Unfortunately, those Jewish leaders who have or will participate in these programs must be naïve if they don’t recognize that we are often being used. We offer the other side a platform to twist and transform meanings of their behavior. They sound kind and peaceful – meanwhile, they teach hatred and fill textbooks with inaccuracies. Coming together to fight Islamophobia and anti-Semitism is shameful. They cannot and should not be equated.

Jews have been ridiculed, mocked and were subject of derogatory cartoons, yet they never advocated killing anybody. When Danish cartoons mocked Mohammed, the Islamic community revolted, people were killed, others threatened, and for fear of death, most countries didn’t even dare to publish them.

By their blind participation, the Jewish community allows the radicals to gain strength and support. This facilitates the election of more and more politicians who promote the introduction of Sharia, Islamic law, into our lives. Sharia law is not compatible with our Constitution. It is not a choice, but our duty and obligation to protect our laws.

Those who want to practice Sharia law should return to their own country. In the United States our legal system does not differentiate for various nationalities. We must put aside political correctness and use freely the terms, “terrorists” and “Jihad,” because it is our lives, our freedom and our liberty that are being threatened.

Having lived under communism, it is truly frightening to see the similarity between the encroachment of Communism into Hungarian politics after World War II and Islamism/Sharia law in this country currently. In 1945 when Russia liberated Europe from the Nazis, they attempted to take over but didn’t have enough support and political strength. Slowly and steadily – just like the Islamic community does now – they established their foothold by replacing small party leaders with their representatives and within three years they were able to build a coalition of parties, eventually winning a majority to rule in 1948. Hungary, my birthplace, and other Eastern European countries have never been the same. All totalitarian regimes rely on brainwashing the uninformed, who are gullible into believing their message.   

The Jewish community has always reached out, offered help and assistance to the needy or downtrodden. Once they were no longer needed, they were pushed aside, hurt and even persecuted. It seems that many Jews haven’t learned from past experiences. They still do what is considered to be the right way to heal the world, the practice of Tikkun Olam. There are only 15 million Jews but there are 1.5 billion Muslims throughout the world.  Jews have helped and contributed greatly to the world while some Muslims seem to promote hatred and destruction.

While Islam is considered one of the Abrahamic religions, it preaches the opposite of Christianity or Judaism. The Koran says, “Unbelievers, I do not worship what you worship, nor do you worship what I worship. You have your own religion, and I have mine.” (Koran 109:1) While neither the Hebrew Bible (Torah) nor the Christian Bible promote alienation from people of other faiths, the Koran admonishes the faithful. “Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends, they are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number.” (Koran 5:51)

We in the West live in democracies, have choices, and allow free religious practice for all faiths, while Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries forbid open worship by Christians and Jews. In most Muslim countries it is a capital crime for a Muslim to convert to Christianity. They believe in death, while we believe in life. To come together and equate our lives, our beliefs and our deeds is not only naïve but dangerous.

We know the majority of Muslims are peaceful, but approximately 10%, about 150 million, are radical. Unfortunately, the peaceful, moderate Islamic community did not condemn the attacks prior to 9/11 or since. To mention a few, in 1996 the Khobar Towers incident in Saudi Arabia, in 1998 the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole incident in 2000 in the Yemeni port of Aden, or more recently, in 2008, the US Embassy attack in Yemen. After all these they remained silent. Are they afraid to speak out or are they in silent support. They continue to attend their mosques and send their children to schools where they are continuously taught hatred and untruths.

It seems inconceivable that so many Rabbis accept this. Are they misinformed, uninformed or worse yet, what is behind it?  They seem to protect those who seek to harm us, threaten our freedom and our lifestyle? What will it take for them to recognize the problem? Do we need another 9/11? We expect our Rabbis to lead us in the right direction. It is their obligation to protect us and to know the difference between good and evil. America offers the luxury of living in a dream world, but we need to live in the real world.

We must learn from the past and be prepared for the future.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Susanne M Reyto is a speaker and award winning author of Pursuit of Freedom: A True Story of the Enduring Power of Hope and Dreams. Her horrific personal experiences of surviving Communism in Hungary energize her mission. Her website is www.pursuitoffreedom.com .

Family Security Matters » Publications » Exclusive: Interfaith Dialogue – A Dangerous Road down a Slippery Slope

By Valentina Colombo
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, November 25, 2008

“I am fully ready to have a public debate with Tariq Ramadan to make it patently clear that the man does not know 1% of what a world-class scholar must know.”
This challenge comes from another Tarek, the Egyptian intellectual Tarek Heggy. He finds it a mystery why Europe keeps on listening to people like Ramadan and why many European intellectuals and politicians consider him the best Islamic intellectual.
This is the reason why I asked Heggy to comment on some quotations from Ramadan’s speeches, books and videos. Here you find an illuminating clarification of the Islamist intellectual movement.

Tariq Ramadan:“For years I have heard people saying: ‘Be careful with Tariq Ramadan because he has one message in French; and a different one for when he speaks Arabic in the suburbs.’ Go and try to speak Arabic in the suburbs of France and you won’t have an audience because they don’t know Arabic.”

Tarek Heggy: Like a number of Muslim Brothers, Mr. Ramadan has two messages: one for the non-Arabic speaking audience (such as his views about physical punishment) and different messages in Arabic. The difference between the spirit of these messages is enormous … one would realize the dangers of this phenomenon only if equipped with good command of Arabic and knowledge of Sharia. The only way to reveal this “academic lie” is by directing certain questions to Mr. Ramadan and his peers such as:

a) What do think of the Khilafah system?
b) How you describe the so-called martyrs-operations?
c) Is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a model that you approve?
d) Can we establish in the 21^st century an international law and a legal system based on Shari’a?
e) What do think of the status of women in the Islamic jurisprudence and in Muslim societies?
f) What would be the status of non-Muslims in an Islamic state?
g) Can a non-Muslim be the head of the state in Egypt - where your parents came from?
h) What is your overall judgment on Western Civilization and its value system?

I would love to have a public debate with Mr. Ramadan to enable the civilized societies to see what lies under the façade this gentleman and his peers have adopted – and to show people how incomplete (and deformed) their intellectual formations are.

T.R. To Ernesto Ferrero, director of Turin Book Fair, in 2008 with Israel guest of honor: “This is where we deeply disagree: to choose the State of Israel while you know what was, and still is, happening in the occupied territories - and just after the international community, almost unanimously, condemned the Gaza’s blockage - is neither wise nor fair towards the Palestinian and their dignity. I am sorry to repeat, you took a wrong and an unwise decision.[...] A call for a boycott was launched before I was asked about it and I simply decided to support this call not to attend. It seemed to me it was a question of conscience and dignity.

T.H.: Mr. Ramadan, what is the relationship between what you have said about the suffering of the Palestinian people and a book-fair in Italy? Apart from this book-fair boycott (BTW, did the Arab boycott ever yield any significant fruits?), what are your views concerning the Israeli/Arab conflict? Do you favor the route of Anwar al-Sadat, i.e. a political settlement to the conflict via civilized negotiations and therefore you accept that as the Palestinians have the right to have their own state, Israel has an equal right to exist? Or you favor “the military solution” that Hamas and Hezbollah advocate? What is your description of the suicide attacks committed by Palestinians against Israeli civilians?

T.R.: “Muhammad married a Jewish woman and he even protected Jewish tribes.”

T.H.: This is partially correct. The Prophet took a Jewish lady who was, by our modern terminology, a POW as a wife. Though I read all the main Sira books, I have not come across the so-called “protection rendered to some Jewish tribes” - we shall be grateful to Mr. Ramadan if he could guide us to the sources that he depended on, in due course. 

T.R.: “Today Europe is Dar al-shahada.”

T.H.: Saying that Europe today is dar al-shahada” confirms that Ramadan has a sick nostalgia. This passion to use medieval terminology is (in my view) a strong and patent sign of a mind that imagines that a certain era or period of history was a paradise: its heroes, language and concepts were “Angelic.” The term dar al-shahada represents this sick relationship with the past (or with a specific epoch): a sentiment that has no scientific bases whatsoever. More dangerously, it motivates young and semi-educated people who were raised in total isolation from the contemporary age to endeavor to replicate what cannot be (by any means) replicated. The term (also) could mean “the place for martyrdom.”

T.R.: “To criticize the religion and Muslims is not Islamophobia; a critical attitude towards religion must be accepted. But to criticize someone or discriminate against them only because they are Muslim-this is what we can call Islamophobia, this is a kind of racism.”

T.H.: This is great Mr. Ramadan. But while we are aware of thousands of books that were written by Jewish scholars criticizing Judaism and thousands of books that were written by Christian scholars criticizing many Christianity related subjects - please give me only ten titles of books written by Muslim scholars in which they criticized their own religion without being considered to be infidels by most of the Muslim clergy who then call out for these heretics to be killed if not by their own governments, then by volunteers.

T.R.: “The worst that can happen to a democratic society is to see its citizens being transformed into passive victims paralyzed by fear. The proponents of the global clash of civilizations theory shall win if we accept to be individually colonized by emotional caricatures and suspicion towards people of other faiths and cultures.” 

T.H.: This is absolutely correct. But not in the way that Mr. Ramadan suggests. Will he ever dare to declare that Saudi Arabia, a country that invested billions of dollars on spreading its own interpretation of Islam, is the society that his words above describe – a society that has established a peerless case of duality in all values and behaviors; a society that sends its children each Friday to watch the authority representatives while whipping people, cutting their hands and legs and/or stoning men or women to death?

T.R.: “If a law already exists, why a new law in 2004? This is because crucifixes were accepted under the old law. The new law was passed because of France’s Muslim presence. The reality is that France’s secular tradition is being adapted to target a specific group. French society is going through something of an identity crisis. I have told all French girls that, if they have to make a choice between going to school and wearing the headscarf, they must choose school. Just go. This is the law. But at the same time, being a democrat means that you continue to discuss the merits of the law and call for change.”

T.H.: Mr. Ramadan asks “why a new law in 2004?” The answer is patently clear: “because of the rapidly growing danger that nobody could neglect or ignore.”

T.R.: About Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab: “We cannot deny that his intervention in Arabia was often a kind of a war, but at the same time the reason of his enterprise was filled with a will of renewal.”

T.H.: I have read everything Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab wrote (13 booklets) and read also all that has been written about this ruthless man and found him nothing but a very shallow man calling for destruction and death. Every expert in Islamic jurisprudence knows that while Ibn Hanbal represents the most conservative figure among the Sunni Jurisprudents, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim represent the extreme wing among the Hanbali sect followers and the ones who gave “the text” the largest role and minimized the role of the human mind. As a semi-educated follower of this line, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab reached an unprecedented level of conservatism, narrow-mindedness, hatred to all forms of OTHERS and rejection of modernity.

Having read a great deal of what Ramadan has written, I have no doubt that he neither read (in full) Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim nor the 13 booklets of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Ramadan simply parrots the Wahhabi claim that Abd al-Wahhab called for “renewal.” In reality, Abd al-Wahhab called for a literal return to the year 632 AD.

T.R.: “I have said that I am against the implementation of stoning, death penalties and corporal punishments. In Islamic-majority countries, this is a minority position. What we cannot deny is that these punishments are in the texts. What I am saying to Muslim scholars is that today’s conditions are different, so in this context you cannot implement these punishments. So we have to stop. This is the moratorium.”

T.H.: The question is not the implementation of physical criminal/penal punishments. The question is simply as follows: if you do reject the Islamic criminal punishment – do you also reject the rest of Sharia? For if you argue that physical punishment is no longer suitable in the modern age, what about civil law, marriage, commercial and international relations?

T.R.: About Hasan al-Banna, his grand-father and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood: “He is very badly known to the West since he is known only from the words of British colonizers and Zionists.”

T.H.: Mr. Ramadan should pray day and night that the British do not release all of their documents that are relevant to Hassan al-Banna. If they do, the world would realize why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in the Egyptian city of Ismailia in 1928. I know from reliable documentation that the idea was mainly a British idea fully supported by King Fouad I of Egypt. They came to the conclusion that after all minority parties failed to eliminate the overwhelming majority of the Wafd party that was leading the national movement in Egypt since 1919 that only the use of Islam would work.

This began a series of mistakes that helped to create the phenomenon of the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, which was itself the beginning of the march of terror that led to 9/11. In this case, nobody expects Mr. Ramadan to give an objective judgment about the father of his own mother and to condemn the assassination of Egypt’s prime minister (al-Niqrashi) in December 1948 which was led by his Mr. Ramadan’s own grandfather.

T.R.: “I don’t work for the British or any other government. I am open to any kind of dialogue as long as the rules are clear: free to speak out, free to criticize, free to resist and free to support when it is right. Muslims should stop thinking that to talk is to compromise, but the black and white approach is often the reality of Muslims today.”

T.H.: That’s great Mr. Ramadan - let us have a public debate anywhere in Europe or in the USA. I did my own survey to your writings and speeches and came to a patently clear conclusion that your main qualification is that you are the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder (with the British Embassy in Egypt in 1928) of the MB’s organization and that your knowledge base is therefore distorted.

T.R.: “As to Hizb ut-Tahrir, I disagree with them but I think that as long as they are not speaking illegally, they must be free to speak and the society and Muslims should be free to respond. Hizb ut-Tahrir is not calling Muslims to kill or to act illegally, so it must be heard and challenged. To ban is the wrong way.”

T.H.: You are most mistaken, Mr. Ramadan. It is time for Europe to get up and protect democracy from all those who are trying to utilize “the tools of democracy” to establish a system that is by all civilized definitions anti-democratic. The basic beliefs of Hizbu al-Tahrir are entirely anti-modern, anti-democratic and anti-western. The freedom of the enemies of freedom MUST come to an end. Why doesn’t Hizbu al Tahrir move from Europe to the Saudi capital?

T.R.: “Firstly, we have to be accountable when attending international interfaith meetings. If we engage in dialogue only at conferences, then we are not living up to our spiritual commitment. We must be committed to go back to our communities and share what we have learned and put our words into actions.”

T.H.: The basic requirements for a free and open dialogue among the followers of the three monotheistic religions are not (yet) mature on the side of Muslim intellectuals who still lack the minimum respect of OTHERS and of their freedom to be different. Just look at the speeches of all the Saudis who participated in the recent conference in Spain that was held on a call from the Saudi Monarch.

FrontPage Magazine

by James Zogby

(Tuesday, December 2, 2008)

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“None of these incidents passed unnoticed, with the mainstream media writing extensively on each, sometimes causing even greater concern for Arab Americans and American Muslims who wanted to be part of the election ‘08 story, but not in this manner.”

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In looking back at the now-completed Presidential contest it is striking to note the degree to which Arabs, Muslims, and Islam itself, were factored into the race.

While Arab Americans and American Muslims were, in fact, deeply involved in the election (especially on the Democratic side, where the Obama campaign hired Arab American staff, formed an official Arab American committee, launched a website, etc.), more often than not these communities found themselves (and, in the case of Muslims, their religion) slighted or used in hurtful ways.

A principal precipitator of much of this was, of course, the mere presence of Barack Obama on the Democratic ticket, and the efforts by his opponents to negatively exploit his name, parentage, and upbringing. Early in the campaign, emails began virally circulating alleging not only that Obama was a Muslim, but a “secret Muslim” with a dark agenda to undermine America. The stories were bizarre, but even the most bizarre tale told often enough and echoed on talk radio, can take hold and be accepted as truth- at least by some. The story morphed into different forms, and so what began as “Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim” became “He’s not a real American”, or “He’s an Arab” became “He doesn’t share our values”, etc. These stories, if not countered, might have proved fatal to his candidacy.

In their zeal to stomp out this smear campaign, the Obama camp spared no effort, at times reacting with what amounted to an excessive aversion to all things Muslim. It was this that prompted two Obama staffers, on their own initiative, to ask two hijab-wearing women to move their seats out of camera sight at a June 2008 event. And while churches and synagogues were venues for campaign events, Muslims took note that mosques were avoided. It was this same degree of excess that caused, at the first hint of controversy, the hasty dismissal of a young Arab American Muslim who had been hired

Finally, toward the very end of the campaign, Republican Vice- Presidential candidate Sarah Palin attempted to smear Obama on the basis of his friendship with Rashid Khalidi, a distinguished Columbia University Professor who had once been a neighbor of Obama’s in Chicago. Apparently, for Palin, the mere fact that Khalidi is Palestinian provided sufficient grounds to argue that Obama “consorted with terrorists and terrorist supporters.” Once again, the Obama campaign quickly separated themselves from the story — albeit a bit too abruptly for some Arab Americans.

None of these incidents passed unnoticed, with the mainstream media writing extensively on each, sometimes causing even greater concern for Arab Americans and American Muslims who wanted to be part of the election ‘08 story, but not in this manner.

The assault on Islam wasn’t limited to blind emails smearing Obama, or baseless attacks by his opponents. It also came in the form of a frontal assault on the religion, itself. Early in the campaign, when John McCain needed to shore up his support from the Evangelical Christian Right, two pastors associated with that wing of the Republican Party came to his side. Capturing the endorsements of the Reverends Rod Parsley and John Hagee was initially viewed by McCain as a coup; but as media reports about their bizarre theologies and Islamophobic attitudes (as well as their hostility to Catholics, Jews and others) proliferated, McCain was forced to renounce the endorsements of both.

From late summer through November a shadowy group with ties to the Republican Party (and also to an Israel-based charity) attempted, in their own way, to insert Islam into the campaign. Beginning at both conventions, they were the responsible for the distribution of tens of millions of copies of an Islamophobic DVD called “Obssession: Radical Islam’s War against the West”. In September alone, the group sent out 28 million copies of “Obsession” to households in battleground states playing the fear card to influence voters. The group has strong ties to the above-mentioned Reverend Hagee and his Christians United for Israel, and the National Jewish Republican Coalition - both of which also engaged in Muslim-baiting tactics this year in an effort to influence voters.

There was more. Arab-baiting was used in a number of Congressional campaigns, and by a plethora of right-wing bloggers and talk radio hosts - all of whom worked overtime in an effort to impede Arab American or Muslim involvement and/or smear Islam.

It was hurtful and harmful, to be sure; but the real story of 2008 is that none of this dissuaded Arab Americans and American Muslims from playing a significant role in this year’s elections, from the Presidential contest to state and local races. In the process of shrugging off troubling slights, the communities were strengthened, deepening their roots in the political process. And it is important to note that, in no instance, was this Arab- or Muslim-bashing successful, since from Barack Obama on down, candidates, who were targeted, defeated their opponents.

Arab and Muslim-Bashing Failed in 2008 (by James Zogby) - Media Monitors Network (MMN)

Muslims for freedom and enlightenment
Himanshu Bhatt
ABOUT three years ago, a handful of Muslim academics from disparate countries in Southeast Asia linked up and realised how similar their ideas were on the direction of Islam in their various states. They then became inspired to build a channel to keep in touch, in spite of their cultural differences, whether they spoke Tagalog, Bisayan, Thai or Malay.

The upshot of it all was a series of round-table meetings and study trips under a network called the “Southeast Asian Muslims for Freedom and Enlightenment” (Seamus). Comprising eminent Muslim activists and scholars, the network hailed itself as a historic “reform-oriented” movement; its purpose, to promote human rights, gender equality, pluralism, peaceful conflict resolutions and civil society, among Muslim communities across the region.

But as the meetings progressed, they threw open a whole new gamut of concerns, with the representatives confronting commonalities so identical and urgent. Chief among these, they found, was an overarching concern about their indigenous Southeast Asian cultures in the face of heightened fundamentalism in the Muslim world.

“In all our discussions, one issue that the participants brought to the table was of Middle-Eastern interpretation and its negative impact on local culture,” said Amina Rasul, a convenor for the Philippines Council for Islam and Democracy. “In Southeast Asia, we did not have this kind of situation before. But now more and more, year by year, people are donning Arab garb to show they are Muslim.”

“And as this goes on, the trend is going to impact the songs we sing, the traditional dances we have,” added Amina who hails from Mindanao and is a former presidential adviser in the cabinet of Fidel Ramos.

“And so we said we should be wary of Arabic interpretations. We should differentiate our cultures from Arab customs.”

And when the network recently held an unpublicised meeting in Penang, the delegates who had converged here found the mutual concern about their Southeast Asian identities become even more articulated. The meeting was co-organised with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

According to Raja Juli Antoni, executive director of the Jakarta-based Maarif Institute, the adoption of Islam had for centuries never unduly affected the rich local traditions of the Southeast Asians. Because Islam entered the region peacefully, not through war or conquest, it seeped into peoples’ lives without disturbing their cultures, integrating side-by-side with local “Malayness”, he says.

But increasingly, just over the last decade or two, there has been a growing tendency to abandon locally evolved traditions, fearing that they are “un-Islamic”.

“We cannot deny that the Quran and the Hadith are written in Arabic, but we have to make a distinction between Islamic values and Arab traditions,” he says.

His countryman, Luthfi Assyaukanie, chairman of the Liberal Islam Network, finds it ironic that it was the very democracy introduced in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto that allowed radical Islamic groups to grow over the last ten years.

“There is a contest of ideas between liberals and radicals … And the conservatives are using this freedom to impose Islamic agenda.

“If the agenda is good, that it deals with poverty, the environment, with quality of human life, and so on, then it’s fine. But if your agenda is going to discriminate people, humiliate particular groups, then it needs to be looked at.

“In the past we were wiser … But it’s the same problem in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and south Thailand,” Luthfi says.

Malaysian Institute for Policy Research executive director Khalid Jaafar insists that a powerful reconciliation between the two worlds – the traditions of Southeast Asia and the values of Islam – can be attained.

And it can be found in many of the ancient Islamic texts themselves. “The intellectual foundations are there,” he says, stressing that the religion accommodates diversity while embracing different cultures. “What we want to do is to first understand the rich resources available within the spectrum of Islamic thought that have emerged historically.

“We need to be aware of the contemporary challenges faced by Islam, and look at how the deep spiritual resources can help to deal with the challenges.”

And the intellectuals maintain there is hope for another dawn of Islam in Southeast Asia. “There has got to be a point where we see that we are in fact Malay, Indonesian, Thai or Bangsa Moro,” says Amina Rasul. “And that we see to it that our cultures are not erased, even as we follow our Islamic faith.”

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