A patronising version of Islam

After nearly three decades, I went back to a primary school the other day to register my 5-year-old daughter for the 2015 session. The last time I was in the compound of a Sekolah Kebangsaan was when I was in Standard 6. Since then, I have probably gone in and out for only a few minutes to cast my vote for the general elections.

It was nostalgic, yet there was something different. The whole environment made it seem as if I was entering a school meant not for all races but for only Muslims, specifically Malays. I was greeted by a clutter of posters with Islamic greetings, and I could be forgiven for thinking that it was a madrasah.

In the school office, the intense Islamic cosmetics soon gave way to the normal government office atmosphere Malaysians have grown used to. A group of teachers were busy having their tea break, and just sat there eating even as I was handing over my forms and documents, which for some bizarre logic also included my marriage certificate.

As I came out of the school, I began to worry about my daughter. Will she be confused with the kind of “Islamicity” being hammered into pupils? God forbid, I told myself, that she would one day grow to be like the ministers’ wives, who laughed and giggled when a government “ustaz” spoke to them on the practices (and, yes, dangers) of “deviant” Shi’ites, thinking that their version of Islam was sent from the sky together with God’s revelation to the Prophet.

Yet, the truth is that this patronising behaviour of Malaysian Muslims is felt not only by unsuspecting children but also by Muslim men and women. I keep asking my non-Muslim friends why they complain so much. As Muslims, we are being patronised left and right, even when our doors are locked. They at least don’t have such nuisance. And the pressure is more felt by Muslims who know their stuff, who have a fairly good knowledge of Islam and its concepts, who practise the Islamic rituals and try as much to fulfil basic Islamic expectations.

Malaysia now has a countless number of institutions and concepts with the Islamic label. We have Islamic banks, Islamic pawn shops, a mushrooming education industry made up of Islamic pre-schools all the way to Islamic universities.  More recently, we have boutiques specialising in Islamic fashion, tour offices offering Islamic holiday packages, Islamic hotels and, of course, Islamic non-governmental organisations and professional bodies.

Switch on your TV in the morning and do some channel surfing and you will stumble upon at least two or three Islamic motivational programmes on Islamic channels, where one would be forgiven for thinking the speakers were comedians, until they break into a litany of Quranic quotes from memory.

So you see, Islam is a big business, bigger than its subsidiary halal industry, which has now grown into monstrous proportions banking on what seemed to be centuries of misinterpretation and half-baked understanding of what is lawful and what is not for a Muslim.

But as ironic as it may sound, these Islamic institutions are the biggest bane of the development of the Muslim mind. In the past, when one hardly saw Islam in the public domain, Muslims produced scholars and works which continue to be used today. It is as if demonstrating that the more Islam is pronounced in public institutions, the more backward is the state of affairs of the Muslim community.

The same plight befell Christianity when clergymen from Europe began to build Christian missionary schools at a time when Christianity was on its deathbed in Europe and when Western civilisation were shunning anything having to do with Christianity, which is now relegated to necklaces, birthday cards and car rear windscreens.

It does seem now that Muslims in Malaysia are fast going down this road. They want to be better Muslims – many out of guilt – but they don’t know how. One can’t help noticing that this is more pronounced now among those busy Muslims in middle-class housing areas, who seek solace in foreign preachers. Some come to mosques dressed in the typical Saudi-priest garb with a golden lining, imitating their newfound Youtube idols.

They buy Islamic books in English, printed in Jeddah on bulky glossy paper, many written with atrocious grammar and lacking substance. In them, the life of the Prophet and his companions are narrated and venerated, with the only difference between these books and pre-school books being the font size and vocabulary.

Meanwhile, the less rich can still have their Islamic entertainment in the form of sexual jokes disguised as knowledge by celebrity ustads at capacity stadiums, broadcast live of course.

Little wonder, then, that anything remotely Islam can be viewed with suspicion by non-Muslims. Are they to blame for not wanting to know more or to have anything to do with this Islam being paraded by salaried Malay bureaucrats, many of whom have no clue about others in Malaysian society.

And little wonder, then, that back in the school, adding my daughter’s name to a long list of names of children who would begin schooling two years from now, I could only see a long line of Ms in the column for race. – December 3, 2013.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.