Salafism a recipe for dangerous politics, expert warns

KUALA LUMPUR: A US professor who has studied Islamist movements said the rise of Salafism, whose followers claim to promote an austere version of Islam that is free of non-Islamic practices, will further complicate Malaysia’s already racialised politics.

Jeffrey Kenney, a professor of religious studies at the DePauw University in Indiana, said there seemed to be a symbiosis between Salafism and Malaysia’s politics, although the ideology does not fit naturally in the more accomodative Malay culture.

“Salafism intimidates and derogates the religious other and while Malays don’t believe in this as a whole, it is there,” he said.

He said Salafism plays into extremists that promote Malay supremacy using Umno as a base.

“People who aren’t part of the majority will not feel like part of society and while I don’t think this is Umno’s perspective, it becomes communicated sometimes either subtly or not subtly at all.”

Kenney said it was possible that Salafist influence made it easier for the popularity of controversial Indian Muslim preacher Dr Zakir Naik.

“He has a message which certainly resonates as he expresses purist ideas. He also loves to provoke,” Kenney told a forum in contemporary problems faced by Muslims, organised by the Islamic Renaissance Front.

Naik has courted controversy in Malaysia over statements seen as derogatory to non-Muslims, but has received support from the Malaysian government as well as local scholars and groups, including Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin and Malay pressure group Perkasa.

Salafist ideas are often linked to the more aggressive Wahhabi doctrine founded by 18th-century Arab scholar Muhammad Abdul Wahhab.

The Wahhabi doctrine is commonly regarded as the ideological foundation of modern Saudi Arabia, and has inspired many restrictive laws on women in the kingdom.

Kenney, who has researched Egyptian Islamist movements and sectarianist conflicts within Islam, said there was a difference between Salafism of the 19th century and the Salafism propagated in the 1960s to the 1990s.

He said modern Salafism is rooted in differences and antagonism not only with non-Muslims, but also within Islam itself. -FMT