I am writing in response to Dr Patricia Martinez's refutation of an alleged article posted on the internet on Malaysia being a Christian state which she said is aimed at hurting her academic reputation as being the only non-Muslim holder of a PhD in Islam in the country.

Martinez received her PhD from the Department of Religion at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA a few years ago. The Department does not award a PhD in Islam but a PhD in Religion.

Hence, it is proper that Martinez claims that she has a degree in religious studies rather than a degree in Islamic studies although she may have chosen a topic related to Islam as her area of concentration for the purpose of her comprehensive exam and her dissertation.

A student doing PhD studies in religion at Temple University, apart from choosing a religious tradition as his/her major religion of focus, must also specify one of three methodologies where his/herresearch in that religion is carried out; whether his/her research on that religion focuses

A person, particularly a non-Muslim in Malaysia, holding a PhD in Islam would definitely raise eyebrows as this implies that the person is competent in all the sciences pertaining to the study of Islam, including a very strong command of the Arabic language and a thorough grasp of the Quranic and Hadith sciences, which are prerequisites for competency in Islamic scholarship.

Martinez should therefore clarify under which area her research was carried out. No one person can have competency in all three methodologies.

The latter two, namely philosophy of religion and historical-textual analysis, require a high degree of command of the Arabic language and a sound understanding of Islamic philosophy — from the time of the rise of the science of theology called Kalam to the time of the refutation of the Peripatetic philosophers by al-Ghazali, followed by the rise of the mystical-philosophical tradition of Ibn Arabi and the passing of Islamic philosophy from the Muslim West in the hands of Averroes to the Muslim East that culminates with a particular philosophical tradition called Hikmah that coincides with the school of Isfahan which continues until this day in Persia.

I believe that Martinez's area of research falls under the social sciences methodology which does not require a strong command of the Arabic language nor thorough competency in Islamic philosophy.

As such, I believe it would be more fitting for her to claim to have done work on a topic relating to the Muslim society rather than making a general claim of possessing a PhD in Islam that raises the impression in the minds of people that she knows the scriptural, theological and philosophical dimensions of Islam very well.

Had she done that, I think she could have avoided the present dilemma that she is put into. To be fair to her, I think those responsible for putting up the article which she claims was not of her doing should have taken a more ethical and professional approach.

I know that Martinez has written on the issue of Malaysia as an Islamic State that use the well-known writing by the title of Al-Ahkam Al-Sultaniyyah .

Perhaps some quarters were not happy with what she has written on the subject. Nevertheless, the professional and scholarly approach is not to blasphemise someone and put that person to shame or discredit that person's reputation, but to take up the subject and analyse the issue in a scholarly manner.

Thus, for example, on the question of whether Malaysia is an Islamic state, one has to know in the first place how this idea of the state comes about.

Is this idea similar to the idea of governance during the prophet's time? Was the prophet laying down the principles of governance or did he fix a system of government that was complete and cannot be altered any more after his time?

How were the prophet's principles and values of governance relative and particular to the tribal society and culture of his time, and in what ways were they universal in their application to societies outside of Mecca and Medina, especially in lands following the Muslim conquest.

When Muawiyyah was appointed as governor of Damascus by Umar, did he throw out all the Byzantine laws that were applied to the subjects of the land when they were under the Romans and implementing the tribal laws of Arabia, or did he retain those principles and laws that were suitable to the people and culture of that land and introduce new principles and laws to replace those that were oppressive?

What is this political entity called the state? Is it a modern idea? If it is a modern idea, where did it originate from? In Europe? When? Why did this idea arise? For what purpose was this idea introduced? How has this idea become the notion and entity of the modern world we are living in now, what we call the nation-states? What about the idea of citizenship that comes with the nation-state? What is the significance of citizenship?

How is this comparable to the idea of the division of subjects into `Muslims', `Dhimmis' and `Harbis' in classical Islamic political theory? How can this division of subjects in a society fit into the modern notion of citizenship?

More importantly, how can this notion provide better justice in the protection of the rights of the individuals in a society compared to the idea of citizenship? What about the non-Muslims?

In classical times, non-Muslims can choose to move out of a Muslim land and go elsewhere to live if they think they cannot fit into the society which they live in because there is no idea of citizenship where a subject is attached to a particular land where he is born.

Supposing Malaysia implements this idea of the division of society into `Muslims' and `Dhimmis,' and many non-Muslims decide to leave the country, where can they go to? To Australia, to Europe? Who will accept them? Are they going to end up as refugees?

If this is the idea of Islamic state that Malaysia is going to be as imagined by some quarters, doesn't it give rise to injustice, which is fundamentally opposed to the very teaching of Islam that places justice at the heart of its religion.

At best, it only makes Islam a religion of a people known as Muslims, not a religion of the whole of mankind.