In his highly influential work, the Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamisation of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago (1963), Syed Naquib al-Attas had argued that 'the coming of Islam, seen from the perspective of modern times, was the most momentous event in the history of the Malay archipelago'.(1)
It is understandable that Naquib al-Attas would have qualified the coming of Islam to the Malay world in such terms, bearing in mind that in the work of the man (who later became the intellectual mentor to a whole generation of Islamist scholars, students and activists in the country) we find traces of a form of reversed Orientalism at work and that his aim was to introduce a radical break between the pre-Islamic past of the Malays and their Islamic present in the here-and-now.(2)
Putting aside the obvious agenda-setting that is apparent in al-Attas's work, we nevertheless need to point out two problematic elements in his thesis. The first, is the claim that the coming of Islam represented a radical break from the pre-Islamic past.
The second, is the implicit claim that Islam arrived in its totality and was presented to the Malay world as a complete and totalised discourse with clearly identifiable boundaries of its own.
Neither of these claims, implicit in the works of Naquib al-Attas and many contemporary Islamist scholars, stands before the light of close scrutiny.
Yet, to engage in any debate of this sort today would mean getting oneself involved in a highly contested dispute that has taken on a broader political dimension as well.
For the re-writing of the pre-Islamic Malay past has become a matter of political interest and it is not an accident that the revisionist attempt to re-inscribe the story of how the Malay people took off in the 1970s when the anti-Orientalist debate engulfed the academic world in Malaysia as well. (Edward Said's ' Orientalism ' was published in 1978, the same year that Naquib al-Attas's ' Islam and Secularism ' was published in Malaysia by Abim)
What complicates matters further, is the lack of reliable material and resources that one could arm oneself with, should one decide to join in the fray.
Jaundiced view
It is therefore timely and fortunate indeed that the Malaysian Sociological Research Institute (MSRI) has managed to put together a collection of important writings by the prominent historian and scholar of Malay studies Rudolf Aernoud Kern in a volume entitled ' The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago '.
For years, the writings of men like R A Kern were vilified and condemned on the grounds that they were tainted by Eurocentric and Orientalist biases.
One of the saddest (and surely unintended) consequences of Edward Said's ' Orientalism ' was that it opened the way for a flood of anti-Western polemics from the pens of non-European authors and scholars who used it as a justification to demolish the entire order of knowledge that had been constructed during the colonial era earlier.
While it is true to say that much of the scholarship produced in the West about the rest of the world during the 19th to early 20th century was indeed shaped by a jaundiced view of all things Asian and Muslim, it is also important to state that much of that scholarship was also carried out with great care and attention to detail.
In a radical gesture of throwing the baby out with the bath water, post-colonial scholarship in many ex-colonial states ended up rejecting anything and everything that was written by writers from the West.
This meant that overnight, the works of men like R A Kern were discredited on the grounds that they contained traces of ethnocentrism, eurocentrism and prejudice towards Islam and Muslim culture.
Equally biased
Sadly, the rejection of Western scholarship did not lead to the opening of the minds of the ex-colonial subjects themselves.
In too many cases, the rejection of the Western canon merely led to the creation of other equally hegemonic and static discourses that were rooted in notions of essentialism and authenticity.
Much of the writing that has emerged in the ex-colonial societies have proven to be equally biased, essentialist and in some cases downright inaccurate and caricatural.(3)
The republication of the essays of R A Kern therefore comes at an opportune moment when the debate over an Islamic state and Islamic society is once again on the cards in Malaysia.
For what his writings show is that the coming of Islam to the Malay world and the Islamisation of the Malay society was indeed a long, complex and highly differentiated process that did not take Islam and Muslim identity as fixed and stable categories.
Kern's close readings of early Malay and Indonesian Muslim texts, social rituals and rites clearly show the plasticity of Islamic discourse that has been at the core of Islamic civilisation itself.
The spread of Islam was due in part to the fact that as a discursive economy, it was open and flexible, and that its borders were porous and ever-shifting.
The evidence of early Islam in the Malay archipelago testify to this as well. In his important essay on the famous Trengganu stone- which till today is referred to as proof of Islam's arrival to the Malay peninsula in the 14th century- Kern notes that the impact of Islam was a subtle one.
The Trengganu stone bears an inscription in Jawi script. While this has been used time and again as a reference point to mark the immaculate arrival of Islam in the Malay world, few have cared to point out that the inscription itself does not mention the word 'Allah' but rather refers to God as ' Dewata Mulia Raya '- a phrase that is totally Sanskrit in origin.
Key concepts
R A Kern is trying to show that Islam's early arrival did not come as a forceful impact that marked a traumatic break from the past, despite the claims of many an Islamist scholar today.
Similar observations are made by R A Kern in his writings about the Islamisation of Aceh, South Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi and the Malay peninsula. He goes to great lengths to show the degree of overlapping and inter-penetration that took place in these diverse social settings at a number of levels.
Working within the communicative architecture of the period, R A Kern explores the etymological roots and development of key concepts in Malay culture like kuasa (power), kewibawaan (authority), sakti , derhaka (treason), and others to show just how the formation of Islamic socio-cultural, political and legal discourse was developed according to the needs and circumstances of the local environment then.
R A Kern also points to the local genius of the Malays themselves were had adapted Islam to their culture and vice-versa, in a process of cultural cross-fertilisation which enriched both Malay culture and Islamic civilisation at the same time.
In all these cases, one detects a common sensitivity and awareness of the fact that Islam's entry into the Malay archipelago was not a forceful one, but rather a 'penetration pacifique' that came in gentle waves which adapted themselves to the local socio-cultural terrain.
This would also explain why Islam managed to spread itself from the lowest sections of society upwards, and why the ruling courts and royal houses finally allowed themselves to come under the sway of this new faith from abroad.
If anything, the writings of R A Kern disprove the oft-repeated assertion that Islam had spread across the world at the point of the sword and that the expansion of Islam was motivated by the desire for territorial conquest and imperial rule.
More so than any other writer today, R A Kern had shown that Islam in the Malay world was- from the very beginning- pacifist, accommodative and tolerant of cultural diversity and difference.
How else could one explain the lingering traces of the pre-Islamic past which are with us till today, even in the rites and rituals of Islam themselves?
(One does not have to look very far for traces of the pre-Islamic past in the experience of lived Islam in the Malay world. The very word 'sembahyang ' (prayer/to pray) literally means to offer homage ( sembah ) to Hyang (the Primal ancestor of pagan times).
One cannot help but wonder if the Malay-Muslims of today are aware of how close they are to their pre-Islamic Other in their daily rituals.)
Scrupulous editing
Credit must also go to the editor of ' Propagation of Islam ', Alijah Gordon, for her masterly handling of the work. As with the case of other publications that have come from the MSRI stable over the years, this latest offering stands head and shoulders above most of the publications that have come from other publishing houses in the country.
Gordon's scrupulous editing, careful annotation and the abundance of footnotes rich with valuable data make the book a joy to read for any serious scholar with a deep abiding interest in the subject.
Most important of all, her handling of the text and her selection of other accompanying articles by the likes of G.W. J Drewes, Charles Ralph Boxer, Denys Lombard and Claudine Salmon had added a much needed touch of sanity and balance in a debate that has seriously gone off the rails in the Malaysian context over the past few years.
Drewes's biographical essay on Kern sheds much needed light on the man and his personality, while the other essays in the second part of the book take the argument of R A Kern further by looking at the process of Islamisation in other parts of the archipelago that fell outside the orbit of Kern's scholarly interest.
All in all, ' The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago ' is a wonderfully comprehensive and lucid text which does justice to the man who pioneered the study of Islam and Islamisation of the Malay archipelago.
The MSRI should be congratulated for yet another worthy offering to the field of Malay and Islamic studies, and it is hoped that with the publication of this book the debate over the question of Muslim identity in Southeast Asia can be reactivated, but also on the right track.
The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago
Edited by Alijah Gordon
Malaysian Sociological Research Institute (MSRI), Kuala Lumpur 2001
Hardback. 472 pages.
Endnotes:
(1) See: Syed Naquib al-Attas, Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamisation of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago . Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur, 1963.
(2) The Islamist agenda in Naquib al-Attas's work is clear enough for those with the eyes to see it. His writings work within a defensive and reactionary logic which sees Islam as a religion with singular purpose (what he calls a 'salvatic mission') that is at the same time under threat from two contaminating elements: Secular Modernity (which represents the external Other) and the pre-Islamic past (which is the enemy from within).
In his writings, Naquib al-Attas frames Islam in terms of a nostalgic politics of authenticity which seeks to return it to its pure and pristine past, free from the contaminating influence of both. In his Preliminary Statement (1963) Naquib al-Attas presents an image of the pre-Islamic Malay world as an incomplete universe.
Malay identity may have been nominally identified with Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and cultural practices at the time, but Naquib al-Attas contends that pre-Islamic Malay subject was an incomplete subject whose rational faculties were not fully developed and whose potentialities were not fully realised.
The picture that he draws of the pre-Islamic past is one where social, cultural and political development was, at best, lopsided and partial. The reason for this lopsided development of the Malay subject, Naquib al-Attas insists, lies in the fact that the Malay experience of Hinduism and Buddhism itself was an incomplete one.
For him, the pre-Islamic Malay world was one that was bereft of philosophical thinking and enquiry. As Naquib al-Attas argues: 'In the Hindu-Malay translations of Hindu-Indian religious literature such as the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita depicting the life of Arjuna, and the Bharatayuddha... the philosophical expositions, so important in the original, suffered great neglect'.(pg. 3)
Even when Hinduism did made in-roads into the world of the Kerajaan, Naquib al-Attas insists that 'it was aesthetic and ritualistic Hinduism that was recognised and accepted; the scientific, with its emphasis on rational and intellectual elements was rejected. ...and even when accepted had first to be sifted through the sieve of art so that the worldview presented was that envisioned by poets rather than philosophers'.(pg. 20).
Thus for Naquib al-Attas the Hindu-Buddhist past of the Malays was therefore a fractured, uneven and incomplete one. By positing the thesis that the pre-Islamic Malay world was in a state of intellectual crisis, Naquib al-Attas is also preparing the way for the solution of his own riddle.
If Malay identity was not complete, who and what would help it achieve its full completion? The answer, for him, was Islam.
(3) In Naquib al-Attas's ' Islam and Secularism ' (1978), for instance, the dichotomy between Islam and Secularism (which Naquib al-Attas equates with the West) is framed in terms of a oppositional dialectics where both categories are presented as fixed and mutually-exclusive.
Naquib al-Attas's reading of Secularism is caricatural, bordering on simplistic. He clearly sees secularism as a Western phenomenon which he argues was invented to impair the faith and culture of Muslims themselves.
Islam, on the other hand, is presented as a phenomenon that is sui generis, self-generating and self-sufficient. This effectively locates secularism as something that lies radically outside Islam and Islamic civilisation, and makes it impossible for us to assert that Islam also has played a role in the development of Secularism itself.
See: Syed Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism , Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (Abim), Kuala Lumpur 1978.
