Perhaps the most remarkable difference between the Hikayat and the writings of present-day Islamists is the way that they dealt with the pre-Islamic past.

While it is clear that in the Hikayat the pre-Islamic past was being post-rationalised in terms of the Islamic present, there was less of the tendency to demonise the past or to relegate it to a secondary, inferior register.

The authors of the Hikayat seemed to possess a deep sensitivity to the past that they had just left behind, and were acutely aware of the fact that history is vulnerable to the critique of the present. The dead cannot defend themselves against the penetrating gaze of the living, and in the Hikayat the ways of the past were treated with a degree of respect that is absent today.

Numerous examples of such sensitivity to the pre-Islamic other can be found in the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa. At one point, for example, the reader is told that the days when human beings were in contact with the elements, spirits and the forces of nature are long gone. Human beings no longer speak with the animals and spirits in the forest:

" Pada tatkala itu segala binatang tiada boleh berkata-kata kepada zaman itu, kerana yang bernama Nabi Muhammad Rasulu'Llahu salla'Llahu 'alaihi wasallam itu sudah dizahirkan Allah Subhanahu'wa ta'ala kedalam dunia ini. " (pg. 44)

But as the passage above shows, the demise of the old world was brought about by the arrival of a new message - Islam - that spoke to the world as a whole. In other words, the Hikayat does not deny that in the pre-Islamic era the world of animals and human beings overlapped and that mortals could speak with animals and spirits .

Epistemological relativism

But what it does say, in effect, is that with the coming of Prophet Muhammad there was no longer a need for human beings to speak with animals as God's final messenger had finally arrived. (And the animals could get back to what they were doing.) The Hikayat does not abjure the miraculous character of the past, but merely posits the claim that Islam's arrival was the latest and the last of these miracles.

A similar point is made when the Hikayat discusses the impact of Islam on the teachings and beliefs that came before it:

" Maka jadi bersalahanlah daripada umat nabi yang dahulu-dahulu itu daripada karamat Kitab al-Quran, habislah hilang hikmat dan ubatannya segala orang yang dahulu-dahulu itu daripada laduni, yakni yang terbang di udara dan yang melata di bumi, di dalam laut dan daripada segala ilmu sihir, yakni ilmu yang ghaib-ghaib daripada yang tiada diketahui. Dan segala hikmat dan ubatan orang tua-tua yang dahulu itu tiadalah menjadi guna, demikian lagi seperti iktikad yang tiada kebetulan itu seperti orang tua yang dahulukalanya yang menyembah berhala yang diperbuat yang boleh berkata-kata, atau tiada dapat berkata-kata seperti pohon kayu yang disembahnya, dan seperti matahari yang disembahnya dan seperti binatang yang disembahnya. " (pp. 77-78)

Here the Hikayat presents Islam's arrival as the final seal of knowledge and truth which effectively makes the beliefs of the past redundant.

But once again the Hikayat does not rob the teachings and beliefs of the past of their intrinsic value to the people who believed in them. The beliefs of the previous generations (" segala hikmat dan ubatan orang tua-tua yang dahulu ") have merely been superseded by a new wave of ideas that are relevant to the needs of the present.

Just as it made sense for the previous generations to hold to their order of knowledge (" ilmu sihir, yakni ilmu yang ghaib-ghaib ") so does the new order of knowledge that is Islam make sense for those living in the present.

Again we see that the Hikayat does not draw a sharp and exclusive boundary between the past and present. In a rare leap into epistemological relativism, the Hikayat concedes that each epoch has its own truth and that the truths of the past should not be judged by the standards of today.

It was against such a backdrop that texts such as the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa were written. The complex process of Islam's arrival to the Malay world which was narrated therein was treated with a subtlety and finesse that one cannot find in the comparatively crude and unsophisticated texts of present-day Islamist ideologues, who can only think of Islam and Muslim identity in dialectical terms that divide between 'us' and 'them' with precious little in between.

Care and sensitivity

While the more dogmatic Islamist intellectuals among us today may think of these Hikayat as bordering on the blasphemous and heretical, they were nonetheless more honest and open in their approach to the lingering questions that remain with us.

In the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa we read of the encounter between Islam and the pre-Islamic past that was negotiated with care and sensitivity.

In two particular instances - Garuda's plot against the King of Rum which fails and leads to the creation of Langkapuri and the Devil's role in bringing Islam to Kedah - we see that the pre-Islamic and un-Islamic elements have played a crucial role in the historical drama of the Muslim kingdom itself. The 'Other' to Islam here is a constitutive other, without which Islam's own identity would be effaced.

By presenting the Other in such an ambivalent light, the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa has tried to show that identities are never fixed but relational and that the enduring presence of the Other is a prerequisite of identity itself.

Though such respect and sensitivity to the pre-Islamic and un-Islamic Other may be absent in Malaysian society today (cut up as it is by modern-day categorisations of identity and difference), it is nonetheless important for us to remember that the early Muslims of the pre-modern Malay world understood the importance of such differences.

More than any other period of Malay-Muslim history, it was the early period of Islamisation that witnessed an ethics of inter-civilisational dialogue at work, and for that reason we owe more to the Dewas and Rajas of the Hikayat than we may care to acknowledge.

Endnotes

Animals and spirits

But with the arrival of Islam (brought about by the birth of the Prophet Muhammad), these channels of communication are rendered redundant as God has appointed his final messenger and representative on earth.