I refer to the Malaysiakini report Ex-Perlis mufti freed on bail: Jais feels the heat?

Higher learning institutions have long been regarded as the ‘brains producers’ in any society. There, the cream of the crop is moulded to be the trustees of the intellectual tradition.

Degrees obtained by those who succeed in their litmus test in bearing the responsibility as learned person are a recognition of their achievement and capability. This tradition is not a mere post-Enlightenment Western product, but has long been practiced by Muslims throughout the centuries.

The recognition of one to be a scholar is heavily based on their achievements in their performance during their campus years.

However, this common consensus has been denied in Malaysia by the religious authorities in Selangor (Jais). through the pseudo-detention of the former maverick mufti of Perlis, Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin.

In the first place, nobody really knows the motive of the lynch-mob style detention at one of the bungalows in Taman Sri Ukay. Not only was the detention committed without any permit, even the Jais personnel keep changing their tune to justify it.

Thank God, a press statement made by Jais chairperson Mohammed Khusrin Munawi eventually solved the enigma. It apparently was all about ‘preaching Islam without a ‘tauliah’ (ratification or should I use ‘license’?) from Jais. So it was simply about showing the people who the boss really is!

I wouldn’t argue about the legal provision of the ‘tauliah’ matter. The curbing of any teaching by the cults and heretics would be a nice justification for such. The problem remains with this former mufti’s case. What other qualifications do they want from a PhD holder in Islamic studies?

If the detention involved Ayah Pin, or Haji Kahar the Malay Prophet, the public would not find any objection. But when it happenes to a former mufti, the highest level of a religious authority in any Malaysian state after the sultan and Agong, something is definitely not right.

In the same vein, how does Jais evaluate his scholarship? Doesn’t a PhD in Islamic Studies obtained from the International Islamic University in Malaysia - after his long journey in knowledge-seeking - have any weight in the authorities’ eyes?

Personally, as an academic and a lecturer in the institute where Asri obtained his doctorate from, I feel humiliated by the detention and the argument given to support the detention. If a doctorate- holder from the academia of my working place has no value for a ‘tauliah’, what else should we expect from us the academics?

So what about the JKKK members and YBs that normally hold their ‘ceramah’ occasionally at the mosques and ‘surau’? And what about the ‘tabligh jamaat’ that is moving from one mosque to another preaching to the people about religion? And what about those good-hearted mosque goers that recite the ‘hadith’ and Quranic verses after some prayers at the mosques?

To the religious authorities, I suggest a modification should be done to their prerequisites for allowing people to preach Islam within their jurisdictions. To be more accepted by the public and in the larger interest of Islam and the ‘ummah’, their current attitude towards scholars and academics with Islamic studies background must be altered and renovated.

Or else, the aforementioned policy will continue to be a sheer humiliation on academics and scholars of Islamic studies. I am wondering how Islam continued to flourish and spread all over the globe - especially in the Europe - despite the scholars’, preachers’ and academics’ non- ‘tauliah’ status by the authorities.

The writer is president, Durham University Islamic Society and advisor, Durham Malaysian Scholars.