Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey

  He had prepared some thoughts about the self-sufficiency of the village, and he wished to speak these first.

  “We are a close-knit community and we know little of the outside world. You asked me why we didn’t have technical men, professionals. We have on our own, to meet our requirements, builders who are themselves an architect, who can conceive plans that are required by the clients and can turn that plan into reality by his skills. We don’t have doctors. But we have traditional medical practice within the community. If I can remember, there have never been chronic diseases which require immediate operation in my village.”

  After he had said that, we returned to talking of his life and career. His first visit to Kuala Lumpur, in 1963 with his school scout troop, had been a shock. But a second visit two years afterwards was easier.

  “I was getting a little more used, a little more brave. I came with an old man who was a distant relative and we stayed ten days, in various places of relatives. We stayed in Malay kampongs and also with relatives in modern situations. I can give one instance of getting more brave. I took a cab to the museum. On the way back home I couldn’t figure which way to take, after walking some distance. Then only I took a cab again.”

  “Why was that a brave thing to do? You were seventeen.”

  “My parents did not allow me to come to KL with someone unknown to the family. And not many people like me leave the kampong to come to KL in this way. They are not frightened. They may or may not be frightened. But they have nothing to do in KL.

  “So I wasn’t frightened when I came to the college in KL in 1966 for preuniversity education. I was nineteen. My seniors in school were all studying here in KL. I stayed in a students’ house, run by the students. In 1968 I went to the Institute of Technology. There I began to be interested in student politics. That was when I came into contact with Anwar Ibrahim. I was twenty-one and he was twenty-one.”

  “Did you go out with girls?”

  “What do you mean by going out? You see, I admired somebody, and the person I admired was staying with a family and I could hardly take her out. So to take anybody out means being unfaithful. She was a distant relative. It was a childhood admiration. It began in my village, with family meetings.

  “There were political disturbances in KL in 1969, race riots between Malays and Chinese. That was when I became a leader. A few friends invited me to go for a demonstration at a public rally, and I didn’t go. I sensed that a disturbance was coming up that day. It was a demonstration of Malays against Chinese.”

  “Did you have strong feelings against the Chinese?”

  “Yes. I should say I grew up with a feeling against the Chinese. In terms of religious taboos. But the feelings in KL were different. They were national politics. About seven that evening, the day of that demonstration, I was in a hostel and I heard a radio announcement about a curfew being clamped on KL. This announcement justified my not going. My sense was right. I arranged group security measures around the college, got the students to have their dinner and remain calm and quiet. There were no other leaders. So I became a leader by accident. After these riots we had meetings with Anwar Ibrahim and other Muslim students’ organizations. We began to talk about nationalism and Islam. And that’s how it began.”

  “Did you never have doubts about the faith as a student?”

  “No. I questioned only the systems. Why marriage? I even proposed that there should be contract marriages. In the sense that if you long to have a descendant, you marry the person on the understanding that after you have a child the contract is over. That was wild thinking on my part. Those are the few daydreams I had.”

  “You were thinking about the girl you admired? Did she respond?”

  “The girl I had been admiring did not respond. After I left college I worked with a youth organization. Then after four years I went to the United States.”

  This was news to me. Nothing Shafi had said had suggested that he had gone abroad.

  “I approached the cultural officer of the American embassy after hearing that there was some exchange of youth workers. At first he said the places had all been taken, but after one month he came back and offered me the trip.

  “The United States was a shock. Before leaving we were given literatures about what to expect. But on arrival at JFK Airport the first shock was the biological shock, the time. It was one day earlier: we were still on the same day that we left. I expected JFK to be big and things to be different. I didn’t marvel. From the air I saw beautiful housing estates close to the beach and I thought that was beautiful. And—arriving at the hotel—as I expected, I stayed with an African.”

  “You expected that?”

  “It didn’t surprise me to be with an African, because I was the only Malaysian in the programme.” But from the emphasis Shafi gave to being with the African (anonymous, in his narrative), I felt that, coming directly after the long flight and the biological shock, the experience had unsettled him. “My suspicion—for having that African to be with me—was that the organizers of the programme were trying to group the familiar people with similar backgrounds together. I expected there was going to be some segregation in the programme. It didn’t make me unhappy. I thought they were putting a generalization to us, African and Malaysian, that we come from underdeveloped countries—the same state of civilization, if you want to put it that way.

  “The food was all Western food. Being a Muslim, it was difficult for me to enjoy the food, because I had a suspicion that the food is not cooked in the Muslim way. On the second night my programme director brought me to see an X-rated film. And I felt that most of the experience I am going to face in America is not my”—he searched for the word—“culture, is something foreign to me, that things there—whatever is yes in America is no to us in Malaysia, and whatever is no in America with us is yes. The technical developments, the material developments, is all I expected. You can get it anywhere.”

  “Anywhere?” I was interested in this idea of the developed world as something just existing, just being there: part of an almost preordained division of men: creative, uncreative; faithless, believing.

  “When I stopped in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, I see the same thing—tall buildings, busy people, modern technology. The thing I could not find is the person with the same religious background as I am.”

  “Why were you so surprised? You had gone to a foreign country. A big country, an important country. Weren’t you interested in what they had to show?”

  “I am not interested in what they had to show. But I am asking why, with the sort of developments that they have, they could not even sit down for a moment to ponder the universal creation. The non-Muslims, the unbelievers in the greatness of the creator, did not even have the time to think about this creator. Later on, when I was in Chicago, I spoke to some Jews, some Negroes, and some Americans about Islam. And, compared with the TM that they practise, the Transcendental Meditation, my short explanation did really attract them.”

  “What do you know about other religions?”

  “I’ve read around at random. But how much can you think of the universe with the limited brain that we have?”

  “Don’t you think you may be claiming too much for yourself and running down other people too easily?”

  “You can say that a man is civilized if he knows where he is from and where he is going. I could not agree that a man is educated and civilized if he spends his whole lifetime studying the universe and in the end worships the stars, not knowing where he is from and where he is going. They have not found the answer.”

  “Shafi, you think you have found the answer?”

  “I think so.”

  “Tell me more about your time in the United States.”

  “Before I left KL, one reporter asked me what do I want to do there. I said to him that I wanted to study all the policies made by the civilized—by the so-called civilized—people in the modern world, so that we may not be trapped with mistakes that they have
done.”

  “Are you saying that you have civilization and they don’t?”

  “Civilization to us does not mean material development only. It means to us being able to develop the man, the person, closer to the creator.”

  I said, “So you don’t think think too much of me?”

  “Now, please don’t be emotional about this.” Shafi laughed. The sentence had come out pat; I felt he had made the joke before. “If you stay longer perhaps I would be able to convince you. But about the U.S., somebody gave me a book. Basically, from the conversations and discussions with the people, they said that money is religion and sex is the prophet. Basically their life revolves around money and sex.”

  “Do you think my life revolves around money and sex?”

  “I would say: what is the purpose of your writing? Is it to tell people what it’s all about?”

  “Yes. I would say comprehension.”

  “Is it not for money?”

  “Yes. But the nature of the work is also important.”

  I had shocked him. The idea of a vocation was new to him; and—it was part of his openness—for a little while he considered it. He relished religious debate—I could tell that now; but when he spoke again, it was not to deny or to challenge what I had said about myself.

  He said, with a regard that was like concern, “I would say you are losing something. You are not doing justice to yourself. You have been searching for truth and yet you haven’t got the truth.”

  “Let’s get back to the United States.”

  “I made friends with people there. New York, Chicago, Washington, Indiana. I was working with an Outward Bound programme, a programme for the poor. But I looked forward to returning back home. I think of America now as a place to go for a short visit but not to stay. When I came back I worked for the Red Cross. Then I took up a job in a business firm, a construction firm. A Malay firm. As a general manager.”

  “You were very young.”

  “I was twenty-eight or twenty-nine. There the manipulations in business were without ethics. It was with corruption. Cheating in construction, not delivering work to the specification.”

  “Was this because it was a Malay firm?”

  “Business is such. This business is filled up with unscrupulous people. The pressures of this corruption were too great. I left the firm after about a year. I was getting quite a good salary. About a thousand dollars a month. This was in 1973–1974. I tried to start up on my own in the construction business, trying to be honest. It doesn’t pay to be honest. I got a contract and tried to be honest—and you are trying to be honest and you are the only honest person in that field. Say I build a house, and the specification is fixed in concrete mixture, and I try to adhere to the specification, my workers—most of them are Chinese—did not follow the instruction. And I ran into trouble. People don’t believe me. The clients don’t believe me and they are quite prejudiced about Malay contractors. It is true of their suspicion, because Malays are just starting in the field. Once I was six months without a job, without contracts. It was a difficult time. But it was satisfying because you are doing it for yourself and you know you are honest about it. The purpose of doing business for us as Muslims is to fulfil the requirements of the society.”

  “Isn’t that true of all business?”

  “Some business are meant strictly for profit. At the end of my three years as a contractor I began to be associated with Islamic activities more intensely. And I feel there is a need, the need is very much to fulfil the requirements of the Islamic movement rather than that of business—which I was in.”

  “What about the girl you admired?”

  “On return from the U.S., I got married. Not the girl I admired, but a girl from a village who has probably a similar background to mine. A girl from a kampong. She comes from a poor family, from another state. Which is breaking a tradition of my family. Because none of my family, none of my close relatives, got married to somebody from outside the state. My parents did not object. But I feel I have broken a tradition. It doesn’t worry me. My wife is working in a firm, a British firm. The business practices do not worry her. She is mainly doing secretarial work. We don’t have a house yet. It’s under construction. I bought it from a developer, for fifty-eight thousand dollars.”

  “So you’ve given up the idea of returning to the village?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me whether I live in a village or in town. I love the village because it’s not polluted in terms of environment, in terms of society, and in terms of resources. They are not materialist people. They are people with dignity. They are quite pious. Even in town, if I have that unpolluted community with unpolluted environment, I would like to stay. It may not be possible, but I have to be in town because of the nature of my activities with the Muslim youth movement. We have purchased eight acres of land collectively about seventeen miles from KL, and we are trying to plan for a self-contained community and for facilities run under an Islamic system. Islamic kindergarten; a cooperative; health centre, with Muslim doctors. Planning the utilization of resources to the maximum.”

  “You will be trying to re-create the village life. But didn’t you say that that life of your village in Kota Bharu was mediocre?”

  “Yes, in some ways. Because it’s self-sufficient. The only difference is that we are guided by the sense of religious ways.”

  “Surely all Malays are guided by that?”

  “Not all Malays are guided by that. There are some communities which emphasize traditions more than religion. Some of those traditions are quite pagan.”

  He meant pre-Islamic. And I began to see that, over and above his wish to preserve the Malay village community, he had a contrary missionary wish—given him by the new Islam—to purify the old ways of the village, to cleanse his Malay people of an important part of themselves. But that was another question. He knew he hadn’t answered the question about mediocrity.

  He said, “This attempt to make Malays less mediocre is a difficult attempt. I have not put my thoughts.”

  He had lost his village. He had married outside his state and broken a family tradition. By education, travel, profession, he had without knowing it broken other traditions. In the new world, he had failed in business. I could see how, without Islam, he would be lost. But whether he liked it or not, Shafi had entered the new world; and it was not possible in this world for him to hide. His survival depended on trying again and trying harder; it depended on vision.

  As we were walking away from the coffee shop—and he was worried again about appearing to push himself forward, about giving himself an individuality above that of his fellows—I said, “I want you to think about one thing. I don’t want to argue, though I know you want me to argue with you. But I think that because you travelled to America with a fixed idea you might have missed some things. I think you are being less than fair to people outside.”

  He said, “I accept that there are dedicated people there, and good people. But I cannot compromise.”

  FROM the New Straits Times, November 6, 1979:

  THREE CHARGES OF DESTROYING HINDU IDOLS IN TEMERLOH

  Temerloh, Mon.—An ex-religious teacher and a student pleaded not guilty in the magistrate’s court here today to charges of having destroyed Hindu idols in the Temerloh district, last year.…

  This, too, was part of the Islamic movement among the educated young. It was a more elemental kind of Islam, and I felt that it embarrassed Shafi. He said it wasn’t important. But it was important.

  ABIM, Shafi’s group, was not the only Muslim youth group in Malaysia; Anwar Ibrahim, with his high idea of Islam, was not the only leader. There were other leaders, with less difficult messages. Missionaries (from India or Pakistan) had brought the idol-smashing message to Malaysia. They had worked out, from various books they had consulted, how many thousands of years in paradise a Muslim earned for every idol he smashed; and they had calculated that a grand total of thirty smashed idols won a Muslim the jac
kpot, an eternity in paradise.

  The Malay rage was really about the Chinese shrines—some no more than concrete boxes—that were everywhere in the towns (there were two just outside the Holiday Inn). But the Chinese were powerful, and had their secret societies. The Tamil Hindus were a small, pacific community. So Hindu images were smashed. On many nights—during a three-week period in 1978—Tamil temples were desecrated.

  Then, at the Kerling temple, there was a tragedy. A group of five idol-smashers (at least two university students among them) were met by eight temple guards. Four of the idol-smashers were killed. Idol-smashing stopped after that. And now—more important than the Temerloh temple case—was the trial of the eight Kerling guards on charges of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder.”

  The trial was taking place far from Kerling, at Klang, on the west coast, about twenty miles from Kuala Lumpur. It was a Tamil taxi driver who took me there. But his thoughts were not of the trial. His thoughts were of money; they always were.

  The first day I took him I said, “You haven’t put your meter on.” He said, “My head is full of something. I am thinking about how to go to Malacca tomorrow. It will cost a hundred and forty dollars at least. I don’t have the money. My sister is getting married.” I said, “Why will it cost so much to go to Malacca?” He said, “There are seven of us. My mother, my sister, my wife, and my three children. Seven. The fare will be twenty dollars each, minimum. By line taxi.” And as we stopped and started in the fuming Kuala Lumpur traffic, he involved me in his anxiety.

  I said, “Do seven of you have to go to Malacca? Does your wife have to go?”

  “She must go. It’s her sister getting married.”

  “I thought you said it was your sister.”

  “Her sister is my sister.”

  “All right. I can see that your wife has to go. What about your own sister? Does she have to go to Malacca?”

  “She wants to go. She knows the girl well.”

  “Well, let your wife and sister go. Two fares. Forty dollars.”