[vulikox]

Brother Faizol,

I am actually a Malaysian by birth, but have been away from the country for a while studying. Alhamdulillah, where I was in Australia before the dakwah activity is strong and growing. However upon returning to Malaysia I find things happenning here to be far more restrictive for muslims.

I am generally worried about the trend in the country and increasing polarisation that is happening between the Islamists and the nationalists and this appears to be culminating to the point where even dakwah becomes restricted. I am not a member of Tabligh-e-jamaat FYI, I agree with their intentions but not with some of their methods (i.e leaving the families for 3-6 months sometimes and such). However, this law could even pose problems to Tabligh-e-jamaat as well as they could be viewed as unaccredited by the government especially the brothers that come from India and Pakistan to spread dakwah here. Such a law is open to abuse and in Malaysia, the government has been seen to frequently abuse laws which grant them power and selective prosecution is rampant.

I agree the nationalists are very afraid of the Islamists. Even through the short discussion I have with some of my colleagues at work during lunch and such on Islam, they sometimes are shocked and taken aback by some of my stands which are fully supported by evidences from the Quran, hadeeth and ijma' of the scholars. They find their reality being challenged and racial undertones and frequently raised by these nationalists. I haven't asked them the question, when Mahdi comes, would they take the bai'ah? Many of them don't answer. They say it won't be in my time and such. I fear for my fellow muslims here that they are being brainwashed into nationalists and this method of controlling dakwah will be used to stifle the spread of Islam so that the ruling regime will only allow their warped "nationalist version" of Islam to be the only accepted version. Even hudood is criticised here Nauzubillah.

brother,

, actually some of the questions you asked (like giving baiah to the Islamic ruler), those are the same questions that I often used in my discussions too .

Anyhow, these are my points;

- you can't look into what's happening inside of the ruling party and to judge the Islamic movement from them. They never wanted to fully implement Islam in its entirety (because of their lack in understanding, and also because of the influence of the kuffr governments). That's why ulama are against them, and are doing da'wa to them to let them understand that by rejecting hudud and such is tantamount to kuffr. Indeed, the Islamist party have already declared that they will absolve the Islamist party should the ruling party is willing to accept Islam 100%. So the ruling party declared that they don't reject hudood, but the broad coalition party (which also consists of several non-Muslim parties) disagree on the hudood implementation.

- Regarding Ustadz Fathul Bari, like brother Silat said, he's a supporter of the ruling party, and yes he's a bit outspoken against some of the decisions made by the ruling party. But you also have to look at the internal political struggle within the ruling party itself. There are various groups within that organization, some of them are Islamists who are trying to move the ruling party closer to Islam from inside (can't say that they are successful though), true nationalists to the core, opportunists and so forth.

- Regarding hudood implementation, Kelantan has passed hudood enactment about 10 years back if I'm not mistaken, but it's blocked from being implemented because of the federal constitutions. At the time, there were even rumours that Kelantan might choose to get out of the federation so that Kelantan would be able to implement the hudood in its entirety. However, since then, the federal sharia court has been expanded, and even some of the criminal laws are developed to be tabled and will be implemented, though the laws tabled might not still be a complete hudood implementation yet. This is actually a big leap as before this sharia court was only used for civil cases pertaining to Muslim civil affairs only.

- regarding certificate to teach, those were under state jurisdiction, and most of the time the decision is influenced by the head minister. If you do follow the political development in Malaysia, you would know that the ruling group in that state is opposed to the ruling prime minister.

- This certificate requirement is a two edged sword, it can be abused like what you mentioned. However, there's also a need to do that in matters pertaining to deviant teachings that otherwise would go unrestrained. These groups, mostly using sufi movement as a cover, originated from unknown madrassa abroad (mostly from remote places in Indonesia). They are bringing in some practices that are totally against ahlul sunnah practices. Plus, like I mentioned about the rafidi movement. Those movements are taking advantage of the hezbollah movement which is popular among the lay Muslim person as it seems to be the only movement that goes head to head with the zionists and the US policies (though we know that's not the real case). Without this requirement, they can openly do their propaganda to misled more Muslims. And using this requirement actually enabled a group of rafidis in Selangor to be detained last year.

Da'wa movement is not hugely impacted by the requirement you mentioned. there are many ways to move the da'wa movement forward. But brother, we need more discussions like what you had among the local Muslims. It would be nice if we can share some youtube videos for example (and other references) so that we can show them to our friends to get the message across.



Allahu'alam.