Creeping Islamisation in Singapore

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

As a Muslim, I am very wary of creeping Islamisation in Singapore.  I equate it with intolerance.  Today, it is about the hijab in secular schools.  Tomorrow, special prayer places.  And the day after, dictating our foreign policy.  I look across the Causeway, in Malaysia, where ridiculous fatawa are gazetted and made into law, politicians are justifying child marriage, and aggressive intolerance of non-Muslims is becoming a norm.  Is that really the direction we want the Muslim community here to go?  This is not the Islam I converted to. 

I think we should consider scaling back the AMLA and removing entire sections of it.  I think the Mosque Building Fund should be abolished; they already have enough money.  I think we should consider moving away from a rigid interpretation of shari’ah, migrating from an emphasis in Shafi’i fiqh to Hanafi fiqh to better address the challenges of the time in terms of our fiqh al-mu’amalah. 

I think Muslim leaders, particularly the asatidzah, should engage in more dialogue with the Shi’ah, as well as the Ahmadiyyah community.  And after that, building actual relationships with the Jewish and Christian community.  We have too much lip service.  None of these are popular ideas, but they should be considered. 

And beyond that, a litany of actual issues within the Muslim, not just Malay, community we really need to look at.  We need to consider the fact that a lot of converts do not stay, or they simply stop practicing, after a few years.  We need to consider that a lot of young heritage Muslims leave the religion outright, or simply stop practicing.  We need to consider that there is a huge gulf between the religious and the secularised sections of the community.  We need to consider the fact that the Wahhabi ideology is not only accepted, but also propagated, and these calls against extremism are lip service.  We need to relook the fara’idh, particularly when many families are multi-religious.  We need to relook some of our fatawa on zakat, especially on the CPF.  We need to consider how to address increasing interfaith marriages.  We need to admit that more and more Muslims do not use Malay and the mosques must adapt.  We need greater accountability in many of our Muslim organisations, particularly in finance and fund management.  We need to better police extremist ideology and hate preachers, and work towards an outright ban on entry.  Instead of all this, we have people championing a piece of cloth on the head. 

Shari’ah is simply Divine Law.  It consists of two portions, regulating the relationship between Creation and the Creator, and the relationship among Creation.  If shari’ah were a house, its foundation is mercy, its walls are justice and its roof is God-consciousness.  When it leaves any of this, it ceases to be shari’ah.  What people often mistake for shari’ah is jurisprudence, fiqh.  Whilst shari’ah is Divine, jurisprudence is human commentary, and is not.  Whilst shari’ah cannot be wrong, jurisprudence can, and can also be corrected. 

And that is why the Prophet (s.a.w.) said that we are all born upon fithrah, that God-consciousness and connection to the Divine inherent in all when Allah (s.w.t.) Blew His Ruh into Adam (a.s.).  Shari’ah is within us and calls us to acts of mercy, that outrages us at miscarriages of justice, and causes us to seek knowledge.  If there is a doubt in a ruling, then do as the Prophet (s.a.w.) says “istafta qalbak,” “question your heart.”  And if our heart says it is wrong, we should listen to it, no matter the legal opinion of mortals, and that is shari’ah.