Kamboja : Bebas Dari Teror Islam Berkat

Jasa Khmer Merah

Posted by kabarislamiah Oktober 22, 2014 Tinggalkan komentar
Filed Under cambodia, community, islam

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Cambodias Muslims: More orthodox, less integrated

16 Oktober 2014 11:38
The suggestion that members of Cambodias Islamic minority have joined ISIS a claim
vigorously denied by leaders of this community has briefly focused attention on a religious
group in mainland Southeast Asia that is little understood by other than a few specialists.

The last time there was a similar flurry of media attention directed towards Cambodias Islamic
community was when it was revealed that Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin), the claimed mastermind
behind the 2002 Bali bombing, had been living in Cambodia for six months in late 2002 and
early 2003 before his arrest in August 2003 in Thailand. While details remain obscure, it appears
that Hambali received assistance while in Cambodia from foreign Islamistsone Egyptian and
two Thai. The extent to which he dealt with the Cambodian Islamic community beyond living in
a small mosque in suburban Phnom Penh has never been established.

Even to write in terms of the Cambodian Islamic community is misleading, or at very least
inadequate. In the 1950s, King Sihanouk, in an effort to find a way to emphasise that followers
of Islam were just as much part of the Cambodian nation as the majority Buddhists, coined the
term Khmers Islam or Islamic Cambodians. Recently, I was told in Phnom Penh that this term
is no longer in favour among the followers of Islam themselves.
Moreover, its use, like the readiness to describe the followers of Islam in Cambodia by their ethic
identity as Chams, is itself unsatisfactory (as an example, this misleading catch-all use of the
term Chams occurs in a 2010 Phnom Penh US Embassy cable released by Wikileaks). Not all
followers of Islam in Cambodia are, in fact, Chams, an ethnic group originally from central
Vietnam whose ancestors migrated to Cambodia over many centuries. There are still a significant
number of Chams living in Vietnam itself.

Of the total number of members of the Islamic community, which may be as many as 500,000 in
a total population of 15 million, an uncertain proportion, perhaps 10-15%, are Malays, the
descendants of settlers from sections of modern Malaysia and Sumatra. Moreover, there is an
important division within the Cham community between those who pray only once a week and
who regard themselves as the preservers of traditional Cham culture, and those whose
observance of Islam is more orthodox.

As already noted, detailed academic study of the Islamic community in Cambodia in modern
times has been limited, with the work by William Collins of particular importance, though the
reference I drew on for my 2004 Lowy Issues Brief, The Khmer Islam Community in
Cambodia and its Foreign Patrons no longer appears to be available on the web. Other more
recent contributions include publications by Agnes de Feo and Alberto Perez.

The Legacy of the Khmer Rouge

The Islamic community suffered grievously during the Pol Pot regime, with an estimated 95,000
dying from executions, overwork, hunger and disease out of what was then a total population of
250,000. Mosques were destroyed, with some being used (with the deliberate intention of
causing grave offence) as pigsties, while members of the community were forced to eat pork.

At the time the Pol Pot regime was overthrown, the followers of Islam in Cambodia were in a
shattered state. Their plight was recognised, at first slowly, but later on a widespread basis, by
fellow Muslims in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and funds began to pour in to Cambodia
to assist them. It is not an overstatement to note that domestic and international reaction to the
suffering the community endured during the Khmer Rouge period has had a transformative effect
on Islam in Cambodia

The contemporary scene

The true scale of external aid to the Islamic community is almost impossible to quantify.
Individual donations are often reported in the Cambodian press, with funds coming from the
government of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, for instance, as well
as from private individuals including in Dubai. But in the case of Malaysia, there has been some
reluctance to specify the size of the largesse.

Equally, it is difficult to place precise numbers on the Islamic missionaries who have come to
Cambodia to preach a more orthodox observance of Islam, in particular Dakwah Tabligh and
Wahhabi Islam. What is apparent is that there are now many more mosques, with new mosques
often built in a Middle Eastern architectural style, than was the case before 1970. A range of
reports refer to the adoption in many Cambodian Muslim villages of stricter separation of the
sexes in communal gatherings and the wearing of Middle Eastern dress, including women going
fully veiled.

Equally uncertain is the precise number of Cambodian followers of Islam studying abroad in
southern Thailand, Malaysia and the Middle East. The links with southern Thailand and
Malaysia go back as far as the nineteenth century, if not before. While some foreign observers
have questioned whether Cambodian Muslims have participated in the endemic violence of
southern Thailand, no convincing evidence of such action has ever been presented.

Hun Sens CPP government has repeatedly claimed that it is both comfortable in its dealings with
the Islamic community and alert to any suggestions that members of the community might be
vulnerable to extremist teachings. The mufti of Cambodias Islamic community operates with
government approval, but more importantly leading members of the community have held
important offices during the CPPs long tenure in office (eg. figures such as Mat Ly and Ahmad
Yahya, the first after a period of working with the Khmer Rouge, the latter as secretary for social
affairs and as a translator of the Koran into the Cham language).

As a long-time observer of Cambodia, I have been struck during recent visits to Phnom Penh by
the extent to which, in the eyes of my ethnic Cambodian interlocutors, the Islamic community is
seen as firmly apart from the Buddhist majority, however much the Government seeks to present
a picture of Khmers Islam as an integral part of the nation. These views come from a limited
and admittedly elite sample of local observers. But one theme was pervasive: the belief that the
Islamic community in Cambodia is more rather than less integrated into the national community
than once was the case.

It has long been the case that many Muslim villages have existed as separate entities, and the
suggestion is that this separation has been reinforced in villages located along the Mekong and
Tonle Sap Rivers as a result of the growth of orthodox Islam. The tendency for followers of
Islam in Cambodia living in distinctly separate villages is, according to some observers, less
marked among Malay members of the community.

On one point there seemed to be general agreement among those I have spoken to over recent
years: the extent to which the majority of the Islamic community remains poor and lacking in
modern education. Whether this makes members of the community more vulnerable to extremist
blandishments is an open question.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Edwin Lee

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jasa-khmer-merah/, diunduh pada 07-10-2016,pada pukul 07.07 WIB