ISLAMIC KINGDOMS, SYNCRETISM, AND LOCALCUSTOMS

Hindu, Buddhist, and Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms arose and fell ruling over the largely agricultural populations of tropical Island Southeast Asia for several centuries prior to the arrival of Islam.

The diffusion and localization of variants of Islam added another dimension to the complex mixtures of beliefs and practices. Sharia and legalistic varieties of Islam flowed in with mystical and ascetic varieties as well as other fields of Islamic knowledge. Many of the Sufi brotherhoods found in other Muslim societies took root in the fertile, mystic-oriented soil of the Malayo-Indonesian world. As in the Middle East and South and Central Asia, conceptions of sharia and taṣawwuf (Sufism) fluctuated between relations of tension and harmony. Some Sufi scholars claimed that sharia was a lower stage in the spiritual path that could be disregarded once one reached the higher stages, while others asserted that sharia and mystical pursuits must go hand and hand for practitioners to experience the sweet taste of deep conviction and closeness to Allah.¹ Royal elites also synthesized Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic forms of statecraft, presenting themselves as spiritually elevated or sacerdotal figures with special natures, abilities, and relationships with divinity.

In addition to Hinduism, Buddhism, local religious traditions, and Sufi mystical ideas, conceptions of sharia came into close association with local customary law and principles (adat) for social life. Unlike the Middle East and South Asia, kinship in Island Southeast Asia was primarily organized according to bilateral or matrilineal principles. In the Malay world, these organizational principles came to be known as adat temenggong and adat perpatih. Adat temenggong organized society according to territorial units under the authority of the ruler, prime minister, chief of police, ministers, and governors. Temenggong laws covered constitutional, criminal, civil, and maritime laws, and in cases of criminal law they prescribed the death penalty or lesser penalties based on principles of compensatory justice (Mackeen 1969, 111–14). According to the generally unwritten constitutions, the territorial chiefs possessed the most effective power over their districts and checked the authority of the raja and his central government (Harding 1996, 7–9). On the other hand, adat perpatih organized society into matrilineal clans that constituted territorial units or districts of the state. Legal authority rested in matrilineal-based units from the heads of subclans, clan and territorial chiefs, and ultimately the ruler. Unwritten perpatih laws contained within customary aphorisms covered all aspects of law and tended to lean toward principles of restitution and compensation more than the retribution-oriented temenggong laws. The four constitutional heads of states in eighteenth-century Negeri Sembilan elected and assisted the ruler (10).

The legal codes of several Islamic kingdoms, such as the Melaka Digest of 1523, the Pahang Digest of 1596, the Kedah Digest of 1606, and the Johor Digest of 1789, indicate the influence of Islamic law (Abdullah Alwi 1996, xlvii). A substantial part of these digests reproduced rules of Islamic jurisprudence and reflected sophisticated knowledge of the standard texts of the Shāfi’ī school (Hooker 1983, 161–62). Malay states, to varying degrees, applied sharia in family laws, land laws, law of sales, criminal law, and maritime laws (Abdul Samat 2003, 96; Abdullah Alwi 1996; Yusoff 1977–78). The laws of Melaka were also strongly influenced by Indic Hindu-Buddhist ideas and customary principles in many of these areas. For instance, the inclusion of laws for forced marriage (kahwin paksa)³ and discrimination in criminal punishment for low- and high-ranking strata (castes) in the Melaka code are reminiscent of Indic Hindu-Buddhist notions (Yusoff 1977–78). However, family laws, laws for religious worship (Ar. ‘ibādāh, M. ibadah), and several areas of criminal law, such as adultery, fornication, and theft, demonstrated the application of sharia (ibid.). Severe hudud (penalties set by the Qur’an and hadith) punishments for some crimes were implemented by several Malay states. In Terengganu, Kelantan, Kedah, and Perlis, Islamic law was more firmly entrenched and adhered to, but still combined with local customary principles. By the middle to late nineteenth century, Terengganu and Kelantan implemented criminal law enactments that were “clearly Islamic and in conformity with the hukum syarak (Islamic law)” and only applied customary principles that did not conflict with the principles of sharia (Abdull ah Alwi 1996, 5).

New constructions of Melayu (or Malay) identity began to take shape within the contexts of these maritime Islamic kingdoms. For some time, Malay identity had been associated with indigenous participants in coastal trade empires, such as the Buddhist South Sumatran–based kingdom Sriwijaya, and with speakers of Malay language and practitioners of prestigious customs and mannerisms (Daniels 2005, 21–22). This prestigious culture and Malay identity spread among inland foragers, upland cultivators, and seagoing folks as they were incorporated into economic and political relationships with the cosmopolitan centers located downstream and on the coasts. The diverse residents of these coastal trade centers, such as Chinese, Indians, and Arabs, began to adopt many elements of the prestigious cultures of Malay elites. As Islamic kingdoms spread across the region and became active forces spreading the faith, Islam began to constitute an important component of Malay identity. Now, conceptions of sharia—disseminated by Muslim traders, missionaries, and Sufis, and institutionalized by rulers—came into intimate contact with constructions of Malay identity.

The history of precolonial Islamic kingdoms holds multiple meanings, as it is selectively filtered and framed within Malaysians’ varying cultural models.

I decided to look at a different angle: what can be done... to boost up, rejuvenate [the] Melaka economy. Other than the very small industrialization that had taken place in Melaka at that time, I perceived that Melaka should be moving toward the development of tourism products. And being the oldest state in Malaysia and the capital of ancient Malaya or Malaysia at that time, we have a lot of historical culture... to be capitalized on as the tourism product for the state.... From there, we cooperated with some investors to look into the possibility of developing the tourism potential in Melaka... and created a lot of projects to restore the glory of Melaka, with one slogan... “Melaka where it all began.” Six hundred years of Malaysian history actually started in Melaka, and of course it is the mother history of Malaysia.... With that slogan, first of all we created museums. Our plan was to create 101 museums of all kinds... a state of museums.⁶

Here, Melaka is selected as the place where Malaysian history began. It was not with the other Islamic kingdoms across the peninsula or the pre-Islamic Malay states of the region where Rahim Thamby Chik and other UMNO ideologues sought to locate the origins of the Malaysian nation.

We explored deeply into tourism development because we have products that other states don’t have—for example, the historical buildings and ruins in Melaka you can’t find in other states in Malaysia.... One hundred years of the Melaka Malay Sultanate,... the Portuguese administration for a hundred years, the Dutch one hundred years, the British over one hundred years, the Japanese four years, the British [again] for a few years, and [then] we attain independence. It is a very glorious chronological history of Malaysia, through Melaka history, where you experience different kinds of colonialists.... Melaka became a real melting pot, a potpourri of multicultural, multireligious, and so forth. We have learned how to live together for six hundred years or more. We have become very tolerant, very moderate, and very wise.... This adds to our spirited heart to see that Melaka rise as one of the most successful tourism destinations in Malaysia, based on the historical and cultural products.... This gave us the opportunity to really contribute to the cultures of the Malays, Chinese, and Indians, together with the Portuguese, the Babas and Nyonyas and Chitties. The administrations of Ali Rustam and previous chief ministers have been able to consolidate and strengthen this position, and that has made Melaka, in terms of the development of tourism,... one of the most successful destinations in the country.

Malay political elites created “replicas” of places and objects, such as the Melaka sultan’s palace and a Portuguese ship, and renovated and packaged old buildings and a fort embodying their narrative of a Malaysian history that began with the Melaka Sultanate, sailed through successive colonial eras, and culminated with political independence and the postcolonial nation-state. This historical imaginary, which erased the pre-Islamic Malay states, multiple Islamic kingdoms, and various colonial histories across the Malay Peninsula, featured “rejuvenated” ethnic groups that index the diversity of contemporary Malaysian society. Rahim Thamby Chik informs us that special attention was paid to the Melaka Portugis, Chitty, and Baba/Nyonya minorities who are conventionally thought to be hybrid categories of descendants of Portuguese, Indians, and Chinese that intermarried with local Malays. Malay officials use representations of these minority hybrid ethnicities together with larger Malay, Indian, and Chinese categories to construct a multicultural model of the Malaysian nation.

Datuk bandar (mayor) of Melaka Yusof bin Jantan, who was appointed by chief minister Mohamad Ali bin Rustam, filled in more details of this elite Malay model:

We have a long history, from the year 1400 until today... more than six hundred years, but we can note in this case [that] the origination of the port of Melaka has been determined over two hundred years, there is the history of the Sultanate of Melaka, there is the history of the Portuguese, then enter the Dutch, the British, and... [the] Japanese.... Then there was an evolution with Chinese from early on until today.... There was assimilation of the group of traders that came to Melaka; many of them did this. Chinese married with local people. Indians traders married local people. So, most of them practiced the culture and language of local people, but without leaving behind their understandings of religion and beliefs. This is something that is unique about Melaka.... There are several outstanding values; in other countries there are only one or two. But if you look at Melaka there is the group of Malays, the original people, then... Chinese, Indians, Baba/Nyonya, and Chitty. There is the group of orang asli, forest people, but now they are rural people. This is also our heritage.... We can note that these groups have various kinds of cultures. If we look at the Baba and Nyonya group... half of them... follow Malay culture and half of them follow Chinese culture. The same with Chitties—half of them follow Malay culture and half follow Indian culture; in language, all of them speak Malay. Their mother tongue is Malay because they intermarried with Malays. They married Malay women or men. If you go to a Baba and Nyonya house over on Jonker or Heeren Street you can find interracial people who descend from someone that long ago had married... a Malay woman.... There is also assimilation with clothing and food.... We received recognition from UNESCO because of the outstanding values here, first because of our monuments, and second because of the “living heritage” that still continues... including traditions of these people, of Baba/Nyonya and Chitties.... The old-time crafts are still done, still live, within the heritage zone.⁷

The mayor’s discourse entails a model of partial assimilation of the culture of Malays, designated as the “original people,” by Chinese and Indian immigrants. Indigenous orang asli are recognized as part of the “heritage” of Melaka, but as distinct from the carriers of prestigious Malay culture. Immigrant traders are constructed as intermarrying with Malays and subsequently assimilating Malay clothing and food styles and becoming speakers of Malay language while maintaining their religious identity and beliefs. However, instead of continuing to develop this image of cultural hybridity, he shifts to the awkward formulation of “halving” Baba/Nyonyas and Chitties into those that follow Malay culture and those that follow Chinese or Indian culture. That is, the Melaka mayor avoided wholeheartedly embracing hybridity—the complex blending and synthesizing of cultures—in favor of preserving the representation of Malay, Chinese, and Indian cultures as distinct things. Moreover, this sort of reification of cultural diversity appears to have fit with the criteria and expectations of UNESCO for recognizing World Heritage Sites with “living cultures.”⁸ The mayor then melded the values of interethnic and interreligious tolerance and harmony into the constructed elite Malay historical imaginary:

There was also a development of mutual understanding between Eastern and Western cultures, like an interlocking of them... If you go to Harmony Street you can see the... [Hindu] temple, the Chinese temple, and [the] mosque all along the road, and not far from there is a church.... Then, if you say, “The way these people perform their prayers will disturb other people or bring about the sanctions of other people or other religions,” [this] does not happen in Melaka, since the early period until today. They still can have tolerance, because... next to them there is a masjid or a kuil [Hindu temple]. [Nowadays] if there are Malay people you can’t have a church nearby because they are scared.... But long ago in the early period there was no fear because they believed in each other’s places. If you consider Baba and Nyonyas they would say that... [we] pray to Buddha in the temple but we recite our prayers in Malay language. And we Malays pray and recite our prayers in Arabic, and there are half who recite in [the] Malaysian language, Malay, but to understand, that is why religion is meaningless. What we mutually understand... can be said to be the heritage values we have, what knowledge we share that is our roots. Where we don’t think we have our own separate culture, then we don’t feel that we need to apply sanctions to different cultures. All cultures are going in the direction of goodness and not in the direction of badness. This also goes for religion. All religions teach good things and not bad.

He interprets the proximity of diverse religious institutions in the built environment of the city to represent the harmony and tolerance among different groups in Melaka. These religious institutions, actually built during the colonial period, and friendly relations among believers of different faiths, are viewed as demonstrating values that go back to the earlier period of the Melaka Sultanate. Whereas he notes that Malays today may be disturbed or even fearful of the religious worship of others, he imagines a cosmopolitan Melaka in which people from various religious backgrounds use the Malay language in their respective religious activities, believe in one another’s rightful place in society, and emphasize the culture they share rather than their differences. Moreover, the mayor considers this cosmopolitan perspective—which deems all cultures and religions as inclined toward goodness and allows them all to flourish freely, without sanctions—to be part of the heritage values of Melaka.

Jalan Tokong or Harmony Street, Melaka

Secular nationalist Malay elites have widely institutionalized and distributed this model of the early history of Melaka. Though many Malaysians have internalized and reproduced these models, they are also often contested and subverted as subalterns negotiate meanings of history and their positions in contemporary society. For instance, Mohamad Suhaimi, a young Malay professional, told me in a disgruntled fashion that “[i]t is hard to talk to Chinese about Islam because they usually respond by saying that if they become Muslims then they will have to become Malay. But what is wrong with becoming Malay? Malays have never oppressed them and have treated them well, so why do they have this objection with becoming Malay?”⁹ In contrast, Rajan, an Indian factory worker in his early thirties, rejects the assimilation model and subverts the historical imaginary that locates the origins of Malaysian history with Malays and Islam:

Malay people will accept Indians into their families and eventually these Indians become Malays, they masuk Melayu.... But the history of Melaka started with a Hindu, Parameswara, who fled from Palembang to escape Majapahit rulers and killed someone in Singapore... and then came to Melaka, where only his son became a Muslim.... But it [Sriwijaya] was under Majapahit control for a time, and he tried to rebel against Majapahit, which was a Hindu state... and Hinduism and Buddhism are almost the same anyway.... They came to Melaka, and many Indian traders came from Gujerat, bringing Islam and trade to Melaka. These Gujerati traders were the first ones to bring Islam to Melaka... and then the Malays began to become Muslims.¹⁰

In his discourse, Melaka history begins with the flight of a Hindu or Buddhist prince from Palembang to Melaka, after which Indian Muslims converted Malays from Hinduism and Buddhism. From this perspective, it makes no sense to have to become Malay as a result of converting from Hinduism to Islam, since Malays themselves were originally Hindus before Indians brought them into the fold of Islam. Several Indian Muslims I have spoken with underscored the role Indians played in transporting and teaching Islam to Malays. Abdul, a young university student at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, proudly told me, “My family have been Muslims for hundreds of years. My great great-grandfather came to Malaysia as a mubaligh [Muslim missionary] making dakwah... and one of my forefathers opened a sundry shop in Seremban and then moved to Perak, where my family is from now.”¹¹ Similarly, Mohideen, an Indian Muslim from Negeri Sembilan, told me, “Melaka is where the first Indian Muslims came, bringing Islam to Malaysia. They stayed in Tanjung Keling originally, and were called orang keling because the Malays did not understand Tamil and heard the bangles on the Indian women’s ankles going ‘kling, kling, kling’ and so called them orang keling [keling people].”¹²

Another subaltern interpretation of precolonial history takes off from the representation in the elite Malay model of Chinese and Indian traders intermarrying with local Malays without being required to convert to Islam. Robert Seet, the secretary of the Peranakan Association of Melaka, stated:

Baba and Nyonya were Hokkien originally... and we follow all the traditions strictly, even more than the other clan groups.... We follow the traditions on each day before the New Year, like last night, the gods went up to have a conference in the sky... [and] on the Fourth of the New Year they come back down.... On the eighth and ninth we pray to Cheng Kong.... They [Hokkien and Hakka] do not follow these traditions as strictly.... We make the kue bakul [bakul cake] as offerings for the gods, a very special cake.... Baba are more Chinese than the Chinese; we follow all the significance of each day.... No doubt we had intermarried, but we are more Chinese than the Chinese. In the earlier days Islam was not as strict, and they [Malays] may not have converted yet, so they followed Chinese customs.¹³

While elite Malay discourse constructs all Babas/Nyonyas as assimilating Malay culture in early history and “half” of them in contemporary society, Robert Seet and many other Babas and Nyonyas I interviewed stress that they are more “Chinese” in their cultural practices than are Chinese of other sub-ethnic categories. Intermarriage did not lead to assimilation because either Malays were not Muslims yet or they did not follow sharia as strictly as they do today. From this subaltern perspective that promotes liberal pluralism and the loosening of sharia norms, early history provides a model for facilitating greater integration of non-Muslims into the Malaysian nation.