SIS AND IRF: REFORMING MUSLIM THOUGHT AND PRACTICE

SIS is an Islamic feminist and human rights organization that combines Islamic concepts with the dominant global culture of “human rights,” gender equality, and the “secular” individual.

An Inter-Faith Commission must be set up which can assist to draw up some ground rules. Religious preachers need to be told that no religion has a monopoly on the truth; that there are many ways of finding salvation.... Just as with the right to propagate, the right to convert is part of the constitutional and international right to freedom of religion. However, though conversion is an intensely personal decision, its exercise must be regulated by the law if the conversion adversely affects the rights of others. The recent case of Sgt. Moorthy highlighted the pain and anguish a conversion can cause to the non-converting spouse.

Rather than advocating for Malay and Muslim hegemony, he promotes religious pluralism and religious freedom for believers of all faiths to propagate their religions. Moreover, he argues for reforms in laws governing conversion and apostasy cases to bring them into concert with international laws, constitutional guarantees, and “the spirit of Islam,” which includes the principle that there should be no compulsion in matters of religion (ibid.).

SIS, like many of the international Muslim scholars in their network, forges a reformist path within the Islamic discursive tradition that diverges from classical legal theory and doctrine. They combine reformulated conceptions of sharia with modern, Western notions of “gender equality,” individual civil liberties, and privatization of religion. SIS is opposed to the implementation and enforcement of sharia criminal laws they argue discriminate against women and encroach on individuals’ civil liberties. SIS bulletin coeditor (and its first male associate member) Shanon Shah (2007, 15) criticized state-enforced sharia criminal laws by arguing, “In effect, turning personal sins into crimes against the state radically alters the relationship between the believer and his or her God from one of personal piety to one of duress.

SIS situates its feminism within a “religious secularist” perspective that reengages and reinterprets religious texts to be congruent with the dominant global culture of “human rights” and Western notions of symmetrical “gender equality.” Many SIS scholars have argued that the patriarchal cultures of many traditional scholars influenced their readings of religious texts and shaped their gender-biased rulings, which have been adopted by jurists in both Malaysia and other Muslim societies. Thus, SIS actively challenges local interpretations of Islam that discriminate against women by violating their universal “human rights” as laid out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and promotes reinterpretations of sharia compatible with such international human rights documents. They call for substantial reforms of sharia family laws and reformulations of gender and marriage in Islamic legal theory to enable contemporary Muslims “to attain the objectives of justice, equality and fairness that are central to Qur’anic principles, the social objectives of the Shari’ah (maqasid al shari’ah)” (Norani Othman 2005, 9).

Although the Malay women I spoke with in the Prime Minister’s Department criticized the feminist worldview of SIS, they also told me they engaged in dialogues with SIS on many legal matters pertaining to women. For instance, when I interviewed a group of female legal experts at JAKIM, Haryaty stated that although they view SIS as a feminist movement they do not ignore their perspectives. They invite them to discussions and listen to their opinions when working on sharia law provisions (cf. Azza Basarudin 2016, 154–57). Likewise, Dr. Zaleha binti Kamarudin, the deputy director of IKIM, informed me they often invited SIS to participate in their seminars and discussions. She noted that the SIS perspective is very different from the “traditionalist” perspective they adopt at IKIM, “in which we take into account the problems of society where sharia is being implemented and try to make the society fit with the laws.” Dr. Zaleha contrasted the SIS model of gender relations with the model she interprets to be based in sharia; yet she also spoke of the concept of equality and the need for male heads (khalifa) of household to practice consultation with their wives in order to make good decisions.²

There has been considerable interaction and exchange between the Sisters in Islam and federal government Islamic institutions and some other Islamic civil society organizations, such as JIM.

Similar to the Sisters in Islam, the Islamic Renaissance Front is a Muslim reformist organization that combines Islamic ethical notions with dominant global ideas of liberalism, pluralism, and inalienable human rights.

In 2014 Dr. Ahmad Farouk Musa, a cardiothoracic surgeon, university-based academic, and director of IRF, wrote a press release criticizing the proposed plan to have surgeons amputate the hands of thieves as part of the PAS Islamic criminal law bill. He argued that physicians and surgeons are “instruments of God on earth” for healing people of ailments and suffering, and to suggest that they inflict punishment is contrary to the Declaration of Geneva, which revised the Hippocratic oath in a modern way and clearly stated that doctors shall not use their medical knowledge to “violate human rights and civil liberties.” He also rebuked the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia and IKRAMHealth for their tacit or explicit support for having surgeons execute amputations, and suggested that the error rate in corporal punishments should militate against using amputations as a form of punishment. This IRF press release was published in Malaysiakini and the Malaysian Insider; following public outcry, the PAS altered the proposal to have a special group of executioners exact the hudud and qisas punishments, rather than surgeons, in their planned rollout of a sharia criminal law bill in Kelantan.

IRF is also an outspoken advocate for what they consider the inalienable rights of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. A 2012 press release titled “End the Smear Campaign,” also published in the Malaysian Insider and bearing the name of Ahmad Farouk Musa and six other members of IRF, condemned the mischaracterization of Nurul Izzah Anwar’s statement on religious freedom (Islamic Renaissance Front 2012b). Nurul Izzah is the daughter of Anwar Ibrahim, and they are both popular leaders of PKR and the opposition coalition. IRF clarified that she was merely summarizing the well-known Qur’anic verse, Sūra al-Baqarah 2:256, which declares, “Let there be no compulsion in religion.” They argued that this Qur’anic principle of “freedom of conscience” should be applied to Malays and Muslim converts and not just to non-Muslims. Moreover, they criticized the erroneous confusion of ethnicity with religion in the assumption that “Malays can only be Muslims” and called for their supporters to speak out “against the rising tide of religious chauvinism and speak truth to power.” In a 2013 press release titled “A Perverse Understanding of Human Rights,” Dr. Ahmad slammed the statement of Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom, an official in the Prime Minister’s Department and director of IKIM, that “there was no violation of human rights in the banning of Shia teaching.” He asserted that this statement reflects a clear misunderstanding of the language of human rights, and clarified that “human rights are inalienable fundamental rights to which any human being is inherently entitled” and therefore cannot be taken away. The IRF director proceeds to articulate the international culture of human rights with interpretations of the divine will expressed in the Qur’an:

From the perspective of the Qur’an, these rights came into existence when we did; they were created, as we were, by God in order that human potential could be actualized. No ruler or government could abolish the rights created and given by God. Eternal and immutable, they ought to be exercised since everything that God does is for a just purpose. Hence the greatest guarantee of personal freedom for a Muslim lies in the Qur’anic decree that no one other than God can limit human freedom and that judgment as to what is right and what is wrong rests with God alone. The state has no business to dictate what people should believe in and which denomination they chose to subscribe to.

Dr. Ahmad reconciles the ideas of inalienable human rights embedded in international conventions with revealed knowledge through positing that God created those rights simultaneously with his creation of humans. He suggests that the “human rights” Western peoples discerned through using their reason and intellects were the rights that God originally created. This approach intertwines a version of Islamic natural law with Western Enlightenment thought and its emphasis on the use of reason to determine what is right and wrong. Dr. Ahmad contends that banning, outlawing, and harassing Shias unjustly violates their “basic fundamental human rights” of religious freedom, dignity, and the opportunity for developing human capacities. IRF called for the Malaysian government as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council to protect the human rights of Shia Muslims equally and without discrimination. Their discourse and combination of ideas suggests a form of religious secularity akin to that of SIS and PKR’s Muslim leadership.

IRF contests the hegemony of race and religion and incorporates ideas of pluralism, justice, and democracy in their vision of the Malaysian nation. In a 2012 press release titled “Lesson from the On-going Demonization of DAP,” the Islamic Renaissance Front (2012c) challenged recent claims by UMNO politicians and ulama that voting for DAP is haram. To the contrary, IRF asserted that voting for a just non-Muslim rather than an unjust Muslim is more in keeping with the Islamic principle of supporting justice. They drew on the opinions of Tariq Ramadan and a nineteenth-century Syrian reformer to buttress their position in support of DAP: “The great Muslim reformer from Syria, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1854–1902), held the opinion that since oppression and despotism are contrary to Islam, a just non-Muslim ruler is preferred to a tyrannical Muslim leader. In particular, we find DAP’s vision of Middle Malaysia, wherein dignity, opportunity and prosperity is promised to all Malaysians regardless of ethnicity, gender and religion, wherein the welfare of the poor and oppressed are secured, as in no way in contradiction with Islam’s own aspirations for a just society in a modern globalized age.” They also stated that they adopt the position of Tariq Ramadan, who downplays the significance of aiming to establish an Islamic state and implementing the hudud penal code and instead stresses the need for Muslims to deal with pluralism and focus on “objectives and values of justice.” IRF noted the inconsistency in UMNO political leaders’ expressed commitment to wasaṭiyyah, or a moderate approach to religion, and the “extremism” propagated by UMNO sympathizers and members such as Fathul Bari Mat Jahya and other scholars in their organization of ulama. Likewise, IRF and fourteen other civil society organizations, including SIS, SUARAM, Aliran, All Women’s Action Society, and Women’s Aid Organisation, issued a joint statement on June 6, 2012, titled “Agree to Disagree: Book Banning Frenzy Must End,” calling on Malaysian authorities to stop banning books “as the first step towards promoting diversity and respect” (Islamic Renaissance Front 2012a). They mentioned the recent uproar against Irshad Manji’s Allah, Liberty and Love but underscored how the larger trend of banning works contradicts the wasaṭiyyah stand on diversity and tolerance and stifles the open discourse necessary to develop a healthy democracy. IRF’s sociopolitical project involves striving for a modern, inclusive, democratic Malaysia through activism and dialogue.

Although the Sisters in Islam developed some traction with dominant pro-sharia projects in terms of gender, SIS and IRF have been the targets of severe criticism for their liberal positions on many other issues. In the seminar “Liberalism and Pragmatism: Truth and Reality,” attended by representatives of mufti departments, government departments, NGOs, and religious teachers in July 2012, Datuk Marzuki, the director of the Selangor Department of Islamic Religion, mentioned IRF’s support for Irshad Manji’s book as evidence that liberalism has already made an impact on Malaysian society. He warned that these movements, with their “upside-down ideologies,” pose the danger of fomenting confusion, divisions, and hostilities within the Muslim community (Sinarharian 2012c). Furthermore, the persistent alliance of SIS with secular liberal rights organizations has made them the subject of a recent fatwa of the Selangor Fatwa Council, which declared that SIS has deviated from Islamic teachings by subscribing to liberalism and religious pluralism.⁵ This suggests that while contention over the existing gender norms can be tolerated, a challenge to the underpinnings of the racial and religious hierarchy cannot.