Malaysia's failed exams - an observation

Two decades ago Malaysia failed the Salman Rushdie test. Five years ago it failed Karen Armstrong. Four months ago it abandoned Hamza Kashgari and last week it capitulated to Irshad Manji. As the baritone that supposedly glues the narrative becomes brittle by the year, this Saturday June 9 young and 'emancipated' Muslim friends will fail an invitation to a Glad Tidings solemnization of a beautiful couple underscoring the humble power of the cross but that is another story. 

In Satanic Verses the Ayatollah's edict dribbled down to die-hards who could not endure let alone understand the author’s complicated prose. Kashgari was apprehended upon request of his pervasive host who contends that since a citizen had failed one of its exams, he would by extension fail the test of any Muslim nation he sought refuge in. Manji was deemed detrimental in Malaysia only after an Islamic non-governmental organization in Indonesia hijacked her book launch and evicted her out the country. 

The issue in Malaysia is that the content of her book is blasphemous while the weed up the Indonesians is not the substance of the Canadian’s work but her advertised sexual orientation which is not exactly ‘sharia’ compliant, but then the irony that presents itself is that the lesbian’s perception of Indonesian and by extension Malaysian ‘moderation’ is summed up on page 179 of her recent book, Allah, Liberty and Love, where she asserts in all seriousness that “If you want meaningful moderation in Islam, then turn for more lessons to the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, Indonesia”. 

On Armstrong, banning the ex-Catholic nun is peculiar because the woman is obviously on the side of the Islamist, that is if anyone cared to peruse her material but given the prevailing trend to consider form over substance, the previous job-description of the still Catholic author may have influenced the censors. Having read her book History of God and her other material, it is apparent that the ex-nun is entrenched in the Bucaille genre. Maurice Bucaille was in the seventies, a physician to the Saudi King and in his writings he softened the hard edges of the Islamic canon. 

His detractors say he was commissioned and amply rewarded to write favorably about the doctrine but the upside to the adherent is that the good doctor and those of his ilk such as Armstrong offer the ‘infidel's view' of Islam that is sought after and well absorbed in Wahhabi as well as Sufi institutions of learning. 

Further, Armstrong's genre shows up in her piece Balancing the Prophet published 2007 in the Financial Times in which she critiques Robert Spencer in his The Truth About Muhammad and in response to which she declined an invitation by Spencer to grind his opposing view but that is another story. 

Words – Tommy Peters 

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