KUALA LUMPUR, May 25 — Ahmad Fuad Rahmat, 33, would be familiar — well, at least his voice — to listeners of radio channel BFM 89.9 as one-half of Night School, the show about philosophy and current issues that has gained a cult following.
Trained in philosophy at Marquette University, a Jesuit institution in Milwaukee, US, Fuad joined the progressive Muslim group Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF) in 2011 before becoming the editor of Projek Dialog, an online interfaith community in late 2012.
He also spent some years helping out the family business in Abu Dhabi, which he later found out was not to his liking, and now teaches freelance at the School of Modern Languages and Culture at The University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus.
According to Fuad, his leaning towards philosophy and social justice started from his time in Kolej Tuanku Ja’afar (KTJ), an international school in Negri Sembilan.
In his own words:
I never felt at home in KTJ… my parents, they were not old money, they were part of the latter day commercial class, beneficiaries of the NEP (National Economic Policy). It’s not obvious but there are nuanced differences in social expectations between the two, and let’s just say that KTJ is worlds apart from the public school I came from.
I was in Pace University, New York during 9/11 and that was my near death experience… that was also my first experience being marginalised as a Muslim. You realise you’re on the receiving end of prejudice… I felt it first hand, and from that moment on I could never think of privilege in the same way.
Abu Dhabi was quite racial, there was a racial hierarchy of labour… people thought I was Filipino, who were mostly in service. I’d have serious business dinners, and when I was walking to the bathroom, some Arab guy would be tapping my shoulder asking for the menu.
The jarring experiences in KTJ, New York and Abu Dhabi... there was always the sense that I was on the outside looking in… the idea of class consciousness, we never have a neutral outlook on the world, our outlook is always coloured by class. After that, you have a lot of these questions: Whose way of life is better? What’s a good way of life? What does it mean to live a good life?
When I left my PhD programme, my skill set was so abstract. Somehow I ended up interviewed by IRF. It was really weird because I didn’t know much about Islam. I taught at a Catholic university, most of my learnings had been secular. I even approach religion in a secular way, I look at it as a human phenomena. Everybody wants some identification, something universal. Religion is just one manifestation of that.
At some point, I realised that my time at IRF was expiring very quickly… I was not doing progressive Islam justice. If progressive Islam wanted to go forward, I was not the guy to do it… the conservatives I often debated would talk in terms of Quran and hadith, whereas I would talk in terms of the limit of reason and scriptures. They didn’t like that.
I was just reinforcing the stereotype that the liberals and progressives, they don’t know their scriptures, they’re coming with value systems that are alien to Islam. Not that there’s anything wrong about that, but in the current context that’s not the best strategy.
[My Night School co-host Sharaad Kuttan and I] have the same temperament, which is very important. Not your view, your politics, but how you deal with things… for me and him, we’re both relaxed, we don’t need to control everything, the process is very organic.
Interestingly enough, Night School has gotten into trouble for the most innocent things … Whenever in our description there is the word “Islam”, the MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) would tell us not to air it. It’s either that or sex … Obviously the two things they think the most about, otherwise they won’t be so sensitive about it, right?
Teaching right now, I have to say, is the best way of social change, having been in NGO and media. In Malaysia right now, the chance for radical change is there. That’s where you can really work on the questions and have long conversations that you can’t have at public forums … I realise that my role in the long term would be that. I like (Friedrich) Nietzsche. If I can make an impact on the Malays like how he did on the Christians I’ll be very happy. It’s a tall order lah.
