DECEMBER 31 — First, whatever I say here, it’s clear that Minister of Education Maszlee Malik should have chosen a phrase other than medan dakwah when urging religious teachers from Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah to continue serving in East Malaysia.
Given our country’s religio-racialised climate, it was almost certain that people would interpret Maszlee’s remark exclusively as an aggressive call for Muslim proselytization.
For example, a top community leader in Sabah read the phrase as a call towards making Sabah and Sarawak a “battleground for Islamic evangelisation”; at least one columnist began recounting the history of Islamisation in Malaysia and worried out loud that Maszlee’s statement may lead to the replacement of secular education with Islamic teachings; an evangelical organisation in Sarawak even strongly denied the very possibility of alternative meanings to dakwah i.e. it can only mean a rallying cry for Islamisation and a treat to freedom of religion and that is what Maszlee meant it to be. Full stop.
Again, I’m all for selecting more “cordial” words and phrases given the sensitivities of many Malaysians, and obviously Maszlee has a lot to learn as a newly-minted politician in one of the most important ministries in Malaysia Baharu.
Having said that, in the spirit of education, perhaps it helps to bracket the belief that any of use of the term dakwah by necessity means evangelisation cum proselytization in the most militant manner.
The irony is that — the political sensitivities of non-Muslims in Malaysia notwithstanding — if I forcibly insist (without debate) that a certain religious term must possess one and only one meaning, then isn’t that rather unhelpful to unity and mutual understanding?
Because it’s clear from a little bit of research that dakwah can be used in a variety of ways.
Literally meaning “issuing a summons” or “making an invitation”, the term dakwah when used by a Muslim leader to his followers can, depending on the context (and even geographical region!), denote any of the following:
- To engage in evangelisation and missionary activity
- To be involved in activities and conversations on how to interpret the Quran and practise the Islamic faith
- To actively promote and work for universal goodness, truth and justice in the world
- To be mindful of spiritual growth and revival, both for one’s self and others
- To push for or support state-sponsored socio-economic and cultural activities (or even foreign policy decisions!) which benefit the community
Without denying that traditionally dakwah brings to mind Meaning #1, the term has grown to embrace all the other meanings as well. Meaning #3 is essentially Maszlee’s explanation of what he meant.
As some religious (and even non-religious) people may notice, over time institutional faith has the tendency of evolving and adapting to external factors, the world’s cultures and media, to globalising trends and so on.
The transformation of the meaning of dakwah into various acceptable forms, cautiously put, could be seen as a gradual adaptation of the Islamic mindset towards a changing world.
One more time, I certainly hope that Maszlee has learned his lesson that certain words “trigger” others very easily (hence our caution in using them).
But the fact is that only very rarely do words (especially religious ones) have only one absolute meaning. Hence, while I can appreciate the anger and concern arising over Maszlee’s remarks (especially from East Malaysia), I think it helps no one if we continually insist that when a certain person used a certain word, he could have meant nothing other than what we believe he meant.
To go back to the list again, one can easily notice a shift from dakwah as missions to dakwah as missional.
A missions framework is more confrontational, narrow-focused, doctrinal and, obviously, proselytisational in nature.
The missional perspective, on the other hand, is more holistic, societal, and dialogical (or “interactive”).
The first asks how to “convert” non-Muslims to the Islamic faith; the second asks how the Islamic community can serve the world and make it better.
In the spirit of unity, goodwill and Malaysia Baharu, I wish to give Maszlee the benefit of the doubt that his priority in using the word was to encourage religious teachers to be more of a blessing to their communities than anything else.
And that’s always a good thing.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
