AFTER the United Nations Security Council condemned the Islamic State (IS) on Friday, with United States Secretary of State John Kerry aptly describing the group as a “militant cult masquerading as a religious movement”, Malaysian Muslim clerics must ask themselves whether they are doing enough to deter Malaysian youth from joining IS. The Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (ABIM) has reportedly said that it had encountered many Muslim youth who were keen on joining IS, owing to their skewed interpretation of “jihad”. Though it has been more than three months since Malaysia found out that it had started losing its youth to IS, the fact that the interest to join them has not abated indicates that it is imperative for the authorities to review whether the measures it has taken are sufficient to deter more Malaysians from joining this pseudo-Islamic group.
It is important that both the government and the prime minister have come out to officially condemn the IS and for the police to be unequivocal in their pursuit of IS-related militants. But given that the IS gets its recruits from selling the idea of sacrifice in the name of God, it surely falls upon the religious clergy, imams, ustaz and religious scholars to counter such manipulative romance with arguments for why this is not a cause and one that God would not advocate, nor, indeed, reward. It does not help that the death of former Pas Kedah Youth information chief Mohd Lotfi Ariffin, who allegedly fought for the Free Syrian Army, has been lauded by some in the higher echelons of Pas, with some calling him a martyr, further muddying and misleading the public on what constitutes martyrdom and the conditions of justified and honourable warfare. Futhermore, it does not help that the National Fatwa Council does not see the need to state its opinion on the concept of jihad-nikah (wartime comfort women) because it feels that the hukum (religious law) on the matter was “understood”. But is it? With the blog postings of a Malaysian IS bride going viral and romanticising terrorism, can the Muslim clergy be absolutely sure that everyone has the necessary religious knowledge to be aware of and understand the hukum?
We are fast approaching that point where, if there is no urgency by our Muslim clerics to come out loud and clear against terrorism, we will one day turn around and discover this evil among us. No one should be under any misapprehension that the IS in any way represents the Islamic utopian ideal. The reverse, in fact. Clerics aside, ordinary decent Muslims don’t do enough to denounce the iniquities of this misappropriation and misrepresentation of Islam, but when Islam is criticised because of it, they get upset. They have only themselves to blame.