SUBMITTING to GOD Islam in Urban Malaysia Women And
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Challenging preconceptions of the nature of Islamization In recent decades, Malaysia has been profoundly changed both by forces of globalization, modernization and industrialization, and by SYLVA FRISK a strong Islamization process. Some would argue that the situation of Malay women has worsened but such a conclusion is challenged by SYLVA FRISK this study of the everyday religious practice of pious women within SUBMITTING TO GOD Kuala Lumpur’s affluent, Malay middle class. Here, women play an active part in the Islamization process not only by heightened Women and Islam in Urban Malaysia personal religiosity but also by organizing and participating in pub- lic programmes of religious education. By organizing new forms of collective ritual and assuming new public roles as religious teachers, these religiously educated women are transforming the traditionally male-dominated gendered space of the mosque and breaking men’s monopoly over positions of religious authority. Exploring this situa- SUBMITTING TO GOD tion, the book challenges preconceptions of the nature of Islamization as well as current theories of female agency and power. “One of the distinctive features of this wonderfully researched ethno- graphy is its insightful analysis of the religiosity and spiritual develop- ment of urban Malay women who had participated in the Islamization process in Malaysian society. Submitting to God will undoubtedly add to the debates on the anthropology of difference, gender and religion, and gender and Islam.” – Sharifah Zaleha Syed Hassan, Institute of Ethnic Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia “[A]n important contribution to the understanding of grassroots women’s Islamic activities in Malaysia. … I strongly recommend [it] to readers seeking a humane approach to Islam in Malaysia, a text that is not filled with negative images and addresses real spiritual as well as other social issues.” – David Banks, Contemporary Islam, vol. 4, 2010 GenderinG AsiA a series on gender intersections www.niaspress.dk Frisk-cover-reprint.indd 1 18/04/2011 16:39 SUBMITTING TO GOD Frisk_prels.indd 1 20/5/09 12:09:58 GENDERING ASIA A Series on Gender Intersections Gendering Asia addresses the ways in which power and constructions of gender, sex, sexuality and the body intersect with one another and pervade contemporary Asian societies. The series invites discussion of how people shape their identities as females or males and, at the same time, become shaped by the very societies in which they live. The series is concerned with the region as a whole in order to capture the wide range of understandings and practices that are found in East, Southeast and South Asian societies with respect to gendered roles and relations in various social, political, religious, and economic contexts. Gendering Asia is, then, a multidisciplinary series that explores theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues in the social sciences. Series Editors: Wil Burghoorn, Gothenburg University, Sweden; Cecilia Milwertz, NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Denmark; and Helle Rydstrøm, Lund University, Sweden. Contact details can be found at: http://www.niaspress.dk. Working and Mothering in Asia. Images, Ideologies and Identities Edited by Theresa W. Devasahayam and Brenda S.A. Yeoh Making Fields of Merit. Buddhist Female Ascetics and Gendered Orders in Thailand Monica Lindberg Falk Gender Politics in Asia. Women Manoeuvring within Dominant Gender Orders Edited by Wil Burghoorn, Kazuki Iwanaga, Cecilia Milwertz and Qi Wang Lost Goddesses. The Denial of Female Power in Cambodian History Trudy Jacobsen Gendered Inequalities in Asia. Configuring, Contesting and Recognizing Women and Men Edited by Helle Rydstrøm Submitting to God. Women and Islam in Urban Malaysia Sylva Frisk NIAS Press is the autonomous publishing arm of NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, a research institute located at the University of Copenhagen. NIAS is partially funded by the governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden via the Nordic Council of Ministers, and works to encourage and support Asian studies in the Nordic countries. In so doing, NIAS has been publishing books since 1969, with more than two hundred titles produced in the past few years. copenhagen university Nordic Council of Ministers Frisk_prels.indd 2 20/5/09 12:09:59 Submitting to God Women and Islam in Urban Malaysia Sylva Frisk Frisk_prels.indd 3 20/5/09 12:10:00 First published in 2009 by NIAS Press NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Leifsgade 33, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark tel: (+45) 3532 9501 • fax (+45) 3532 9549 email: [email protected] • website: www.nias.press.dk Simultaneously published in the United States by the University of Washington Press © 2009 Sylva Frisk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Frisk, Sylva. Submitting to God : women and Islam in urban Malaysia. -- (Gendering Asia ; no. 6) 1. Women in Islam. 2. Women in Islam--Malaysia. 3. Muslim women--Malaysia--Social conditions. I. Title II. Series 297’.082’09595-dc22 ISBN-978-87-7694-048-5 Typeset by NIAS Press Produced by SRM Production Services Sdn Bhd and printed in Malaysia Frisk_prels.indd 4 20/5/09 12:10:00 Contents Preface and Acknowledgements vii Glossary xi Abbreviations xvii 1. Introduction 1 2. Islamization in Malaysia 27 3. Submission to God requires knowledge 63 4. Religious duties and acts of worship 99 5. Transforming rituals: Claiming public religious space 141 6. Becoming mukmin 161 7. Conclusion: Feminism, anthropology and agency 181 Bibliography 191 Index 205 Frisk_prels.indd 5 20/5/09 12:10:00 Figures 1.1. Mosque group 3 2.1. Outside the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur 28 2.2. Women walking towards Masjid Jamek in Kuala Lumpur to pray 56 3.1. The cafeteria at the International Islamic University in Gombak 67 3.2. The Putra mosque in Putra Jaya 69 3.3. Tajwid class 75 4.1. Friday noon prayer at the National mosque in Kuala Lumpur 112 4.2. Friday noon prayer at Masjid Jamek in Kuala Lumpur 112 Figures 1.1.–4.1. by Sylva Frisk; Figure 4.2. by Jan Mellqvist Frisk_prels.indd 6 20/5/09 12:10:00 Preface and Acknowledgements My research interest in the religious practices of Muslim women in Malaysia started in the early 1990s when I had the opportunity, as a fresh doctoral student, to visit Dr Wil Burghoorn, a senior researcher and also close friend, while she was doing her fieldwork on Malay factory women in one of the Free Trade Zones in the Klang valley, west of Kuala Lumpur. During this first visit I came across religious study groups formed by women and I met women who expressed a strong sense of self esteem and value in relation to religious commitment and studies. They were eager to introduce me to Malay traditions and practices and emphasized the fact that women were allowed to take an active part in all aspects of society; they could work side by side with men, they earned their own money, they were visible in public space and they could contribute to the religious life of the community. The importance that women placed on religious practice in their everyday life and the roles that women played in religious education showed me a different dimension of the wave of Islamization movement that had swept over the country since the early 1970s. What I had read thus far on Islamization in Malaysia had a clear focus on men’s activities and roles and women were usually presented in terms of victims of Islamization or as passive followers of the movement. When I, during my first visit to the country, met women who guided me through their religious practices and introduced me to female religious spaces it opened up a wide field of research questions concerning gender, Islam and agency that I have ever since tried to grapple. In 1995, a couple of years after my first visit to Malaysia, I embarked on a field work in Kuala Lumpur with the intention of collecting data for my dissertation with a focus on women’s religious practices in urban Malaysia. Over the next 12 months I spent most of my days in mosques, in Koran study groups and in Arabic classes together with women who were driven by a desire to learn more about their own religion or the desire to teach and inspire other women to learn more about Islam. During this field work I formed relationships as an anthropologist with individual women as interlocutors. These contacts have extended beyond the initial PhD project vii Frisk_prels.indd 7 20/5/09 12:10:01 Submitting to God as I have, as a researcher, been able to return to Kuala Lumpur on a fairly regular basis up until this date. New research questions have been in focus, but I have been able to keep contact with many of these women: to follow their daily lives but also participate in the religious study groups that they are engaged in. The data that I present in this book have thus been collected over an extensive period of time beginning with my dissertation project in the mid-90s and ending with my latest field trip in January 2009. Many of these relationships that I formed during my first long term field work have transformed, over time, into relationships of friendship: I have stayed close with them long after the field work, and eventually the dissertation, were finished. As friends, these women, have a deep concerng for my personal religious beliefs. Firdaus, my adopted sister and dear friend, has ever since we met the first time in 1995 nurtured a hope that I would see the beauty and truth in Islam the same way that she does.