By Azly Rahman

The current uproar over the arrest of Dr. Asri, former Mufti of Perlis interests me. I am not particularly interested in the political and ideological dimension of it; rather in how this issue will develop in this hypermodern country plagued with internal contradictions. “The center cannot hold” as the Irish poet W.B. Yeats once said, and “Things Fall Apart” as the title of the great African novel of Chinua Achebe suggests – these describe the Malaysian theological dilemma, a dilemma that has a history and a future.

Malaysian Muslims are yet faced with another challenging situation; one which presents an interesting extrapolation of the historical dilemma the Muslims have been facing intellectually. Coming soon would be a public intellectual crisis that involves the Grand and subaltern voices in Islam. Those of the Wahabbi, Salafi, Sunni, Syiah, Sufi, and the “denominations derived from traditional and indigenous practices” (the tariqats primarily) will come out in the open to assert the “truth-ness” of their perspective and practice of Islam.

Essentially now, Islam seems to have many ‘denominations’ based on cultural, geographical, political, economic, and intellectual factors Read the rest of this entry »