Interpretation of faith in Islam

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Raids and fines for Ramadan fast breaking spotlight rising religious conservatism in multicultural Malaysia


Muslims around the world have marked the holy month of Ramadan with prayers as well as religious fasting between sunrise and sunset. Saurabh Sirohiya/NurPhoto/Getty Images

CNN
—
Religious authorities in Malaysia have stepped up moral policing efforts during the holy month of Ramadan in what critics warn has been part of a wider recent shift toward a more conservative form of Islam in the multi-racial and culturally diverse nation.

Ramadan, regarded as the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, is celebrated by Muslims around the world who abstain from eating, drinking, and sexual acts during daylight hours and break their fast after sundown.

It is a month of deep spiritual reflection and celebration with friends and family – but can also be far from easy, as anyone who has tried fasting can attest.

In many parts of Malaysia, Muslims caught eating or drinking during daytime hours can find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Around 20.6 million of Malaysia’s 34 million-strong population are Muslims, but the country is also home to sizeable ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities that include Buddhists, Christians and Hindus, as well as indigenous communities.


Muslim devotees offer night prayers marking the start of Islam's holy fasting month of Ramadan at Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta on March 11, 2024.

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Under the country’s unusual dual track legal system, which is also federal and varies from state to state, Muslims are subject to sharia law on a host of social issues including marriage, divorce and fasting.

Religious police tend to ramp up their presence during Ramadan, activists note, which ends later this week, patrolling the streets more visibly and staking out at popular eateries – sometimes in disguise – to catch those breaching the rules.

Those caught eating or drinking during daytime hours face fines of up to 1,000 Malaysian Ringgit (about $200) and prison terms of up to a year. Non-Muslims caught selling food, drinks or tobacco to Muslims during fasting hours are also subject to penalties.

Arrest figures have not yet been released for this year but in 2023, religious officials in the state of Malacca, a major tourist destination, recorded nearly 100 arrests of Muslims caught eating in public during the fasting month, an increase from 41 arrests the previous year, they said.

This year, more than 10 “hotspots” were identified throughout the state, said the chairman of its Islamic Religious Department, JAIM.


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Rahmad Mariman announced that “frequent monitoring and inspections” were being carried out at popular bars, restaurants, malls and parks. “Through these operations, JAIM enforcement officers will detain Muslims found eating in public and will not hesitate to take action against traders involved in selling food to them,” Mariman said in a statement.

Up north in the state of Perak, JAIM’s counterpart, the Gerik Islamic Religious Department (JAIPK), took to TikTok to share videos of inspections and fasting raids religious officers had conducted throughout March.

In one video, set against a spaghetti western soundtrack, JAIPK officers wearing their distinctive black and white uniforms and reflective vests were seen arriving at an open-air eatery in the town of Gerik during the day to question restaurant staff and catch Muslims buying food.

One man wearing a blue motorcycle helmet, whose face is pixelated in the video, was seen fleeing the restaurant with a plastic bag of food.

“This was not a reenactment by professionals. It is an actual video of what took place during our recent operations,” JAIPK wrote in a caption accompanying its TikTok video, which went viral – racking up more than 1.7 million views and continuing to draw thousands of comments since it was uploaded on March 15.


A man runs away from a religious police raid on a restaurant in the state of Perak. Image taken from a video of the raid that was released on TikTok by local authorities. padgerik33300/TikTok

‘Heightened tensions’

Like much of South and Southeast Asia, Malaysia has historically practiced a moderate form of Islam but religious conservatism has been on the rise in recent years.

At the forefront of this shift, experts say, is the ultra-conservative hardline Islamist political party PAS, which made historic gains during Malaysia’s 2023 general election and wields great influence in its stronghold conservative states in the north.

PAS party leader Hadi Awang, also a religious teacher, regularly expresses his support for harsher sharia laws.

CNN reached out to multiple state religious bodies across Malaysia for comment. One religious enforcement officer from Malacca said that more raids had been carried out this year at various roadside stalls, restaurants and parks as compared to 2023 and 2022.

“It is our responsibility to protect and preserve the name of Islam during this important time,” said the male officer, who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak with international media.

But not all cases result in arrests, he also stressed. “It is also important that we show compassion, especially on very hot days when we see people drinking water – sometimes it can’t be helped.”


Supporters of the Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) gather for a rally, dressed in the party's signature green colors. MOHD RASFAN/AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Moral policing during Ramadan is a longstanding issue in the country, according to Malaysian women’s rights group Sisters in Islam, which advocates against religious policing and points to another controversial area of concern – “khalwat” laws.

Also known as “close proximity laws”, they vary from state to state and are part of the civil sharia legislation that only applies to Muslims. They are used to prosecute unmarried couples deemed to be overly close to each other.

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On March 8, religious police raided a luxury condominium in the capital Kuala Lumpur and arrested two actors, a married male and a single female, under these laws, a move that generated significant local media coverage.

Complaints were made to the state religious department, media reports said, and the scandal caused a national stir – drawing scorn from conservative politicians and prompting public apologies from the celebrities.

Sisters in Islam told CNN that overzealous application of religious laws had gotten worse in recent years.

“These acts of moral policing violate personal freedoms and paint a distorted image of Islam and raises important questions,” said SIS spokeswoman Ameena Siddiqi.

It is also common practice during Ramadan for public schools in Malaysia to shut their canteens, leaving limited options to eat and rest during the day, Siddiqi notes.

“This has led to instances where non-Muslim students are forced to ‘respect’ their fasting peers and eat their recess meals in toilets,” Siddiqi said, adding sensitivities around fasting add to “heightened tensions.”

“Restaurants and eateries have refused to serve food to pregnant women during Ramadan, which goes against the very essence of Islam,” Siddiqi added.


Muslim women perform Tarawih prayers at Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan on March 22, 2024, in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia. Annice Lyn/Getty Images

Anisah Mahmood, a 42-year-old mother of two from Kuala Lumpur now living in London, said she was suspended by her company in 2018 after she was caught eating in public. She was breastfeeding at the time.

“There are valid reasons for not fasting, mostly medical,” she said. “But this is severely misunderstood in Malaysia, even if you are tired or sick, you will be shamed and made to feel like a bad person.”

The issue of shuttered school canteens has been hotly debated over the years and was recently revived in parliament by Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek.

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Non-Muslim students, she argued, “should not be forced to eat in storerooms or other inappropriate places” during Ramadan “when canteens are available.”

Her comments drew criticism from PAS.

“We think it’s common today that everyone respects those who are fasting and the children that are still learning to fast,” PAS lawmaker Haji Ahmad Bin Yahaya, said in a statement shared online.

For those who struggle to fast or adhere to the rigors of the faith they were born with, Ramadan can be a stressful time.

Yusuf, a Malay Muslim man in his 30s who lives in the southern state of Johor, recalled how he was caught buying food during Ramadan by religious police in 2019.

“As long as you look Malay, you must fast during Ramadan – those are the rules,” Yusuf told CNN.

He asked not to publish his full name and age given the sensitivities of the topic.

“No one likes to admit when they don’t fast – especially if they are in Malaysia,” he said.

“I try to fast and try to be consistent, but it gets mentally taxing and can feel almost impossible when all you want is coffee and a cigarette to help get you through the day.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/08/asia/mal ... index.html

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Struggling to Stem Extremism, Tajikistan Targets Beards and Head Scarves

After Tajiks were charged with a deadly attack in Moscow, the country has cracked down on signs of Islam. But experts say it’s not addressing the causes of terrorism.


Where stalls once sold head scarves and hijabs, they now mainly offer traditional Tajik clothing.

People in Tajikistan were expecting a government crackdown after Tajik men were arrested and charged with a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall in March.

But it still seemed excessive to Nilufar, a 27-year-old education professional, when she saw local authorities with scissors outside a K.F.C. in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, trimming beards that were deemed too long.

Excessive, but not so surprising. In the span of a month, Nilufar herself had been stopped three times by the authorities for wearing a hijab in public.

“Nowadays, as soon as you go outside, you can actually feel how the raids have intensified,” Nilufar said in a recent interview in Dushanbe, providing only her first name because of fear of retribution.

With a population of 10 million, the vast majority of whom are Muslim, Tajikistan has many challenges that counterterrorism experts say make it an incubator for extremism: poverty, poor education, high unemployment and grievances against an autocratic government that severely restricts the practice of religion.

In the face of these challenges, critics say, Tajikistan has continued to restrict how Islam can be taught and practiced and increasingly implemented superficial policies regulating head scarves and beard lengths.

ImageA woman silhouetted against the net curtains of an apartment window, through which trees and a tower block can be seen.

Nilufar, a 27-year-old education professional in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, has given up wearing a head scarf after the authorities stopped her three times.
Image
A poster of a suited man waving above the door of a three-story building faced in beige stucco.

A hospital in Dushanbe bearing a poster of President Emomali Rahmon, an authoritarian who has been in power for three decades.

The country came under global scrutiny after four Tajik men were charged as the assailants in the worst terrorist attack in Russia in two decades, which killed 145 people and injured more than 500 at the Moscow concert hall. Other Tajiks were later arrested in connection with the attack.

American officials have said that Islamic State Khorasan Province, a branch of ISIS known as ISIS-K, was responsible for the attack, and radicalized Tajiks have in recent months caught the attention of governments and counterterrorism experts around the world.

Tajik adherents of the Islamic State have also been involved in terrorist attacks in Iran and Turkey, as well as thwarted plots in Germany, Austria and elsewhere. Last month two Tajiks helped stage a mutiny at a Russian prison, the state news agency TASS reported, adding that they claimed to be motivated by radical Islam.

The attacks have tarnished the country’s image abroad, especially in Russia, where about one million Tajiks — 10 percent of Tajikistan’s population — toil in low-skilled jobs to send money home.

The government’s response, overseen by President Emomali Rahmon, an authoritarian leader who has been in power for more than three decades, has been to crack down.

“In Tajikistan, authorities are getting frustrated by the international stigma they’re receiving and the blame they’re getting for all these attacks,” said Lucas Webber, the co-founder of Militant Wire, whose research focuses on the Islamic State. “So they’re just doubling down, being heavy-handed.”

Tajiks have long been accustomed to restrictions that would surprise many Westerners, with legislation governing conduct at weddings, birthdays and even funerals (“extravagant emotions” are banned at memorials). Hijabs — head scarves that cover a woman’s neck and generally don’t reveal any strands of hair — have been banned in schools since 2007 and public institutions since 2009.

But in June, the Parliament passed a law banning “clothes alien to Tajik culture,” a term the government often uses for clothing it considers Islamic. Hijabs are a target.

The law imposes fines of between 7,000 and 15,000 somoni, or about $660 and $1,400, in a country where the average monthly salary is just above $200.

The rationale appears to be that stamping out public signs of conservative Islam will help tamp down conservative Islam itself — and potentially reduce Islamic extremism.

Image
A woman in a hijab and a bareheaded child in jeans and a pink top walk along a road. A large mosque is on the horizon.

Tajikistan’s largest mosque, in Dushanbe. The head scarf of the woman passing is of the kind now banned by the government.
Image
A group of men by the side of a road, mostly sitting along a painted curb.

Men from all over Tajikistan gathering in Kosimobod, south of Dushanbe, to seek work in the capital. Most worked in Russia before a crackdown there.

But Mr. Webber said the government’s reaction only added fuel to the fire.

“The terrorists who planned the Moscow attack could not have asked for better responses from the Tajik government,” he said. “Because they want to stoke tensions, they want backlash.”

Several Tajik government bodies responsible for implementing the laws declined to meet with The New York Times in Dushanbe or respond to emailed requests to comment.

Tajikistan is a mountainous country in Central Asia bordered by Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It is heavily reliant on Russia economically and its leaders maintain a very close relationship.

Outside the K.F.C., several women who were with the men trimming beards approached Nilufar and a friend. The women said they were from the Committee on Women and Family Affairs, a government body that advises on and implements state policy. They asked the two women to remove their head scarves.

Nilufar tried to explain that she did not normally wear a head covering, but was mourning her mother’s death.

Image
A triple-height market hall with decorated columns and an inlaid floor.

A market in Dushanbe. Enforcement of the new law against “clothes alien to Tajik culture” has been felt keenly even in a country accustomed to restrictions.

“The women told me, ‘All this is being done for a reason,’” Nilufar said. Many Tajiks had been involved in terrorist attacks, they told her, adding that fundamentalists from Afghanistan had come to the country.

“They sport long beards and their wives wear head coverings,” she said the women told her, and it had become difficult for the authorities to catch them, “because we also dress like them, and it’s hard to tell the difference.”

The women wanted to fine Nilufar. She called an uncle with government connections, who told them to leave her alone.

But when she was stopped in June a third time, she said, this time by the police, she had to spend the night in a cell because she refused to sign a document accepting that she had broken the law.

“When I got to the station, there were already about 15, even 17 women wearing head scarves sitting in the cell, including an older woman who was at least 50,” she said.

In the morning, the station chief arrived — an acquaintance from her university course — and released her. “My husband was angry with me, and worried,” Nilufar said. But he understood what she had been through: He had previously spent five nights in jail before agreeing to trim his beard.

After the experience, Nilufar finally decided to stop wearing her hijab, because she was worried that a stain on her record could hinder her ability to work.

That kind of policing has been a focus of ISIS-K propaganda published in Tajik, among other languages, said Riccardo Valle, the research director of The Khorasan Diary, a research and media platform about the terrorist group.

The propaganda also makes much of crackdowns on Tajiks in Russia, where the authorities have conducted raids on migrant dormitories that house Central Asian guest workers, and have requested documents from people in public places, effectively racially profiling them.

Experts interviewed by The Times said that the strategy of strictly monitoring physical appearance was not an effective way to combat extremism, because it bred resentment. It was also ineffective, they said, arguing that radicalized extremists might try to remain inconspicuous by avoiding outward signs of religiosity.

Image
Livestock being herded through clouds of dust in bare fields.

Goats and sheep returning to Kosimobod at the end of the day.

Image
A woman in a head scarf looking out at hills beyond a low wall.

Gulrakat Mirzoyeva, the mother of Dalerjon Mirzoyev, one of the men charged in the Moscow attack.

Family members of two of the men accused of carrying out the Moscow attack said neither had shown any external signs of religiosity.

“My son was never a practicing Muslim,” said Gulrakat Mirzoyeva, 59, the mother of Dalerjon Mirzoyev, one of the men charged in the assault. “Sometimes he prayed, but not really.”

All four of the accused attackers had been working in Russia for at least several months, some making repeated trips in and out. Many experts say that it is not only crushing poverty at home but degrading experiences of migration that drive Tajik citizens into the hands of militants.

Tajiks who join groups like ISIS-K “are almost all Tajiks who were migrant laborers and were radicalized outside Tajikistan via social networks,” said Bruce Pannier, a Central Asia fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Mr. Mirzoyev had done four stints of six to eight months working in Russia to provide for his wife and their four children. Their home, in a dusty village on the Tajik steppe, has no running water.

Shamsidin Fariduni, another man accused in the attack, had become an observant Muslim after time in prison. His mother, Muyassara Zargarova, insisted he was not an extremist.

He went to work in Russia repeatedly because of financial pressure, she said. First he needed to pay for his wedding, then for medical help when his wife developed pregnancy complications. And when the baby was born with breathing problems, he and his brother went back to look for work once more.

Image
A woman with a white scarf around the top of her head sitting cross-legged next to a cloth spread with food.

Muyassara Zargarova, the mother of another of the suspects, at her home in Loyob, Tajjikistan.
Image
Three men picnicking next to a pile of hay in a close-cropped field.

A break from harvest outside Kosimobod, the home village of one of the suspects in the Moscow attack. His mother says he showed no sign of religiosity.

In the aftermath of the concert hall attack, the Tajik authorities have increased security cooperation with Moscow. Mr. Rahmon has also increased ties with Beijing, though China has denied media reports that it is building a base in northwestern Tajikistan.

The United States and Tajikistan signed an agreement in May to use software that will notify U.S. authorities in real time if travelers who are considered suspicious enter Tajikistan.

But the state needs to be doing more, said Larisa Aleksandrova, a Dushanbe-based expert on human rights.

Instead of tackling substantive problems like corruption, poverty, and social inequality, she said, the state was focusing on “where to put a comma in a sentence, what to name a particular ministry or what clothes, for example, women or men should wear.”

“It distracts us by talking about problems which, in my opinion, are not so relevant,” she said.

Image
A tin-roofed village seen from above, with yellow hillsides beyond.

The village of Kosimobod.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/08/worl ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

As Taliban starts restricting men, too, some regret not speaking up sooner

Beside imposing severe rules on women, new laws require men to grow fist-length beards and bar them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior.


Afghan men ride motorcycles along a road in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Aug. 28. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

As the Taliban starts enforcing draconian new rules on women in Afghanistan, it has also begun to target a group that didn’t see tight restrictions on them coming: Afghan men.

Women have faced an onslaught of increasingly severe limits on their personal freedom and rules about their dress since the Taliban seized power three years ago. But men in urban areas could, for the most part, carry on freely.

The past four weeks, however, have brought significant changes for them, too. New laws promulgated in late August mandate that men wear a fist-long beard, bar them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior, widely interpreted as a prohibition against jeans, and ban haircuts that are against Islamic law, which essentially means short or Western styles. Men are now also prohibited from looking at women other than their wives or relatives.

As a result, more are growing beards, carrying prayer rugs and leaving their jeans at home.

These first serious restrictions on men have come as a surprise to many in Afghanistan, according to a range of Afghans, including Taliban opponents, wavering supporters and even members of the Taliban regime, who spoke in phone interviews over the past two weeks. In a society where a man’s voice is often perceived as far more powerful than a woman’s, some men now wonder whether they should have spoken up sooner to defend the freedoms of their wives and daughters.

“If men had raised their voices, we might also be in a different situation now,” said a male resident of the capital, Kabul, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity or that only their first names be used due to fears of drawing unwanted scrutiny from the regime. “Now, everyone is growing a beard because we don’t want to be questioned, humiliated,” he said.


Mohammad Faqir Mohammadi, center, deputy of the Taliban’s Ministry of Virtue and Vice, speaks during a news conference in Kabul on Aug. 20. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

The Taliban’s new rules governing men pale in comparison with restrictions the government has placed on girls and women, who remain banned from going to school above sixth grade, barred from universities and were recently prohibited from raising their voices in public, among many other rules.

But newly empowered religious morality officers, known for their white robes, have been knocking over the past four weeks on the doors of men in some parts of Kabul who haven’t recently attended mosque, according to residents. Government employees said they fear they’ll be let go for having failed to grow their beards, and some barbers now refuse to trim them. Increasingly, male taxi drivers are being stopped for violating gender segregation rules, by having unaccompanied female riders in their cars, or for playing music.

The new laws give the morality police authority to detain suspects for up to three days. In severe cases, such as repeated failure to pray in the mosque, suspects can be handed over to courts for trial and sentencing based on their interpretation of Islamic sharia law. Violations of the new rules are expected to be punished by fines or prison terms. But people found guilty of some infractions, for example adultery, could be sentenced to flogging or death by stoning.

Amir, a resident who lives in eastern Afghanistan, said he supported the Taliban up until the latest restrictions. But he now feels bullied into submission by their morality police.

“We all are practicing Muslims and know what is mandatory or not. But it’s unacceptable to use force on us,” he said. He added, “Even people who have supported the Taliban are now trying to leave the country.”

Most men interviewed for this story live in Kabul, the country’s most cosmopolitan city, or other urban areas. Residents of more conservative and traditional parts of Afghanistan said they have noticed barely any changes. A male resident of rural Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, said no one in his village has concerns and such rules have long been customary there. “No morality police has showed up here so far. They focus on the cities,” he said.

The new restrictions appear to reflect a broader shift in the balance of power inside the Taliban, with the most conservative elements either gaining influence or seeking to assert themselves more aggressively in urban areas, according to Western officials and Afghan critics of the Taliban.

The Ministry of Vice and Virtue, which directs the morality police, could not be reached for comment. A former senior official with the Ministry of Vice and Virtue denied that the ministry is increasingly turning into a shadow law enforcement agency, saying its primary responsibility remains preaching. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is no longer authorized to respond to journalists.


The faces and heads of mannequins are covered with tin foil at a men’s apparel store in Kabul. In Afghanistan’s capital, shop windows display dazzling ball gowns and three-piece wedding suits — with the face of each mannequin covered. The morality police have asked store operators to hide the mannequins’ faces and photographs of models, according to a clothes seller in Kabul. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

The new restrictions on women include a ban on them raising their voices, reciting the Quran in public and looking at men other than their husbands or relatives. Women must also cover the lower half of their faces in addition to donning a head covering they were already expected to wear.

The crackdown by morality police in urban areas, where some religious rules had been rarely enforced, has heightened anxiety among women. For men, it has come as a shock.

A 36-year old male driver in Kabul said the new restrictions feel “enormous” and pose a growing hardship for his work. His revenue has declined by 70 percent since late August, he said, partly because the Taliban has begun enforcing a rule that bans women from traveling alone in taxis.

Even in some government offices, a new sense of dread has set in. A former Taliban supporter recalled how a friend, who still works for the regime, recently had his salary withheld because his beard wasn’t sufficiently long.

“We are hearing that some of the civil servants, whose beards were shorter than the required length, were barred from entering their departments,” said a government employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

For the past three years, Afghan women often felt alone in their anguish. Some grew exasperated by their husbands’ silence or growing support for the Taliban, which tried to win public favor by building roads and repairing tunnels.

Several women said they hope their protests will soon be joined by Afghan men. “Men were silent from day one, which gave the Taliban the courage to keep imposing such rules,” said a 24-year-old female resident in Kabul. “Now, the Taliban is finally losing men’s support,” she said.

Others are skeptical whether criticism of the rules can make a difference.

In interviews, several Kabul residents said they have begun in recent weeks to look more seriously into leaving the country.

“But if more young people flee this country,” said a male Kabul resident, “there won’t be any hope at all.”


Taliban security personnel stand atop a vehicle in front of the former U.S. Embassy in Kabul as they celebrate the third anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on Aug. 14. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

Haq Nawaz Khan and Lutfullah Qasimyar contributed to this report.

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