A fond memory growing up with a weekend father was him taking me and my younger sister to a long leisurely lunch on Friday afternoons, then ice cream at Swensen’s. My sister and I were aware that he was bunking off Friday prayer at the mosque to spend time with us, which was time better spent because neither of us cared much about religion or God.
Many years ago, I joked with my irreligious Malay male friends, usually over a long Friday lunch then back to work, that I was impressed by their total insouciance about their expected attendance at the mosque. It was the only time in the week, for a couple of hours, when they could be policed; at other times they were free to partake in whatever indiscretions, flouting this or that fatwa (like smoking), and would get away scot-free. Oh to be a Malay man!
Today came a news report that Muslim men in the northeast state of Terengganu in Malaysia will be jailed for up to two years if they fail to show up for congregational Friday prayer, presumably at the mosque or surau. It is an escalation of an existing law with a lighter sentence, a six-month prison sentence for missing Friday prayer three times. The need to ‘discipline’ men is the rationale given by the state’s religious authority, passed by the Islamist party PAS-only state assembly. Aside from relying on moral vigilantes, it will be interesting to see how this would be enforced if the state authority is serious about catching errant Muslim men.
Most times, whenever Islamic authorities in Malaysia appear in global news, we expect Muslim women and members of the queer and trans communities to get the short end of the stick. This time, they are coming after cis-straight men, too. Though not for the first time, if one is to parse the minutiae of sharia law.
In Michael Peletz’s Sharia Transformations, he argued that reforms in recent decades have made Islamic laws in Malaysia more punitive towards errant husbands. Around the same time the reforms created additional legal avenues of support for women navigating the (often long and onerous) path out of marriage. Peletz stands mostly alone in stating that, in contrast to widespread opinion, sharia law can be helpful, even ‘good’ rather than punitive towards women, though it is women who already meet the right heteronormative, moral criteria and then some.
Speaking of meeting particular criteria, the attempt at disciplining Muslim men on Friday afternoons is likely to be specific to Malays, the desired object of political control who are captive audiences of fiery kitab-thumping khutbah. Less useful to PAS are men from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Gulf states, and heaven-forbid, from Iran.
This new ruling on mosque attendance in Terengganu will not diminish men’s freedoms and privilege in a meaningful way. Being a multicultural, multi-faith society, Malaysia offers many spaces to evade the Islamic panopticon. The ethnic heterogeneity of its residents, at times producing racial ambiguity, can also create escape from the grip of Islamic authority. Men are less visibly ‘marked’ by Islam; they are not expected to wear something akin to the hijab. If anything, whatever ruling formulated in line with orthodoxy is likely to reinforce and uphold the Islamic masculine ideal than to make it subordinate to other social groups.
Alicia Izharuddin 