[Books]

I largely agree with the Sir.

Islam, as it moves through the world, changed as it interacted with other cultures. It is a war based religion, the product of a brutal culture. However, SE Asia wasn't violently converted (at least not as violently as the Middle East) and the existent cultures (Buddhist, Hindu and animist) influenced its expression, namely tolerance. True, women wear the hijab and Arabic expressions have well made their way into Bahasa, but the Malay version of Islam is dramatically different that of the Arab world.

What does this really mean though for Islam? It means that the Malay version is essentially an apostate version of Islam (according to an Arabic perspective) in that it embraces (or allows) tolerance and coexistence. Obviously this is my read of the situation, but I think it bears up under scrutiny.

Just like there are folks born into a Catholic country who aren't really Catholic, there are Muslims born in an Islamic country who are only notionally Muslim. There are more of those in Malaysia than there are elsewhere. It is a lack of their "muslimness" that has largely enabled Malaysia to connect with the Western world and develop its people and infrastructure.

That said, one of the shitheads we were training there had a picture of OBL as his screen saver. Several of the good ones though came up and confessed that they were Christian or Buddhist. . . so it goes.