MUSLIM COMMUNITIES IN CAMBODIA : AN OVERVIEW

(TR. LES COMMUNAUTS MUSULMANES DU CAMBODGE : UN APERCU)

EMIKO STOCK 2010, ATLAS DES MINORITS MUSULMANES EN ASIE, M. GILQUIN ED., BANGKOK, IRASEC / PARIS CNRS, 183-216

* This text is an English translation, of the original French chapter on Cambodian Muslims entitled Les communauts musulmanes du Cambodge : un aperu , from the edited book Atlas des minorits musulmanes en Asie mridionale et orientale , M. Gilquin Ed., IRASEC / CNRS Editions, Bangkok Paris. While finally published in 2010, the text was finalized in 2006 and would therefore need to be revised and updated in many areas. This version nevertheless aims a simple translation of the original, in order to provide a readable format to a non French-speaking public. The translation was made with the help of Florianne Wild, and Alberto Perez-Pereiro whom I would like to warmly thank for the time spent on it.

Well see about that at the end of the Cham month!1. This expression, firmly rooted in current Cambodian speech, is meant to refer to an event that is not likely to ever occur. This is how a lender might be made to understand that he will continue to wait forever for his payment. In addition to such expressions used by Buddhist Khmers, who make up 90% of Cambodias citizenry, there is other evidence for a lack of understanding of this Cambodian minority among the majority. Khmers are indeed puzzled by these people called the Cham, who are Muslims, and seem different in every way - even in their calendar, which appears to celebrate neither the end of the month nor the beginning of the year. This common saying reveals the complexity of the relationship between the Khmer majority and a community that is doubly a minority because it is both Cham and Muslim - a complexity that is subsumed by Islam as a marker of difference by Khmer observers, which then negates the complexities of group identity when seen from the Cham/Muslim interior. To present this Cambodian umma2 in all its diversity of origins as well as its Islamic practices requires putting it in its context, before touching upon the multiple reinterpretations of the faith. This will entail a discussion of its local environment, marked on one hand by a half-century of Cambodian social crises and on the other hand by its positioning onto the global stage, notably through the ancestral links interwoven with the umma, often Malay, and the resumption of relations with transnational Islamic communities today.
1

I.

GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE CAMBODIAN MUSLIM COMMUNITY

I. 1. The Cambodian Umma: an integration misunderstood. A mere 5% of 12 million Cambodians, or between 300,000 and 500,000 people, according to statistical sources, are counted as Muslims3. One could wonder if this Muslim minority - overwhelmingly ethnic Cham4 - is indeed as oppressed, and discriminated against, by a supposedly crushing Khmer Buddhist majority, as the Western perception of minority largely framed by a certain vision of human rights tends to see it? The events of September 11, which dominated international media, made Cambodian Buddhists suddenly more aware yet again of these little-known Muslims neighbors, often in unflattering ways: they began to question the wearing of veils, wedding celebrations where no one drinks alcohol, the immense mosques which had formerly been as modest as small countryside pagodas. All the same, even though those Muslims may not appear as a community completely assimilated into Cambodian society, they are no less a part of it in their own way(s), and are continuously reformulating their Islamicity. If there is often a lack of understanding on both sides of each others customs and use of social space, this does not mean there are insurmountable barriers between the two groups. There is most certainly communication. Apart from a minority of remote villages where Cham are dominant, Cham all speak Khmer as well as their own language, and there are good neighborly relations. The death of a Khmer village chief will be followed by a Buddhist cremation to which the Muslims will be cordially invited. Together, they evoke fond memories of the deceased. Another indication of the permeability of barriers are the economic relations. Everyone shops together in the markets; and since Buddhism forbids the slaughter of animals, the Muslim butchers and fishermen have often dominated this business sector. Finally, a look at matrimonial relations reveals that marriage between Khmers and Muslims, until now considered marginal, are in fact much less rare than they seem at first. A recent suspicion of the other after September 11, has been added to the numerous peculiar beliefs that the Khmers hold with regard to the Cham... Prejudices - no doubt a part of all inter-ethnic relations persist on both sides, whether Cham or Khmer: their respective cuisines are shunned because of food taboos or differences in meals preparation that are difficult to overcome for the uninitiated. The fear that
2

the Cham, in their boats, will not come to rescue a drowning person is doubtless a response to the uneasiness that Khmers experience with regard to water, whereas the Cham have been excellent navigators since time immemorial. The apprehension - and fascination - that the Khmers have for Muslims, whose ancestral reputation is one of skillful sorcerers, nonetheless does not prevent Buddhists from soliciting their magical services whenever needed. Finally, if the Khmers are amused by the story of a marriage between a sow and a dog as the original birth of the Cham, they see nothing insulting in it, but consider it an ancestral creation myth (Ner 1941: 193). The day-to-day relations between Muslims, be they Cham or Chvea (a non-Cham, Muslim minority in the country), and the Khmer, extend therefore well beyond an ignorance of the other. While different confessional communities may often be found within the delimited area of the same village, Khmer and Cham will keep and protect separate social spaces. Opting for a multi-culturalist model rather than an assimilationist one: this is probably the final result desired by the Cham minority, when they adopted the religion of the Prophet and thus established Islam as an identity trait. But first, lets return to the foundations of this umma in Cambodia. We will find a history linked to the last breath of the Cham kingdom.

I. 2. Formation of a Muslim Community in the Lower Mekong During the first centuries of our era, along with the process of Indianization, Champa and Cambodia both took the path of Brahmanism, later followed by Mahayana Buddhismespecially pronounced in Champa during the 15th and 16th centuries. While Theravada Buddhism became solidly established among the Khmer, Cham were discovering Islam on their shores. Encounters with travelers, Arabs, Indians, and Persians - all Muslims5 - helped to establish Islam in Champa. It was through continuous exchanges with the Malays that Cham seem to have found their new faith (Cabaton 1906: 27-47; Manguin 1979; Reid 2000: 43-49). This transition toward another religion must be read as a social act. In continuity with a common Austronesian identity (sailing, trade, the use of Malay languages), the Islamization of the Cham facilitated their insertion into mercantile networks. The new religion, associated with the prosperity of its followers, was also attractive because of the supernatural powers it seemed to confer on its greatest leaders through Sufism, similar to the wonder-working talents attributed to monarchs of the past (Reid 2000: 19). On the other hand, in the geopolitical sphere, the few accounts we have from the 17th century of the attempts of Cham sovereigns to play the Malay Muslim network card in order to counter the military incursions of the Vietnamese, emphasize the failure of this policy (Manguin 1979 ; Abdoul-Carime 2005). Successive defeats, whose chronology and importance are debatable, will sweep away the last shreds of Cham sovereignty in 1471, 1692, and 1832. After each attack, refugees were taken in by Cambodia, and little by little they came
3

to constitute the Cambodian Cham community that we know today. These first arrivals, very likely not yet Muslims, will be converted - yet again - through contact with the Malays who had preceded them as settlers in the country (the Chvea, who will be discussed later in more detail). In addition, the last migrants, already Islamized in Champa, found these Chvea to be guides toward a greater orthodoxy (Cabaton 1906; Ner 1941: 166). Slowly, the Cham villages are recomposed, keeping their own language alive, maintaining contact with the Chvea in order to sometimes oppose together the newly adoptive Khmer kingdom, other times to support it.

I. 3. Shared Memories: A Short History of Cham-Khmer relations Looking closer, over the long term, the Cham and the Khmer have always had close relations, however ambiguous. Champa, the kingdom composed of various principalities, extending from the Annam Gate to the region of Donnai (in present-day Vietnam) was the neighbor of the kingdom of Angkor6. The two neighboring states sometimes fought side by side against the eternal Vietnamese invader. Sometimes, they joined with that same invader to conquer the other on the border - be this other Khmer or Cham - who had become troublesome. To balance this seeming dichotomy of relations into historical perspective, we should consider the bas-reliefs of the Bayon, where the great Khmer king, Jayavarman VII, who had lived many years in Champa, is represented as laying low the Cham enemy alongside his Cham allies (Vickery 2004: 42-46). As far as the post 15th century Cambodia goes, the Cambodian Royal Chronicles document the inclusion of the Cham community then in formation on Khmer soil and its role played in local power circles. An example is the conversion of the Khmer King Ramathipadei I (the Sultan Ibrahim from Dutch sources), who, in order to conquer the throne in the 17th century, allied himself with these newcomers who had the reputation of great military skills (Weber 2005: 108-110). On the other hand, we hear of rebellions of the Muslim community as one against the Khmer kingdom - more probably these were struggles of particular factions against such-and-such a prince taking over the throne, or else, on the other hand, to support some other prince, than an actual unified Cham or Muslim front. In addition, there is the ambivalent memory of the sovereign Ang Duong (1858-1860): on one hand, a trusted monarch who offered his hospitality and his lands (in the region of the former royal capital of Udong), on the other hand the leader of a bloody repression in Thbaung Khmum, Kompong Cham a memory persisting in the way Cham built their social networks until today (Weber 2005: 117-134).

Diverse from within and often divided, this heterogeneous Muslim population thus offers its services to various parties, but remains under the protection of a monarch who is respected and to whom, after the short-lived experience of the Champa royalty, it owes allegiance7. Finally we should mention references such as the popular tales in which a Cham prince marries a Khmer princess; treasures stolen sometimes by the Khmer, sometimes by the Cham (Vickery 2004: 26). And last but not least, half-expressed, somewhere between the desire for union and regret of it, the mythical naga princess, the alleged common founding ancestor and unifier can be evoked8.

I. 4. The Cham in the Wake of Contemporary Cambodian History In the aftermath of 1954 independence, a new appellation was created by Norodom Sihanouk, then chief of state: Khmer-Islam. The term rings with the echo of a paradox: how can one be Khmer-Islam when Cambodian Buddhism and Khmerness go hand in glove, and when the great majority of Muslims are not Khmer9? But time post-colonial time is of the essence, and true to a nationalist and populist ideology, the sovereign wanted no one excluded from the new nation building process. Therefore, he uses an ensemble of neologisms taken from the root word Khmer, which designates of the ethnic majority. Khmer-Islam is one of those terms. It does not intend (as the then peoples father defended himself), a dissolution of Muslims into Khmer culture, but rather a unification of all countrymen into a national impetus (Stock 2012). Many remained faithful to the King Father until his political fall in 1970, although some may have reproached the importance given to Buddhism in the Constitution of the new nation (Po Dharma 1981: 174). As the regional issues gradually grew clear with the beginning of the American war in Vietnam, and in response to the appeal of their cousins in Champa now oppressed minorities under the South Vietnamese regimethe Cham of Cambodia and those of Champa ended up, in 1964, in creating the FULRO (Unified Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races). The movements intent was the liberation of the former lands of Champa, occupied by the Vietnamese. It was founded by, among others, Colonel Les Kossem, but received support from the government of Norodom Sihanouk, and especially from General Lon Nol, then head of the armed forces. The latter seized power during a coup in 1970, and FULRO became no more than another military organ used by the new government (Po Dharma 1981: 176-180). Today, certain former members of FULRO look back at their adherence as a patriotic Cambodian act, emphasizing their support to the King, or at least, to the acting Khmer government. The great moments of FULRO, for many, recalled the idealized combat of former Cham generals who fought beside Khmer princes, rather than the re-conquest of a Champa whose terminology was then

making its appearance10. The quest for their own identity within the new national construct, hesitating between references to Champa and Islam, may also have been one of the triggers for this involvement. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge took the capital after having controlled certain provincial areas, sometimes for several years. Their rise to power marks, for all Cambodians, a period when a cleansed and areligious model based on Khmerness - a basic ideal of the Khmer peasant - as conceptualized by a few urban ideologues, was implemented through terror and mass extermination. Ten years ago, William Collins remarked on a debate that is still current today11: were the Muslims of Cambodia victimized to a greater extent by the Khmer Rouge than the Khmers themselves (Collins 1996: 41)12? Admittedly, losses among the Muslim population speak for themselves: in 1979, there were between 138,000 and 260,000 Cham survivors13. This is out of the 250,000 to 700,000 counted before 197514. Therefore the losses represent - according to the figures - a mortality rate between 36% and 71%, which is two to three times greater than for other Cambodians. Muslims indeed attracted more attention because of some outstanding points: Their linguistic differences: their language was not understood by the majority, Their religious differences: at a time when the Pol Pot model considered religion a debasement of society, Their social organization: going much beyond the Khmer family network and units, and exceeding the new family: the Angkar15. They therefore stood out in total contradiction to the model imposed by the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. Indeed, any outward sign of disagreement with the line of Angkar - the organization - any traditional or religious practice connected with the time before Year Zero, any reference other than that of the cleansed and idealized peasant was a pretext for elimination (including among the so-called pure Khmer). Thus, while it is verified that a much larger proportion of the Muslim general population perished during this period, it must also be noted on the other hand that if only 11% to 17% of Muslim religious leaders were alive after 1979, only 3% to 7% of the Buddhist monastic order survived in 1981 (CAS 1996; BI 2000). A re-contextualization of the massacres of Muslims shall therefore be conducted on regional basis: an area with a Cham majority obviously brought about a greater number of Cham deaths; if some heads of districts with Muslim majorities were said to be particularly bloodthirsty in their repressive measures towards Muslims, Buddhists were no less victimized; but also historically: the reputation of the Cham as eternal insurgents, going back to the revolts in Kompong Cham during the previous century, to
6

their pro-FULRO bias in favor of Lon Nol, but also their rebellions against Democratic Kampuchea no doubt contributed to a sadly preventive repression16. With the restoration of peace in 1991, the first free elections held by UNTAC17, and the financial manna that came with it, the networks were re-built. Cambodian politicians rejoined parties which, even though they did not offer yet any political or ideological program, were the guarantee of a linkage of networks and a social positioning. Some Muslims found choice places in the state apparatus, taking jobs as ministers, under-secretaries of state, party members, commune chiefs. Equally divided by the three principal parties in place and their convictions, Muslims - just as non-Muslims - began to hold multiple positions on both the political and the socio-religious scenes.

I. 5. One Muslim Community or Plural Communities? In order to define from the outside this community which is seemingly united by Islam, the Khmers use the term Cham in present-day language. Yet, the latter can designate both an ethnic group or a native of Champa. Even before the migrations, the Champa kingdom, while mainly composed of persons of Cham ethnicity, also included other Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic groups (Gay 1987: 49-59). In addition to this initial confusion is the term malais, which the French protectorate used to designate Cham and Malays from Indochina. By jumbling them together, they were taking up the terminology of the Khmers, who, in their royal chronicles, often named the Muslim group Cham-Chvea, since they fail to recognize the difference (Mak Phoeun 1987: 83-94). If until now, this article has drawn a portrait of the Muslim community by emphasizing the first (Cham) and marginalizing the second (Chvea), its precisely because we have little information about the Chvea. What we know is that they probably settled in Cambodia from the 14th century on. To complicate matters, the Chvea, who rarely refer to themselves as such, did not make up one sole and unique stock, but two: the Malayous, on the one hand, who originated in Malaysia and the south of Thailand, and the Chvea, on the other hand, a people originating in Java, Sumatra and Borneo. However, these distinction and their provenances seem more and more confused, since the protagonists themselves, who now speak only Khmer, insist on introducing themselves as Khmer-Islam. In fact, this is how in general, today, Cambodian Muslims prefer to introduce themselves, whether their interlocutor is Khmer or a government official, in order to emphasize their integration into Cambodian society. But very rapidly, and in daily discourse, people begin saying Cham, thus taking up the generic term, which assimilates all Muslims and is used by the majority of Khmers in their daily language. In order to unite themselves with a majority, the minority Chvea also do not hesitate
7

to say, initially, Cham (implying, once again, Muslim from Cambodia) thus erasing the foreign aspect that might be attached to Chvea. In the villages Chvea and Cham rarely mix together, but in urban areas the communities can be relatively easy to dissociate, if only because of language: the Chvea speak only Khmer, while the great majority of Cham use their own language in daily speech. Yet again, and in addition, other Khmers-Islam can be encountered on occasions, and they call themselves neither Chvea nor Cham. What did they call themselves before Sihanouk applied his terminology is impossible to discern from the current state of research. They are the result of intermarriages between young Khmer or Cham women with Chvea soldiers in Battambang, or with urban Indo-Pakistani merchants. Few survived the migrations to Thailand or Pakistan before the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975 and the purges that followed. Besides these diverse origins, and in spite of the discourse of unity of the Cambodian umma, we can also note a variety of understandings of the message of the Koran. If these diverse modalities of appropriation are sometimes ancient and intimately linked to the cultural and historical past of the various groups, new tendencies have emerged, especially through foreign influences, be it passive and receptive or active. One might mention the orthodox18, who form a majority among both Chvea and Cham. The Jahed - or more correctly, the Group of the Imam San, or traditionalists19 - who are a minority, claim to be the advocates of the preservation of the heritage of Champa. They are often criticized for praying only once a week (on Fridays), whereas the first group insists upon five daily prayers. At the same time, they are granted a certain respect for the preservation of tradition. But might this dualism inherent in the discourse be as simplistic as that? Although they are blamed by the traditionalists of abandoning their customs for a foreign Islam, the orthodox of Kompong Cham also claim a pride in their origins, and call themselves - in the image of a majority of Cham in the country - the old people: the direct descendants of the Champa migrations. But essentialist tradition used in an instrumental way (as it also has been for a few years among the Khmer) is not solely the preserve of the heirs of Champa: in Kampot, the majority of Muslims are Chvea, divided into two groups: the Lohao20, or those who pray five times a day, and the Jumat21 who pray weekly, and who insistthat they are preserving original traditions22.

II.

FROM

WIDE DIVERSITY

OF

RELIGIOUS TRENDS,

TO

NEW PRACTICES

AND

CURRENT REARRANGEMENTS

Just as most of the rest of the Malay World, the Muslim population of Cambodia is Sunni-Shafii23, But the diversity of inspirational sources drawn on by the Cham in order to forge an Islam that bears witness to a long history of eclectic influences, be they Shiite24 or Sufi25. Not to mention that this has been grafted onto a background of ancestral cults and of pre-Islamic Brahmanism. With the reopening of the country in the 1990s, a certain religious renewal was noticeable, which sometimes worried observers, especially in the aftermath of September 11. The presence of Salafist movements, of preachers coming from the Middle East or from India, but also news ideas introduced by the Cham and Chvea upon their return from studying in Malaysia, in the south of Thailand or in Saudi Arabia, (and to a lesser extent in Egypt), aroused some fear about a new radicalism. Yet none of those terms have actually been defined. The closing of the Koranic school Umm Al-Qura26 near Phnom Penh in May 2003, followed by the arrest of teachers suspected of links with the terrorist organization Jemah Islamiyah, increased this suspicion27. Still, links with foreign co-religionists are far from being a new phenomenon. A few examples from history: the mingling of faiths of the Cham and the Chvea through their religious centers - especially Trea in Kompong Cham and Chruy Changvar in Phnom Penh - which attracted visitors from around the region; their continuing exchanges of instruction with the Tuans religion teachers - and Imams from Kelantan and Pattani, already mentioned by Marcel Ner in 1941 (Ner 1941: 166, 177); their pilgrimages to Mecca already attested in 1891 (Aymonier 1891: 98) All clearly show that their interest in religious debate is neither passively receptive, nor of recent emergence (Gurin 2004)28. Marcel Ner emphasizes in his writing in 1937 on the Hajj: Think of the distance of the holy city, the length of the pilgrimage requiring at last 7 or 8 months, its cost, and the number of people who prolonged their visit for several years in order to frequent the schools in Mecca. Think also of those who received Koranic instruction in Kelantan or Pattani, and you will understand the value that was attached to religious observation and to an exact knowledge of the precepts of the Prophet (Ner 1941: 186). What does seem new though is the flow of money from abroad, the construction of dazzling mosques in the new Middle Eastern style, the ostentatious dress of the Malay or Arab style, the fact of new access to transportation brought about by the democratization of air travel, along with outside support, the sending of massive numbers of pilgrims to Mecca, and of students of religion to the countries mentioned above.
9

The foreign influences and the divisions they brought about are nothing new or surprising: in the 1930s, M. Ner points to a split between the Cambodian Muslims into two groups, Kobuol and Trimeu, over the importance of instruction in Arabic by some, and in Malay by others. In the 1950s, the Cham Imam Ali Musa, on his return from studying in Kelantan, gave birth to a prime community rupture: the Kaum Muda (from the Malay new group) close to Wahhabism, and the Kaum Tua, (from the Malay old group) which was conservative in most Cham and Chvea Islamic customs. Discussion was lively and sometimes bitter in families that rallied to one or the other movement (Collins 1996; Blengsli 2003). Finally, looking back to the last fifteen years or so, the phenomenon of rupture sometimes observed within the Cambodian umma should probably be viewed in continuity with these debates and movements, temporarily frozen by 20 years of war. Today, elders often compare the new fragmentation of the Muda to the Salafists and Middle Eastern Wahhabis, called Kuwaitis and the Tua to the Tabligh, also called Dawa29. The cohabitation of Dawa with the practices already in place, allows the movement to be well assimilated - in spite of criticisms often formulated - as a trend internal to the community, whereas Wahhabism is often described as exogenous.

II. 1. The Advent of a Globalized Islam30 Nonetheless, these two tendencies draw attention and even attraction because of their foreign provenance. Many Khmers perceive Europe and most of Asia as modern, exotic, often idealized, allowing a widened field of vision and a global network. In the same way, Cambodian Muslims see in an international umma, an opening onto a transnational outside world from which they have been cut off, after having been - for long - dynamic actors in it. In the continuity of an Islamization initiated within the borders of Champa, and with the hope of a better future than what Cambodia is currently able to offer, the communities have turned toward a positive future: either built on an absolute rationality based on a reformist Muslim modernity, or toward an imagined ancestrality of reconstructed traditions, guarantee of a reassuring and comforting harmony that would have existed in a mythic past. It is therefore understandable that, in general, Salafists and Wahhabis - relatively mixed and / or confused together in Cambodia - might be attractive to students, the urban population, and the elites; whereas the Dawa has more appeal with the peasant masses and the elders31. The Kuwaiti tendency advocates, as the Kaum Tua did 50 years ago, the return to a purified Islam through the return to the primary written sources. They preach a certain cleansing of the Islam, notably from the ulamas and their interpretations often considered today as unreliable and a source of discord.
10

They also advocate the reduction of costs linked to festivities carried out with great pomp, notably during the Mawlud (the birthday of the prophet), in which offerings are made during visits to the tombs of saints and ancestors in the hope of happiness, cures for illnesses, and prosperity. One young Cham, a public health official, hopes to contribute to a more rapid development of his community: When I go into the villages and see people who prefer to incur debt in order to celebrate spirits who dont even exist and who will bring them nothing - and they still hope to cure their illnesses, whether benign or serious, by means of costly offerings - I really feel pity and compassion. Its not surprising that Muslims are not moving forward.... Wahhabism is thus perceived as an access to a unique and unified Islam with a contemporary and international label. As such, it permits the connecting of a resolutely transnational community and its various extended networks. It is seen as a leap forward, an education which would constitute a first step to a future-oriented action. The elites consider that the Muslim associations in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Malaysia, provide them with key interlocutors for the organization of pilgrimages, the design of development programs, the establishment of university exchanges, and support to the Tuans and the Imams. Unlike Wahhabism and Salafism which, although they may reject the West, nonetheless borrow its modes of operating in their quest for modernity, the Dawa preaches a return to the way of life of the Prophet Mohammed and his companions as a renaissance of lost traditions that once held society together. Those who have not given into Wahhabism because they didnt want any foreign intervention in their religious affairs, find in Dawa an idealization of reconstituted traditions: the new apparel - may it be an ArabMuslim dress - is justified as a return to ancestral practices. Contributing to this image of the tradition revival, the preservation of visits to ancestral tombs and the celebration of the Mawlud and other festivities in all their splendor are not repressed or prohibited by the members of the Dawa. Within this logic, ancestrality and Islamism are one and the same. A little saying often brought up on the field, here from a farmer, is revealing: The Kuwaitis want us to stop our prayers to the dead and the Mawlud. But we inherit that from our ancestors, and even in spite of the Khmer Rouge - life was very hard then - we never gave up on our customs. The Dawa are just guys like us, but they manage to follow the path of religion in a better way. The Dawa allows for another type of relationship to the umma. The visit of the Khuruj32 to the village mosque is an occasion for awaited religious teachings, when too often the community is only left with the men generations whose religious formation was restricted by the war. The visits also provide a chance to widen the circle of relations in the area, and in the umma of the whole country. A time to hear news from families in the region where the preacher originally comes from; or to share all kind of information: opportunities for religious teachers in other provinces, new methods to raise cattle or grow
11

crops which have proven successful in other locations, stories and accounts about journeys abroad. While today the majority of the Tabligh groups are Cambodians, the occasional Khuruj arriving from overseas always makes a strong and lasting impression33. And we cannot fail to mention the massive infatuation for the ijtima, huge annual Tabligh reunions in Trea, a village in Kompong Cham that has always been a center of religious dialogue. Its last assembly, in April 2006, drew about 40,000 attendees34. Still, this reification of tradition and modernity into two fixed and opposite concepts is not restricted to the distinctions between Kuwaitis and Dawa, as some have perceived it, nor is it particular to Muslims in general. Dealing with the suppression of its intellectual elites, and of its purveyors of culture and knowledge, religious teachers of all tendencies, its artists, Cambodia has been attempting for the past decade to re-conquer a lost identity frozen in the idea of a folklorized tradition: a return to classic Khmer silks (often woven by Cham workers), to local products in supermarkets (revived by foreign NGO programs); to culture consumption through visits to museums or theme parks where the authentic is staged (through Asian funding) In the end, the return to Muslim tradition (once again, reified in the myth of a single / unified Islam), must be understood as a response to the exacerbation of Khmer culture which was abused for 30 years and which should now be preserved and saved35. It can also be viewed as a mirror to the prevalence of a communal Islam on a global scale, expressed in the perception that Cambodian Muslims have of their identity and cultural environment very much determined by the lens of a certain Muslim-Arabic pattern36. But beyond this foregrounding of a global Islam, the logic of affiliations is often mingled with a certain individualism that we will now analyze.

II. 2. The Logic of Individualization and Secularization The Khmer Rouge regime dismantled the social structures of Cambodian society intentionally and systematically and dispersed the population to hamlets and villages that were completely unfamiliar to their new inhabitants. Once the war was over, once the displaced settled, a great number of people set up new communities when demographic growth pressured in their areas of origin and made it too difficult to acquire land or to develop economically. But if people were to reconstruct themselves individually, in appearance abandoning family and village links as well as ancestral tombs, in a vision of a better personal life to come, they nonetheless never really abandoned their natal villages. Connections are maintained through weddings and other regularly attended festivities; the sons are sent to religious schools in their home villages; and there is a preference for Friday prayer at mosques that may be far away, but where pilgrims will find other exiles, rather than a closer mosque where there are no ancient links with the
12

worshippers. Individualization logics therefore do not neutralize the attachment to the community of origin: children are raised socially, individually, but the fallout and effects are those of the family, the community, the greater network. Funds from Chvea and Cham who took refuge overseas (Malaysia, United States, France) during the war enable the reconstruction upon their return to the country of family villas and mosques, an occasion to acquire of merit37. The process is the same for the numerous Excellencies, high-ranking bureaucrats who all bestowed their generosity on their communities by means of large donations. This is not so different from the affiliation with the protective patron, of clientelism, which allows a community as a whole to improve itself, thanks to a reputable individual who has been successful in life. The individual, continually in search of a protective network, is not unlike what we find in the few conversions of Khmers to Islam. An example would be the Khmer elderly and orphans who, having lost everything, displaced to unknown territories of a Muslim majority, preferred to remain living with their new neighbors and to become Cham / Chvea in their adoptive alien community. But Islam also allows an individual access to international donors. When the annual competition of the recitation of the Koran is held, the participants may travel at no expense to Malaysia or Brunei for the international sessions. Such a victory contributes to the strengthening and knowledge of their faith, as well as the personal pride and prestige - shared by their villages - and also the perspective gained from traveling and discovering a wider umma. In most cases, villages account one or several young men who leave to pursue religious studies in the south of Thailand, in Malaysia, or in Arabia, sometimes financed by foreign donations, and more often than we think, by their own families. The young man returns with the prestigious halo of an education, of religious knowledge and the experience of a journey to another umma. His social position is paradoxical, because he takes the respected title of Tuan or Hajji, even though the village is often not able to offer any compensation. Very often, it will be another village, whose more profitable zakat the annual Muslim alms - will be better able to provide him a good living, calling upon him to take the offer and acquire the social position he deserves. The link to his original community remains, but often it is in this relocation that he will find a wife and found a family, thus transferring his recent economic and social acquisitions to this new personal environment. The return of these young men to the homeland, now adepts of globalized Islam, does sometimes pose problems with some of the elders. New ideas throw into question old practices, and often the resulting dialogue is endless. In the case of the Dawa, acceptance is more common, although sometimes disputes will occur. But the interests of society in general are too great to be put into question. As one fisherman happily stated, since we have had the Dawa, young people have stopped drinking, drugging themselves
13

with Yaa baa38, and getting into trouble. Such remarks are common in most of the Muslim villages where people are proud to see their youth enthusiastic and active in these missions: they find a masculine community life when they travel; they take on the social function of preachers, and, as such, the prestige of an educated man of good conduct. Previously, many of them had no employment or qualifications, and nothing to occupy their time (unless they fell into delinquency).

II. 3. The Questioning of Traditional Authorities All the same, this new social position, which challenges the supremacy of the elders, who were formerly the repositories of religious knowledge, troubles the village community by interfering in the controversies opposing Wahhabis and Salafists on one side, Dawa and elders on the other side. The main targets for contestation are the Krus, the Gurus : those masters who are considered special experts in matters of health and treatment of illness, of magic and protection, counselors and intermediaries against occult forces, and whose actions are connected to their deep-seated religious practices. The young Tuans and Imams, trained to a faith based on rationality that rejects all superstition, as well as the less young who also tend to see fetishism and archaism in these customs, have relegated these masters of all situations to the ranks of the discredited - at least on the surface - since their place among the population still remains essential today (Blengsli 2003)39. The krus are not the only ones who find their position disputed. The Khuruj visits also pose the problem of competition for religious power. The beliefs and the transmission of religious knowledge within the mosque by men unknown to the community and often young, lead to the appropriation of a social role formerly held solely by a Hakem40 and his adjuncts, and also to the questioning of the superior knowledge formerly attributed to them alone. Similarly, the arrival of Wahhabi groups, who bring new and different teachings that are declared to be - or are interpreted as - superior owing to their strict return to the sources. This puts the older heads of mosques (and of communities) in a delicate position. As a consequence, conflicts are not rare. In one small Chvea village in Kampot, there are two mosques, a few hundred meters from one another, each one counting about forty families among the faithful. On side proclaims its attachment to the elders and the Dawa, while the other side prefers to turn to the new Kuwaitis. Some of the villagers speak out saying they miss the former situation of the community, but without - yet - finding a solution to the discord. In other places mosques are just divided in two parts (De Feo 2005). In a village in Pursat province, the conflict has lasted several years and has been taken to the highest Muslim authorities, as well as to the local state religious administrations. One group of Khuruj
14

which took over the place in the mosque to pray (or lead the prayer) without asking permission from the Hakem, allegedly challenged its authority. In the last few years the situation seems to have calmed down, but the authorities, both Muslim (the Mufti and its local representatives) and governmental (the Ministry of Cults and Religions and its local representatives) are paying close attention. Everyone agrees that the animosities of the past, stemming from the then freshness and bitterness of the debate, have now abated and that measures have been taken. For example, putting a stop to the construction in a same area of competing mosques41, very often stemming from a desire for prestige on the part of the initiators. This is also common among the Khmers and could be related to the desire for acquisition that penetrates Buddhism.

II. 4. Cambodian Muslims and Political Divisions These conflicts do not always stem from a divergence of opinion about what Islamically correct would actually mean. An important role is played by affiliation with associations linked to political parties: the CPP, Cambodian Peoples Party, which has governed since the Vietnamese period; the FUNCINPEC, by turns royalist and / or oppositional; and the Sam Rainsy Party, resolutely oppositional. In Cambodia, Islam does not seem to seek to instrumentalize politics: on the contrary, it would be politics that appear to take charge. Therefore, there is no Muslim party, since proposing a model other than the one already conceived by the Cambodian nation as a whole would mean opposing a Buddhist majority. Many Muslims are quick to point out that the Khmers were willing to welcome them when Champa was lost: to contest this would commensurate to behaving badly in the home of the host as William Collins suggested (Collins 1996). To another extent it would call into question the allegiance to the King, now their king. To a lesser extent, probably left silenced yet still recalled by some, are the consequences of a potential radical change in the system: many still remember the Thbaung Khmum rebellions which were crushed down by King Ang Duong; the population displacements that resulted; and, closer to contemporary history, the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. In addition, the freedoms currently granted to Muslims in their daily life - religious or other - whether it be the result of indifference or a true politics of tolerance, do not necessitate - in the eyes of interested persons - the establishment of a Muslim political system in public life. Thus, when someone expresses his convictions about the values of sharia42, his opinion is intended to influence those in his community (village or neighborhood) but rarely aims at the national umma, and is - in any case - solely addressed to Muslims, since such opinions would be considered inappropriate in a Cambodian context. The idea of the adoption of sharia is limited to a few tuans and religious officials, and seen as off-putting or tedious by a majority of the population. The last Cambodian elections saw the emergence of numerous
15

parties who openly defined themselves as Buddhist. In neighboring countries, various parties claiming affiliation with Islam have run candidates for public office. But the Muslim community in Cambodia has never considered itself as a movement apart. One of the reasons given is the watchful concern for the unity of the umma, in spite of the clearly displayed affiliations of some of the party leaders. Thus, the Mufti, even though a unifying figure as head of the Muslims, is nonetheless the subject of polemics: behind the arguments, we regularly find old stories of networks conflicts, often political, since the Mufti is clearly affiliated with the CCP, the party of the current prime minister, Hun Sen. The Mufti is not the only one having difficulties in uniting a varied community when confronted with the blame of standing out for his own political positions. The leader of the Imam San community, who also declared his sympathy for the CPP who liberated the country from the Khmer Rouge as he puts it, is regularly criticized in the villages whose heads support the opposition. One might therefore wonder how far these tensions referred to as religious are indeed politically rooted, and vice-versa. Religion therefore tends to be instrumentalized by politics. Villages and communes with Muslim majorities are most often led by the Chvea or the Cham, whose positions of power depend on party affiliations. An example: a Cham youth radio station, because of its affiliation with an association led by a member of the opposition, freezes out the partisans of the CPP43. Another example: the organizing of the annual competition on the recitation of the Koran is not much under the responsibility of the Mufti, but rather of a group of Muslims from the opposition44. The 2006 edition had Nhek Bun Chhay, as its patron: then vice minister of defense, key member of the FUNCINPEC and a Khmer Buddhist. Finally, the mosques are of considerable political importance: sometimes financed by associations who are quietly but certainly politicized, but even more often by a personal donation from one Excellency or another45. We are getting closer here to what has been a near-frenzy in the construction of wats - pagodas - by Khmer men in power, who acquire merit that the electors can appreciate in the bright light of day. And one would be surprised to reckon how many mosques are financed by politicians who are Khmer Buddhists. While the three parties are still currently unable to put together a tangible political program, the Cambodians Muslims and non-Muslims - define their convictions on the basis of the involvement of the different existing networks, in a very clientelist pattern which feeds the hope of an improvement in their conditions of life.

16

III.

INTERACTIONS DEVELOPMENT

BETWEEN

RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGIES, PRACTICES & ECONOMIC

III. 1. The Impact of State Economic Failures: the Relationship with NGOs On the subject of development, is there discrimination experienced by this umma in Cambodian society? The poverty of the villages, the continuing lack of access to disease prevention and health care measures or treatment, the absence of Muslim students in higher education in the capital - these are often brought up. If an attempt is made to estimate the deprivation of one community or another, it is worthwhile to consider the resources potentially available in the area, especially by comparing them to the difficulties of neighboring Khmer villages. Poverty can thus appear most visible when we know that a great number of Khmers live in an inordinately high state of debt, which is constantly renewed: borrowing from the local lender in order to treat an unexpected illness, for an impressive wedding to emphasize a social status, for the purchase of land on which there is hope to speculate. On the other hand, recourse to usurers is condemned by Muslim tradition, and thus such ostentatious spending occurs in much less proportions. The Muslims in Cambodia tend to resolve their problems among friends, neighbors, or family, and thus borrow to a lesser extent, in the end displaying more modest houses and neighborhoods. The economic situation of the Muslim community is often a mirror of the greater Cambodian crisis: a government apparatus whose resources depend on the good will and the orientation of donors and foreign investors. To this extent, if the Cambodian umma has often found itself marginalized out of donations from the innumerable NGOs who have come to assist the country for the last fifteen years, it is probably more the result of a geographical exclusion: the villages farthest away from roads - and therefore the neediest - are completely left out from the path of development, and this is true whatever the religion of the village may be. When development indeed comes, it is generally viewed with sympathies by the villagers, who see a break with the monotony, either through exotic trainings (on Human Rights, Gender Equity, Good Governance, AIDS Prevention) or through providential aid (donations of rice, sarongs). The fact remains, though, that these gestures are devoid of any long term perspective (sanitation workshops without the establishment of any system of evacuation for the waste water; veterinary care trainings, without any actual access to accompanying treatments), nor any local perspective in order to provide a relevant framework (a blind application of principles of democracy without even any attention paid to local systems that have proven efficient for generations). All combined,
17

this lead to a relative absence of any real effectiveness. If Muslim villages are low on the scale of humanitarian benefits, the same observation can be made with regard to equally unsuitable programs in neighboring Khmer villages46. With the opening up of the country to new foreign capital, the enthusiasm has increased for new Muslim associations that would benefit47 from foreign aid from their co-religionists throughout the world. While Cambodia begins to be disenchanted with promises of development, in which they see nothing but dependence, the Cambodian umma also has no lack of criticism for their Muslim brothers who were full of promises left unfulfilled48. In the words of an Imam in Kompong Cham, The NGOs Well of course we see them. They come, promise money for the mosque, a new school building, and salaries for our teachers That lasts for about three months, and then we never see them againand thats if they come back at all! In any case, everything depends on your connections, and here we dont have any, so the Excellencies and the others put their money elsewhere.

III. 2. Failures of State Economic Policies: The Education Case Yet, the international umma and its ensemble of representative associations remains an alternative path to the services for which the State has no resources. Education is the primary issue, as a majority of the Cambodian population is under 25 years old: the public institutions cannot absorb all, and private schools, particularly in urban areas, have developed exponentially. For their part, the Muslims have found in this system the possibility of enrolling in certain private universities whose tuition and fees are paid by Muslim associations49, but also - thanks to similar funding - to leave for vocational training (to Indonesia, for example)50 or alas, to enroll at no cost in Cambodian and Muslim private schools whose curriculum is as much religious as it is general. For example, the schools of the RIHS (Revival Islamic Heritage Society) of Kuwaiti origin, whose headquarters and institute grant the baccalaureate, are based in Chom Chau, in the suburbs of Phnom Penh. Each day, the orphans have a half-day devoted to religious studies, and another to state curriculum51. The exams taken to obtain the major degrees are recognized by the Ministry of Education. The institution is thus aiming to establish a future Muslim elite that will be a guarantor of professional development in the community, and is beginning by setting up programs for vocational trainings. Through its seven primary schools located in the provinces, the RIHS aims a completely covered education for orphans, but also for local kids for whom teachings come also at no cost. However, these schools gather mainly orphans who
18

have sometimes come from distant areas, and only a small number of children from the village attend. A number of parents consider these boarding school students who have come from afar as being under an outside influence through the affiliation with Wahhabism and prefer not to send their kids there but rather to the local Cambodian public schools and the small village madrasas. Another example, the former Umm Al-Qura School, closed because of accusations of terrorism made about some of the teachers, has now reopened as the Cambodian Islam Center and placed under the joint supervision of the Ministry of Cults and Religions and the Mufti. Strangely enough, the school formerly financed by Arab donations, better known to the Cham under the name Chroy Metrei School (the name of the district near Phnom Penh where it is located), does not have this image of a foreign institution. Muslims in Cambodia regretted its closing, considering it the heart of Cambodian Islam, and the decline in financing and educational standards as a result of the departure of the foreign teachers, who were the guarantors of its reputation. Last, if Cham and Chvea students have only a small visibility in the capital universities, the same is true for young provincial Khmers without family members or any other network in the capital. They remain on the margins of the system of higher education. As an answer to the relationships developed by the Khmers with relatives in America, Australia, and France, the Muslims have re-built long-time bridges linking them to the transnational umma beyond their borders.

III. 3. The Influence of Islam Advocated by Various Movements on Economic Development Even though the salafist theories, when they were born, widely disapproved of Western hegemony, they have not hesitated to borrow its models, especially its education mode. In Cambodia, the disapproval of the West, while already not so obvious in those movements theories, is even imperceptible in practice. With a huge desire for development, but a great gap in funding (despite large individual donations from Malaysia, the Middle-East, and Cham / Chvea refugees, especially in the United States), the Cambodian Muslim associations must now turn to new possibilities of funding. The embassies as well as the NGOs notably those representative of the United States, and to a lesser extent Great Britain and Australia - offer new opportunities. In April 2006, the RIHS was hoping for positive feedback to its applications for funding for vocational training from the embassies of Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore, with the largest contribution expected to come from the United States. The former Umm Al-Qura was regretting its lack of relations with the American Embassy to contribute to the restructuring of the school. A great number of the Muslim
19

associations and NGOs were, or had been, financed for some of their programs (with a marked preference for the teaching of the human rights), by the American Embassy or American institutions, and on some occasions by the Australians and the British. At present, it is rare that zones with Muslim majorities have not been provided with sewing machines, given to a large number of families, with the intention of allowing women to increase family income. The Dawa was not totally excluded from these new contributions: in a Kompong Chhnang Village with a clear affiliation to the Tabligh movement, a hospital was built with similar contributions. In other locations requests were made to embassies and NGOs by provincial mosques in order to support the setting up of various infrastructures. In spite of the massive enthusiasm, the risks to social structures involved in any globalizing development program can be regrettable over the long term: the homogeneity of practices taught in a workshop whose intention is the harmonization of traditional customs; the increasing number of women who leave the villages for garment factories at a time when the saturated Cambodian market cannot absorb any more seamstresses; the massive diffusion and acceptance - however temporary - of concepts that come from the West, with the risk that come one or two generations from now, those may be challenged by the lack of local anchorage. Meanwhile, the Islam that had been considered radical and anti-Western seems to have accommodated itself quite well with practicality and lenders formerly considered unlikely. In a general way, Islam - here as elsewhere - accommodates itself, in the economic sphere, to what is said and what can be done. Prohibited amulets are still purchased to guarantee the success of an enterprise. The business and wealth resulting are not even disparaged as the access to power whether political or economic by a member of the umma, is a promise of the visibility of the whole community on both local and national spheres. It is also seen as an equilibrium as much social (a protector bringing together its enlarged network) as economic (in the form of gifts, of consistent zakat, or participation in the building of mosques and schools). On the periphery of Phnom Penh, while its proportion is still limited compared to the Buddhist majority, a Muslim middle class consisting of bureaucrats, shopkeepers, employees of service industries has emerged. Normative Islam doesnt seem to enter much into debate as long as it leaves individuals free to dispose of their own choices. The five recommended daily prayers are adapted to busy schedules, and finally are a practice limited to the most devout, even in the villages where the Dawa are in the majority. The preachers then form a group visiting families who do not pray: in these discussions, preachers talk about the necessity of prayer; sometimes patrols put pressure on the undecided. If the Dawa is mainly known for its quasi-ascetic values, guarantors of a certain moral balance in society, it is denounced when it tries to impose itself as the exclusive model, putting the development of the community in peril. A high-ranking Muslim official confides: Young people are all ready to rejoin the
20

Dawa now. Thats fine, but only to a certain limit. Who is going to rebuild the country if theyre all absorbed with the mosque? For his part, a Tuan from Battambang worries: The problem with the Dawa guys is that because of their travels, they are often absent from economic life. Thats bothersome in itself, but some of them become totally detached from their families, abandoning their wives. And then again they finance their travels themselves, leaving the family to fend for itself or fall into debt.

III. 4. Transformations in the Conditions of Women In Cham society, and to another extent, in the Khmer society, who are traditionally matrilineal, the role of the woman in the household is too important not to be taken into consideration. What is of great value is protected, and if Islam has modified some aspects of the social structures, it has in most cases only been set side by side to the place traditionally assigned to mothers. A far cry from the clichs about the submissive woman behind her veil, a woman has become, in the absence of her husband in Dawa, the sole master of the household, of her daughters and sisters. This young woman under a black veil, a recluse because she is haram, forbidden and therefore sacred, comments ironically: of course her husband has left her alone, but at least he has left in order to search for God, not for girls Many women in the large communes of the Dawa continue not to wear the enveloping black veil, but rather simple colored shawls, arguing that for moving around, for business, or certainly for work with livestock and for agriculture, where they do the same work as the men, this garment is totally unpractical. In the same places where the words radicalism and fundamentalism weigh heavily, women can pursue their religious studies beyond puberty, whereas traditionally - among the Cham as well as the Chvea - women put an end to their studies as soon as the perspective of a couple and family life becomes a possibility. If traditions and the Dawa traditionally limit women for the sole roles of mother and spouses - the assurance of a certain long-awaited social status in some places such as this Kompong Cham island Cham have seen see their economies take off with the resumption of silk weaving, an exclusively female activity. Does this mean independence for women? We must remember that regardless of economic imperatives, Cambodia has always considered that a woman working means that the husband has failed to suitably support his family. Elsewhere, many young women are active in associations with Wahhabi tendencies, along with their male colleagues, they put together orientation programs for female students in Phnom Penh or to travel abroad in order to gain training. Many women also leave alone or accompanied by a relative, to find a new life in Malaysia: they leave the country to become factory workers or domestic servants through recruitment and placement agencies. Some of those are approved by the two countries. Others are clandestine, and the consequences have too often meant slavery or rape in Malaysia or Saudi Arabia. When they leave independently rather
21

than through an agency, and are successful, they become freelance workers, and may feel satisfied by the changes that have come about in their new lives. They become a new and essential source of support for their families, and return home only occasionally, especially to give birth. While AIDS awareness or birth control campaigns didnt always received approval from the religious leaders, they have slowly become more successful. A worker loading trucks on the Vietnamese border prefers, like her neighbors, to use the pill, even if often disapproved of by men, resulting in new children unbalancing weak family finances. But in the end, husbands also seem to find benefit in this... she says smiling Much like these couples, theoretically in disagreement but pragmatic, Cham and Chvea, the orthodox, the elders, the modernists, the traditionalistsall seem not to submit to influences, to resist them. They rather skillfully test them, in order to retain what is adaptable or necessary. Thus, if there is an influence from various Islamist movements, it should not be overestimated, in order not to freeze the community in an enclosure, at the end rather external.

CONCLUSION
The discussion developed in these pages is not intended to minimize the concern of the Khmers about their Muslim neighbors, who seem to be taking a new direction towards globalized Islam and the muchfeared extremism that could eventually stigmatize the Muslim community. Although the mutation in progress and its potential cannot be denied or ignored, one may regret that the obsession with the growth of fundamentalism and radicalism seems too often to obscure the approaches of a community whose Islamism is in continual redefinition and stated within the Cambodian context, even if the fascination with the outside is not absent. In the same way that the Khmer elites - whether educated abroad or not often look down on the possession ceremonies and the confection of protective diagrams as superstitions, Muslims are seeking a new foothold in the domain of religion, and with all the more acuity, since the perspectives of a better living remain only promises. Whatever community they belong to, young graduates and also the youth who dont have the means to education themselves, come from all regions to swell the ranks of those who are frustrated by a development allotted in trickles. In the absence of adequate structures, repentant delinquents are feeding the ranks of the novices in the wats, to such a degree that the head of the bonzes himself is alarmed, and is calling on national youth to put forth an effort to reconstruct the countryand themselves. The exacerbation of the religious impulse as a justification for equilibrium in

22

the society of the future is modeled on an idealized past that is far from being ignored as well by Cambodian Buddhists. In the end, beyond the confessions of a reciprocal lack of knowledge of the two communities, beyond the suspicion toward the unknown, Cambodians - Muslims and non-Muslims - use the same tools to reconstruct themselves as mirror-images of the other, proving that each of them, unconsciously, seeing one another on a daily basis, know themselves and live themselves perhaps more and better than originally thought. Phnom Penh, December 2012 (For the English translation)

REFERENCES:
CAS 1996 : Bouddhism in Cambodia, Center for Advanced Studies, Phnom Penh. BI (Buddhist Institute) 2000 : Untitled Internal Statistics Report, Buddhist Institute, Phnom Penh.

ABDOUL-CARIME Nasir 2005 Note sur l'identit communautaire khmre, une approche historique et une relecture socio-politique , Pninsule, 50 : 1, 41-57. AYMONIER Etienne 1891 Les Tchames et leurs religions , Revue dHistoire des Religions, vol. XXIV, 187315. BRAAM Ernesto 2006 Travelling with the Tablighi Jamaat in South Thailand, ISIM Review 17, 42-43. BLENGSLI Bjorn 2003 The Cham : Religious diversity and change among Cambodias Muslims, cand. polit dissertation in social anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. CABATON Antoine 1906 : Notes sur l'Islam dans l'Indochine Franaise , Revue du Monde Musulman I: 27-47. COLLINS William 2009 (1996) : The Cham of Cambodia , Ethnic Groups in Cambodia, CAS - Center for Advanced Studies, Phnom Penh.
23

DE FEO Agns - 2004 : Les Cham, lIslam et la revendication identitaire, mmoire de DEA, EPHE, Section IV, Paris. - 2005 : Le royaume bouddhique face au renouveau islamique , Les Cahiers de l'Orient 78, 107-122. GABORIEAU Marc 1997 Renouveau de lislam ou stratgie politique occulte ? Le Tablighi Jamaat dans le sous continent indien et dans le monde , Renouveaux religieux en Asie, EFEO, Paris, 211-229. GAY Bernard 1988 Vues nouvelles sur la composition ethnique du Champa , Actes du Sminaire sur le Campa organis lUniversit de Copenhague le 23 mai 1987, Paris. GUERIN Mathieu 2004 Les Cam et leur vranda sur La Mecque, linfluence des Malais de Parani et du Kelantan sur lislam des Cam du Cambodge , Asanie 14, 29-67. KIERNAN Ben - 1988 : Orphans of the Genocide: The Cham Muslims of Kampuchea under Pol Pot, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 20, 2-33. - 2003 : The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia, The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975-1979, and East Timor, 1975-1980, Critical Asian Studies, 35, 585-597. LE ROUX Pierre 1998 To be or not to be. The cultural identity of the Jawi (Thailand) , Asian Folklore Studies, LVII : 2, 223-255. MAK Phoeun 1987 La communaut cam au Cambodge du XVe au XIXe sicle , Actes du Sminaire sur le Campa organis lUniversit de Copenhague le 23 mai 1987, Paris, 83-94. MANGUIN Pierre-Yves 1979 : Etudes cam II: L'introduction de l'Islam au Campa , BEFEO, LXVI, Paris, 255-287. NER Marcel 1941 : Les Musulmans de lIndochine Franaise , BEFEO, XLI : 151-200. PO DHARMA 1981 Note sur les Cam du Cambodge , Seksa Khmer IV, Cedorek, Paris, 161-183. 1982 Note sur les Cam du Cambodge: religion et organisation , Seksa Khmer V, Cedorek, Paris, 103-116. OSMAN Ysa 2002 Oukoubah: Justice for the Cham Muslims under the Democratic Kampuchea Regime, DCCAM Documentation Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. REID Anthony 2000 : Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai, Silkworn Books, Bangkok. ROY Olivier 2002 : Lislam mondialis , Le Seuil, Paris. STOCK Emiko 2012 Au-del des ethnonymes. propos de quelques exonymes et endonymes chez les musulmans du Cambodge , Moussons - Social Science Research on Southeast Asia, 20, Paris, 141-160. TROLL Christian 1994 Two conceptions of Dawa in India : Jamaat-i Islami and Tablighi Jamaat, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 87, 115-133
24

VICKERY Michael - 1988 : Correspondence, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 20, 70-73. - 1990 : Comments on Cham Population Figures, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 22, 31-33. - 2004 Revising Champa History, Symposium on New Scholarship on Champa, N.U.S, Singapore. WEBER Nicolas 2005 : Contribution lhistoire des communauts cam en Asie du Sud-Est (Cambodge, Vietnam, Siam, Malaisie) : intgration politique, militaire et conomique, thse de Doctorat, INALCO, Paris.

1 2

The equivalent of the English expression: When pigs fly.

Umma: community of Muslims. While most of the time implying its transnational dimension (Umma Al-Islamiyah: the community of Muslims around the world and beyond national borders), it can also refer to a region or a country Muslim community (The Cambodian Umma: the Muslim community of Cambodia). 3 Statistics are numerous and diverse (Ministries of the Interior, of Cults and Religions, of Planning) and do not provide an adequate account of their methods: do we count the Cham who claim an affiliation to this cultural group or the Muslims who comprise a majority of Cham, but not only? The Cham researcher Ysa Osman stated that 510,000 Cham were victims of the Khmer Rouge (Osman 2002), a figure challenged by Ben Kiernan (Kiernan 2003). A high-ranking state official from the majority party stated anonymously in March 2006 that the figures were inflated for political purposes and that there were no more than 300,000 Muslims in Cambodia. The figures from the Ministry of Cults and Religions and from the High Council of Muslim Affairs in Cambodia seemed to agree on a total of 312,000 Muslims in May 2006, data which seems pertinent since both entities took surveys that consulted with village chiefs, and were carried out yearly if not monthly. Even though the term ethnic seems reductive because of the immutable and substantivist vision that accompanies it, we will use the term here for lack of anything better, as well as lack of space for discussion of the terminology. (For more on this issue: Stock 2012).
5 6 4

A. De Fo emphasizes furthermore the possibility of Islamization in China (De Feo 2004: 51-52).

Today, scholars go as far as finding common origins in Funan the ensemble of principalities that were ancestors of Angkor, and in Champa (Vickery 2004: 12). We can imagine to a lesser extent (owing to its size and lack of information about it) that this is also the case for the Chveas, some of whose oral traditions report a splitting off from the Javanese monarchies. The founding myth of Cambodia features the marriage of an autochthon, a Khmer naga princess, and a foreign Brahman, probably Indian. In this myth, the Cham of Cambodia consider themselves autochthonous, descendents of the union of a naga princess no longer Khmer but Cham, and a Khmer foreigner. (Stock Les enjeux de lautochtonie des Cham au Cambodge: Lecture des relations des Cham avec le Royaume travers le mythe de la nagi , unpublished article). We might compare this situation with that of the Muslims in the south of Thailand, called the Jawi, but designated officially as Thai-Islam (Le Roux 1998). Thus, the term Champa wouldnt have appeared in Cham manuscripts before the 60s, when it would be popularized by the elites with access to the language (Personal communications Nicolas Weber & Po Dharma, 2004). As discussed in the column of the bi-monthly Phnom Penh Post between October 2005 and April 2006: legal experts, researchers and observers, Cambodians and foreigners debate the notion of genocide using notably the case study of Cham (Phnom Penh Post 14/20, 14/22, 14/24, 14/25, 15/01, 15/02, 15/05, 15/06). The list of publications relevant to this debate would be too long to quote here, we will refer the reader to Collins 1996 and Osman 2002 to begin with.
12 11 10 9 8 7

25

The statistics used do not expose clearly if the counting refers to Cambodians Muslims or to Cambodians Cham. Are Chvea and Indo-Pakistanis included in this Cham-Muslim majority or left out of it? M. Vickery suggests a more reduced account, with a Cham population of 191,000 before 1975, 180,000 in 1979, and therefore a total of 11,000 deceased Cham under the Khmers Rouges (Vickery 1988, 1990). The Organization referring to the supreme authority body during the Khmer Rouge regime. It shall be noted that when it comes to Khmer-Cham relations, the latter often refer to the 3 years, 8 months tragical period as a common element to both groups (the expression aiming the Khmer Rouge period has been popularized by the government which came to power on the aftermath of the Vietnamese era and before the International Khmer Rouge Trial).
16 17 18 15 14

13

United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia.

The term is not used here in the pejorative sense that it can sometimes bear in the West, but rather to the way the protagonists refer to themselves, claiming that they are those who live according to the religion. (Stock 2012) From the self-designation, those who live according to tradition. The term Jahed may have been overused by researchers, after W. Collins first spread the term. Still, from the beginning, W. Collins emphasized how this was an external designation. It would thus be more judicious not to impose an external term, but to renew the one used by the group itself, such as the Group of the Imam San, in memory of its ascetic founder. (Collins 1996: 62; Stock 2012).
20 21 22 23 19

From the Arabic Zuhur: the daily mid-day prayer. From the Arabic translation of Friday, sole day of prayer for this group.

I have further developed the arguments in this paragraph in Stock 2012. Sunni Islam is composed of 4 law schools. The ShafiI school from the eponymous founder is one of them. Created in the 8th century, it is notably present in Africa, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and in the Malay world. It is also by far the main affiliation school of the Cambodian Muslims. Some examples concerning the Shia influence: young traditionalist cham couples who, at the time of their engagement, take the names Fatima and Ali in honor of the 4th Caliph and his wife, venerated by the Shiites. It is also to Ali, that are attributed both the origin of magic and the conversion to Islam in Champa. Genealogies of the Saeth families, descendants of the Sayyid and Champa families, are said to take their origin in one of the Ali branches. Finally, there is the enthusiasm and the copying and disseminating of booklets recounting the tales of Ali, but also of Hassan and Hussein, his sons. These remarks are the result of personal research on oral traditions. While no historical source alludes to the passage of the Caliph to Champa it is interesting to note that it is his name and memories that have been transmitted from generation to generation. Notably the community of traditionalist ascetics near the old capital of Udong, organized along the mode of the brotherhood. Also the importance in the texts of the same community on personal efforts for an introspective encounter with God, and with no doubt, the booklet used for meditation guidelines entitled Kitap Sufi. In other places in the country, we can mention the visits and offerings to Saints tombs Cham, Jveas, Malays, Arabs to whom all the powers are attributed. Finally the division in discourse between Sharia the law to be applied to human society and the Hakekat - access to ultimate internal truth through fusion with God that are most probably the reminiscences of former Sufi Masters teachings. The very name Umm Al-Qura, The Mother of Cities, referring to Mecca, refers obliquely to an eponymous work which appeared in 1899, a text having an important role in the genesis of Muslim reformism. It should be noted that the coup de filet preceded the visit of Colin Powell by a few days. The four accused men were detained well beyond the legal limit (a year and a half), and they were condemned to life imprisonment without any tangible proof (Cambodge Soir, No. 2462, 03-05/02/2006). In the article retracing precisely the ancient nature of links of the Cham with Malaysia and Thailand, Mathieu Gurin emphasizes the pursuit of a process of Islamization over the long term, from the lands of Champa to the present day (Gurin 2004). Rather than dwelling here on the organization of the Dawa movements, I will refer the reader to some of the publications consulted for this article: Troll 1994; Gaborieau 1997; Braam 2006.
30 29 28 27 26 25 24

Echoes the eponymous work of Olivier Roy (Roy 2002). 26

This dichotomy is not absolute: some mosques in Phnom Penh frequented by the same wealthy social classes remain clearly conservative and open to the teaching of the Dawa. If a majority of high-ranking Muslim officials are more favorable to joining the mosque in Beung Kak financed by the Wahhabis of Dubai, others are also drawn to the Dawa (De Feo 2005: 120)
32 33

31

Travels undertaken for preaching for 3 days a month and 40 days a year.

Examples: the visit to Battambang in 2005 of a group of Muslims from France, some of whom were converted Khmers, and to Kompong Cham in 2004 of a Brazilian group, are regularly reported by the local population.
34 35

Those figures, provided by the organizers, are confirmed by several participants of various backgrounds.

Among the traditionalists, the process of exacerbation of such a specificity occurs as much in response to khmeritude (Khmer-ness) as to ambient reislamization: folklore associations, small village schools teaching the written Cham language or the literature originating in the group are appearing. In 2005 a series of workshops discussing the homogenization of the teaching of traditions and the language was set up with help from the American and Australian embassies. In July 2006, the small village of Svay Pakaw in Kompong Chhnang saw the opening of a Cham Culture Center, thanks to the initiative of the Cham National Federation of Cambodia (CNFC), founded by a Cham Brahmanist from Vietnam. Examples: young woman at weddings parading in their most beautiful cover-up (according to tradition) garments, very much in style because they are imported from Malaysia. The halal label emphasizing the respect for culinary traditions which are nonetheless equally Malaysian, in markets and streets food stands. And after the infatuation with the showy, spacious mosques, more modest architectural models are now slowly coming back: not a return to the old structures resembling the Wats (Khmer pagodas), but to a middle-eastern inspiration, because it is a part of our tradition, in the Koran. The expression is taken up in Khmer from a Buddhist tradition of the accumulation of merits for the next life. Its use does not necessarily mean the penetration of a Buddhist custom into the Muslim community, but rather an adaptation to the linguistic context of the discourse.
38 39 37 36

Amphetamines.

It is not rare to see families that have given, at the same time, all their sympathy to the local Dawa or salafist movement, and who continue nonetheless to attend possession ceremonies, for example. One young woman from a village of Kompong Chhnang: We dont tell the religious authorities, because they dont like it, but meanwhile what can you do? When youre sick, its the only solution! While the Hakem was originally a scientist and / or a judge, the title is now in Cambodia referring to the head of the mosque, and leader of the village or community. To be noted: the refusal of the administration to grant authorization for the construction of new mosques of fewer than several kilometers away from one another. This confession seems more and more perceived as such, with the new international geopolitical stakes linked to the Muslim world. Rare are the interlocutors who openly preach the interest in Sharia for society, particularly when questioned by a Western female researcher. On this point (and many others) the work of our Muslim colleagues could bring a completely different and complementary view. This radio station broadcasts, in Cham language, international and national news, reports on health care, democracy, gender, and human rights, sometimes linked to Islam issues. If the interest for this little broadcast grows, it is nonetheless limited to the Cham (the Jveas criticize it for its use of a language that has nothing to do with Islam, and is not understood by everyone), and to the orthodox (traditionalists do not recognize themselves as members of the prescriptive Islam offered on those airwaves). This has been the case since the first competitions were organized by a Cham deputy of the opposition party, then in position at the Ministry of Cults and Religions. Today, set aside from any state apparatus, it is his former comrades who assure the continuity of this event. A title given to high-ranking State officials, or currently somewhat less than 400 individuals in Cambodia. Most of the time, people forget the name of the Excellency in question and recall only his title, or perhaps his political affiliations. 27
45 44 43 42 41 40

In a large Muslim community in Kompong Cham, and American NGO came to dig wells at a depth where - in this location at the rivers edge - the water clogged with sand remained unusable, for both the Cham and the Khmer villagers. On the contrary, in a small Kompong Chhnang village, another American association built a school and funded a few teachers, at first for the Cham community. Very quickly, the children from the nearest Khmer villages joined what had become the sole place of local learning. Several Muslim NGOs, especially the ILDO (Islamic Local Development Organization) and the Cambodian Muslim Youth Coordination Center design some programs intended for Khmers and Chveas, or Khmers and Cham, together. In the defense of these NGOs, it should be noted that the transfer of money, following 9/11, became more and more difficult because of the suspicion climate. Before it exhausted its funds, the Cambodian Islamic Development Association made it possible for 300 Muslim students to pursue their studies at the private Norton University Especially through the Cambodian Islamic Youth Association (CIYA), the Cambodian Muslim Student Association (CAMSA), and the Islamic Medical Association of Cambodia (IMAC). The example of Indonesia is not unique and is joined by Malaysia and Thailand, especially when it comes to technical studies. The Cambodian public school, which has too many students and not enough teachers, is open in the morning to one section and in the afternoon for another. The pupils thus have only a half-day of classes every day.
51 50 49 48 47

46

28