[Tlc] The Khmer Islam: regional security threat?

[Mike Yared]

Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst - December 01, 2007

The Khmer Islam: regional security threat? 

Key Points
Cambodia's Muslim citizens, officially known as 'Khmer
Islam' (Cambodian followers of Islam), are an
ethnically and doctrinally diverse community. 

Since the early 1990s, the complexion of Cambodia's
Islamic community has changed considerably, with some
sections being influenced by conservative theological
doctrines. 


Despite some alarmist conclusions drawn from the
community's changing character, there is no firm
evidence that Cambodian Muslims are currently involved
in sponsoring or participating in extremist activity. 
 

International attention seldom focuses on Cambodia's
Muslim community, or the 'Khmer Islam' in official
terminology. Estimates of its size range from 321,000
to 700,000 people, with most commentators settling on
a figure of about 500,000 people, or 3.6 per cent of
Cambodia's population of around 14 million.
Importantly, the lower figure of 321,000 is favoured
by Norwegian Bjorn Blengsi, one of the few
anthropologists to have recently studied the
community, which would make Cambodia's Muslims only
2.3 per cent of the total population. 

Cambodia's Muslim population is widely spread
throughout the country, unlike the Muslim communities
of the Philippines and Thailand, which are
concentrated in defined geographical regions and each
comprises approximately five per cent of their
country's population. 

International media attention was briefly sparked in
May 2003, when three foreign Muslims - two Thais and
one Egyptian - were arrested by the Cambodian
government and charged with having links to Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI).
The following month, a Cambodian Muslim was arrested
as part of the same operation. All four men were
charged with 'commission of acts of international
terrorism'. Concurrently, 28 foreign Islamic teachers
- citizens from Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Thailand,
Yemen and Egypt - and their dependants were expelled
from Cambodia. Those arrested and some of those
expelled were linked to schools supported by a Saudi
charity, the Umm al-Qura Institute (also
transliterated Om Alqura) in Cambodia. Although
suspended following the arrests, the charity has since
been allowed to operate again. The four detained
individuals were brought to trial in December 2004,
when the Egyptian defendant was discharged and the
other three defendants were sentenced to life
imprisonment. The charges against the three convicted
defendants were overturned on appeal, but at last
report they remain in custody. 

Then, in August 2003, Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin), a
prominent JI leader suspected of masterminding the
October 2002 Bali bombings, was arrested in Thailand.
After his arrest, it became apparent that he had
crossed into Cambodia from Thailand in September 2002,
and had lived in a guesthouse close to the Dubai
mosque in the Muslim neighbourhood of Boeng Kak in the
Cambodian capital Phnom Penh until February 2003, when
he returned to Thailand. 

As such, the obvious question that has been raised is:
do Cambodia's Muslims pose any form of extremist
threat, either to their government or more generally
to the wider Southeast Asian region, particularly at a
time when the Khmer Islam community is undergoing
substantial change? It has increased links with
Muslims in Thailand and Malaysia, and in contrast to
what was the case before 1970, sections of the
community now have substantial links with the Middle
East, including with groups promoting conservative
theological doctrines. 

Diverse community
Often described simply as 'Chams', the Cambodian
Islamic community is divided into three groups. The
largest consists of Chams, descendants of refugees who
fled the former kingdom of Champa - once located along
the coast of central Vietnam - to settle in Cambodia
centuries ago. This majority group practices a
relatively orthodox Shafiiyah version of Sunni Islam,
marked by the practice of praying five times a day,
but incorporating a degree of syncretism in their
beliefs with echoes of Hindu rituals and resorting at
times to magic. They accept the obligation of making
the hajj, but did so in very small numbers before
1970. 

A minority Cham group, known both as Jahed (pious
ascetic) and Cham Sot (pure Cham), numbers no more
than 30,000 to 40,000 people, with most living near
Udong, the old royal capital north of Phnom Penh. They
pray only on Fridays, claiming this practice reflects
the form of Islamic observation their ancestors
brought from Champa. They do not regard the pilgrimage
to Mecca as an obligation, and their embrace of
syncretic influences is more extensive than the more
orthodox Chams. 

About 15 per cent of the Cambodian Islamic community
are ethnic Malays. They were an established community
as early as the 16th century and probably earlier.
Known locally as Chvea (Javanese), the term should not
be taken literally, as they are descendants of
migrants from Kelantan in peninsular Malaysia, the
southern areas of Thailand and from Sumatra. 

In addition to those Khmer Islam living in or near
Phnom Penh, thought to number around 30,000 people,
Cambodian Muslims mostly live in more than 400
villages near the country's major rivers, the Great
Lake and along the coast. Some villages are entirely
Muslim, but in others, Muslims live side by side with
Buddhists. Many of these villages are both physically
and socially isolated and are among the poorest in the
kingdom. Yet, while Chams and Malays have always been
seen by ethnic Cambodians as a group apart, they have
equally been regarded as an integral part of the
national community, and unlike Muslims in the
Philippines or Thailand, they do not occupy territory
that once comprised Islamic sultanates. 

Pol Pot period
While King Norodom Sihanouk dominated Cambodia until
1970, Cambodia's Muslims, whether Chams or Malays,
were mostly poor and unrepresented in the
administration, although the government maintained a
direct link with the community through an appointed
mufti. Few could afford to make the hajj, with less
than 100 making the pilgrimage to Mecca each year
during the 1960s. Before civil war broke out in 1970,
there were, nevertheless, 122 mosques and 300 Koranic
schools in the country. 

A very limited number, of Chams, including the
prominent, Mat Ly - who served in both the Democratic
Kampuchean (Khmer Rouge) regime before defecting to
Vietnam, and then in the successor regime of the
People's Republic of Kampuchea - were associated with
the Cambodian communist movement. 

When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, the Islamic
community suffered grievously. Many Muslims died under
the Khmer Rouge, possibly more than 70,000 people - an
uncertain proportion of whom were executed. Based on
some estimates, this death toll represented 36 per
cent of the Cham-Malay community. If correct, this was
a considerably higher proportion than the 25 per cent
of the general population who died during the Pol Pot
years.
Mosques were destroyed or desecrated, some used as
pigsties, while individual Muslims were forced to eat
pork. Many of the small number of Islamic scholars in
the community died between 1975 and 1979. 

By the time the Pol Pot regime was defeated in early
1979, the Cambodian Islamic community was shattered
and many of its members were living in exile in
Malaysia and southern Thailand, where they had escaped
as refugees both during the Khmer Rouge period and
immediately after. 

Changing complexion
After 1979, as the world became more aware of the
character of the Pol Pot regime, the fate of
Cambodia's Muslims began to resonate among Muslims in
Malaysia who sent limited financial support. Then, in
the mid-1980s, the first substantial inflow of aid
from the Middle East took place, when the Islamic
Development Bank in Jeddah and business interests in
Dubai donated funds to the Samakum Islam Kampuchea
(Cambodian Islamic Association) established by Mat Ly.
Nevertheless, the situation of the Islamic community
until the early 1990s remained dire, with only an
estimated 20 functioning mosques. 

Since then, change has been rapid, as funds have flown
into the community from the Middle East, Malaysia and
Brunei, and in one notable case from Muslims in the
United States. There are now an estimated of 269
mosques, more than twice the total number that existed
in 1970. Among notable contributions to mosque
building include a gift of USD350,000 from Saudi
Arabia for the international mosque in Phnom Penh,
USD500,000 from Muslims in the United States for a
mosque at Phum Trea in Kompong Cham province, and
USD40,000 from Malaysia for a mosque at Pong Ros near
the provincial capital of Kompong Cham. The full
details of foreign aid to the Cambodian Islamic
community are not known. The Malaysian government, for
instance, will not supply details of donations it
makes. Diplomatic sources in Phnom Penh suggest the
funds from Saudi Arabia probably exceed a million
dollars annually. On the basis of information
contained in local media reports, other donors to the
community include the Muslim World League (Rabitat
al-alam al-Islami), the al Haramain Islamic
Foundation, the Libyan Islamic Call Society and the
Revival of Islam Heritage Society. 

The number of Cambodian Muslims making the hajj has
increased sharply, with an estimate of 1,174
participating in 2005. The rapid increase in the
number of mosques is not matched by an increase in the
number of Koranic schools, which appear to number
roughly the same as was the case before 1975, between
300 and 400. These schools, which teach a very basic
curriculum, are separate from an estimated 32 advanced
religious schools. Teachers in these advanced schools
are almost all foreigners. 

Muslim missionaries, mostly from the Middle East, are
active in Cambodia preaching a conservative Wahhabi
version of Islam. There has also been an embrace of
Dakwah Tabligh, an orthodox form of Islam that has
many followers in Malaysia, which has been brought
back to Cambodia by students who studied in Kelantan.
Some estimates place the number of adherents to each
of these two forms of Islamic observance at between 15
and 20 per cent of the overall Cambodian Muslim
community. If correct, this would mean that close to
half of the Khmer Islam community has now adopted a
conservative form of Islam, which seems unlikely.
Suggestions that these Cambodian Muslims who have
studied overseas return to their country as advocates
for a stricter observation of their religion are
certainly justified. But claims that these Cambodian
Muslims have unwittingly been recruited to attend
terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan
are not backed by firm evidence. 

The embrace of more conservative practices by some
Chams is causing concern among the broader membership
of the community as followers of both Wahhabi and
Dakwah Tabligh doctrines refuse to worship with their
less devout brethren. There are no reports of
violence, but there have been instances of separate
mosques being built in the same village and of
physical separation being established within a single
mosque, with reported instances of a blanket being
hung to separate worshippers. In a small number of
villages, all of the inhabitants have adopted full
Middle Eastern Islamic dress, with women being
completely veiled while men wear flowing white robes.
Such dress was not seen in Cambodia before 1970.
Indeed, it was then extremely uncommon for women to
cover their head except when inside a mosque. 

Regional links
In the late 1990s, upwards of 400 Cambodian Muslim
students travelled to Malaysia for further study
annually, while a further 80 were said to have gone
each year to Pakistan or the Middle East. These
figures were partially confirmed by a Muslim member of
parliament, Ahmad Yahya, in 2004, when he suggested
that many hundreds of Cambodian students were going to
southern Thailand and Malaysia, particularly to
Kelantan, each year to study in madrassahs. However,
he noted that the troubles in Thailand were likely to
put an end to students going there. Yahya also said
Thai Muslims had come to Cambodia "looking for help",
in their activities against the Thai authorities, but
that "we have said no". Cambodian sources firmly
reject Thai media reports saying Cambodians Muslims
have participated in the violence occurring in
southern Thailand. There are no reliable figures for
the number of Cambodian Muslims currentl y in Thailand
and Malaysia. 

The Cambodian government claims it is keeping a close
eye on developments involving the Islamic community
and it certainly has close links with the
government-appointed mufti, Oknha Sos Kamry, who is a
member of the ruling Cambodian People's party.
Diplomatic and intelligence sources are sceptical
about the government's claim to have a firm grip on
developments within the community through its security
apparatus. Moreover, given the failures of the Thai
security service to penetrate its own Muslim
community, the Cambodian government probably gains
little from the links it has developed with Bangkok.
At best these probably yield some information about
Cambodian Islamic students studying in southern
Thailand. 

Difference
Yet, despite doubts about the competence of the
Cambodian security services, and while it would be a
mistake to discount the future possibility of some
form of extremist activity emerging from within the
Cambodian Muslim community, there is no current
evidence that this is occurring. The differences
between the Khmer Islam community and the minority
Muslim communities of the Philippines and Thailand
have already been noted as these relate to both
history and geography. There is nothing in Cambodia
analogous to the demographic dominance of Muslims to
be found in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao
in the Philippines or the three southernmost provinces
of Thailand. Also, importantly, Cambodia's Muslims do
not share with their fellow Muslims in Thailand and
the Philippines a memory of their community having
once belonged to an Islamic sultanate. While being
seen, and seeing themselves, as a separate community,
the majority of Cambodia's Muslims appear to regard
themselves as Cambodians first and Muslims second.
Were this to change, because of the increasing
importance of stricter adherence to conservative
theological doctrines, this would be a cause for
concern.
While generally poor, they are not distinctly
different in this regard from their Buddhist
compatriots. 

Indeed, despite the influence of missionaries
advocating a stricter observance of Islam, recent
studies by Blengsi and in the late 1990s by the
American anthropologist William Collins indicate that
the change that has occurred within the Cambodian
Muslim community has been confined to theological
matters and is lacking in political content. With the
exception of the events of 2003, there is no
contemporary evidence of jihadist ideas making inroads
into the Khmer Islam community. 

The apparent absence of extremist activity within the
Cambodian Muslim community does not mean that the
government and external observers can be complacent
about the community's future. However, on the basis of
the information currently on hand, it would be wrong
to take an alarmist view of the community's present character.

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