Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid, a professor of political science at Universiti Sains Malaysia, alleged that the Salafis had expunged spirituality from Islam and influenced their young followers to believe that martyrdom was the only guarantee of forgiveness for their sins.
He said this went against the traditional teaching about God’s mercy and His acceptance of repentance. The Salafi teachings, he added, were therefore diametrically opposed to the teachings of all the Sufi schools.
“The first pillar of spirituality is repentance, and you will find that the literature of Sufism is full of this,” he told FMT.
The Salafi movement is a Sunni movement that developed in the Arabian peninsula in the early 18th century. Its followers claim that its beliefs and practices are closer to those of the Prophet and his companions.
The Sufis claim basically the same thing. There are Sufi orders in virtually all schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Sunni and Shi’ite. Unlike the Salafis, however, the Sufis are generally not active in seeking followers.
Fauzi said youths in the current age were exposed to a challenging world in terms of temptations to sin and those wanting to become better Muslims could be easily swayed by IS rhetoric, which is Salafi-based.
According to a recent Washington Post report on radicalisation among youths, in the vast majority of cases it was not the ideology itself that attracted them, but the way in which it provided a conduit for perceived grievances.
Fauzi said the only way to get rid of the martyr mentality was to encourage a return to spirituality.
He claimed that many Muslim youths in Malaysia did not know who the 13th century Sufi poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi was although even non-Muslims in other countries did.
“The youths in this country are dominated by Salafist-based literature, which says that spiritual influence is a modification of religion,” he said.
Fauzi was commenting on a recent remark by Bukit Aman anti-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay. Ayob told FMT one of the reasons youngsters were joining IS or becoming sympathetic to it was that they were looking for some form of redemption for past sins.
“The Salafi jihadist ideology states that if you die in war, then you are cleansed of all your sins,” Ayob said.
“We caught a suspect in Perlis who was a university student and when we asked him why he wanted to go for jihad, he told us that he had committed fornication with his girlfriend three times.
“He had read in social media that if he went for jihad and was killed, then all of his sins would be washed away.”
Ayob said this was a common story with many terrorism suspects who had been arrested.