Syed Akbar Ali: The Quranic Islam versus the ‘Religion’ of ‘Islam’

By Yoginder Sikand

Born in 1960 Ipoh, Perak, Syed Akbar Ali is a Malaysian of Tamil Muslim (Mamak) origin. He studied business management and engineering in the United States, after which he returned to Malaysia to work as a banker and then served a stint as a Consultant at the National Economic Action Council of the Prime Minister’s Department. He presently runs a jewellery business in Kuala Lumpur. He was also a newspaper columnist for several years, writing mainly about religion, politics and current affairs He has published three books so far: To Digress A Little (2005), Malaysia And The Club of Doom (2006) and Things in Common (2008). He is an activist of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

Ali is not a trained traditional alim, but he assumes that, as a Muslim, it is his right to seek to understand the Quran on his own. A striking feature of Ali’s approach to Islam is his reliance only on the Quran, for, as he argues, God Himself has guaranteed that the Quran shall be protected by Him. The same is not true, he argues, for the Hadith as well as the corpus of fiqh, all of which he dismisses as unreliable. Given that many of the problematic issues in traditional and contemporary Islamic discourse to do with women, non-Muslims, inter-community relations and so forth, have their basis in the Hadith and fiqh, and not in the Quran, Ali’s approach enables him to provide novel answers to such issues without having to engage with the Hadith and fiqh at all.

A second major aspect of Ali’s understanding of Islam is his insistence that Islam is not a religion, in the sense of a cult and a set of beliefs about the supernatural. Rather, it is a complete way of life, ad-din in Arabic, which has been taught by all the many prophets that God has sent to the world, the last of whom was the Prophet Muhammad. ‘Islam’, he points out, simply means ‘to surrender’ to God, and this has been the way life that all the prophets. As he puts it, ‘Islam is not a religion or agama. There is no such thing as a religion of Islam […] Islam is a deen or way of life, a good way of doing things. Deen can also imply an Order—an ordered way of life.’[1] In these two senses, then, he argues, Islam represents true universalism. In contrast, he claims that Muslims have reduced Islam from a way of life to a mere religion, a narrow set of laws and beliefs. In his view, they wrongly understand Islam as a cult that is in fierce completion with other cults for supremacy. In this way, he claims, they are not ‘true’ Muslims, in the literal sense of the term (which means to ‘submit’ to God’s Will). Instead, he generally refers to them as ‘deviationist religionists’[2] and ‘cultists’.

A third significant aspect of Ali’s understanding of Islam relates to the question of Islamic authority. God’s last revelation to humankind, the Quran, he says is for all to study and understand. There is no priesthood in Islam, and hence the class of ulema, who presume themselves to be authoritative interpreters of Islam, functioning almost similarly as priests in other religions, has no basis in the Quran. From this follows the argument that one is not bound to follow the opinion of the ulema, past or present.

A fourth central focus of Ali’s approach is to deconstruct, even dismiss, much of the corpus of what has come to be widely understood as the Islamic shariah. He claims that much of this is actually the invention of the earlier ulema, mixed with what he regards as fabricated Hadith narratives for which there is no reliable historical record, as well as the baneful impact of Jewish and Christian thinking on the early Muslim scholars.[3] In this way, Ali is able to argue that many of the deeply problematic aspects of the historical shariah are simply not Islamic at all, in that they have no sanction in the Quran, which, Ali insists, is the only text that Muslims must rely on.

One of Ali’s principal concerns is the formidable rise of conservative, supremacist and reactionary, groups speaking in the name of Islam, in Malaysia and elsewhere, many of which have taken to violent means. These include, but are not limited to, the principal opposition party in Malaysia, the ‘Islamic’ PAS. He considers them a danger to Islam itself. With regard to such elements in Malaysia, he argues that they are a ‘corrupting influence’, because they are ‘advocating chaos and confusion’ and that they would destroy Malaysia if they are left unchecked. Despite claiming to be champions of Islam, most of them, he says, ‘[do] not possess Islamic values.’ Hence, ‘they just [do] not represent Islam’. In a meeting with the then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, chief of the UMNO of which Ali is an activist, Ali pointed out that in a way he, Mahathir, was responsible for the promotion of such elements because of his so-called Islamisation policies that had been ‘hijacked by some of the extremists to almost destroy our nation’. Mahathir’s ‘indulgence’, through financial patronage and setting up various ‘Islamic’ institutions in which they had been employed, had empowered them, particularly the conservative ulema, ‘to a level which had never been seen before’ in Malaysia. Many of them, although funded by the UMNO-led Government, were ardent supporters of the PAS and were, so he alleged, ‘abusing government machinery’ in order to further ‘their evil beliefs’.[4] He accused the private ‘Islamic’ schools being run by what he called ‘religious extremists’ in Malaysia of ‘churning out mindless kids who cannot contribute much good to themselves or to their society’. Such schools, which received government patronage, taught their students ‘to hate and foment violent and aggressive thinking.’[5]

The oft-discussed ‘Malay Dilemma’ is another issue that Ali deals with at length. He argues that the post-1970 New Economic Policy that gives special privileges to the Malays has killed the spirit of competition and hard work and the desire for knowledge, making them dependent almost wholly on state patronage.[6] This dilemma is exacerbated by narrow understanding of Islam as a stern religion that forbids even minor pleasures and that preaches Muslim supremacism and abhorrence of non-Muslims, thus leading to a ‘complex psyche that has many fears to contend with’.[7] Excessive government patronage has been made the Malays complacent. In contrast to the ‘enterprising’ and ‘industrious’ Chinese, the Malays remain ‘backward’ because, he says, they spend their time obsessing about ‘useless’ things: religion, sex, ‘hocus pocus black magic’, and endless consumption, caring little, if at all, for intellectual pursuits. This is not something unique to the Malay ‘Muslims’, however, Ali argues. Rather, he says, in this ‘they have friends among all the “Muslim” peoples of the world.’ ‘In every “Muslim” country’, Ali writes, ‘their peoples are at the bottom of the heap. It can be seen that among the poorest, most unhygienic […] most unintelligent people in the world today are the so-called Muslims.’[8]

As Ali sees it, ‘backwardness’ is thus not something limited to the Malay ‘Muslims’, but, rather, is somewhat of a general ‘Muslim’ phenomenon. Ali regards this as owing principally to the fact that Muslims the world over have developed a distorted understanding of Islam itself, as a result of which they have collectively failed to adhere to the ‘clear teachings’ of the Quran. That is to say, Ali argues, it is not because of Islam that they are ‘backward’. Rather, the contrary is true. ‘Because of their own non-adherence’ to the Quran, he insists, ‘they suffer many calamities. They have been forsaken in this world.’ Ali goes so far as to argue that what he regards as the ‘false’ Islam that they follow, which he considers as having nothing at all to do with what he believes is the true Islam of the Quran, that they have met this fate. Hence, it is inevitable, he says, that their ‘distorted’ religion, which they regard as the solution to their woes, will only further exacerbate their plight rather than solve it. As he puts it, ‘They are also led to believe that somehow they will be blessed in the Hereafter for doing the same things that makes them non-achievers in this world’.[9]

A major target of Ali’s ire are ‘Muslim’ clerics, whom he derisively refers to as ‘priests’, and ‘shamans’ and ‘morons’[10], denying them the exalted title of ulema or ‘scholars’. He accuses many of them of ‘depend[ing] on outright lies to make a living’, of using religion as a ‘money-making venture’. He remarks that the Quran condemns priests for taking people’s money, and that it viscerally opposed to the concept of priests offering ‘the keys to paradise’ and serving as intermediaries between Man and God, which is what he regards the class of Muslim clerics as having virtually become. To make matters worse, he argues, the average guru agama or Malay Muslim religious teacher ‘will likely not know the contents of the Quran’, which is why the people they preach to also remain ignorant of the real message of the Islamic revelation.[11]

If Ali denies the self-styled ulema the right to speak for Islam or even to define it, he is equally critical of efforts by the state, in Malaysia and other Muslim-majority countries, to impose ‘Islamic’ laws. Naturally, he is also opposed to the Islamists’ agenda of an ‘Islamic’ state. His argument is that the Quran is ‘clear as to what a person should do and not do’, and hence there is no need for the state to legislate in such matters.[12] Since Islam ‘has already been perfected’ in the Quran, to seek to legislate it is, Ali argues, meaningless. That would only lead to the shackling of the law, to endless disputations resulting from differences in interpreting Islamic legal injunctions, to the hegemonic imposition of the views of one ‘Muslim’ sectarian grouping over the others and to gross human rights abuses, particularly of vulnerable groups such as women and non-Muslim minorities.[13] It would also hurt those Muslims who differ with the interpretation of Islam of the state and religious authorities, who can easily accuse them of ‘heresy’ and ‘apostasy’, which are punishable crimes in Malaysia and many other Muslim-majority countries.[14] In other words, Ali argues the case for a secular, that is to say religiously-neutral, state, claiming that this is precisely what Islam itself mandates.

Ali’s critique of dominant understandings of Islam includes a denunciation of the conflation of Islam with elements Arab culture, or what he derisively dismisses as ‘desert culture’.[15] To equate the two, he believes, is to completely undermine the universality of Islam, which, in his view, is compatible with all human cultures and is not tied to any particular one. A ‘major cultural failure’ of Malaysian Muslims’, he argues, ‘is our inability to fend off the Arabisation of Malay music, culture, religion and language’.[16] This tendency to ‘ape the Arabs’ by regarding Arab culture as somehow more ‘Islamic’ also leads to a pervasive sense of alienation from local culture and a profound feeling of inferiority vis-à-vis the Arabs, who are considered to be somehow ‘better’ Muslims just because of their culture and language. This attitude, Ali laments, nurtures among the Malays a strong sense of ‘self-deprecation’ and ‘low self-esteem’ that keeps the community down, leading to ‘negative values’ and ‘arrogance, rudeness and withdrawal into racial and religious cocoons’ that become shields to cover up for their weakness.[17] In this regard, Ali caustically asks:

[W]hat is the worth of being respected by the Middle Eastern countries […]? They are without doubt among the most oppressive, undemocratic, poor and corrupt nations on the surface of Allah’s earth. They are hardly the paragons of Islamic virtue that they are made out to be. Even their citizens do not like their countries.[18]

It is not the Arabs that the Muslims should emulate or learn Islam from, Ali argues. Since he interprets Islam as ‘an ordered way of life’ or ‘a good way of doing things’,[19] Islam, he contends, is found wherever this way of life is practiced, no matter what those who practice it call themselves as. Islam stresses the acquisition and application of knowledge, upholding the truth, intellectual courage, hard work, logical thinking, honesty, integrity, justice, politeness, care and respect for fellow humans, professionalism, a scientific approach, non-aggression and so on. A true Muslim ‘has to be a non-threatening person to his fellow human beings’ and have ‘evil thoughts against others’, he adds. ‘This is what Islam really is’, he insists, arguing against the dominant notion of Islam as a ‘religion’, a set of do’s and don’ts, beliefs and legal restrictions.[20] Those who adopt these values Quranic are practicing Islam even if they do not call it or recognize it as such. For instance, he argues the enormous scientific and economic ‘development’ that China has witnessed and the rising standards of living of its people is ‘Islamic’, because this is a reflection of a truly Islamic way of, and approach to, life. Islam, then, he argues, conduces to material prosperity, for God is said to have promised this to those who truly submit to Him.

Why, then, Ali asks, are most Muslim countries economically deprived? He has a simple answer: in the name of following Islam, they actually follow something else which they call by the same name. The ‘Islam’ of ‘the confused religionists’ makes its followers ‘dirt poor’, besides ‘stupid, violent and downtrodden by everyone else.’ Only the ‘more crafty religionists frequently enrich themselves’ at the expense of the many.[21] The self-styled ‘Muslim’ religious authorities are, Ali contends, directly complicit in the Muslims’ economic and intellectual backwardness, because of the various restrictive laws that they seek to impose, their inculcation of a deadening fatalism, their opposition to intellectual and religious freedom, their stern, their deep-rooted misogyny and stern authoritarianism, their opposition to science, and their hatred for non-Muslims, all in the name of Islam.[22] To repeat a point made earlier, Ali insists that this is not Islam at all, but what he calls a ‘deviant religion’. Because most Muslims follow this ‘religion’ instead of the Islam of the Quran, he argues, they have ‘been forsaken’ by God, which, in turn, has led to horrific ‘poverty, violence and ignominy’ among many Muslim communities. Unless the Quranic Islam is properly understood and practiced, he warns, the situation will not change. Contrarily, if Muslims continue to adhere to their ‘religion’ that they wrongly consider to be the true Islam, their problems will only get worse.

In this regard, Ali sees little hope, for a whole range of forces, including and particularly Muslim political and religious authorities throughout the world, are viscerally opposed to any reforms in the Muslims’ religious thought, erroneously believing this to be ‘un-Islamic’. Thus, he writes:


Despite such horrific truths, the confused Arab religionists keep insisting that the same Allah who has forsaken them in this world will somehow bless them in the Hereafter for the same non-achievements. This is the sick logic which they force their followers to swallow hook, line and sinker […] The confused religionists are following the Fool’s Law of repeating the same unsuccessful method again and again with the hope that maybe the next time round the results will be magically different [….] They are hoping that all the things they do which can make them violent, poor and unsuccessful in this life will somehow win favour from Allah for success in the next life. Such tragic stupidity![23]


[1] Syed Akbar Ali, To Digress A Little (published by the author), Kota Bharu, 2005, p.103.
[2] Ibid., p.2.

[3] In his Things in Common, Ali argues that several contentious aspects of contemporary Muslim thought and practice, such as degradation of women, ill-treatment of non-believers and punishment for apostasy, are not sanctioned in the Quran, but, rather, were borrowed by the later Muslims from the Old and the New Testaments (see www.syedakbarali.blogspot.com).
[4] Ibid., p.6.
[5] Ibid., p.11.
[6] Ibid., p.14.
[7] Ibid., p.42.
[8] Ibid., p.58.
[9] Ibid., p.58.
[10] Ibid., p.94.
[11] Ibid., p.93.
[12] Ibid., p.96.
[13] Ibid., pp.103-4.
[14] In this regard, Ali writes, with reference to Malaysia, ‘It is an irony that the Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Tien Taos, Sikhs and everyone else has total freedom to interpret and practice their religion any which way they want but the so-called “Muslims” do not have the same right’, their right to do so being restricted by the state (p.106)

[15] Ibid., p.107.
[16] Ibid., p.100.
[17] Ibid., pp.115-18.
[18] Ibid., pp.103-4.
[19] Ibid., p.103.
[20] Ibid., p.263.
[21] Ibid., pp.233-35.
[22] Ibid., pp.241-47.
[23] Ibid., pp.248-49.