Islam in Cambodia

Islam in Cambodia is the religion of the Cham people and of Cambodia's Malay community, and of about 2 percent of Cambodians in 2019. Most Cambodian Muslims are Sunnis of the Shafi'i school, whose faith reached them through the Malay world.

Origins

The Cham descend from the people of Champa, a Hindu and Buddhist kingdom in what is now central and southern Vietnam, annexed by the Vietnamese in 1832. As it lost ground, Cham moved to Cambodia in several waves between 1471 and 1835. The first arrivals joined Cambodia's Malay community, with whom the Cham share related languages and customs, and through them became Muslims. Many Cham adopted Islam at some time in the following centuries, and it is the religion of all but a few small Cham communities in Cambodia.

King Ramadhipati I (r. from 1642 to 1649 or 1658, by different accounts) married a Malay princess and became a Muslim. He brought Cham weavers to his court to make hol, a silk dyed before weaving. The royal chronicles report his conversion in the 1640s and that officials who converted with him were circumcised.

Learning and reform

For higher Islamic study, Cambodian Muslims looked to Patani in what is now southern Thailand. They also looked to Kota Bharu in Kelantan, which Cham students call "little Makkah". Through texts in the Jawi script, Islam in Cambodia developed in exchange with Pattani, Kelantan and Mecca. Most Cham write their language in an adapted Jawi script.

In the 1950s Imam Ali Musa, back from long study in Kelantan, spread the reformist ideas of the kaum muda ("young group") in Kampong Cham province. The disputes with the traditionalist kaum tua ("old group") turned mostly on the right way to bury the dead. In 1960 the government sent him and another reformist imam into exile in Thailand for a time, and the two sides later settled into coexistence.

The Jahed

About 35 Cham villages, the Jahed, did not take up the Malay form of Islam. They pray only on Friday and are seen as the keepers of Cham culture. Only they can read the classical Cham script, which derives from Sanskrit writing. They have kept their practices against pressure from foreign Islamic charities. The state treats them as a distinct religious community, and their leader holds the same rank as the grand mufti of the Sunni Cham.

Under the Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge (1975 to 1979) set out to destroy religion. They banned the Cham language, broke up most Cham villages and targeted village and religious leaders. Historians disagree on the scale of Cham losses and on whether the Cham suffered more than other Cambodians. Of the 113 hakims, 20 survived, and of about 300 religious teachers, 38. Almost all mosques and religious books were destroyed.

Rebuilding

The People's Republic of Kampuchea allowed Islam and Buddhism to be practiced again from 1979. The Islamic Development Bank gave $1 million to rebuild mosques with classrooms. In the 1990s two businessmen from Dubai paid for 20 mosques, among them the International Dubai Mosque in Phnom Penh, built in 1994.

After the 1993 elections, Islamic charities from Arab countries and Malaysia began work in Cambodia. A Cambodian Muslim Development Foundation was set up in 1997, and by 2005 it ran more than 15 Islamic secondary schools for girls and boys in eight provinces. The Tablighi Jamaat, a preaching movement, spread in the early 1990s, with its spiritual center at the village of Phum Trea. In the same years many Cham women began to wear the Islamic headscarf, and older pagoda-style mosques were replaced with mosques of a more Islamic look.

See also

• Saraman Curry
• Buddhism in Cambodia
• Influences on Khmer civilization