MUSLIMS LIVING AS MINORITIES
Cambodia Doesn’t Have a Problem with Its Muslims, Unlike Other Countries Cham Muslims and Buddhist Khmers craft a new life in Cambodia BY SLES NAZY
An interfaith meeting bring together Cham Muslims and Buddhists
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ambodia is home to about 700,000 Cham Muslims, about 5% of the country’s population. This minority is composed of three major groups: Chams (the descendants of Champa, conquered and integrated into southern Vietnam centuries ago), Malays (Chvea), and Cham Jahed (those who belong to the Imam San community, which is well-known for preserving Cham customs and traditions). Even though the Kingdom of Cambodia espouses Buddhism as its official religion, the Muslim minority enjoys full rights. They live in peace and harmony, which is, unfortunately, not the case in such Buddhistmajority countries as Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Ysa Osman, an independent Cham researcher at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (dccam.org/home) and author, told a local news agency that their community’s relations with Buddhist Cambodians are particularly friendly and warm. Osman is the author of three books about the Cham: “Cham Muslim and Khmer Buddhist Intermarriage” (2010),
“The Cham Rebellion: Survivors’ Stories from the Villages” (2006) and “Oukoubah: Justice for the Cham Muslims under the Democratic Kampuchea Regime” (2002). “Cham people don’t normally have extreme ideas,” Ysa said. "The Cham and the Khmer have a common culture — before and after the Khmer Rouge period — and live together peacefully. In some villages, Cham women wear the veil, and in others they dress the same as Khmer girls. Some Cham men go to entertain during Khmer New Year, so we have a lot of exchange of culture between the Cham and Khmer.” According to his findings, Cham Muslims invite their Buddhist neighbors and friends to their weddings and are invited to Buddhist weddings. If we look at history, the Cham have coexisted with the Buddhist majority and others, despite some misconceptions, such as ethnic jokes, negative perceptions and the belief that the Cham practice black magic. In his book “Cambodia: 1975-1982," Michael Vickery states, “Much more important in prewar Cambodian society
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than Christians were the Chams, who were both a minority ethnic group and followers of another ‘foreign’ religion, Islam. They … were accepted as Cambodians, if not really Khmer; their religion, albeit viewed as very strange, was somehow more indigenous than Christianity and not linked to the European colonialists or to any other threatening foreign source” (p.181). As Ben Kiernan writes in his “The Pol Pot Regime” (1996), "[Marcel] Ner [b.1888] considered Khmer-Cham relations in general ‘a happy symbiosis’: ‘The Khmers get on well with them. They feel that they have brought an element of activity that the country needs, and I have never heard expression of the fears or irritation that they often display about other ethnic groups” (p.256). The Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea (1975-79) was an exception to this historical reality. During their reign, between 100,000 and 500,000 Cham Muslims were murdered or died due to starvation, illness and other man-made causes. According to Osman, Democratic Kampuchea’s constitution proclaimed, “Every one of the
