As Muslim community grows, so do Kingdom's ties to Arab states
Over $700 million has been pledged to the nation over the last six months by land-hungry Arab nations, raising concern that their rising influence will radicalise Cambodian Muslims

HENG CHIVOAN

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah during a state visit this year.

IN the last six months, more than US$700 million has been pledged to the Kingdom by oil-rich Gulf states, sparking concerns among Western diplomats that the vast investments could be used not just to kick start the agricultural sector, but also to radicalise Cambodia's small but increasingly significant Muslim population.

"There are some organisations here from the Middle East that are very radical and that are very intolerant, and they are trying very hard to change the attitude and the atmosphere of the Muslim population here in Cambodia," said outgoing American Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli in his farewell speech to reporters on August 25.

At a time when rising international commodity prices have given a new imperative to food security and made food export more lucrative, Cambodia, with its vast swaths of under-utilised farmland, is in a strong position to form relationships with cash-loaded but nonarable Arab nations.

In April, the emirate of Qatar said it would invest some $200 million in Cambodian farmland.

Last month, the Gulf state of Kuwait announced it would give Cambodia more than $500 million in soft loans and revealed plans to establish an embassy in Cambodia - which, were it to happen, would mark the first embassy from an Arab nation to open in Phnom Penh.

"Kuwait, of course, is a very wealthy country, so in ways it could be very helpful to Cambodia economically.... The one thing we all need to be careful about is what the money is going to," Mussomeli said.

Cambodian Muslims are "very open and tolerant of other countries", Mussomeli said, but he cautioned that as a very poor community they are vulnerable to being manipulated by groups offering money who "are much more rigid fundamentalists in their perspective and who certainly don't like foreigners or other religions".

Islamic ties
The recent series of high-level state visits from Kuwait and Qatar represent the newest round of contact from Arab countries.

---

COUNTRIES LIKE THE USA ARE UNHAPPY THAT CAMBODIA IS RECEIVING MONEY FROM KUWAIT.

---

Beginning in the early 1990s, money from Malaysia and the Middle East flowed into Cambodia's Muslim community, ostensibly to rejuvenate a minority community that had been devastated by the Khmer Rouge and needed to solidify its rightful place in Cambodian society, Cambodian Muslim leaders say.

HENG CHIVOA

Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah with Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The primary focus of the most recent state visits have been trade. Yet cultural ties are also at stake: Kuwait pledged some $5 million for Cambodian Islamic institutions, including renovating the dilapidated International Dubai Mosque near Boeung Kak lake.

Ahmad Yahya, a government adviser and president of the Cambodian Islamic Development Association, told the Post on Monday that the new facilities at the Boeung Kak mosque were necessary to accommodate the steadily growing Muslim community.

He described the prospect the having Arab embassies in Cambodia as being "symbolically very significant for our community here".

He added that the Muslim community in Cambodia "has just begun to grown up" and pointed to a series of recent gestures by Prime Minister Hun Sen as a sign that it is receiving the respect it deserves.

Within the last year, Hun Sen has called for a Muslim prayer room at the international airport, instructed educators to allow Muslim girls to wear a hijab in the classroom and granted Cham leaders an hour of free airtime for Cham language broadcasts on public radio - all of which Ahmad Yahya called a "big achievement for us".

In response to concerns by Western countries - particularly the US - over how the money will be used, he responded: "If the money goes to individuals and NGOs and no one monitors it, then maybe you have reason to be afraid; but the money is going to the Cambodian government, so why worry about it?"

Domestic recognition
Sith Ybrahim, a secretary of state at the Ministry of Religion, said in an August 28 interview with the Post that the good relationship Hun Sen has maintained with the Cham community has encouraged Islamic countries to give loans to Cambodia and that while "some countries like the USA are unhappy that Cambodia is receiving money from Kuwait, it doesn't affect the feelings of the Muslim people here".

"Some say the money can help make Cambodian Muslims radical, but it won't," he said.

Yet past cases have put an uncomfortable spotlight on Cambodia's Muslim community. In May 2003, police raided the al-Mukara Islamic school. Three foreign-born men as well as one Cambodian man and the Saudi charity that ran the institution were charged with international terrorism and accused of having links to Jemaah Islamiyah, or JI, the Southeast Asian affiliate of al-Qaeda most famous for the 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, that killed more than 200.

It was later discovered that the head of JI, Riduan Isamuddin, had spent almost a year laying low in Cambodia. Another serious scare came in December 2003, when Thai Muslims living in Cambodia were arrested for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks on the US, British and Australian embassies in Phnom Penh.

In the post-September 11 world, Western authorities have continually raised concerns that Cambodia, with its record of poor law enforcement and easy cross-border access, is a vulnerable site for money laundering and purchasing arms, as well as other illicit activities that support terrorism.

Cambodian Chams
Most of Cambodia's 320,000 Muslims, as estimated in 2006 by Cham specialist, Norwegian Bjorn Blengsli, are ethnically Cham, whose practices have traditionally been moderate. But Blengsli has noted a rise of fundamentalism in the Cham community, in particular of Wahhabism, an austere form of Islam originating from Saudi Arabia that he said is now taught in more than half of the Cham community's religious schools.

"Economic ties between Cambodia and Arab countries will lead to more funding for Islamic organisations in Cambodia and, since they are often unhappy with the purity of Islam as it's practiced here, there will be increasing Arab influence on local Muslim practices," Blengsli said.

The penetration of Islamic missionaries, as well as development and educational organisations into Cambodia, is problematic because of the isolation some of these groups encourage, said Alberto Perez, a Cham researcher who is based in Phnom Penh.

"It's extremely difficult for new understanding of Islam brought from the Middle East to find expression in politics and mainstream public life [in Cambodia]," he said.

"The result is that greater Islamisation tends to result in greater separation from Khmer society - a bubble within which they can put Islam into social practice far away from Khmer influence."

While Hun Sen has publicly stated that Muslims must be accepted as an integral part of the country, Perez said many Khmers continue to imagine Muslims as a foreign group and are "suspicious of their intentions because of perceived connections between them and unwanted foreign influences".

But Sith Ybrahim feels that newly formed ties between Cambodia and Islamic countries, as well as the growing presence of Cambodian Muslims in high-ranking government positions, point to a clear trend: Islam has found firm ground in Cambodia.
He added that Cham leaders want to eliminate the stigma in Cambodia associated with their religion and rid them of the "shyness" they have about their identity.

"I'm proud to be Muslim and so should be all Muslims here," he said.