Newsletter No. 1132
Editorial-Opinion
September 5, 2008

 

A REPORT ON THE MUSLIM STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION OF JAPAN

A Canadian Muslim outfit called “Jihad Unspun” has recently produced a report about the Muslim Students Association of Japan. It includes both useful facts as well as a few controversial political assertions. The author is a Pakistani Muslim who has an MA from the University of Tokyo. He has written about a number of political topics in recent years at venues such as Asia Times Online and is a leader of the Pakistan Association Japan, and apparently some other political and religious groups as well. As will be clear, this article was written for a devout Muslim audience, not as a piece of standard journalism.

Islamic Awakening of Muslim Intelligentsia: A “Good News” Report From Japan
By Hussain Khan

The Muslim Student Association of Japan held its annual conference in Osaka with 280 foreign and 130 Japanese delegates. Two guest professors from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth were invited from Saudi Arabia and one from Al-Azhar University in Egypt for Islamic lectures.

Osaka, Japan: Islamic awakening in Muslim intelligentsia became clear when doctorate and post-doctorate students in Japan from several Muslim countries like Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, and others gathered here for three days to attend the annual conference of Muslim Students Association, Japan (MSAJ). It was held here during the Obon holidays in Japan on August 15, 16, and 17th August in Chisun Shin-Osaka Hotel. It was attended by 280 foreign Muslim delegates from all over Japan and 130 local Japanese from the nearby Osaka area.

Two professors, Esam Hamed Ai-Abdul Hafidh and Mohammad Al-Bhatairy, both well-versed in Islamic subjects were invited from World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Saudi Arabia; and Dr. Samir El-Shaikh, Professor of Islamic Studies from Al-Azhar University, Cairo. They gave five lectures in Arabic and English during the three-day conference on various Islamic topics, as requested by MSAJ, and answered questions from the attendants satisfactorily.

Two separate sessions were held for non-Muslim Japanese. These were attended by 130 Japanese people. The morning session of about one and a half hours was devoted to lectures in Japanese language by a non-Muslim lady Prof. Aisa Kiyosue and by the Islamic Japanese scholar, Mr. Sulaiman Hamanaka. The second session was devoted to posters, showing important features of Islamic history and Islamic teachings.

There is a very strong Muslim Students Association in USA as well that has existed for a long time and students of lower and higher levels are both included in it. But MSAJ does not have any lower level university students. This is the difference between the two. The Japanese government has changed its policy. During the 1950s and 1960s, it used to offer scholarships to undergraduate students. But during the last few decades, it stopped scholarships for the undergraduates. Now all scholarships are given to doctorate and post-doctorate students only, and their number has increased tremendously during the last few years. Now hundreds of such students are attending almost all universities all over Japan, specializing in several technical subjects. Every student is given around $1500 along with an inexpensive housing facility. This amount is barely sufficient for them to stay in Japan with their families and children.

It has suddenly increased the percentage of highly-educated Muslim residents in Japan. It is a new phenomenon for Islam in Japan and is an addition of a new chapter to the history of Dawah Islamiah in Japan. MSAJ has collected huge sums, mostly from among themselves, and have built mosques around different universities all over Japan, costing from a minimum of $250,000 to $450,000 each. So far they have completed building eight beautiful mosques in different parts of Japan. It is continuing to build or financially support building of one or two additional mosques each year in some part of Japan where there is no mosque in the city or near the university.

So far, mostly Pakistani and a few Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan or Burmese Muslims, settled as businessmen of used cars or some other professions, have built forty to fifty mosques in various areas of Japan during the last two decades. After the emergence of MSAJ, this trend is now changing. Now MSAJ has started taking lead in such matters.

After the dissolution of Ottoman Empire and the end of the two Great World Wars, Muslim countries started getting political independence from Western imperialism. But during the period under the colonial tutelage, they were impregnated with the poison of anti-Islam Western education and its glittering civilization. Most of the Muslim intelligentsia had lost faith in divine guidance for the social, economic, and political ills of the modern civilization and confined their faith into the boundaries of mosques and madrassas only. A lot of them have become secular and lost interest in praying five times a day or even once a week at Jummah prayers. Ataturk was the first culprit who started secularization of a Muslim country, Turkey, and tried to change its Islamic character to imitate the West and its degenerated civilization. Political leaders in most of the newly independent Muslim countries still have little interest in implementing Islamic Shariah in their own countries.

The phenomenon of the emergence of MSAJ gives hope in this regard. Highly-educated classes of Muslim countries, as represented by MSAJ, show that the future leaders in Muslim countries will be more serious about Islam than the previous generation, which was brought up under Western colonial rule over their countries. The generation of Muslim youth and the intelligentsia that has been brought up in independent Muslims societies is becoming more and more Islamic than the previous generation under Western slavery.

The anti-Muslim attitude of the West with regard to Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, etc. has also served as an eye-opener for the Muslim youth and the intelligentsia that their deliverance lays in this world and in the hereafter in their seriousness in following the teachings of Allah and His Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). This Islamic awakening among the Western-educated Muslim intelligentsia is a sign of hope for the Muslim revival and renaissance in 21st century.