Dynamics of Faith: Imam Musa in the Revival of Islamic Teaching in Cambodia

Abstract

Born a Cambodian Cham, Ly Mousa who later became Imam Musa, left home at a tender age of twelve to go to Bangkok, and Patani, in Siam and then to Kelantan, in Malaya, to pursue his religious education. After returning home right after the Second World War, he married a young girl from an influential family, and became an instant well-known religious activist not only in Cambodia but the whole of French Indochina. A different Islamic teaching, not only in approach but also in content, was taught, initially, in the village of his wife, to men and women, young and old. His teachings, after some time led to the breaking up of the Muslim Cham community into Kaum Tua and Kaum Muda. By 1970, when the Cambodian civil war started, his followers had spread from Kratie to Phnom Penh, on the eastern bank of Mekong River. The dynamism of Imam Musa and his followers, known as Kaum Muda, created the Sangkum Ly Mousa, even before the Sangkum Reastr Niyum was born. During some twenty years of his brave and active teaching, national primary schools were built by the Sangkum Ly Mousa in the heart of Cham villages where Cham children could easily have access to formal education; through some organized economic activities, his follower‟s livelihood have known some changes. This paper also briefly discloses the present situations of the Cham in Indochina. It discusses the ups and downs of the life of Imam Musa, how Imam Musa implanted the dynamism to the Kaum Muda Cham community and how their ethnic identity was respected in the Buddhist Cambodian majority community, until his tragic death in 1975, just after the Khmer Rouge take over.