cham vietnam

7/29/2019 Cham Vietnam

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Chams

The Chams are an ethnic minor-ity and largely Muslim population nowconcentrated in Cambodia and Vietnam,groups of which practise many varietiesof Islam, from syncretist traditions incor-porating Hindu beliefs and practices, to a

more orthodox version of Sunn Islam.

1. The Chams before Islam

The Chams, Austronesian-speaking rel-atives of the Malays, emerged in historyas a seafaring people of Southeast Asia.In the first millennium B.C.E., they sailedfrom the west coast of Borneo across theSouth China Sea and settled in what isnow central Vietnam (Vickery, Champarevised, 135). Burial jars found there, insand dunes at Sa Huynh, resemble othersfound in Borneo. By the late first millen-nium B.C.E., this prehistoric culture wastrading in semiprecious stones from as faraway as India (Southworth, 2123).

The growing sea trade between Chinaand India benefited inhabitants of thelong Vietnamese coastline. By 85 C.E.,when Chinese records mention southernbarbarians from beyond the frontier,

Sa Huynh sites contained iron goodsand Chinese coins (Wang Gungwu, 20-4;Keith Taylor, 61; OReilly, 129). Chinanever integrated that southern frontierregion, where indigenous and Indic cul-tures mingled. A third-century Champolity produced Southeast Asias firstwriting, a Sanskrit inscription found nearNha Trang, in central Vietnam. A fourth-century Cham-language inscription foundin Quang Nam province and written inan Indic alphabet is the oldest text in aSoutheast Asian language (Coeds). TheChams naturalised Indian gods (e.g.,Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu) and Hindu-ised local deities. Thus the goddess of NhaTrang, Po (lord or lady) Ino Nagar,became identified with Uma, consortof Shiva (Mus, 367). The sixth-century

C.E. Cham temple of My Son in QuangNam is Southeast Asias oldest monumentof Indian style (Maspero, 38). The art ofthe ninth-century Dong Duong templecomplex, also in Quang Nam, has beentermed possibly the most astonishing aes-thetic experience produced by Buddhism(Mabbett, 299).

For centuries, several coastal kingdomsknown as Champa (in what is now

C


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central Vietnam) competed with oneanother and with their neighbours. Chamculture, music, and religion influenced

the people of Vietnam. Chinese histo-rians record a first tribute mission fromZhan-po in 657 C.E. (Wang Gungwu,122). A Sanskrit inscription from My Sondated 658 tells of a Cham prince whovisited Cambodia and married a Khmerprincess (Vickery, Champa revised, 256).More than 210 Cham-language inscrip-tions survive, dating from the fourth to thefifteenth century (Guillon, 68).

The Muslim writer al-Dimashq (d.727/1327) claimed that Islam reachedChampa in about the second/eighth cen-tury, in the time of Othman, and eventhat the Alidstook refuge there (Man-guin, The introduction, 2901). Muslimmerchants traded between Champa andsouthern China; one led Cham tribute mis-sions to China in 958 and 960. Fifth/elev-enth-century Arabic inscriptions found inChampa confirm the existence of a small

Muslim trading colony. One inscriptionadvised Arab, Persian, and Turkish mer-chants how to use money in the kingdomand to prudently contribute to its coffers.Some traders were highly literate and wonlocal appointment, as attested by the tomb-stone of a certain Ab Kmil, dated 1039.Exhibiting Shinfluence, its inscription inclassical Fimid Kfic script records histitle, The Guardian of Roads (Manguin,

The introduction, 28992). This may beearly evidence of foreign Muslim tradersserving the courts of Southeast Asian portkingdoms by assuming responsibility forother merchant travellers. In some cases,members of a Muslim trading communityeventually converted the king and court,but there is no evidence for a continu-ous Muslim presence in Champa. Bud-dhism and, especially from the thirteenth

century, Hinduism, dominated religiouslife there until the late sixteenth century(Manguin, The introduction, 295).

Sea trade was accompanied by navalwarfare. Cham fleets sacked the Khmercapital of Angkor in 1178, and, in 1371,Hanoi, the capital of the Vietnamesekingdom of Dai Viet. In 1471, however,Dai Viet forces destroyed Champas thencapital, Vijaya, and killed the Cham king,along with forty thousand to sixty thousandof his subjects (according to Vietnamesechronicles). The victors divided Champainto principalities, and Vietnamese peas-ants slowly began to settle its farmlands.Sailing from Champas ports, Cham mer-chants remained active throughout theseventeenth century, trading in Manila,Makassar, Melaka, Johor, Pahang, Patani,and Siam. Merchant ships from as far awayas Japan and Banten (in western Java)visited Cham ports (Manguin, The intro-duction, 3067). Chams helped the Malaysultanate of Johor to combat the Portu-

guese in 1594.

2. Islami satio n and

colonisation

This new era of international seabornecommerce also brought missionaries fromabroad, including f preachers whotravelled aboard merchant ships. Islamand Christianity spread across the islandworld of Southeast Asia. A 1595 Spanish

text asserted that many Mahometansalso lived in Champa, whose pagan kingwanted Islam spoken and taught, withthe result that many mosques existedin the kingdom alongside Hindu templesof the gentiles (Manguin, The introduc-tion, 300). In 1607, a Muslim orang kaya(Malay, lit. high-ranking person, a termused for an official responsible for foreigntraders) inspected a Dutch fleet anchored


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off Champa. The Hindu kings youngerbrother also wished to embrace the reli-gion of the Moors, but he dared not do

so because of his brother (Manguin, Theintroduction, 3001). Cham traditionsrecord that King Po Ramo (r. 162751)invited Muslim dignitaries to Hindu cer-emonies and had Hindu priests attendmosques during celebrations of Raman.He chose a Muslim as one of his wives, asdid his successor (Manguin, The introduc-tion, 3034).

By 1675, most Chams were said tobe Muslims (Manguin, Lintroduction,271). The next year saw the accessionto the throne of the first Cham monarchto convert to Islam, whose full name isnow unknown. He used the Malay titlePaduka Seri Sultan, and ruled until1685. Cham Muslims were Sunns andfollowed the Shfi school but retainedmany of their own traditional beliefs andpractices. A French missionary wrote ofthe Chams in 1678 that more than half

are Moors with the King, without how-ever understanding their religion; theother part worship the sky, and in theirsicknesses, or in accidents which overtakethem, offer sacrifices to devils to be cured(Manguin, The introduction, 302). TheCham goddess Po Ino Nagar re-emerged,as Po Havah, or Eve, wife of the prophetAdam (Ner, 154; Cabaton).

In 16802, the Cham sultan sent ambas-

sadors to Batavia, seat of the Dutch EastIndia Company in Java, and merchantships to Melaka (Manguin, The introduc-tion, 302, 307), but in 1697 the southernVietnamese kingdom of Dang Trong tookover the last Cham port. Some five thou-sand refugees (including much of Chamroyalty) fled into Buddhist Cambodia,where some of their descendants still usethe Indic Cham alphabet and practise a

Hinduised form of Islam (Baccot). A sec-ond Cham migration followed in the 1790s(Po Dharma, propos), and in 1813,

Chams erected Cambodias most promi-nent mosque, Noor al-Ihsan, at ChrangChamres, 7 kilometres north of PhnomPenh. The Vietnamese emperor finallyannexed the last Champa principality in1832 (Po Dharma, Le Puraga).

Between 1858 and 1867, French forcesseized control of southern Vietnam, andin 1863 they established a colonial protec-torate over Cambodia. A French censusof 1874 counted 26,000 Chams in Cam-bodia, three percent of the population(Pore and Maspero). By 1936 an esti-mated 88,000 Muslims, mostly Chams,lived in Cambodia (Ner, 17980). Theirnumbers rose to at least 150,000 by 1955,and about 250,000 in 1975. (Lower andhigher figures are debated in Vickery,Comments; Kiernan, The demography;Kiernan, The Pol Pot regime, and Ysa,Oukoubah.)

By 1940, fifteen thousand Chams livedin south-central Vietnam, of whom sixthousand were Muslim (Ner, 154). By1971, the number of Chams living therehad risen to sixty thousand. Vietnamstotal Cham population was estimated in1989 at 99,000, and by 2006, at 131,000(Moussay, 10; Philip Taylor, 59; Ba TrungPhu, 126).

3. Religious belief s and

practices

The Cham populations of Vietnam andCambodia may each be divided into sev-eral religious groups, with a different spec-trum of beliefs in the two countries.

Of the Vietnamese Chams, up to ninetypercent live in south-central Vietnam nearPhan Rang and Phan Ri. About half ofthese Chams are Muslims, and half are


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Hindu or animist (Philip Taylor, 2; BaTrung Phu, 126). The Muslims call them-selves Cham Bani (Cham sons [of the

religion]) and call their Hindu compatri-ots kafir, despite the fact that the latter alsoworship Po Ovlah (Allh). Conversely,the Muslims worship not only Allh butalso Po Devata Thwor (Sanskrit, DevatSvarga), as well as Shiva and Po InoNagar, whom they equate with Po Adamand Po Havah. Their Qurn is incom-plete, containing only sras 96 through114, handwritten in Arabic in the Kficstyle, and supplemented by instructions inCham, written in the Indic Cham script.Lay people pray facing Mecca, but leaveother religious obligations to religious spe-cialists, such as village preachers, imms,and the heads of religious orders. ChamBani practise only symbolic circumcisionand ablutions; their mosques (sang mgik)usually open only for Raman (ramvan)and for Friday prayers. They observeRaman for only three days and preserve

elements of traditional Cham matrilinealand bilateral gender relations, includinga divorced womans right to her dowryand most of the couples joint property.Female Cham dignitaries known as radjasplay the main part in annual festivals heldin DecemberJanuary, when the radja andCham imms invoke thirty-eight deitiesand mountain and forest spirits, includingshades of spirits beyond the sea, which

may not be mentioned by name (Caba-ton, 12102). Cham Muslims and Hindusalike drink rice spirits, while all abstainfrom both pork and beef. Sh influencepersists in a Cham reverence for Aanand Aai (asan and usayn) and Al,who also figure prominently in Chammanuscripts (Cabaton, 1210). Cham Baniaccord the same titleMbito both Alandthe Prophet, MbiMuhammad (Ba Trung

Phu, 12730).

A group of about 13,000 Chams live inthe Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam.This smaller, more isolated community

defi

ne their identity more in terms oftheir Islamic faith than their connectionto Champa or central Vietnam. Moreintermingled with their Vietnamese andKhmer neighbours, they draw upon Bud-dhist terminology to describe their religionand to assert its parity with Buddhism(Philip Taylor, 2, 6781, 20, 112, 1401).They are led at the village level by hakem,or community leaders.

Cambodia is home to most of the Champeople, nearly ninety percent of whomconstitute a far more orthodox Muslimcommunity than those in central Viet-nam. Even in colonial times the Frenchrulers considered them fervent (Delvert,23). Yet Cambodias Muslims are alsodivided into several communities.

A minority, who are descendants of thefirst Chams to settle in Cambodia, con-sider themselves keepers of the ancient

language, script, and culture of Champa.In 2005, they numbered about 38,000,the majority living in thirty villages nearthe Tonle Sap river and lake, in Kom-pong Chhnang, Pursat, and Battambangprovinces of western Cambodia. TheseMuslims hold prayer in their mosquesonly on Friday. They are variously knownas the Imam San, Cham Bani, Jahed,Cham Sot (pure Chams), and the Fri-

day group (Kom Jumaat). Their centre isO Russei village in Kompong Chhnang,where their religious leader with the titleofon gnur, equivalent to muft, also resides(Blengsli, 175; Bruckmayr, The ChamMuslims, 15).

The majority of Cambodias Chams, bycontrast, share a religious hierarchy withlocal Malays, who are known as Chvea. Bothstrictly observe Raman, ablutions, cir-

cumcision, and Islamic marriage customs,


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and others in the north. Khmer Rougedocuments from this period describedthe Chams as a distinct group that had

to be broken up. In 1973, a documententitled Class analysis and the class strugglediscussed Cambodias ruling classes andproletariat but added, All nationalitieshave labourers, like our Kampucheannationality, except for Islamic Khmers,whose lives are not so difficult. An imageof the archetypal Cham, the independentfisherman, dominated the Khmer Rougeview of the Cham community. Its distincthistory, language, and culture, its largevillages and independent, countrywidenetworks seemed to threaten the KhmerRouge leaders vision of an atomised,controlled society. A 1974 Khmer Rougeregional document entitled Decisions con-cerning the [party] line on cooperatives ordereda delay in admitting Islamic Khmersinto cooperatives and explained, it isnecessary to break up this group to someextent; do not allow too many of them to

concentrate. Cham resistance erupted,and by late 1974, arrests of Muslim lead-ers in Trea village of Krauchhmar pro-voked a serious rebellion. A Cham-ledbreakaway group of insurgents, alliedwith local Cambodian royalists and Viet-namese communists, briefly challengedthe Khmer Rouge in eastern Cambodia(Kiernan, The Pol Pot regime, 2601, 268).

The Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian

civil war in April 1975. Although Chamsmade up three percent of the countryspopulation, Pol Pots new regime (19759)falsely asserted that all the ethnic minori-ties together comprised only one percent.The regime claimed that as long ago as1471, the Cham race was exterminatedby the Vietnamese (Democratic Kampu-chea, Livre noir, 6), yet in 1975 there wereprobably more Chams living in Cambodia

than had lived in mediaeval Champa.

The Pol Pot regime itself set out toexterminate Chams. It massacred theirleaders: the muft, Res Lah, both his

deputies, and more than 290 of the 339hakem and hakem rong all perished (Kier-nan, The Pol Pot regime, 271). The regimealso deported Cham communities fromthe Eastern Zone, forbade the practice ofIslam and use of the Cham language, andeven forced Muslims to eat pork in thenew compulsory communal mess halls,sometimes on pain of death (Ysa, Oukou-bah, and Ysa, The Cham rebellion). Nearly100,000 Chams (over one-third) died infour years of genocide, before a Vietnam-ese invasion overthrew Pol Pots regimein January 1979. By 1983, CambodiasMuslim population had risen again to182,000 (Kiernan, The Pol Pot regime,4612). By 2005, it had reached 320,000,distributed among 417 Muslim-majorityvillages, with 244 mosques and 313 surao(prayer-houses). In 1996, a new muft wasappointed (Blengsli, 173, 177).

Transnational Islamic organisationsbecame active among the survivingChams, including the Muslim WorldLeague, the Fethullah Glen movement,Darul Arqam, and izb al-Tarr. In1989 Suleiman Ibrahim, a former imm ofTrea who had spent two decades abroad,returned to Cambodia and established abranch of the missionary Dakwah Tabligh(Tablighi Jamaat). In 1992, he founded

the Al Hida Yah Hafiz school in Trea.By 2007, Tablighis had built the coun-trys largest mosque there. The Tablighis,who are considered to exert influenceover thirty percent of Cambodias Mus-lims, are associated with the old or tra-ditionalist school, and criticise the newfor proselytising through financial aid(Bruckmayr, The Cham Muslims, 135;Bruckmayr, Cambodias Phum Trea, 48;

Blengsli, 1846).


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Cham Muslims in both Cambodia andVietnam have received significant fundsfrom Arab donors from the early 1990s

(Blengsli, 172, 1878, 1923; Philip Tay-lor, 18, 121). A large Kuwaiti donationfunded the demolition of the historicNoor al-Ihsan Mosque, built in 1813 onthe outskirts of Phnom Penh, and the con-struction of a new one of Middle Easterndesign (Widyono, xvii). In 2002, Cambo-dias muft criticised divisions fostered bythe new religion from Arabia (Blengsli,188). In 20034, Cambodian authoritiescracked down on two Islamic schoolsfinanced and run by Salaf institutionsfrom Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, expellingtwenty-eight foreign Muslim teachers, andsentencing two others and a Cambodiansubstitute teacher to life imprisonment(Blengsli, 172, 187, 190; Bruckmayr, TheCham Muslims, 178). In addition to tra-ditional Qurnic schools, Islamic schoolsproliferated, and in 2005 they numberedup to fifty (Blengsli, 18996).

Bibliography

Ba Trung Phu, The Cham Bani of Vietnam,American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23/3(2006), 12633; Juliette Baccot (pseudonymof Franoise Corrze), On Gnur et Cay O Russey. Syncrtisme religieux dans unvillage cham du Cambodge, Paris 1968;Bjrn Atle Blengsli, Muslim metamorphosis.Islamic education and politics in contempo-rary Cambodia, in Robert W. Hefner (ed.),

Making modern Muslims. The politics of Islamiceducation in Southeast Asia, Honolulu 2009,172204; Philipp Bruckmayr, The ChamMuslims of Cambodia. From forgottenminority to focal point of Islamic Interna-tionalism,American Journal of Islamic Social Sci-ences 23/3 (2006), 123; Philipp Bruckmayr,Cambodias Phum Trea as mirror imageof religious change, ISIM Review 20 (2007),489; A. Cabaton, Indochina, EI2; GeorgeCoeds, La plus ancienne inscription enlangue cham, in Sumitra M. Katre andParashurama K. Gode (eds.), A volume of

Eastern and Indian studies (Bombay 1939),

469; Jean Delvert, Le paysan cambodgien,Paris 1961; Democratic Kampuchea, Livrenoir. Faits et preuves des actes dagressionet dannexion du Vietnam contre le Kam-

pucha, Phnom Penh 1978; Louis Finot etal., tudes pigraphiques sur le pays cham, Paris1995; Emmanuel Guillon, Hindu-Buddhistart of Vietnam. Treasures from Champa,Trumbull CT 2001; Ben Kiernan, Orphansof genocide. The Cham Muslims of Kampu-chea under Pol Pot, Bulletin of ConcernedAsian Scholars 20/4 (1988), 233; Ben Kier-nan, The genocide in Cambodia, 197579,Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 22/2(1990), 3540; Ben Kiernan, The demog-raphy of genocide in Southeast Asia. Thedeath tolls in Cambodia, 197579, and

East Timor, 197580, Critical Asian Studies35/4 (2003), 58597; Ben Kiernan, ThePol Pot regime. Race, power and genocidein Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,19751979, New Haven 20082; L. Loubet,

Monographie de la province de Kompong Cham,Phnom Penh 1939; Ian W. Mabbett, Bud-dhism in Champa, in David G. Marr andAnthony C. Milner (eds.), Southeast Asiain the 9th to 14th centuries (Singaporeand Canberra 1986), 289313; Pierre-Yves Manguin, Lintroduction de lIslamau Champa, BEFEO 66 (1979), 25587;Pierre-Yves Manguin, The introduction ofIslam into Champa, in Alijah Gordon (ed.),The propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malayarchipelago (Kuala Lumpur 2001), 287328;Georges Maspero, Le royaume de Champa,Paris 1928; Grard Moussay, Coup dilsur les Cam aujourdhui, Bulletin de laSocit des tudes Indochinoises de Saigon46 (1971), 310; Paul Mus, India seen fromthe East. Indian and indigenous cults inChampa, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 1975;Marcel Ner, Les Musulmans de lIndochine

franaise, BEFEO 41 (1941), 15197; Dou-gald J. W. OReilly, Early civilizations ofSoutheast Asia, Lanham MD 2007; PoDharma, propos de lexil dun roi cam auCambodge, BEFEO 72 (1983), 25366; PoDharma,Le Puraga (Camp), 18021835.Ses rapports avec le Vietnam, Paris 1987; GuyPore and veline Maspero, Moeurs et cou-tumes des Khmers, Paris 1938; William A.Southworth, The coastal states of Champa,in Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood (eds.),Southeast Asia. From prehistory to history,London 2004, 20933; Keith Weller Taylor,

The birth of Vietnam, Berkeley 1983; Philip


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Taylor, Cham Muslims of the Mekong Delta. Placeand mobility in the cosmopolitan periphery, Singa-pore 2007; Michael Vickery, Comments onCham population figures,Bulletin of Concerned

Asian Scholars 22/1 (1989), 313; MichaelVickery, Champa revised, Singapore 2005;Wang Gungwu, The Nanhai trade. A studyof the early history of Chinese trade in theSouth China Sea, Kuala Lumpur 1958;Benny Widyono,Dancing in shadows. Sihanouk,the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cam-bodia (Lanham MD 2008), foreword by BenKiernan, xviixxvi; Osman Ysa, Oukoubah.

Justice for the Cham Muslims under theDemocratic Kampuchea regime, trans. RichArant, Phnom Penh 2002; Osman Ysa, TheCham rebellion. Survivors stories from the

villages, Phnom Penh 2006.

Ben Kiernan

Contagion

Contagion, the transmission of dis-ease by direct or indirect contact, hasbeen a contentious subject in the Islamicworld for over a thousand years, hav-

ing been treated in the fields of Galenicmedicine and Prophetic medicine and inadth commentaries and plague treatises.Despite the impression of some Europeantravellers that Muslims were generallyfatalistic during plague outbreaks, refus-ing to take precautions in their interac-tions with those afflicted by the disease,Islamic practice and scholarship have bothexhibited a striking variety of positions on

the issue of contagion. In any discussionof contagion in the pre-modern period,however, it must be kept in mind that thephenomenon of disease transmission wasunderstood quite differently than it is inconstructions of disease, which have theirroots in the laboratories of the nineteenthcentury.

It is clear from references in poetry thatthe Bedouin of pre-Islamic Arabia believed

in the transmission of disease betweenanimals. While contagion is not addressedin the Qurn and only tangentially in

Qurnic exegesis, a belief in contagion isencountered repeatedly in the canonicaland pre-canonical collections of Prophetictradition of the late second/eighth andthird/ninth centuries. Here we find theProphet denying the existence of conta-gion (adw), along with other pre-Islamicbeliefs such as evil omens, while warninghis followers to flee from lepers as thoughthey were lions and not to water mangycamels with healthy ones. The issue isfurther complicated by the fact that theProphet forbade people to enter or leaveplague-infested areas, while stating thatthe plague was a form of martyrdom forhis followers. The seeming contradictionbetween these two stances was acknowl-edged in the Prophetic tradition itself, inwhich the (in)famous Companion AbHurayra (d. c.58/679), when questionedabout his having related contradictory

statements from the Prophet, denied hav-ing related the Prophets refutation ofcontagion.

The issue of contagion thus entered thethird/ninth century debates between theMutazila and the traditionists on the reli-ability of Prophetic tradition, and in IbnQutabyas (d. 276/889) defence of Pro-phetic tradition (tawl mukhtalif al-adth)we find an attempted reconciliation of the

traditions. Ibn Qutayba argued that whilediseases cannot transmit themselves, thereare cases when diseases are transmittedbetween animals and people; this view setsthe tone for the extended discussion of thissubject in the genre ofadth commentar-ies in following centuries. In this discus-sion there was an emphasis on the ideathat all things come from God and thatHis is the only true causal power.

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