Death of Iranian leader lays bare Malaysia's unease with its Shi'ite community

On the evening of March 1, a small group of Shi'ite adherents gathered outside the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, chanting “death to America” and holding portraits of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

- Hadi Azmi

Mr Kamil Zuhairi Abdul Azizi, who heads the Malaysia Shia Imamiyyah Ja'fari Civil Society, at a remembrance ceremony in Kuala Lumpur on March 2. He condemned Washington and Tel Aviv for the attack on Iran.

A day earlier, a US-Israeli strike on Iran had killed Ayatollah Khamenei and other country leaders, while also targeting key security and military sites across the country.

The reaction in Malaysia to his death has since exposed a quiet tension currently at the heart of the country’s Muslim community - between the state’s official rejection of Shi'ite as a “deviant sect”, and the sympathy some prominent Sunni voices have shown for the slain Iranian Shi'ite leader.

For some in the Shi'ite community, Mr Khamenei was not just a political leader but was considered the spiritual authority of adherents worldwide.

“Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was our imam and rahbar - leader. He was the viceroy or representative of the Imam Mahdi,” said a 65-year-old Malaysian Shi'ite, who wished to be identified only as Mr Zulfikar, for fear of being singled out in the country. “Imam Mahdi” refers to the messianic figure in Islam.

Mr Zulfikar is among the hundreds of thousands in the country who follow Shi'ite, the second-largest Muslim denomination in the world. Worldwide, some 90 per cent of Muslims are Sunni and over 10 per cent are Shi'ite.

The community in Malaysia has persevered, despite decades of state-sanctioned marginalisation. The Islamic authorities recognise only the Sunni denomination, while Shi'ite has been categorised as a “deviant sect” since the 1990s.

This lingering perception was evident from the blistering public backlash against Mr Ahmad Fauwaz Fadzil Noor, Mufti of Malaysia’s Federal Territories, who said on March 1 that Mr Khamenei died a martyr.

In Islam, the term “martyr” is traditionally reserved for those who die in the cause of holy struggle, or jihad.