Investigating language and religiosity in Brunei

Contemporary Islam https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-023-00519-8 Investigating language and religiosity in Brunei Salbrina Sharbawi1 Accepted: 1 March 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 Abstract The inexplicable link between the Malay language and Islam has been well-documented in Malaysia. In Brunei, however, this association has not been made explicit and could only be inferred through the state’s stance of utilising only the Malay language for Islamic-related matters, most conspicuously in the Islamic education curriculum. While this practice has been in place since the early days of Islamic education in the country, the changing linguistic situation in Brunei, where English is now more popular than Malay among the younger generation, may require some rethinking of this practice. An earlier study investigating the issues of language and religion in Brunei has found that those who are more English-inclined do not identify strongly with the Muslim identity as their Malay-leaning counterparts. Taking its cue from those findings, the present study extends the investigation in two ways: one, by adding the social variables age, gender and educational background in its analysis; and two, by focusing on the notion of religiosity rather than on religious identity alone. The findings show that age and language proclivity are both predictors of religiosity with older Bruneians displaying greater religiosity than the younger ones. Language also plays a factor such that those who are predisposed to using more English than Malay have fewer manifestations of practices aligned to the Islamic teaching. Gender and educational level, however, have low factor loadings and are not contributory to the measurement of religiosity. Keywords Brunei · Religiosity · Language · Religious identity · Islam · English language * Salbrina Sharbawi ; 1 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei 13 Vol.:(0123456789) Contemporary Islam Introduction Language and religion are comparatively new areas of research (Spolsky, 2003; Darquennes & Vandenbussche, 2011). Studies looking at the interaction between the two have found that they are in a ‘symbiotic relationship’ (Salbrina & Zayani, 2021b), and that religion can be one of the determining factors for language variation and maintenance. Two key concepts underpin investigations on language and religion: first, that language is crucial for the maintenance of religion and religious practices, and vice versa; and second, that both language and religion function as identity markers (Mukherjee, 2013). Spolsky (2006) developed a four-tiered thematic framework on which research on language and religion could be structured, and all of which can be subsumed under the hypernymous field of language policy. The four dimensions are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. The effects of religion on language The effects of language on religion The mutuality of language and religion The interplay between language, religion and literacy One of the best examples of the effect of religion on language is the partition of the Indian subcontinent, prompted initially by Hindu-Muslim differences, which eventually resulted in the Hindi-Urdu division (Mukherjee, 2013). Another example of religion affecting language can be seen in the case of Lithuanian immigrants in Scotland. The community has witnessed a serious decline in the number of Lithuanian speakers among its descendants and this was attributed to the growth of secularism and the consequent detachment to Catholicism among their youth (Dzialtuvaite, 2006). The effect of language on religion is illustrated in Skerett’s (2017) case study of a Caribbean-Chinese adolescent. Her subject identified more as a Christian than a Buddhist as a result of his diminishing proficiency in his mother tongue, Cantonese, and his heightened attachment to English. Vajta (2013) carried out a qualitative study on a five-generation family in Alsace, a region in north-eastern France where French is associated with Catholicism and German with Lutheranism. Vajta’s findings revealed that despite the growing dominance of French in the area, German use was still evident in the Lutheran branch of the family, thus indicating that religion plays an important role in the maintenance of language. Chronicling the changes in Jewish religious language practices spanning over three millennia, Spolsky (2009) compellingly showed that the variations observed in the language of worship in Judaism were largely driven by socio-demographic changes such as the emigration of the Jewish people to new territories. While the diasporic Jewish communities have accommodated to secular languages, Hebrew is still maintained as their sacred language, notably in the ultra-orthodox sects. The third dimension, the mutuality of language and religion, can be observed in the long-standing tradition of associating a particular language to a particular religion or religious identity. In Lebanon, the use of French is associated with 13 Contemporary Islam Christianity and is reflective of the Christian identity (Joseph, 2004). In India, a person’s spoken language can inform his religious belief. There are regions in the country where Hindus are associated with those who speak Marathi, Muslims with Urdu and Jains with the Dravidian language, Kannada (Spolsky, 2003). Pandharipande (2006), however, pointed out the complex reality of the language-religion interface in South Asia where ‘there is no fixed equation of one linguistic form for one religion’ (p.141). For instance, Christianity can be expressed by a variety of languages including English, Portuguese, Tamil, Sinhala and Urdu, and within one community, different languages can be utilised for different religious functions, thereby creating a situation characterised by diglossia. In Malaysia, there is an undeniably strong tendency to link Malay with Islam, and this largely stems from the Federal Constitution which explicitly states that a Malay person is someone ‘who practise Islam… and who speak the Malay language [emphasis added]’ (Rajadurai, 2010: 291). The connection is deemed exclusive and ‘Islam has the privilege in using the Malay language’ (Munif, 2018: 75). In four of the nation’s thirteen states (namely, Kedah, Selangor, Pahang and Penang), the Malay equivalent of specific words such as ‘mosque’, ‘prayer’ and ‘pilgrimage’ has been earmarked as ‘exclusive words by the enactment of Islamic state laws’ (p.75) and are, therefore, banned from being used by non-Muslims. In a landmark albeit contentious court ruling, the use of ‘Allah’ for God was prohibited to those not of the Muslim faith (Neo, 2019), upholding the 1986 Malaysian government directive which had also proscribed ‘kaabah’, ‘baitullah’ and ‘solat’ from non-Islamic publication usage. The decision was made as a way ‘to protect the sanctity of Islam and (to) prevent any confusion among Muslims’ (Mohd. Sani, 2020: 7 (...truncated)