ISLAM AND ANIMISM

Yet spirit worship has not been able to entirely obliterate the idea of God. He goes on to show that among all the tribes of Sumatra, the images which are incorrectly called idols are either pictures to scare away evil spirits by their ugliness, or "soul-carriers"—that is to say, pictures into which "soul-stuff" has been introduced by some kind of manipulation. They therefore either introduce soul-stuff into the house ("soul-stuff" meaning life-power or life-fluid, hence a material conception) and with it a blessing, or by an increase of soul-stuff they ensure protection against diseases and spirits. The first group might perhaps best be called amulets, or when they are worshiped and given food, fetishes; and the second group, talismans.

In Skeat's Malay Magic it is shown that just as one can pick out Arabic words from the main body of native vocabulary in the Malay language, so in their popular religious customs, Mohammedan ideas overlie a mass of original pagan notions. "The Malays of the Peninsula are Sunni Muhammadans of the school of Shafi'i Shafi'i: One of the four major schools of jurisprudence (madhhab) in Sunni Islam., and nothing, theoretically speaking, could be more correct and orthodox (from the point of view of Islam) than the belief which they profess. But the beliefs which they actually hold are another matter altogether, and it must be admitted that the Mohammedan veneer which covers their ancient superstitions is very often of the thinnest description. The inconsistency in which this involves them is not, however, as a rule realized by themselves. Beginning their invocations with the orthodox preface: 'In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate,' and ending them with an appeal to the Creed: 'There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Apostle of God,' they are conscious of no impropriety in addressing the intervening matter to a string of Hindu Divinities, Demons..."