In one of the many versions of the Malay Ramayana epic, Hikayat Seri Rama, the narrative opens with a rather quaint scene where the thousand-headed Demon King Rawana is relaxing near a pool of lava at the foot of a volcano.

Being a thousand-headed demon king meant that poor old Rawana had plenty of things to think about: in his head(s) a plethora of evil plots were being hatched continually, and one of the few pleasures he had left was to while away his private moments in the comfort of his volcanic retreat.

Then suddenly there appears on the scene a certain Prophet named Adam (Nabi Adam) who interrupts Rawana's rest and tells him that God (Allah) is annoyed with him and will no longer tolerate his homicidal excesses here on earth. Adam adds that if Rawana persists in his naughty deeds, then God will send down a mighty warrior-king, Seri Rama, who will do God's work and teach Rawana a thing or two about good manners.

The rest of the story we are all familiar with. Rawana just cannot keep himself under control; he goes around kidnapping Rama's wife and carries her off to Lanka; Seri Rama rounds up his army; they invade Lanka, thrash Rawana's "people's palace", do considerable damage to the local real estate and the story ends happily when Rama throws his wife into the fire just to make sure she remained faithful to him throughout her ordeal.

Now what is interesting about this version of the Hikayat Seri Rama (and we are certainly not claiming that this is the authentic, bona fide, kosher version) is that it brings together a variety of cultural and religious elements.

The encounter between Rawana and Nabi Adam was a narrative device of considerable subtlety and finesse: Hindu mythology cruises side by side with Islamic elements without even raising an eyebrow. The early Malay version of the Hikayat was one that was "Islamised" by the first Muslim Sufi missionaries who came to the Malay world and it was through such decontextualised and reappropriated texts and narratives that the story of Islam was told.

The early Muslim missionaries had no problem with adapting to the circumstances around them: They realised that the Malays were not Arabs or Indians. Their culture was a vast and complex amalgamation of Malay, Indian, Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, Arab, Persian, Central Asian and Polynesian influences. To talk of a "pure" Malay culture was as ridiculous as talking of a "pure" Malay: The Malays then were open to a variety of influences and their civilisational horizons were necessarily broad and all-encompassing.

The success of the early Muslim missionaries lay in the fact that they were able to respect and adapt to local cultures with all their attendant differences and particularities. They did not try to re-make the Malays into something new, but rather tried to add something new to the already-rich cultural environment of the Malays.

This is why till this day the coming of Islam to the Malay archipelago remains one of the true "miracles" of Islam: An area the size of Europe was peacefully converted over a time span of 300 years which nonetheless left much of the local culture intact. Thankfully, the Malay world retained much of its earlier Hindu-Buddhist character as well.

The same, however, cannot be said of the present generation of Islamists in the country.

Judging by the headlines in the media recently, we can only assume that the present-day advocates of Islamisation are not too keen on any kind of mixing, overlapping or inter-penetration, be it cultural, discursive or, heaven forbid, physical.

When members of the Muslim student body of a local university called for the cancellation of the upcoming concerts by the Vengaboys and some Bollywood singers, the first thought that came to mind was, "Oh God, not again ..."

Just a few weeks ago, some of the local "Taliban" bigshots were creating another fuss on campus about Muslim and non-Muslim students being forced to live together in university accommodation, and thereby exposing each other to the "corrupting" influence of other religions and ways of life.

The call for a ban on the Vengaboys concert on the grounds that it promotes licentiousness, sexual excesses and loose morals is another nail on the coffin of common sense in the country. Apart from overlooking the obvious fact that such "decadent culture" is already here (it has, in fact, been here for a few centuries now), the students who are calling for the ban have once again attacked the wrong agents for the wrong reasons.

Their understanding of the problem is, as always, short-sighted and stops at the lycra sports-bras worn by Vengaboys female singers and goes no further. (This was, in fact, one of the major objections raised by some of them who were not too keen on coli-clad women jumping around on the stage.)

Now, of course, there will be those who will condemn me for chastising these young Islamists in our universities and argue that I am an advocate of secularism (hence a corrupt, evil hypocrite, et al.) when I condemn them as the Taliban in our midst. But to those who take such a view, I have only this to say:

The contradictions exist, but they are not mine and they were not produced by me. It was not I who taught these young 'uns to go around calling for concerts to be banned or magazines like Cosmopolitan and Elle to be taken off the shelves because they are "pornographic". (Surely a radical leap of the imagination here - for if Cosmopolitan or Elle is dubbed pornographic, then God knows how these people will cope with what they find on the Internet).

But the real issue here is not public morals or even the right interpretation of Islam: all of that went out of the window a long time ago. What we all seem to have missed altogether is the obvious fact that this whole tiresome nonsensical episode has more to do with Islamist groupings and movements trying to score points in the race towards Islamisation that they themselves have begun.

And it is precisely because these protests are all to do with scoring points and upping the stakes in the Islamisation process that many other constituencies in the country have been effectively left out and marginalised yet again by the self-appointed advocates of good, clean living.

The call for a ban on such entertainment is no longer predicated on an understanding of global politics or the politics of cultural hegemony: Western pop culture is rejected because it is Western and because it is popular - hardly a word has been said about the role of multinationals, the international media syndicates, powerful media interests, etc.

The episode should also provide us with another good reason to look at what is happening to our country and where this race towards an Islamised society will lead to in the end. As the more hot-headed and fiery-tempered Islamists continue to gain ground both on campus and in the countryside, we can only wonder about where the limits of tolerance and openness will be eventually drawn.

The early Muslim missionaries were cognizant of the fact that social transformation begins from within and that cosmetic differences are secondary: It did not matter if their preaching was carried out through a medium that was not even explicitly Islamic per se.

Today we have before us a new generation of Islamists for whom cosmetic differences are everything: Purity in terms of dress and appearance come before everything else, even if their prescriptions for a better Islamic society are riddled with loopholes and contradictions that they remain blissfully oblivious to.