How did this Ustaz Casanova marry 13 women and not get arrested??

So recently we came across a case of an Ustaz (an islamic religious teacher), who had recently been sentenced by the Syariah court to 17 months in jail and six strokes of the rotan for having more wives than he’s allowed to, and for having illegitimate children with some of them. 

His name is Razis Ismail (not to be confused with the 80s singer of the same name) and as we explored his story deeper, we realised there were many things that non-Malay/Muslim’s might not know about how this story came to be. Probably the biggest question would be…

How does an Ustaz become a Casanova!?

When you hear the words ‘Ustaz Casanova’, you would probably envision one of those Malay romance novels where a lonely female university student is swept off her feet by some dashing, pious religious teacher who still looks good with a full beard. They eventually get married and spend the rest of their lives doing well, halal things.

Some of you might be surprised to know that the theme of marrying a religious spouse is actually heavily romanticised in the Malay culture. Check this out…

Also, as you can see from the padi fields, this is probably more a rural thing than an urban thing (at least that what our friends are telling us).

As for Ustaz Razis, we couldn’t quite figure out his origin story, because when the world first found out about him, he was already quite the Casanova.

Back in 2012, he ‘only’ had 11 wives

Razis first surfaced when an article was published in 2007 about him trying to pose as an imam to avoid arrest from the religious authorities for being part of a ‘marriage syndicate’.

We’re not making this up, here’s the original article from local Malay daily Harian Metro:

In 2009, word on the Interwebz started to spread of an Ustaz (who turned out to be the same guy, according to one of his wives) who had allegedly married 11 women by using his image as a squeaky-clean religious teacher in order to woo them. After some korek-korek detektif™ we managed to find the blog post that started it all:

“This Razis used his good looks to woo women… lots of his wives have been cheated… I’ve even met his 3rd wife who’s currently pregnant. He just left without leaving any financial support and his 2 young children miss him.” – from Nordinjaafar.blogspot.my, translated by CILISOS

In fact, one of his alleged ex-wives even talked about how Razis brought his real mother to meet her and win her heart.

Beginning from this, people started to take notice, and every now and then his name would pop up like an urban legend from those stories your nenek used to tell you when you first started coming home late at night.

But in October of 2012, the urban legend turned into reality when Harian Metro published the following headline about the story:

This is when the floodgates opened. Whisper turned to shout, and more and more blogs started to circulate information about this man. Most were simply rants about how what he did was wrong, but there were also some statements from groups that used to work with him distancing themselves from him, some of his victims voicing out their misery at his hands (see image below), and there was even a blog that published his full methods and even his IC number and parents’ home address! (we’re not gonna post that link for obvious reasons)

But the important question here is why did he do it? Turns out the answer is less complicated than you think: he simply wants to find ‘the one’. Harian Metro actually went all the way and got an interview with the man himself, asking him why he went on this relentless matrimonial conquest:

At the end of the video, it is mentioned that Razis was charged by the Syariah Lower Court of Kajang on grounds of falsifying marriage documents and marrying without court permission. We don’t know about you, but we think most people would take this as a sign and just stop.

But nope. Not our Ustaz Casanova.

Late last year, this story by Astro Awani went up:

Yeah, you read right. Like a scene from a very, very bad episode of ‘The Bachelor’, our Ustaz Casanova amazingly managed to snag not one, but TWO more brides before the big boys upstairs finally took notice!

And this time they weren’t playing around. In court cases with two of his ex-wives and his four-year-old twin daughters as witnesses, both the Syariah High AND Lower Courts collectively slapped him with 17 months’ jail, 6 strokes of the rotan, and a RM4,000 fine.

As it turns out, women aren’t the only ones he’s cheated

Our korek-korek detektif™ also uncovered some of his previous exploits thanks to the same seemingly innocent blog from 2009:

“This was my ex-manager Ustaz Razis before I found out about his disgusting lies… Be careful of him, he’s been involved in many cases of fraud involving mosque funds… Even I’ve been conned by him.” – quoted from above, translated by CILISOS

Apparently Razis had been gaining notoriety even back then for allegedly misusing funds collected from various sources, including Qur’anic schools (Sekolah Tahfiz), and mosques. Guess now we know how he got all that money to pay for the weddings!

Of course, since the majority of these allegations were seen on blog posts, one would naturally question the authenticity of these claims. However, after we did some further korek-korek detektif™, we managed to find this newspaper clipping:

According to the above article, the accused, one Mohd Razis Ismail (the same guy la), had pleaded not guilty to one count of breach of trust and one count of public deception to solicit funds under the cover of donations for a Qur’anic school.

Note that this story was wayyy back in 2009, and we couldn’t find any further information on whether or not he was actually found guilty, but we do know for sure is that he’s been conning people for a very, very long time, and some of these victims have to bear the consequences for life.

And all his CHILDREN will grow up without a father, or even a surname

It is unknown exactly how many, but he is reported to have fathered a number of children with the women he married. But since his marriages were not recognised as legitimate, these children cannot bear his name as per Malay-Muslim culture, and must instead use ‘Bin/Binti Abdullah’, which is usually used for converts or children born out of wedlock.

As for his wives, most of them have opted to keep quiet about this whole episode, but one of them has had the courage to speak out and tell her whole horror story about their marriage. You can read about it here. There has also been another wife who had this to say:

“Repent… come back to the right way. At least think of the children’s future, don’t embarrass them.” – Sha (not real name), one of Razis’ wives

 

Of course, this isn’t just a problem with Ustazes and Imams

Yes, there are still some people who will use religion to achieve rather dodgy agendas. What’s worrying with this particular case is that even after the 2011 newsflash, Ustaz Razis still managed to wed 2 more women, which is probably why our parents always asked us to read newspapers when we were growing up. Or Malaysiakini, or Harian Metro or aaaaanything.

Our Ustaz Casanova isn’t the only one too – in the past 6 months alone, Sharhan Shafie, a popular TV ustaz was arrested for khalwat (doing naughty things while unmarried) with a pair of SISTERS; while another two unnamed Ustaz were arrested for molesting students at a religious school in Ampang.

This isn’t an Islamic problem either. The misuse of religion by authoritative figures to achieve questionable gains has spanned over many centuries across pretty much every organised religion in existence. The Pope has admitted that paedophilia is huge problem in the Church; Buddhist monks in Myanmar are committing genocide by the masses; Hindu extremism has been cited as being responsible for terrorist acts against Muslims in India, and of course we can’t forget those dudes from City Harvest in neighbouring Singapore that managed to live rap-star lives on massive donations.

Religious scholar Reza Aslan put it perfectly when he said:

“Religions are neither peaceful nor violent, neither pluralistic nor misogynistic — people are peaceful, violent, pluralistic, or misogynistic, and you bring to your religion what you yourself already believe.”