Introduction by Dr Lim Teck Ghee
Although the article ‘The Myth of a Moderate Malaysia’ cited below first appeared in Forbes in conjunction with Merdeka Day this year, it is unlikely to have been read by many Malaysians. We are reproducing it so that it reaches a wider audience and because of our belief that the subject is relevant to the lives of all Malaysians, both Muslims and non-Muslims.
The central issue as succinctly expressed by the journalist – a foreigner but someone with greater freedom to write critically and perhaps more discerningly than many Malaysians – is the conflict between Islam and modernity as it takes place in Malaysia.
The writer Sadanand Dhume poses the heart of the matter in his two postulations:
• Can a Muslim majority live with a non-Muslim minority as equals, or must the former be explicitly dominant — in law as well as in day-to-day life?
• Can Muslims reconcile piety with a culture where the rights of the individual (say, to order a beer) are given precedence over communal beliefs?
Dhume has qualified his concerns by pointing out that issues about secularism and individual rights are also found in some non-Muslim societies. For example in India, there are cases of thuggish Hindu groups roughing up women in bars and castigating young couples for the high crime of celebrating Valentine’s Day. Similarly he notes that the United States has still to come to terms with a woman’s right to an abortion.
But the highly regarded reporter also notes that “only in Muslim-majority lands are religious bigots given such broad leeway by their secular co-religionists???. He forgets to mention, though, that uniquely in multi-racial Malaysia, there is only muted response from their subdued fellow citizens belonging to other faiths who more often than not, are in a state of paralyzed passivity.
Broad leeway for these actions by the religious fringe is also encouraged by the close-one-eye or even close-both-eyes attitude displayed by the authorities.
This include the unhindered practice of conducting protests after Friday prayers, an increasingly steady pattern which finally led to the head-line grabbing ‘cow-head’ demonstration in Shah Alam.
Or state intervention as in the case of Revathi Masoosai – a practicing Hindu born to Indian parents converted to Islam – who during her detention in the faith rehabilitation centre was alleged to have been forced by her wardens to eat beef.
Dhume’s conclusion that “unless Malaysians can find a way to treat Islam like any other set of ideas, scenes like those in Shah Alam on Friday aren’t about to disappear??? may sound contentious in this Muslim country but it is something we feel worthwhile pondering over.
Lastly, in case the CPI is accused of undermining religious harmony for initiating a larger public discourse on this topic, we should emphasize that we fully support the position articulated by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah recently on Oct 16.
In his keynote address at the official launch of the book, Multiethnic Malaysia: Past Present and Future, Tengku Razaleigh said the “fact that we have a constitution governed by common law [and not by syariah] is not an accident nor an external imposition. We chose to found our nation on a secular constitution [and that] for us to continue to grow up as a country, we need to own, understand and defend it.???
Forbes in Malaysia
The Forbes Global CEO Conference (FGCC) is an annual affair with this year’s conference in Kuala Lumpur 28-30 Sept co-hosted by the government of Malaysia for 450 delegates.
The FGCC would “enhance Malaysia’s image as an attractive business destination???, and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Miti) believes that coverage by international media is of help to reinforce the country as an attractive investment destination.
Hence advertisements on Malaysia have been published in 28 issues of the Forbes magazine since early 2008, including scheduled interviews of Prime Minister Najib Razak and Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin by Steve Forbes in KL on the sidelines of the FGCC.
About the writer Sadanand Dhume
Sadanand Dhume is a writer and journalist based in Washington, DC. He has served as India bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review and as Indonesia correspondent of FEER and the Wall Street Journal Asia. His essays, op-eds and reviews have also been published in The Washington Post, Commentary, YaleGlobal and Foreign Policy.
The Myth Of A Moderate Malaysia
Canings, cows’ heads and ethnoreligious apartheid.
By Sadanand Dhume
Excerpt:
But most strikingly, Malaysia (along with next-door Indonesia) can claim something increasingly rare in the Muslim world: a large non-Muslim population. About four in 10 Malaysians are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu , Sikh or Confucian. (By contrast, Turkey, the poster-child for an Islam at peace with the 21st century, is 99.8% Muslim.) Recognizing the power of this statistic in our multicultural age, Tourism Malaysia promotes the country’s allegedly harmonious blend of Malay, Chinese and Indian communities with an odd but nonetheless catchy slogan: Malaysia, Truly Asia.
The reality, of course, is a lot less sunny. Unlike neighboring Singapore, which shares the same colonial past and ethnic mix –albeit with a Chinese rather than a Malay majority — Malaysia has rejected secularism in favor of a kind of ethnoreligious apartheid that belongs more in a medieval kingdom than in a modern democratic republic.
In Malaysia, Islam is the state religion. Higher education, the bureaucracy and vast swathes of the economy are operated as a kind of spoils system almost exclusively for Malays, whom the state defines as Muslim. Race and religion determine everything from your odds of getting into medical school to the amount you’re expected to put down for an apartment.
To read more …