| The Islamisation of Malaysia: religious nationalism in the service of ethnonationalism |
| Commentary |
| Written by Michael D. Barr & Anantha Raman Govindasamy |
| Thursday, 30 December 2010 15:47 |
 The relationship between religious, ethnic and national identities in Malaysia has long been fraught with uncomfortable tensions-especially for the 50 percent of Malaysians who are outside the dominant Malay-Muslim communal grouping. Until the accession of Dr Mahathir to the prime ministership at the beginning of the 1980s, it was clear that ethnic identity trumped religious identity, even though being Muslim was already intrinsic to being accepted as Malay. Being a non-Malay Malaysian was to accept a subordinate, but not a drastically uncomfortable role in the nation. Since the 1980s, however, religious identity appears to have replaced ethnicity as the central element of nation identity as the society has been systematically-even aggressively-Islamised. Yet appearances can be deceiving, and there is a strong case to be made that Islamisation in Malaysia is basically a variation of the original Malay ethnonationalism, using the nearly complete symbiosis between Malay and Muslim identity as the point of articulation that allows religious nationalism to serve as a cipher for ethnonationalism-but a version of ethnonationalism that is much less accommodating of minorities than was traditional Malay nationalism. This article places contemporary events in a historical context and then focuses on just one aspect of Malaysia’s program of Islamisation that is both contemporary and central to national identity-developments in the education system, and particularly within the secondary school history curriculum-to demonstrate that in this instance at least, religious nationalismis operating as a surrogate for ethnic nationalism and has, in fact,intensified ethnic nationalism by raising the stakes for the communities that are outside the core national group. Introduction The Federation of Malaysia came into being in 1963 as an expansion of the earlier Federation of Malaya-which in turn had only been formed in 1957. Since the early 1980s, it has been the scene of an aggressive government sponsored Islamic project that is built upon an ongoing project of ethnicnationalism by the demographically and politically dominant Malays, all of whom are Muslims by law. The dominance of both Islam and Malays has generally been accepted with a remarkable level of equanimity by Malaysia’s religious and ethnic minorities2, on the assumption that the overall policy is basically one of benign tolerance for those outside the core national groupings. The proponents of this contemporary religious nationalist project, beginning with former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, have never overtly declared or acknowledged that there was a shift in policy from ethnic to religious identification, but we argue in this article that they have rested the religious project on the foundation of the more overtly acknowledged ethnic project, and on the historical reality of the close symbiosis between being Malay and being Muslim (see, for example, Mahathir 2000). In this we build upon an extraordinarily prescient observation made by Judith Nagata right at the outset of this process: Malay[ness] no longer provides a sufficient distinction between Malays and non-Malays as a basis for ethnic identity. The erosion of the first two elements of ‘Malayness’ - language and adat - has left only one effective distinguishing feature - Islam (Nagata 1980: 409). This sleight of hand was not designed to fully disguise the shift in emphasis between the Mahathir era and that which went before it, either for scholars or for Malaysians themselves, but it has effectively papered over the tensions between the ethnic element in the Malay-Muslim identity (looking primarily towards the Malay world*/Nusantara*/for anchorage) and the religious elements (looking towards the universal Muslim community*/the ummah). These two forms of communal identity have been present in Malay nationalism since at least the Kaum Muda (‘Young Group’) movement of the 1920s (Roff 1994: 56:90) and remain a point of significant contestation today (Frith 2000;Hooker 2004), though this contestation is well hidden in the official discourses.3 With most participants failing to actively separate the two agendas and even some academics taking the historical claims of Malay and Malay-Muslim identity at face value (for example, Hng 1998: 85-109; Lukman 2005; Mutalib 2007: 36-7), the new program of religious nationalism has successfully claimed its place as a logical extension of the older ethnic nationalist program. In this article, we contend that it is misleading to regard Malaysia’s lslamisation program either as a simple extension of the old ethnic nationalist agenda or as a new project in its own right, but that it should rather be regarded as a tool in the service of that ethnic agenda*/a program of hegemony designed to reinforce Malay occupation at the heart of Malaysia’s nation-building project and to condition non-Malays and non-Muslims to accept their assimilation into the Malaysian nation as subordinate, peripheral partners. We also argue that this project has had the entirely predictable effect of reducing the comfort levels of the non-Muslims minorities. Malay nationalism The metamorphosis of Malaysia’s ethnocentric nation-building project into one centred on religious nationalism could never have been predicted*/and, indeed,was not predicted*/or even seriously contemplated during the late colonial decades that marked the high point of Malay nationalist activism, or at any time during the first two decades after the original Federation of Malaya was formed n 1957. UMNO*/the politically hegemonic United Malays National Organisation*/was formed explicitly to defend what was perceived as the special place of Malays and Malay traditional rulers (sultans) in their own land. Islam was an important social element in Malayness, but its role was not intrinsic (Roff 1994:67). Rather, the essential criterion for being Malay was being vaguely*/very vaguely*/a native of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago and having ‘Malay’ mores and language. This loose formula was really a code for not being Chinese,European or Indian, which was highlighted by the fact that some Malay ‘states’ welcomed Thais and Arabs as fellow Malays (Shamsul 2004: 141).4 The exclusion of Chinese, Europeans and Indians from ‘Malayness’ firmed spontaneously and spectacularly when Dato Onn Jaafar, the founding leader of UMNO and a Malay nationalist leader for several decades, tried to expand UMNO membership to include Chinese and Indians and change the M-word in UMNO from ‘Malays’ to the ethnically inclusive ‘Malayan’. He immediately found himself marginalised within UMNO (Hooker 2003: 191) and was forced to resign from the organisation in August 1951 (Straits Times 1951a, 1951b). The more ambivalent place of Islam in Malay identity was indicated by the rather different treatment meted out to Onn’s successor as UMNO leader,Tunku Abdul Rahman, when he tried to dilute the link between being Malay and being Muslim. He, too, found that he had overstepped the mark, in his case by suggesting that Christian and other non-Muslim indigenes of Sabah and Sarawak could be properly regarded as full Malays because their language was similar to Malay (Milner 2008: 160; Straits Times 1961). His initiative did not gain traction, but he was allowed to remain as head of UMNO and went on to become Malaysia’s founding prime minister. Significantly, Tunku’s great unforgivable offence* and the one that led directly to his political demise at the end of the 1960s* was that he was regarded as being soft on the Chinese(Milner 2008: 155-61) by his promotion of a multicultural Malaya, albeit one that placed Malays in a dominant and central role within the multicultural national identity (Cheah 2005: 102). This is not to say that Islam was not an important element in Malay identity or Malay nationalism. Indeed the dakwah (Islamic revivalist) movement of the early decades of the twentieth century was an intrinsic element in building an anticolonialist and nationalist reaction among Malays, but the primary purpose of its founders and activists was, in fact, to challenge many of the elements on which Malay identity depended: the centrality of sultans to the social order, adat (village customary law,which often contradicted Islamic law), and animist-inspired Malay superstitions (Means 1969; Milner 2008; Mutalib 1993: 21-3; Roff 1994: 56-90). By any construction of Malay identity, this was a challenge that could not be regarded as a friendly encounter-whether one’s notion of Malayness is based uponthe genealogical paths leading back through Melaka to Srivajaya and Alexander theGreat; on the centrality of the sultanates as kerajaan (the condition of being the subject of a raja or a sultan) (Milner 1982: 9, 112-16; Milner 2008: 30), or Malay mores; or on a Sukarno-like notion of Indonesia/Melayu Raya (‘Greater Indonesia/Malaya’) such as inspired the Malay Nationalist Party (Andaya 2004; Kahn 2006:92-3; Milner 1982, 2002, 2008; Shamsul 2004). Furthermore, there can be no doubt that it was a challenge that the sultans- and, by extension, ‘Malayness’-won with British help (Roff 1994: 14). From the late nineteenth century onwards, the tentative control that the traditional rulers exercised over the conduct of Islam was systematically strengthened by treaties, laws, colonial practices and some sharp politics by a few of the sultans (Harper 2001: 20; Roff 1994: 67-74). When it came time to write the constitution for the Federation of Malaya, no one questioned that the traditional rulers were the proper people to run Muslim affairs. Even in the abortive British proposal for a modern, egalitarian ‘Malayan Union’, the sultans were still to be given this role. Furthermore, the Malay nationalist leaders of UMNO, who were themselves mostly scion of the feudal Malay aristocracy, showed no inclination to challenge this aspect of the status quo, despite their deep disappointment with the performance of most of the sultans, and despite their desire to privilege popular sovereignty ahead of the traditional role of the sultans (Harper 2001: 85; Noordin Sopiee 1974: 24).5 Upon achieving independence, Islam became the state religion of the new Federation of Malaya (thus securing a special and protected status in an otherwise secular and pluralist constitution)6 and, to this day, the regulation of Islam in Malaysia remains a state-as opposed to a federal-responsibility, resting in the hands of the traditional rulers (Martinez 2001: 477-8).7 The Malay version of Islam is therefore ntensely localised, with its own parochial lines of authority, practices and social relationships.8 In both a social and a political sense, therefore, Islam in Malaysia has long been operating in a context of Malayness and been subordinate to it. Islamisation The subordination of Islamic identity to Malayness appeared to begin changing with the Islamisation program initiated by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and there cannot be much doubt about Dr Mahathir’s motivation. As Cheah (2002: 213) expressed it succinctly: Dr Mahathir ‘attempted to curb[a recent rise in] Islamic extremism and militancy among some sections of Muslim intellectuals by playing an ‘‘Islamic card’’’. The causes of the original rise in Islamic consciousness and militancy cannot preoccupy us in this short article, but we might note that Chandra (1987) explained this outburst of Islamisation as the outcome of spiritual alienation faced by Malays in the rapid urbanisation and westernisation of the country. On the other hand, Amrita(2003: 258) put some of the responsibility for escalating it onto Mahathir himself by arguing that the political rivalry between the ruling UMNO and the opposition PAS (Parti al-Islam Se-Malaysia) was itself a driver of Islamism. Farish (2003: 199) came close to making the same point when he referred to ‘the Islamization race between PAS and the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (National Front) government that took place in the 1980s and 1990s’. Regardless of the origins of the rise in Islamic militancy under Mahathir’s predecessor (Cheah2002: 159-84), there can be little room to doubt that in the 1980s, the resurgence was largely the work of the Malaysian government through its program of Islamisation (Camroux 1996: 855) and that by the end of the 1990s, t was occupying a prominent and contentious place in discourses over national identity (Cheah 2005: 111). The Islamic resurgence was not intended to convert non-Muslims to Islam; it was rather about targeting Muslims to have deeper Islamic knowledge and stronger Islamic identity, and to bring the practice of Islam under closer government control and scrutiny (Martinez 2001). This, however, created an oppressive atmosphere for the 40 percent of the population that was non-Muslim. They felt increasingly brow beaten into accepting a subordinate status. It was not a coincidence that the vast majority of Muslims were also Malays, and could be expected to identify fully with the newly emerging national identity just as they could with the old.9 With Dr Mahathir’s accession to the premiership in 1981, the UMNO dominated Malaysian government began implementing-slowly at first-policies and programs that were designed variously to highlight Muslim’s religious identity, impose Islamic mores, or regulate Islam. This program did not pose a major problem for non-Muslims in the early stages. The first stage of Islamisation included some initiatives in education, but most of the focus was on Islamising the architecture of new government buildings, and reforming the dietary and dress practices of Muslims.10 The second stage focused on establishing and expanding Islamic institutions, such as Islamic banks, Islamic centres and mosques. These measures were accepted with complaisance by the non-Muslim community. Throughout both these phases, however, the public culture had been systemically altered to make it more Islam-centric. For instance, the federal government had launched programs of building more Islamic schools, offering more Islamic courses in local universities, and sending more students to the Middle East to become Islamic scholars (Milne and Mauzy1999: 84-5). The state-controlled section of the media had also increased their offerings of Islamic television and radio programs. Perhaps most significant of all, the Islamic Centre (Pusat Islam) was created under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Department, and it came to play a central role as a driver in a much broader Islamisation program than is indicated by this brief survey of initiatives (Milne and Mauzy 1999: 85). From the perspective of interrogating the relationship between ethnic and religious nationalism, it is worth noting that the educational and cultural aspects of Islamic revivalism were packaged as partof the mainstream economic programs-New Economic Policy, National Development Policy and National Vision Policy. The first two of these programs were, in part, targeted at uplifting the Malays economically, which provided another point of articulation between Islamic and Malay political assertion (Mohamed 2005: 86). Thus, by the time Malaysia entered the third stage of Dr Mahathir’s Islamisation program, the national culture had already been transformed into one that made non-Muslims feel marginalised, if not defensive. The third stage, beginning in the late 1980s, proved to be an intensification of this pattern, and it brought non-Muslims and Muslims into direct confrontation. The third phase focused on expanding the capacity and jurisdiction of the Syariah courts and legal apparatus, and standardising various states’ Islamic organisations (Hamayotsu 2003: 56). In 1988, the Malaysian Parliament approved constitutional amendments in the Federal Constitution and added Article 121 (1A)(Malaysian Federal Constitution 2006), which reads: ‘The [civil courts] shall have no jurisdiction in respect of any matter within the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts.’ This initiative was followed by all the other states in Malaysia in restructuring their Islamic legal institutions. The climax of Islamic resurgence occurred in September 2001 when Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad declared Malaysia to be an Islamic state (Martinez 2001: 474). These changes had a direct impact on the non-Muslims. Local government followed the state religious departments’ lead by introducing local initiatives that reflected the Syariah values being entrenched at the higher levels of government. For instance, even in the ethnically and religiously heterogeneous state of Melaka, state-sponsored ‘snoop squads’ of up to 60 members began monitoring social activities among the youth, looking out for immoral activity. This ‘moral policing’ targeted Muslims in particular, but little care was taken to distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims (Kent 2005). Local governments also began limiting non-Muslim places of worship by refusing building permits and land allocations, and pro-actively destroying non-Muslims’ worshipping sites (Lee1988: 412). Moreover, on a national level, the civil courts began refusing to consider child custody cases when any party was a Muslim, claiming that jurisdiction on such matters lay solely with the Syariah courts.11 The non-Muslim political parties in the Barisan Nasional never fully and publicly confronted UMNO on these matters. The Islamisation policies wereregarded as part of an internal Malay-Muslim program and therefore exempt from critical assessment by non-Muslims. When non-Muslim Opposition Members of Parliament have tried to engage in debate on these issues, they have been rebuffed in precisely these terms.12 Nevertheless, there were a few occasions when the non-Malay political parties within the Barisan Nasional coalition tried to voice their concerns. For instance, in 1989, when the Selangor State Assembly passed a controversial bill that allowed the conversion of minors to Islam without their parents’ approval, the bill was opposed by eight Chinese members of the Barisan Nasional. Yet the outcome merely confirmed the hegemony of the Muslim nation in Malaysia: the Chinese dissenters were not only defeated, but they were forced to publicly admit their ‘mistake’ in opposing the bill (Hamayotsu 2003: 71).13 The impotence of the non-Muslim component parties in the Barisan Nasional gave UMNO a free hand to introduce more Islamic-oriented policies. The most recent phase of Islamisation is that ushered in by Dr Mahathir’s successor, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who took over in 2003. In one of his first initiatives, Abdullah shifted the framing of the national discussion about Islam from Dr Mahathir’s conceptions of ‘modern’ Islam and ‘moderate’ Islam, to Islam Hadhari or ‘civilisational Islam’: highlighting the glories of Islamic civilisation and building an aspiration to reach such heights again (Department of Islamic Development Malaysia 2005).14 Religious nationalism supplants pluralism At one level, the elevation of Islam Hadhari to centre stage was simply a change in the rhetoric by which Islamism was being injected into the heart of the body politic, or at most another phase in the contestation of political ascendancy in the Muslim constituency (Chong 2006: 26), but we contend that, at a deeper level, it was much more. The significance of this development was that it was intended as a national ideology for Malaysia as a country-not just for Muslims and not just for Malays. Taken together with Dr Mahathir’s declaration only two years earlier that Malaysia was an Islamic state, this represented an attempt to impose Islam at the heart of the Malaysian national identity, so that outsiders-that is non-Muslim Malaysian citizens-can have no more than a relationship with the Muslim core of the nation. This was not a new or startling lesson for the minorities, since, as we have demonstrated immediately above, they had been becoming accustomed to this status gradually over the previous 20 years. A relatively benign regime of Malay ethnocentrism had gradually been replaced with a much more assertive and personally intrusive form of Islamic religious nationalism that has successfully elevated Muslim identity to the status of being a central element of Malaysian national identity. What had changed was that the notion that Malaysia was the product of many varied historic forces and ethnic groups had been completely supplanted by a vision of Malaysia as the product of a glorious 1400-year-old Islamic civilisation. In practical terms, Islam Hadhari had very little impact on government, and it may prove to have an ephemeral life that passes into history with Abdullah Badawi’s retirement in 2009, but the one area where its footprint has been deep and probably lasting is in education. This should not come as a surprise, since exercises in both ethnic and religious nationalism routinely target the education system for special attention because it provides unique access to a new generation of citizens. This is not the place to expound at length or in detail on the many instances of this nation-building praxis, but even without leaving the immediate region, we find clear examples of such usage of education in Singapore on behalf of ‘Chinese values’ (Barr and Skrbis? 2008), in Sri Lanka on behalf of Buddhist nationalism (DeVotta 2007), and in India on behalf of Hindutva (Pardesi and Oetken 2008). The purpose of such education is to imbue an acceptance of the official vision of society in the next generation: building up the self-importance of members of the dominant group, and presenting the outsiders with the reality and rationale of their ‘natural’ subordinate and marginalised status. It is also in the education system that the defining characteristics of individual nation-building projects reveal themselves most transparently: hence, the remainder of this article is devoted to studying recent developments in the education system. We intend to use these developments to show that Islamic religious nationalism in Malaysia acts primarily as an instrument of Malay ethnic nationalism*/but a harder, less tolerant version than traditional Malay nationalism. ************* This paper was first published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol.64, No.3 of June 2010. Notes 1. The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who made such useful |
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