MALAYSIA: A COUNTRY HIJACKED BY FASCISTS... by S Jayathas‏

MALAYSIA: A COUNTRY HIJACKED BY FASCISTS‏ ; Transforming Indonesian, Thai and Filipino muslims into Bumiputeras to further oppress Indian poor. 

Hindraf. April 10, 2011 | Author S. Jayathas

The checklist which the regime uses to identify citizens as ‘Malays’ is arbitrary so that not only have the Iskandar Kuttys who came to Malaysia from Kerala, India on board the steamer Mamak Tongkang been transformed into Malays but also the recently arrived immigrants from Indonesia who form the vast majority of citizens classified as ‘Malays.’

The situation has become more confused when Bangladeshis and pure ethnic Chinese ( i.e. those who have found it gainful to convert to Islam) were admitted to the ‘Malay’ fold. All of them enjoy the Bumiputra status (i.e. native son/daughter) which entitles them to range of exclusive privileges denied to the Non ‘Malay’ citizens.

Jurists, historians and anthropologists have said that the term ‘Malay’ as used by the regime has no precise meaning…. Philosopher S Radhakrishnan commenting on J B Watson’s (1878 – 1958) Behaviourism which, by the way G B Shaw called a soulless stupidity said that we can make a god out of glands, if only we set about it. Employing the methods used by the regime I could easily transform a musang (Asian palm civet) or a cockroach into a Malay.

If you think my claim is fantastic, then please note that Federal Minister Nazri announced in Parliament recently that 60,000 illegal Muslim immigrants from Thailand were given citizenship papers and converted into Bumiputras. The fellow exhorted us non Muslims to sympathize with the Government for having had to make the difficult decision it made!.

I have already written about Project M a sinister scheme which was devised to render the native peoples of Sabah a minority in their own land. In peninsular Malaysia the Government carried out a campaign to register people who because of some technicality did not or could not apply for citizenship.

It was ostensibly done mainly for the benefit of poor Indians but there are among us hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Indonesia without valid papers. These will surely benefit from the exercise and what is more the vote bank of the regime would be considerably increased. Incidentally comparatively few Indians were registered.

The newly arrived immigrants from Indonesia who are called Malays — a word derived from the Tamil malai uur (hill country) — dominate the Armed Forces, Police, the Civil Service and Government Linked Companies. They are also overwhelmingly represented in the public universities.

The regime has created many affirmative action schemes exclusively for them with taxes collected mainly from non Malay citizens. It is claimed that their numbers justify such disbursement of funds. But massive corruption and mismanagement at every level of the public sector is so prevalent that ordinary non Malay citizens have not hesitated to call these guzzlers of tax money crooks and robbers.

Meanwhile we non Malays find it extremely difficult to keep pace with inflation. The overwhelmingly Malay dominated public service will not let us build places of worship without imposing all kinds of unreasonable conditions and restrictions. Likewise even publications meant for our own use attract humiliating restrictions.

Our bright children cannot obtain scholarships. In an astute move the regime announced last year that the Public Service Department would be limiting scholarships across the board. What it did not say was that ‘Malay’ students could still get scholarships from Government Linked Companies and quangos all of which were set up with taxes paid mainly by non Malay citizens.

Some decades ago Mr Lee Kuan Yew observing the abject servility of the MCA leadership called them political serfs. Today the phrase seems applicable to about 98 % of the non Malays. The regime denies us basic religious freedoms, positions in the Armed Forces and Police, our children scholarships and places in the public universities etc etc and yet all we can do is whine like a drugged rabbit.

We must boldly demand our rights and if the regime will grant them we can appeal to the International Court of Justice. The ICJ will be able to tell us if there is any justification for classifying citizens as ‘Malays’ and granting them numerous exclusive rights and privileges...

Malaysia's Phony War on Affirmative Action.... by John Lee

Malaysia's Phony War on Affirmative Action

Policies favoring the Malay majority over Chinese and Indian Malaysians must change, but progress so far has been slight, writes columnist John Lee

By John Lee  March 3, 2011

When then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad launched his Vision 2020 in 1991, Malaysia's reputation as a prosperous and harmonious multi-ethnic country was the envy of much of Asia. One of the key pillars of the blueprint to propel Malaysia from a rapidly developing to a fully industrialized country was to accelerate and deepen policies that transferred economic power and resources to indigenous Malays in order to ensure the "fair and equitable distribution of wealth."

Since then a number of World Bank experts and veteran Malaysia watchers, such as Professor Hal Hill from the Australian National University, are becoming increasingly worried about the country's long-term future. Even the current Prime Minister, Najib Razak, admits that reform in the sensitive but critical area of affirmative action appears to have stalled. In Najib's New Economic Model (NEM), which he announced in March 2010, a Malaysian leader for the first time criticized important aspects of these decades-old policies and linked them to many of the country's structural problems.

Najib is correct that Malaysia cannot make the transition from a middle- to high-income country without winding back these long-standing affirmative action policies. But there are significant barriers working against the possibility of meaningful reform.

As any Malaysian will tell you, the 1969 race riots between indigenous Bumiputra (the Muslim Malays who were then 50 percent of the population and constitute 65 percent of the current population) and Chinese-Malaysians remains the defining event in the country's history. The acceleration of affirmative action policies from 1971 onward was an understandable response to the national trauma of the violence. Even so, given that the race riots were largely caused by social-economic racial divisions within the country, many believe Malaysia's leaders could have responded by attempting to move the country away from ideologies and policies that emphasized and entrenched racial differences.

But one has to concede that in important indicators, such as poverty reduction among Bumiputra Malays, much progress has been made over 40 years. It is arguable that overall national economic growth is as much, if not more, responsible than pro-Malay policies in raising the living standards of Bumiputras. Nevertheless, the number of Malays living in absolute poverty has fallen from 60 percent in 1971 to between 5 percent and 10 percent today.

A Legacy of Deficits

The obsession, however, with improving the lives of Bumiputra-Malaysians rather than all Malaysians has come at a heavy price. Improving the lot of the poorest—the majority of whom remain Malays—is essential. But implementing an ever-expanding program of state-led economic "restructuring" and "redistribution" initiatives is a seductive but dangerous path for governments to take. The National Economic Policy (NEP) began in 1971 and formally ended in 1991. Many NEP affirmative action policies are still in place today (and some have even been extended). This living legacy is behind much of the pessimism surrounding the country today.

There are several major reasons for this. First, many economists are rightly skeptical of the benefits of an ever-expanding role of the state within a "free market" economy—particularly when interventionist policies are designed to engineer social objectives rather than promote growth. The primary problem is one of numbers.

In a global policy environment rightly wary of ballooning budget deficits, the fact that the Malaysian government has been in deficit every year since the introduction of the NEP in 1971 (except for a period from 1993 to 1998) is troubling. This is particularly the case since Kuala Lumpur spends much less on social services than do Western governments. The economic numbers look even more troubling when one considers that around 40 percent of the government's revenue comes from the state-owned oil and gas giant Petronas. This is the case for two reasons.

First, Petronas is forced to pay a massive 60 percent to 70 percent of its profit in dividends each year—74 percent in 2010—just to sustain the government's spending programs. And second, the company's Malaysian-based reserves (which constitute the majority of Petronas' known reserves) are due to expire in around 15 years.

Second, an essential pillar of any successful economy is the emergence of a strong, independent entrepreneurial corporate class capable of competing with the best in the world. This is where Malaysia potentially has a problem. Although it is overreach to damn all Bumiputra-run businesses as lacking creativity and dynamism, there is no doubt that economic protection in the name of affirmative action can lead to unproductive and wasteful habits. If nothing else, foreign perceptions that Malaysia's affirmative action economic environment makes the country an uncompetitive place to invest is damage enough.

Decline in Foreign Direct Investment

Much of Najib's tough talk in his NEM is to make Malaysia once again a preferred destination for foreign capital. Malaysia's net foreign direct investment (FDI) fell from $2.56 billion in 2004 to negative $7.67 billion in 2008 and recovered to only $1.95 billion in 2009—the worse decline among its developing and developed neighbors. The U.N.'s World Foreign Investment Report 2010 revealed that Malaysia's net FDI trailed such neighbors as Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Indeed, in an embarrassing comedown for the former rising star, Cambodia, Myanmar, Brunei, Laos, and East Timor are the only countries in the region attracting less FDI than Malaysia. Worryingly, even domestic entrepreneurs are voting with their capital, as public investment exceeds private investment in the economy.

Third, just as companies seek to retain their best talent, Malaysia has a reputation for pushing away its best Chinese and Indian citizens. More than 250,000 people left Malaysia from March 2008 to August 2009 (not including students studying abroad). There are no figures on the racial mix of those leaving, but overwhelming anecdotal evidence suggests that a high proportion of ethnic Chinese and Indians are in this group. Once again, not all exits can be blamed on affirmative action policies, but even Najib has admitted it is a priority to make the country more attractive so as to encourage thousands of the skilled (non-Malay) diaspora to return.

The honest appraisal of not just Malaysia's problems but the reasons behind these is admirable. But formidable obstacles block Najib. Most significant is the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) reliance on such an affirmative action political and social contract between the party and Malay elites to remain in power. Among countries that hold elections, UMNO has been in government longer than any other party in the world. It is not surprising that Najib has few supporters in his own cabinet to revise and wind back existing policies significantly.

In 2004, UMNO gained 63 percent of the popular vote. After the party's shellacking in the 2008 general elections, when it gained only 50.6 percent of the popular vote and lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament for the first time since Malaysian independence (and with it the capacity to make amendments to the constitution), it is even more unlikely that the UMNO's brain trust would seek to alienate its strongest supporters—or precipitate an all-out civil war over reform.

One such manifestation of early internecine strife is the rise of Perkasa after the 2008 election. Perkasa is a nongovernmental, nationalist group lobbying to preserve and extend the economic, social, and cultural privileges of Bumiputras, and it claims to have more that 300,000 members—at least 60 percent of whom are UMNO members. Many Malays abandoned UMNO not because they wanted to abolish the affirmative action policies but because they wanted a larger slice of the affirmative action pie.

Furthermore, the role of Malaysia's 1.2 million public servants in implementing any reforms is critical. The problem is that these civil servants are the strongest supporters of affirmative action, since many of their jobs were created by a growing state apparatus designed to implement these policies. In the current political climate, Najib can hardly afford to alienate this constituency. The Prime Minister is also relying on these civil servants—95 percent of whom are Malays—to overcome the deeply entrenched pro-Bumiputra culture.

It is still too early to assess the capacity of the Malaysian government to introduce genuine reform. So far, little has been done to roll back pro-Bumiputra restructuring and redistribution policies or initiatives that would reduce the role of the state in the economy. Significantly, Najib has backed away from abandoning the four-decade-old sacred tenet that Malays own at least 30 percent of all corporate assets in the country. The Prime Minister's NEM is a brave political gamble—and a necessary economic one. But the battle has only just begun.

John Lee, who was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, Australia, and the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. His paper, "Malaysian Dilemma: The enduring cancer of affirmative action," was released by CIS this week.

TMI: The price of Malaysia’s racism — by John R. Malott

The price of Malaysia’s racism — John R. Malott

TMI: February 08, 2011

FEB 8 — Malaysia’s national tourism agency promotes the country as “a bubbling, bustling melting pot of races and religions where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony.” Prime Minister Najib Razak echoed this view when he announced his government’s theme, 1 Malaysia. “What makes Malaysia unique,” Najib said, “is the diversity of our peoples. 1 Malaysia’s goal is to preserve and enhance this unity in diversity, which has always been our strength and remains our best hope for the future.”

If Najib is serious about achieving that goal, a long look in the mirror might be in order first. Despite the government’s new catchphrase, racial and religious tensions are higher today than when Najib took office in 2009. Indeed, they are worse than at any time since 1969, when at least 200 people died in racial clashes between the majority Malay and minority Chinese communities. The recent deterioration is due to the troubling fact that the country’s leadership is tolerating, and in some cases provoking, ethnic factionalism through words and actions.

For instance, when the Catholic archbishop of Kuala Lumpur invited the prime minister for a Christmas Day open house last December, Hardev Kaur, an aide to Najib, said Christian crosses would have to be removed. There could be no carols or prayers, so as not to offend the prime minister, who is Muslim. Hardev Kaur later insisted that she “had made it clear that it was a request and not an instruction,” as if any Malaysian could say no to a request from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Similar examples of insensitivity abound. In September 2009, Minister of Home Affairs Hishammuddin Hussein met with protesters who had carried the decapitated head of a cow, a sacred animal in Hinduism, to a Hindu temple. Hishammuddin then held a press conference defending their actions. Two months later, Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told Parliament that one reason Malaysia’s armed forces are overwhelmingly Malay is that other ethnic groups have a “low spirit of patriotism.” Under public pressure, he later apologised.

The leading Malay-language newspaper, Utusan Melayu, prints what opposition leader Lim Kit Siang calls a daily staple of falsehoods that stoke racial hatred. Utusan, which is owned by Najib’s political party, has claimed that the opposition would make Malaysia a colony of China and abolish the Malay monarchy. It regularly attacks Chinese Malaysian politicians, and even suggested that one of them, parliamentarian Teresa Kok, should be killed.

This steady erosion of tolerance is more than a political challenge. It’s an economic problem as well.
Once one of the developing world’s stars, Malaysia’s economy has underperformed for the past decade. To meet its much-vaunted goal of becoming a developed nation by 2020, Malaysia needs to grow by 8 per cent per year during this decade. That level of growth will require major private investment from both domestic and foreign sources, upgraded human skills, and significant economic reform. Worsening racial and religious tensions stand in the way.

Almost 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, more than doubling the number of Malaysian professionals who live overseas. It appears that most were skilled ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians, tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country and denied the opportunity to compete on a level-playing field, whether in education, business, or government. Many of these emigrants, as well as the many Malaysian students who study overseas and never return (again, most of whom are ethnic Chinese and Indian), have the business, engineering and scientific skills that Malaysia needs for its future. They also have the cultural and linguistic savvy to enhance Malaysia’s economic ties with Asia’s two biggest growing markets, China and India.

Of course, one could argue that discrimination isn’t new for these Chinese and Indians. Malaysia’s affirmative action policies for its Malay majority — which give them preference in everything from stock allocation to housing discounts — have been in place for decades. So what is driving the ethnic minorities away now?

First, these minorities increasingly feel that they have lost a voice in their own government. The Chinese and Indian political parties in the ruling coalition are supposed to protect the interests of their communities, but over the past few years, they have been neutered. They stand largely silent in the face of the growing racial insults hurled by their Malay political partners. Today over 90 per cent of the civil service, police, military, university lecturers, and overseas diplomatic staff are Malay. Even Talent Corp, the government agency created in 2010 that is supposed to encourage overseas Malaysians to return home, is headed by a Malay, with an all-Malay board of trustees.

Second, economic reform and adjustments to the government’s affirmative action policies are on hold. Although Najib held out the hope of change a year ago with his New Economic Model, which promised an “inclusive” affirmative action policy that would be, in Najib’s words, “market friendly, merit-based, transparent and needs-based,” he has failed to follow through. This is because of opposition from right-wing militant Malay groups such as Perkasa, which believe that a move towards meritocracy and transparency threatens what they call “Malay rights.”

But stalling reform will mean a further loss in competitiveness and slower growth. It also means that the cronyism and no-bid contracts that favour the well-connected will continue. All this sends a discouraging signal to many young Malaysians that no matter how hard they study or work, they will have a hard time getting ahead.

Najib may not actually believe much of the rhetoric emanating from his party and his government’s officers, but he tolerates it because he needs to shore up his Malay base. It’s politically convenient at a time when his party faces its most serious opposition challenge in recent memory — and especially when the opposition is challenging the government on ethnic policy and its economic consequences.

One young opposition leader, parliamentarian Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, has proposed a national debate on what she called the alternative visions of Malaysia’s future — whether it should be a Malay nation or a Malaysian nation. For that, she earned the wrath of Perkasa; the government suggested her remark was “seditious.”

Malaysia’s government might find it politically expedient to stir the racial and religious pot, but its opportunism comes with an economic price tag. Its citizens will continue to vote with their feet and take their money and talents with them. And foreign investors, concerned about racial instability and the absence of meaningful economic reform, will continue to look elsewhere to do business. — The Wall Street Journal

* John R. Malott was the US Ambassador to Malaysia, 1995-1998.

CPI Commentary: The Islamisation of Malaysia (Pt II)... by Michael D. Barr & Anantha Raman Govindasamy

The Islamisation of Malaysia: religious nationalism in the service of ethnonationalism 2

Commentary

Written by Michael D. Barr & Anantha Raman Govindasamy

Friday, 31 December 2010 00:00

Islamisation of education Let us start our study of the education system, not in education proper, but at an educational display in Malaysia’s Museum of National History as described by Virginia Hooker (2003: 4-6) in the opening pages of her A Short History of Malaysia. The most significant feature of this display for our study is that it represented the history of Malaysia as beginning with the coming of Islam. The peninsula’s pre-Islamic history was not denied, but it was effectively discarded. For instance, the Srivijaya Empire, which ruled both the peninsula and what is now East Malaysia from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, was only admitted to have left behind historical remains that show its ‘influence’ (Hooker 2003: 5). This ‘influence’ was put into sharp relief by a nearby map with flashing lights showing the spread of Islam throughout South-East Asia, and a replica of what Hooker describes as ‘the famous Terengganu Stone’ (Hooker 2008: 5). This archaeological artefact is a stone pillar dating from the early fourteenth century, which uses Jawi script (Malay written in Arabic script) to say that Islam was at that time already the local religion of the peninsula. Hooker (2003: 5) tells us that ‘the Terengganu Stone is the earliest record of the presence of Islam on the Peninsula and is cited [in the museum display] as evidence that Malaysia has one of the oldest links with Islam in Southeast Asia.’ Hooker was making the point that the display was presenting a skewed, Islamised version of Malaysian history that overplayed the place of Islam in the peninsula’s history, but as distorted as the Museum’s display might have been, it was much less Islamised than what has been taught to secondary school students in their history lessons since 2003. In that year, a new history syllabus and a new series of history textbooks were introduced in all secondary schools across Malaysia. The only significant point of difference between the old and the new versions was in the Form 4 syllabus and textbook.15 Form 4 is the year when schools teach the history of civilisations under the title ‘World Civilisations’, but since 2003 this has not so much been a course in ‘World Civilisations’ as a course in ‘Islamic Civilisation’. The old textbook, which was used until 2002, was titled Sejarah Peradaban Dunia: Tingkatan 4 (World Civilisation History: Form 4) (Ministry of Education Malaysia 1999), and was a broad civilisational history of the world. It contained six chapters titled (in English translation): ‘Early Human Civilisation’, ‘Islam Changed Human Civilisation’, ‘The Transition of the European Society and Its Impact’, ‘Revolution and New Phase of Human History’, ‘Western Imperialism and Local Reactions’, and ‘Moving towards International Cooperation’.16 In this textbook, Islamic history was presented conceptually as having a central place in world history as the religion that ‘changed civilisation’ by contributing to an improvement in world civilisation, but this conceptual centrality was not allowed to overwhelm the syllabus: it was studied in only one chapter out of six, with other chapters studying, for instance, Indian, Chinese and European civilisations. The syllabus also discussed in detail the pre-Islamic period in South-East Asia, with much emphasis on Hindu-Buddhist influence in the Malay world. In the revised version, however, Islamic history was given an unprecedented prominence, occupying fully half of the book. This textbook, titled prosaically Sejarah Tingkatan 4 Buku Teks (Form 4 History Textbook) (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002a), consists of ten chapters, five of which focus on Islamic history: ‘Islamic Civilisation and Its Contribution in Mecca’, ‘Islamic State in Medina’, ‘The Formation of Islamic Government and Its Contribution’, ‘Islam in South-East Asia’, and ‘Islamic Reform and Its Influence in Malaysia before the Arrival of the Colonial Powers’. The other five chapters survey the early development of civilisation per se: Indian and Chinese influence in South- East Asia (in Chapters 1-3), ‘Developments in Europe’ (Chapter 9) and ‘The British Policy and Its Impact on the National Economy’ (Chapter 10). The chapter on the British in Malaysia sits incongruously in a book on civilisational history, but its presence, along with Chapter 8 (‘Islamic Reform and Its Influence in Malaysia before the Arrival of the Colonial Powers’) serves to articulate the rest of the book very firmly into the history of Malaysia. As Milner noted in his brief analysis of this textbook: Although highlighting ‘Islamic Civilisation’, the book is in fact written from the stand point of Malay civilization and Malaysia. . . . Although the potential of a rigorously Islamist perspective . . . is acknowledged, the book manoeuvres back in its final chapter to the task of foregrounding Malays and Malaysia [and] the final sentence of the book asserts the continuing importance of the Malay people and the Malay language (Milner 2005: 153). Indeed, the final two chapters of the book provide a direct link between the civilisational history studied in Form 4 and the Form 5 syllabus, which is a more traditional celebration of Malay nationalism, with barely a mention of Chinese or Indians (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002b). The tight pathway from religious nationalism in Form 4 history to ethnic nationalism in Form 5 should come as no surprise. It provides evidence to support the argument being made in this article that Islamic identity is being kept subservient to Malay identity in official discourses and is being used by the governing Malay elites to bolster the conventional Malay-centric nationformation mythology, especially since history textbooks have always reflected official state-driven agendas of nation-building, emphasising the primary importance of an almost egalitarian multiculturalism during Tunku Abdul Rahman’s rule before 1969 (Milner 2005: 132-3), a more Malay-centric multiculturalism after 1971 when Tun Abdul Razak was prime minister, and promoting the strong Malay-centric national identity of 1987 while Anwar Ibrahim was Minister for Education (Abdul Rahman Haji Ismail and Badriyah Haji Salleh 2003: 184-6). The output of this overtly Islamic textbook was therefore shocking to minority political leaders (Lim 2003) and prompted debates in Parliament because it was recognised that it was not the result of a whim on the part of the authors, but part of a systemic program. The direction of the content of this textbook was, in fact, determined at the time the authors were appointed. Fully half of the co-authors (two out of four) are Islamic scholars: Mohammad Bukhari bin Ahmad and Rosnanaini binti Sulaiman, who trained in Islamic civilisation and Islamic education, respectively. Mohammad Bukhari bin Ahmad obtained his PhD from the University of California and also studied at Ferdowsi University (Mashhad), Tehran University in Iran and Bosphorus University in Turkey. His scholarly writing includes Qasidahs in Honor of the Prophet (1983) and The Ocean of Unity (1993). Rosnanaini binti Sulaiman is a specialist in Islamic history and education, and has been teaching Islamic history for two decades. Currently, she is affiliated to the Maktab Perguruan Perempuan Malayu (Malay Women’s Teachers’ Training College) in Melaka.17 With half the authors Islamic scholars, no one should be surprised if half the textbook is on Islamic civilisation. The decision to appoint this panel of authors must have been taken at a high level in the Ministry of Education, suggesting that even though we are talking about only one year of the history syllabus, this was part of a broader program of Islamisation. If confirmation of the presence of this broader program is needed, it could be found in a 2008 statement by Datuk Alimuddin Mohd Dom, the Director General of Education for Malaysia, when he foreshadowed the systematic promotion of Islam Hadhari in the school curriculum (New Straits Times Online 2008), a program that is, in fact, an effort to create an image of a ‘big Malaysia’ that spiritually, if not actually, traces its roots back to the Prophet Muhammad in seventh-century Mecca. If we look at the Sejarah Tingkatan 4 Buku Teks (Form 4 History Textbook), it is, in fact, an exemplary manifestation of Islam Hadhari. Tour of a textbook Yet, despite the imposition of this religious nationalist construction on Malaysia’s history syllabus, it is still ostensibly directed towards enhancing Malaysian unity, just as the old syllabus had been (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2000: 3, 2002c: 3). The 2005 National Education Policy has even elevated the teaching of history per se to the status of a ‘core subject at secondary school’, with the specific intention of using it in the promotion of ‘National Unity’ (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2005c: 40). The approach of the 2003 Form 4 textbook makes it clear that this ‘unity’ is to be built around the centrepiece of Islam. Even before opening the book, the front cover confronts us with a picture of the same Terengganu Stone that featured in Hooker’s account of the Museum of National History’s display, set against a background that is dominated by pictures of Islamic architecture. Once this civilisational history book is open, we find that the opening three chapters present a superficial overview of ancient civilisations, with accounts of the Mesopotamian, Roman, Greek, Mauryan, Gupta and Chinese empires interspersed amongst each other, and rarely an entire page devoted exclusively to a single subject (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002a: 1-64). Islamic civilisation is absent from these chapters, probably because it cannot be easily construed as being ancient, but Islam itself is nevertheless treated in the final three pages of Chapter 2, which offer a cursory survey of world religions. These few pages are very significant in our study, consisting of less than a page each for Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism and Taoism (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002a: 65-8). The importance of this feature is that it is the last mention of Confucianism and Taoism in the book, and consideration of Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity is thereafter restricted to contextual references in Chapter 3 (on ‘Ancient South-East Asian Civilisations’) and Chapter 9 (on ‘Developments in Europe’) (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002a: 71-97, 214-42). Turn to Chapter 4, however, and the reader faces an entire chapter just on the development of Islam in Mecca-before it even took the 200-mile journey to Medina (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002a: 98-116). It is obvious that this marks the beginning of a radically different approach, but the full significance becomes apparent only when we read the instructions to teachers conveyed in the Ministry of Education syllabus about the teaching of this chapter. The purpose of this chapter, teachers are told, is to understand the development of the ummah and the importance of leadership for its well-being (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002c: 31). The word ummah is an exclusively Muslim term, referring to the ‘community of believers’ and its unqualified use in the context of Chapter 4 already carries the clear message that the Muslim perspective is being privileged in this history. The message is reinforced by the stated purpose of the following chapter, which is to convey the message that ‘Muslim solidarity strengthens national prosperity’ (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002c: 35). This is an explicit claim by the Malaysian ummah to the centre stage of Malaysian society: claiming that prosperity for the rest of the country must be built around the solidarity of the Muslim centre. Yet, after two chapters, this coverage of Islamic civilisation still has not progressed beyond the lifetime of the Prophet or the borders of the Middle East. Students still have ahead of them two more chapters in which they follow Islam to Europe and Asia, and, in Chapter 8, they finally get to read of Islam being established in Malaysia (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002a: ch. 6-8). This chapter is the grand denouement of the arc of chapters on Islam: the faith has arrived in Malaysia and is accepted by the Malays, beginning in Melaka and working through the peninsula. The word ummah is never used in this chapter, but the anachronistic term masyarakyat Melayu (‘Malay community’) is used to great effect.18 After four chapters of prelude, there is no need to make explicit the assumptions of the centrality of Islam in the national history. It is nevertheless made explicit in the syllabus, which speaks at one point of the religious education system as ‘our national heritage’, and instructs teachers to impart an appreciation of the current national education system on the basis of this heritage (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2002c: 49). History is a compulsory subject, and all children passing through the education system are examined in it externally when they sit for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (Malaysian Examination Certificate) at the end of Form 5. The imposition of an Islamic metanarrative at this point can be neither accidental nor incidental. It must be regarded as a deliberate attempt to impose a new form of identity on both the Muslim and non-Muslim children. This conclusion becomes even more pointed if we look beyond the teaching of history, and consider that the Islamisation process has permeated the entire schooling experience for those students who attend national schools. At this level, there is no need to look very far to find an official statement of intent, since as recently as 2007 then Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak declared explicitly ‘the government’s aspiration to empower Islamic education in the country’ (New Straits Times 2007b). To this end, the government is not only providing compulsory Islamic religious education for Muslims, but is also in the process of introducing the Arabic language in primary and secondary schools as a compulsory subject for Muslims and as an option for non-Muslims (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2005c: 16-7). These programs, along with training in Jawi script, Quranic recitation and Fardhu Ain (‘Islam’s obligatory duties’), are being taught making full use of information and communication technologies through a new RM150 million program that was intended to build 1666 special teaching laboratories in national primary schools across the country (Ministry of Education Malaysia 2005c: 17; New Straits Times 2007b). With a program like this in train, it is no wonder that the Form 4 history syllabus asks teachers to present the traditional system of Islamic schools as part of the national heritage: by the time the upgrade is finished, the national school system will have become a twenty-first-century version of the old eighteenth-century madrasah, except, of course, for the increasingly awkward presence of non-Muslim children. These are very contemporary initiatives, but they have not appeared in isolation. Since the early 1980s, national schools have become increasingly Islamic in their ambiance and ethos, under the explicit direction of successive prime ministers and ministers of education. Islamic education is now compulsory for all Muslim children in national schools with five or more Muslim pupils (down from the previous threshold of 15) (Government of Malaysia 1985: 48; Ministry of Education Malaysia 2005c: 16-7), and courts have confirmed that no consideration will be given for personal or parental wishes regarding the element of compulsion (New Straits Times 2007a). The general ambiance is now so thoroughly Islamic that even some Malay parents are keeping their children out of the national schools because so many of them are, in the words of one such parent, ‘more like Islamic religious schools’ (New Straits Times 2007c). According to this parent, some schools hold Muslim prayers during assemblies, while others refuse to organise school concerts for fear it might be un-Islamic to make music. At the moment, non-Muslims are exempt from compulsory attendance at Islamic and Islam-related classes-and, indeed, non-Muslim children cannot attend an Islamic class without the written permission of their parents-but there are grounds to be concerned that this could change. It is suggestive that in a 2003 seminar on ‘Education and Religion’, the President of the Malaysian Muslim Lawyers Association felt confident putting the view that Muslims and non- Muslims should be taught ‘the same moral values’ and that Islamic classes be opened to non-Muslims as an option, ‘just as you would choose another language as a subject because you would like to learn about it’ (Zaitoon 2005: 112-3). The significance of this episode is not that this was a particularly strong indication of forthcoming change-seven years later the suggested reform has not been introduced-but simply that this leading Muslim professional felt that this was an appropriate suggestion to put on the table and it was published in a book coedited by someone (Abdul Razak Baginda) who was closely identified with then Deputy Prime Minister (and now Prime Minister) Najib. Even more worrying is the fact that this suggestion is very much in the spirit of a series of specific initiatives taken by former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohammad over the The Islamisation of Malaysia 1980s and 1990s designed to ‘Islamise’ education. In 1982, Dr Mahathir tried to introduce a new tertiary subject on Islamic civilisation and make it compulsory for all university students in Malaysian universities. He repeated the exercise in 1997, once again trying to make it compulsory for all students. Both moves faced political backlashes from non-Muslims and both were watered down-the 1982 course was quickly made optional for non-Muslims (Mauzy and Milne 1983-4: 640-1) and the 1997 course was superficially broadened to include a notional coverage of Indian and Chinese civilisations (Milne and Mauzy 1999: 89-90)-but the direction and spirit of the moves is clear. It is, in fact, the direction and spirit of the whole religious nationalist project in Malaysia-placing Islam and the Muslim community at the centre and making it very clear to the minorities that their place in society is in a position of subordination. This is not the full story of Islamisation, nor does it give an adequate account of some of the more aggressive or oppressive aspects. Somemention has been made in passing of custody battles, and the destruction of non-Muslim places of worship, but this does not convey the full flavour: systematic and violent destruction of Hindu temples (Farish 2008); the current import and publishing ban on the Christian Bible and any Christian use of the word ‘Allah’ as Malay for God (AFP 2009a, b; New Straits Times 2009); and the episodes of bodysnatching as Syariah courts posthumously declare recently deceased people to have secretly converted to Islam and then insist on burial with Muslim rites (Associated Press 2006). These episodes and many others like them represent the sharp thorns of Islamisation, but they are not central to the program. Barr had the chance to ask a fairly senior member of the Malaysian elite about these incidents in early 2008 and found him apologetic, explaining these actions as the result of a disconnection between Malaysia’s modern elite and its more backward grassroots: either autonomous actions by overenthusiastic local authorities or highlevel political responses to grass-roots expectations. Although his response was highly political in itself, there is probably a lot of truth in it. After all, these actions are not sensible or prudent, and it is difficult to see much point in most of them. If we take this explanation at close to face value, we should relegate the more extreme of these actions to the periphery of our analysis, even though they will be at the front of the minds of victims and potential victims.  The significance of our study of developments in the education system is precisely that these measures cannot be dismissed as peripheral. They were planned years in advance and administered from the highest levels of government. Furthermore, they are undoubtedly one set of drivers that are feeding the grass-roots reactions that were bemoaned by Barr’s confidant.   Conclusion What our study of the education reforms reveals is not an assimilation program designed to assimilate people into Islam, let alone into ‘Malayness’, but a systematic attempt to assimilate non-Malays and non-Muslims into Malaysian society on terms dictated by the hegemonic core national grouping: Malay- Muslims. The religious nationalism of Malay-centric Islam feeds directly and explicitly into traditional Malay nationalism, reinforcing the self-confidence and sense of entitlement of the Malay-Muslim community, and exaggerating the message to non-Malays (and especially to the Chinese and Indians) that they are not core participants in the Malaysian nation. Neither part of the ummah nor the Malay masyarakat, they are subordinate, vulnerable and marginalised in their own country, yet expected to contribute to the Malaysian national project from the margins. Part I of this paper appeared yesterday. It was first published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol.64, No.3 of June 2010. ************************* Notes: 15. The history textbooks for Forms 1 to 3 are designed to provide a basic overview of Malaysian history. They have a significant bias towards Malay nationalism but are free of any Islamist bias (see Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2004, 2005a, b). 16. All translations are by Anantha Raman Govindasamy. 17. The information about the authors is derived directly from the back cover of the Sejarah Tingkatan 4 Buku Teks (Form 4 History Textbook). 18. The use of the term masyarakat (‘community’) in this context is anachronistic because there was no conception of a Malay community until the twentieth century. See extensive discussions on this matter by several contributors to Barnard (2004). _____________________________________________ References: Abdul Rahman Haji Ismail and Badriyah Haji Salleh, 2003. ‘History through the eyes of Malays: changing perspectives of Malaysia’s past’, in Abu Talib Ahmad and Tan Liok Ee (eds), New terrains in Southeast Asian history (Athens: Ohio University Press), pp. 168-98. AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2009a. ‘Catholic paper defies Malaysian government ban on ‘‘Allah’’ ’, 20 January. AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2009b. ‘Malaysia to reinstate ‘‘Allah’’ ban for Catholic paper: report’, 1 March. Amrita Malhi, 2003. ‘The PAS-BN conflict in the 1990s: Islamism and modernity’, in Virginia Hooker and Norani Othman (eds), Malaysia: Islam, society and politics (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), pp. 236-65. Andaya, Leonard Y., 2004. ‘The search for the ‘‘origins’’ of Melayu’, in Timothy P. Barnard (ed.), Contesting Malayness: Malay identity across boundaries (Singapore: Singapore University Press), pp. 56-75. Associated Press, 2006. ‘Malaysia’s racial harmony shaken by dispute over Everest hero’s faith’, 1 January. Barnard, Timothy P. (ed.), 2004. Contesting Malayness: Malay identity across boundaries (Singapore: Singapore University Press). Barnard, Timothy and Jan van der Putten, 2008. ‘Malay cosmopolitan activism in post-war Singapore’, in Michael D. Barr and Carl A. Trocki (eds), Paths not taken: political pluralism in post-war Singapore (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press), pp. 132-53. Barr, Michael D., 2002. Cultural politics and Asian values: the tepid war (London: Routledge). Barr, Michael D. and Zlatko Skrbis?, 2008. Constructing Singapore: elitism, ethnicity and the nation-building project (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies). BBC News, 2005. ‘Malaysia to curb ‘‘moral policing’’ ’, 26 March, world/asia-pacific/4383911.stm>. Bernama Daily Malaysian News, 2004. ‘Shamala-Ridzwan’s custody case raises constitutional issues’, 23 June. Camroux, David, 1996. State response to Islamic resurgence in Malaysia: accommodation, co-option, and confrontation’, Asian Survey, 36(9): 852-68. Chandra, Muzaffar, 1987. Islamic resurgence in Malaysia (Petaling Jaya: Penerbit Faja, 1987). Cheah Boon Kheng, 2002. Malaysia: the making of a nation (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). Cheah Boon Kheng, 2005. ‘Ethnicity in the making of Malaysia’, in Wang Gungwu (ed.), Nationbuilding: five Southeast Asian histories (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), pp. 91-115. Chong, Terence, 2006. ‘The emerging politics of Islam Hadhari’, in Saw Swee-Hock and K. Kesavapany (eds), Malaysia: recent trends and challenges (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). Daniel, Lynn (ed.), 2006. The Far East and Australasia 2007 (London: Routledge), Thirty-eighth edition. Department of Islamic Development Malaysia, 2005. Islam Hadhari: an explanation (Putrajaya: Department of Islamic Development Malaysia). DeVotta, Neil, 2007. Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology: implications for politics and conflict resolution in Sri Lanka (Washington, DC: East-West Center). Farish A. Noor, 2003. ‘The localization of Islamist discourse in the Tafsir of Tuan Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat, Murshid’ul Am of PAS’, in Virginia Hooker and Norani Othman (eds), Malaysia: Islam, society and politics (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), pp. 195-235. Farish A. Noor, 2008.The Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) of Malaysia: communitarianism across borders?, Working Paper No. 163 (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies). Frith, Tabitha, 2000. ‘Ethno-religious identity and urban Malays in Malaysia’, Asian Ethnicity, 1(2): 117-29. Government of Malaysia, 1985. Report of the Cabinet Committee to review the implementation of educational policy (Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Education). Hamayotsu, Kikue, 2003. ‘Politics of Syariah reform: the making of the state religio-legal apparatus’, in Virginia Hooker and Norani Othman (eds), Malaysia: Islam, society and politics (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), 55-79. Harper, T. N., 2001. The end of empire and the making of Malay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hng Hung Yong, 1998. CEO Malaysia: strategy in nation-building (Subang Jaya: Pelanduk). Hooker, Virginia Matheson, 2003. A short history of Malaysia: linking East and West (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin). Hooker, Virginia Matheson, 2004. ‘Reconfiguring Malay and Islam in contemporary Malaysia’, in Timothy P. Barnard (ed.), Contesting Malayness: Malay identity across boundaries (Singapore: Singapore University Press), pp. 149-67. Kahn, Joel S., 2006. Other Malays: nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the modern Malay world (Singapore and Copenhagen: National University of Singapore Press and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in association with the Australian Studies Association of Australia). King, Ross, 2008. Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: negotiating urban space in Malaysia (Singapore and Copenhagen: National University of Singapore Press and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in association with the Australian Studies Association of Australia). Lee, Raymond, 1988. Patterns of religious tension in Malaysia’, Asian Survey, 28(4): 400-18. Lim Kit Siang, 2003. ‘Defend secular Malaysia’, Speech at the 46th National Day Celebration, Tanjong Parliamentary Constituency, 31 August, lks2563.htm> (accessed 21 January 2008). Lukman Thaib, 2005. Islamic political representation in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press). Mahathir Mohamad, 2000. Islam and the Muslim ummah: selected speeches of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, Hashim Makaruddin (ed.) (Subang Jaya: Pelanduk). Malaysiakini, 2006a. ‘Ministers want protection for religious minorities’, 20 January, . Malaysiakini, 2006b. ‘Ministers back down, memo withdrawn’, 21 January, com/news/46065>. Malaysian Federal Constitution, 2006. (Putrajaya: Government Press). Martinez, Patricia A., 2001. ‘The Islamic state or the state of Islam in Malaysia’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 23(3): 474-503. Mauzy, Diane K. and R. S. Milne, 1983-4. ‘The Mahathir administration in Malaysia: discipline through Islam’, Pacific Affairs, 56(4): 617-48. Means, Gordon P., 1969. The role of Islam in the political development of Malaysia’, Comparative Politics, 1(2): 264-84. Milne, R. S. and Diane K. Mauzy, 1999. Malaysian politics under Mahathir (London: Routledge). Milner, Anthony, 1982. Kerajaan: Malay political culture on the eve of colonial rule (Tucson: University of Arizona Press for the Association for Asian Studies). Milner, Anthony, 2002. The invention of politics in colonial Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Milner, Anthony, 2005. ‘Historians writing nations: Malaysian contests’, in Wang Gungwu (ed.), Nation-building: five Southeast Asian histories (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), pp. 117-61. Milner, Anthony, 2008. The Malays (Chichester: Wiley). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 1999. Sejarah Peradaban Dunia: Tingkatan 4 [World civilisation history: Form 4] (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Language and Literature). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2000. Sukatan Pelajaran Sejarah, Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah [History syllabus itemisation, integrated secondary school curriculum] (Putrajaya: Malaysia Centre for Curriculum Development, Ministry of Education Malaysia). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2002a. Sejarah Tingkatan 4 Buku Teks [Form 4 history textbook] (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Language and Literature). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2002b. Sejarah Tingkatan 5 Buku Teks [Form 5 history textbook] (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Language and Literature). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2002c. Huraian Sukatan Pelajaran Tingkatan 4, Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah [Form 4 history syllabus itemisation, integrated secondary school curriculum] (Putrajaya: Malaysia Centre for Curriculum Development, Ministry of Education Malaysia). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2004. Sejarah Tingkatan 1 Buku Teks [Form 1 history textbook] (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Institute of Language and Literature). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2005a. Sejarah Tingkatan 2 Buku Teks [Form 2 history textbook] (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Institute of Language and Literature) Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2005b. Sejarah Tingkatan 3 Buku Teks [Form 3 history textbook] (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Institute of Language and Literature). Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2005c. The national education policy: pre-school to postsecondary level (Putrajaya: Ministry of Education Malaysia). Mohamed Aslam Haneef, 2005. ‘The development and impact of Islamic economic institutions: the Malaysian experience’, in K.S. Nathan and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (eds), Islam in Southeast Asia: political, social and strategic challenges for the 21st century (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), pp. 82-99. Mutalib, Hussin, 1993. Islam in Malaysia: from revivalism to Islamic state? (Singapore: Singapore University Press). Mutalib, Hussin, 2007. ‘Religious diversity and pluralism in Southeast Asian Islam: the experience of Malaysia and Singapore’, in K.S. Nathan (ed.), Religious pluralism in democratic societies: challenges and prospects for Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States in the new millennium (Singapore and Kuala Lumpur: Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Malaysian Association for American Studies), pp. 35-60. Nagata, Judith, 1980. ‘Religious, ideological and social change: the Islamic revival in Malaysia’, Pacific Affairs, 53(3): 405-39. New Straits Times, 2003. ‘Custody turmoil’, 15 September. New Straits Times, 2007a. ‘Muslim pupils must take ‘‘core subject’’ ’, 30 March. New Straits Times, 2007b. ‘Institute for research in Islamic education’, 26 September. New Straits Times, 2007c. ‘Why parents don’t opt for national schools’, 19 October. New Straits Times, 2009. ‘Syed Hamid warns the ‘‘Herald’’ ’, 22 January. New Straits Times Online, 2008. ‘Guidebook on Islam Hadhari for school’, 18 February, www.nst.com.my>. Noordin Sopiee, Mohamed, 1974. From Malayan union to Singapore separation: political unification in the Malaysia region, 1945-65 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press). Pardesi, Manjeet S. and Jennifer L. Oetken, 2008. ‘Secularism, democracy, and Hindu nationalism in India’, Asian Security, 4(1): 23-40. Rahim, Lily Zubaidah, 2009. Singapore in the Malay world: building and breaching regional bridges (London: Routledge). Riddell, Peter G., 2005. ‘Islamization, civil society and religious minorities in Malaysia’, in K.S. Nathan and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (eds), Islam in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), pp. 162-90. Roff, William R., 1994. The origins of Malay nationalism (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press), Second edition. Shad Saleem Faruqi, n.d. [No title], in Abdul Razak Baginda and Peter Schier (eds), Is Malaysia an Islamic state? Secularism and theocracy: a study of the Malaysian constitution (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Strategic Research Centre and Konrad Adenauer Foundation, seminar proceedings 2002), pp. 13-75. Shamsul, A.B., 2004. ‘A history of an identity, and identity of a history: the idea and practice of ‘‘Malayness’’ in Malaysia reconsidered’, in Timothy P. Barnard (ed.), Contesting Malayness: Malay identity across boundaries (Singapore: Singapore University Press), pp. 135-48. Straits Times, 1951a. ‘Malays let down: Onn’, 26 August. Straits Times, 1951b. ‘Onn dominates meeting. But silence was profound’, 27 August. Straits Times, 1961. ‘Tengku hits at a British built barrier in Borheo’, 24 July. Straits Times, 2006. ‘Couple in court over son’s conversion to Islam’, 22 September. Straits Times, 2009. ‘Conversion case puts gov’ts promise to test’, 27 April. Willford, Andrew C., 2007. Cage of freedom: Tamil identity and the ethnic fetish in Malaysia (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press). Zaitoon Othman, 2005. ‘Zaitoon Othman’, in Abdul Razak Baginda and Peter Schier (eds), Education in multicultural societies: perspectives on education in Malaysia (London: ASEAN Academic Press).

CPI Commentary: The Islamisation of Malaysia (Pt I)... by Michael D Barr & Anantha Raman Govindasamy

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 recommendations for the improvement of this article. 2. Of the total population, 39.6 percent are members of religions other than Islam, including Christians, Hindus, animists, and followers of Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist Chinese religions (Riddell 2005: 163), and 52.8% are not Malay. These are mainly Chinese, Indians and non-Malay indigenes (Daniel 2006: 711). 3. It is beyond the scope of this article to explore it in detail, but it should be noted that the conception and direction of Malay nationalism was also the subject of serious contestation over the twentieth century, with the raja-centric, conservative version that became dominant struggling at times against the broader concept of a Melayu Raya (‘Greater Malaya’) and even that of a Indonesia Raya (‘Greater Indonesia’, including Malays on the peninsula) (Rahim 2009: 150). These were based more on modern concepts of Malays as a ‘people’ (bangsa) rather than Malays as the subjects of a raja. Malay nationalist activists and movements have spanned the political spectrum and some have been overtly leftist in their politics (see Barnard and van der Putten 2008). 4. In one state of colonial Malaya, Indians could be accepted as Malays, but this was the only exception to the rejection of Chinese, Europeans and Indians from ‘Malayness’ (Shamsul 2004: 141). 5. Dato Onn did take some steps to build opposition to the rulers’ leadership role in Islam, but only in the last days of his membership of UMNO, when he was desperately looking for new bases of support within the organisation. It did not gain traction, even among the ulama, who stood to benefit if the bid had been successful (see Harper 2001: 337 8). 6. This describes how the relationship between Islam and the state has developed in Malaysia, but Shad Saleem Faruqi (n.d.: 40) argues that the architects of the original Malayan constitution never intended Islam to have more than a ceremonial role that would barely impinge upon the de facto secularity of the state. 7. It is important to note that these state powers are circumscribed somewhat by federal control over important matters like corporal punishment, and that Melaka, Pinang, Sarawak and Sabah do not have traditional rulers, so responsibility for Islam in these states defaults to the federal government. 8. This is not intended as a commentary on the ‘authenticity’ or otherwise of the Malay version of Islam. Barr has argued elsewhere that because of its lack of a transnational authority of governance, Islam is ‘localised’ in this fashion everywhere, which is why contemporary anthropologists urge that the study of doctrinaire Islam not be isolated from the study of reallife Muslims (Barr 2002: 130-1). This observation on the localisation of Islam should not be assumed to apply only to the rulers’ and UMNO’s version of Islam. It is beyond the focus of this article, but it is significant to note that the main Islamic-based opposition party-Parti al-Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS)-claims to advocate a purer form of the faith, but Farish (2003) argues eloquently that it, too, has adopted a highly localised interpretation of the faith. 9. This observation does not presume that all Malays actually did or do fully identify with this Malay-Muslim identity, or that they all did so in the simplistic UMNO-centric fashion that UMNO desired. Indeed, the results of the 2008 general elections, where many Malays voted for non-communal parties or for PAS, suggest that the roots of this identification may have been more shallow than had been previously thought. 10. For extensive explorations of the impact of the Islamisation program on government building architecture, see King (2008) and Willford (2007). 11. For a selection of reports on these matters, see Bernama Daily Malaysian News (2004), New Straits Times (2003) and Straits Times (2006, 2009). 12. An example of such a parliamentary exchange can be viewed on YouTube at <www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaE79RWoiL0>. 13. This pattern of non-Muslim subservience within the governing coalition has continued under Dr Mahathir’s successor. In 2006, nine non-Muslim members of the Federal Cabinet submitted a memorandum to then Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi asking the government to review Article 121 (1A) of the Constitution which established the supremacy of Syariah courts over civil courts (Malaysiakini 2006a). Two days later, the memorandum was retracted under pressure from UMNO (Malaysiakini 2006b). 14. The basic principles of Islam Hadhari are officially set out as follows: ‘Faith in and piety towards Allah, a just and trustworthy government, free and liberated people, a rigorous pursuit and mastery of knowledge, balanced and comprehensive economic development, a good quality of life for the people, protection for the rights of minority groups and women, cultural and moral integrity, safeguarding of the environment and strong defence capabilities’ (Department of Islamic Development Malaysia 2005: 12).