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. 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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).