Malaysia’s Fumbling Modernity

By Farish A. Noor

In his recent article ‘Malaysia Backpedals on Modernity’ Professor Sadanand
Dhume laments what he sees as the fundamental contradictions in Malaysia’s
uneven development: The country boasts of a robust commercial
infrastructure, replete with the now-familiar symbols and markers of
capital-driven modernity and development such as the twin towers of KLCC.
Yet at the same time inter-religious relations in Malaysia have plummeted to
an all-time low and Malaysia’s state-appointed religious authorities have
begun to behave like a law unto themselves, raiding the homes of Malaysians
at night in the name of ‘moral policing’, splitting up Malaysian families in
cases where the spouses are not of the same religion and taking children
away from their parents.

Prof. Dhume rightly raises the question of what is happening in Malaysia
today? For a country that boasts of being a haven for religious moderation
and tolerance, we see little proof of such tolerance at work. Books on Islam
by authors like Karem Armstrong have been banned or not allowed into the
country, and most recently an international conference on Building Bridges
between Muslims and Christians was called off at the last minute. Who, one
might ask, is running Malaysia? The office of the Prime Minister, the
religious authorities or, worse still, the increasing vocal and demanding
hard-right conservative religious lobby?

Yet Malaysia is not unique in its manifold and stark contradictions. Like
many other countries that have and are experiencing the rise of popular
religiosity, Religion has entered the public political and discursive domain
in an all too glaring manner. While public debate in Malaysia during the
1960s and 1970s was focused more on issues related to the economy and
nation-building, it is now practically impossible to discuss anything in
Malaysia - be it pop culture, the media, consumer trends or even political
activism - without going through the prism of religious discourse in general
and Islam in particular.

Similar trends can be seen in many other Muslim countries like Indonesia,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and the Arab world. The same also holds true of
Hindu, Buddhist and Christian-majority countries in many other parts of
Asia, Africa and Latin America. (Analysts often fail to note, for instance,
that while Islamic resurgence is evident in Malaysia and Indonesia, there
has also been a steady increase in right-wing, conservative and literalist
Christian and Buddhist religiosity in majority-Christian Philippines and
majority-Buddhist Thailand next door.)

However the case of Malaysia is particularly striking due to the contrast
between the fruits of capital-driven development and the reaction of the
conservative right. Malaysia’s tallest KLCC towers may charm and beguile
visitors to the country but at the same spot young couples were charged with
moral indecently for simply holding hands in public.

Clearly there has been a great gap between the material and economic
development in Malaysia in the 1980s compared to the development of popular
religiosity in the country. Compared to neighbouring Indonesia where Islamic
studies at the state’s Islamic universities have been regularly reformed and
modernised via the introduction of social sciences and disciplines like
sociology, anthropology, political theory, linguistics, philosophy, logic
and the scientific method; Malaysia’s development in terms of Islamic
studies has remained comparatively stagnant. Islam and religion in general
is studied in Malaysia, and not researched as it is in Indonesia. This
partly accounts for the dogmatism that prevails in debates on religion in
the country.

The other factor that accounts for the uneven state of Malaysia’s
development is its racialised communitarian politics, a throwback to the
colonial era which the post-colonial leaders of Malaysia have not seen fit
to discard. Many of the more right-wing religious-communitarian groups may
wear the mask of civil society organisations and look like NGOs, but are
little more than sectarian groupings that are using the tools of civil
society to undermine it. The moral panic they have generated concerning
inter-religious marriages are as much driven by the collective desire by
some sections of the Malay-Muslim community to make it more difficult for
non-Malays and non-Muslims to marry Malays in the country. Here race, rather
than religion, is the real driving force; and the conflict that arisen out
of many cases of inter-racial marriages stem from this desire to ensure that
the Malay-Muslims remain the dominant group in the country. (Odd,
considering that inter-racial marriages have always been common in Malaysia
in the past.)

In short, Malaysia’s modernity is at best a cased of pragmatism and
hybridity at work, with mixed results. It cannot be denied that economically
Malaysia has been comparatively more successful than its neighbours, but the
social divisions – both racial and religious – that lie beneath the surface
threaten to undermine the country’s unity in the long run. While right-wing
Muslim groups spread more rumours about nefarious “Christian plots” to
undermine Islam in the country and the state’s own religious authorities
spread rumours about secret ‘mass conversions’ of Muslims, the other
religious communities are bound to grow more insecure and reactionary too.

As religion in general and Islam in particular comes to dominate the public
domain more and more, the present government and future administrations of
Malaysia will have to deal with the social antagonism, frustration and
alienation that is bound to come with the dominance of one group, the
Malay-Muslims, vis the rest. Where is Malaysia heading then? And what of the
Malaysian ideal and the very idea of a universal, non sectarian Malaysian
citizenship that ought to be the first and only basis of Malaysian politics
and governance? Here lies the real concern for Malaysia, for despite its
high towers and shopping malls, religion has fragmented this society as
never before and the idea of a universal Malaysian identity now seems lost.

End.

Prof. Farish A. Noor is currently visiting professor at UIN Sunan Kalijaga,
Jogjakarta and is one of the founders of the http://www.othermalaysia.org website.