To be modern, Malaysia needs to be secular
 
Philip Bowring IHT
Wednesday, August 4, 2004
Malays and Muslims
 
HONG KONG Malaysia is passably democratic, but manifestations of a "tyranny of the majority" are damaging its reputation as a Muslim exemplar, a modern, open and pluralistic nation. Two recent court cases have drawn attention to the status of Islam and to Malaysia's almost unique identification of race with religion.
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This identity makes it hard to disentangle racial questions from religious exclusivism. These are further complicated by the economic and social affirmative-action policies for ethnic Malays long enshrined in national policy and accepted, albeit grudgingly, by non-Malays.
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In one case, the highest court rejected the request of some Malays to renounce Islam. These people had earlier been jailed for apostasy for promoting a local religious sect deemed to be incompatible with Islam.
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In another case, a Hindu mother has been battling for custody of her young sons who had been converted to Islam by their Malay father without her knowledge.
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These issues are divisive for a society with large minorities of Chinese and Indians as well as indigenous groups who are not Muslims. But while official polices as well as the constitution itself give a special position to Islam, it is the ethnic Malays themselves rather than the minorities who are often the main victims of the state's willingness to allow religious authorities to exercise extensive powers.
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The first case underlines the fact that all Malays are deemed to be Muslims. It gives them no choice in the matter, despite the constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion and worship.
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Historically, the Malays of what was mainland Malaya were all viewed as Muslims. But modern Malaysia is a more complex place. Many of the indigenous inhabitants of its Borneo states, Sarawak and Sabah, are Christians or otherwise non-Muslim. They benefit from pro-indigenous social policies. Likewise, there are many Muslims of Indian rather than Malay origin.
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The ethnic and religious complexity of the Borneo states makes them socially more relaxed, more mixed than the mainland states, where the race-religion divide between Muslims and the rest appears to have deepened in recent years.
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The bottom line is that Malaysia is very tolerant of other religions and indeed of non-Malays' right not to believe. But it denies Muslims and Malays rights to their own views and interpretations of religion.
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Malaysia has a lot to learn from its overtly secular neighbor Indonesia. In Indonesia there is a deep-seated antipathy to identifying Islam with the nation. Indonesia is 80 percent Muslim, Malaysia about 60 percent Muslim.
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Malaysia's pro-Malay, pro-Islam constitutional arrangements may have made sense at the time of independence, when Malays were the poor underclass, and the economy was owned and run by Chinese, Indians and foreigners. But it now looks out of place in a modern Malaysia where Malays are clearly in charge and which aspires to join the ranks of developed nations by 2020.
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It will be no easy task, however, for Malaysia to modernize its polity accordingly. First, democratic competition for Malay votes from the fundamentalist Parti Islam has forced the governing party into more overtly Islamic policies than its leadership would wish.
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Second, the political system is based on parties that are mostly identified by race. This inevitably means that the issues of Malay economic privileges are difficult to separate from religious ones. Race-based parties may have provided political stability and kept race issues under control. But they have also reinforced ghetto mentalities and retarded the growth of Malaysian national identity.
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If Malaysia is to shed what its prime minister has called a "third world mentality" and take full advantage of its racial diversity and its open economy, it will have to address these issues. It will have to assert the supremacy of the secular state over any one religion and acknowledge that Malays and Muslims have the same rights and obligations as the non-Malays.



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