Transcending 1946 (II): removing need for ‘Malay unity’

A non-religious explanation to the closing of the Malay mind is the need to maintain a captive electoral market to sustain the ethnic preferential policy. Until the need is removed, no enough number of eminent moderate Malays can stop the closing.

Why mustn’t non-Muslims be allowed to call God “Allah”? Why mustn’t Muslims greet Christians “Merry Christmas”? Why shouldn’t the police abide by the civil court’s orders to return to Hindu mothers their young children who have been abducted and raised as Muslims by their ex-husbands who embraced Islam just before or as their marriages are falling apart?

Why must a dead be buried as a Muslim even if the person had never lived as a Muslim for even a day after the alleged conversion?

Why mustn’t Muslims – no matter how small their proportion – be allowed to think differently from the religious authorities? Why must Shias be persecuted?

Why must Muslims touching dogs – even with cleaning ritual as per the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence rule – be seen an insult to the ulamas? Why must (Muslim) women’s preliminary role be in the family and not in society or the office?

There are certainly religious explanations to these questions, which I do not question as I have no expertise to do so.  

Ethnic expansion and religious policing

Allow me however to offer you my non-religious answers.

The first set of questions points to the need to make religious conversion a one-way street to Islam, so that the proportion – not just the absolute number – of Malay-Muslims can only grow and not reduce in a multi-faith environment. No exit.

The second set of questions then points to the need to maintain “Malay unity” by way of promoting religious uniformity within Malay-Muslims. Ethnic expansion becomes meaningless if followed by political fragmentation. No division, which may lead to exit.

Put together, this is to carve out and sustain a Malay-Muslim core in the multi-ethnic population of Malaysia. This core must grow in proportion and stay politically cohesive to be dominant.

Benefit-cost analysis of identity policing

Living in Malaysia’s ethnicised environment, we may take the dominance of one ethnicity over others for granted.

It is, however, useful to recognise that identity can have both intrinsic and extrinsic benefits and costs, and maintenance of identity is hardly an emotional matter.

If you love to profess a certain faith, speak a certain language or live a certain culture or custom, because doing all these gives you tremendous satisfaction and even meaning of life, then this is the intrinsic benefit of identity.

And the intrinsic benefit of identity can be so strong that many people embrace their identity even when that comes with a huge extrinsic cost – fines, imprisonment or even death carried out by government or private citizens. Such tremendous benefit builds a voluntary identity community.

However, if you have to profess a certain faith, speak a certain language, or practise a certain culture or custom, or otherwise you will be punished, then identity here incurs an extrinsic cost. Naturally, you have got to have some extrinsic benefits that are larger than the extrinsic cost. Otherwise, the identity community may just disintegrate.

For the Malay-Muslims, the extrinsic benefit is “ethnic privileges”.

This benefit was first limited to education, public sector employment, business licensing to all Malays under Article 153 of the 1957 Federal Constitution. It was nominally extended to all Bumiputeras after 1963 and greatly expanded through the New Economic Policy (NEP) policy paradigm after 1969.

To sustain the “ethnic privileges”, Malay-Muslims must grow in proportion vis-à-vis other ethnic groups and they must not fragment to the extent that they cannot act to defend the “privileges”.

This is actually built into our Federal Constitution. Under Article 160, Malays are defined not by biological lineage, but by religion, language, custom and the geographical origin of Malaya or Singapore.

In other words, this is an open melting pot that anyone can opt in. In that sense, Ridhuan Tee Abdullah understands extremely well how our Federal Constitution works.

Why fear of exodus?

For all purposes and intent, no one has been disqualified or refused the recognition as a Malay for having Bornean, Indonesian, Filipino or Pattani heritage, or inability to speak Malay fluently or rejecting Malay adat.

Effectively, the only policing front in the Malay identity has always been in religion. One will cease to be Malay – and lose all of one’s privileges as a Malay – if one leaves Islam.

While this was allowed in the past, the door is practically closed now for born Muslims after the case of Lina Joy. So, you cannot even forego your cost even if you are willing to forego the benefit.

I will not go into the religious debates on whether apostasy is allowed.

But the obvious fact is many Muslim countries do not prohibit conversion out of Islam – for example, Indonesia which has the world’s largest Muslim population and Tunisia, which adopted a secular constitution under an Islamist government in January 2014.

But religious freedom in these countries does not lead to exodus of Muslims from Islam, just like the right to divorce does not break up most marriages.

Why do then some Malaysian Muslims fear so much the shadow of Muslims’ apostasy when the opposite is true – Christian Bumiputeras and Orang Asli have all along been complaining about induced conversion by Muslim preachers?

The fear of apostasy is then closely tied to the fear of division among Muslims. In fact, some hardliners see pluralists, liberals and feminists as enemies of their faith.

Has this absolutely got nothing to do with the need to expand the number of Malay-Muslims and preserve “Malay unity”, which in turn is perceived as necessary to keep the Malay-Muslims’ “ethnic privileges”?

While the NEP paradigm has failed to sufficiently lift Malay-Muslims to be more competitive and affluent, it is hard to imagine that its sudden end can benefit the Malay-Muslims.

Is support or sympathy for Isma and Perkasa not fuelled by the post-NEP anxiety held by many Malays?

Delink Malay-Muslim identity with affirmative action

I am, therefore, sceptical that the calls for dialogue on religious matters by the moderates can achieve much if the agenda is limited to identity issues.

Let us be blunt. We have only two choices.

First, find an alternative to the NEP policy paradigm so that most Malay-Muslims can be rightfully empowered without being tied to their Malay-Muslim identity, removing the need of “Malay unity” and consequently ethnic expansion and religious policing.

Second, until then, be prepared for further radicalisation of the Malay-Muslims. Intra-ethnic identity policing is necessary for the NEP defenders to maintain the ethnic boundaries and rally as many Malays as possible to demand its perpetuation.

In both choices, most Malay-Muslims would have to be aided. The fundamental difference is that the first choice does not necessitate majority-minority tension and intra-ethnic identity policing for the majority. Both Malay-Muslims and non-Malay-Muslims can be free.

How to help the Malay-Muslims without evoking their identity? I believe we may need to change a few things.

First, the basis of state aid or affirmative action should be empowerment, not entitlement. In other words, the justification to support deserving Malay-Muslims has to be solidarity, not nativism.

Second, poverty and socio-economic inequalities need to be measured and acted upon more specifically by functional categories such as urban squatters, low-cost flats, traditional kampung, new villages, estate plantations, Orang Asli villages (by settlement type); public transport users, motorcyclists and motorists (by mode of commuting); low-income conventional households, single-mother-headed households, retirees with dependents and retirees without dependents (by family structure and income).

Such categories may or may not be predominantly mono-ethnic but they would certainly be more useful in drawing our attention away from broad categories of ethnicities like Malays, Chinese, Indians, Muslim Bumiputeras and non-Muslim Bumiputeras.

Third, empowerment programmes may and should prioritise communities where Malays are over-represented such as single mothers or motorcyclists, but once the programmes commence, no one should be discriminated against on the grounds of ethnicity, faith or lifestyle.

Lastly, “social upward mobility” should be a key goal in empowerment programme. Like some Australian universities with special programmes to support students who are “FinF” (first in family) to go to university, where circumstance permits, we can emulate this to spreading opportunities of growth to more people in FinF.

This way we can prevent well-connected families to strike the lucky draw of affirmative action multiple times and ensure more marginalised Malay-Muslims and other Malaysians be helped. – December 30, 2014.

 * Part II.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.