To be clear, I don’t mean to hanker after a pre-national form of ‘Malayness’ that draws upon the rich cultural resources of the Nusantara. The desire to instead identify with some notional pan-Malay identity, and in solidarity with those based in Malaysia or Indonesia stems, I think, from some confusion as to what precisely happened when the Malayan project, of which Singapore was to partake in, failed. The door to a wider, expansive regionalism was firmly shut the moment Singapore formally separated from Malaysia and declared itself an independent country. Overnight, the Malays in Singapore found themselves reconfigured as one of four possible demographic groups. Singaporeanness, if once yoked to the Malayan project, now had to be recalibrated anew, and cruelly, as the story of migrants choosing to place roots, above planning the route for the journey onward. Smaller, transient journeys between islands became exercises in entering and leaving ports of entry. If colonialism first provided a mirror with which we could perceive some version of ourselves apparently unbroken by the line of history, Separation represented a clean, psychic break from the possibility of maturing that ‘Malayness’ with a regionalist bent. The Malays became, ironically, landlocked and had to once again adapt to significant cultural transformations—though all of this would be internal. Re-integration into the region was only possible after this new, multicultural Singaporeanness was formulated. In the preface of The Poetry of Singapore, Edwin Thumboo provided an overview of what was then a burgeoning Singaporeanness and its consequences for poetics on the island. He writes of the other communities feeling themselves adrift from their particular traditions, which were located elsewhere. For the Malays, he thought, not so much—the syair and other oral traditions were across the Causeway, but not really lost to geography like in the case of the Chinese and the Indians. He wrote, “the Malays apart, a sense of irrevocable belonging to place had yet to develop for a majority of the [other races]”. I think he was partially correct. The Malays in Singapore had slipped away from themselves in the present, and vanished, become strangely diasporic in their own homes. Maddeningly, the island and all surrounding islands remained firmly in place.
You don’t need to be an Arab to be a Muslim, but many seem to be abandoning their customs and traditions.
I HAVE said it many times: as the Malays become more Muslim, they become less Malay. They are discarding almost everything that they perceive as positing “Malayness” and embraced what they believe to be “Islamic.”
In doing so they are losing their real identity by trying to be what they are not. There is a real issue pertaining to identity struggle and contestation among the Malays today. In the name of religion, they are questioning not only how they look but their tradition, even folktales and performing arts.
Islamisation is not about Arabisation. You don’t need to be an Arab to be a Muslim.
what we are seeing in this country today is the process of Arabisation of the Malays. The Malays have never been as confused in manifesting their true identity as they are now.
Islam is never against the discourse on race. The Quran acknowledges the existence of tribes.
But propagating a notion of one’s race as superior to others is not acceptable. In short, there is nothing with wrong with manifesting one’s race and at the same time professing the religion.
It used to be a lot less complicated back then. The race is Malay, the religion, Islam. Insofar as there is no conflict, race and religion co-exist.
But things have changed significantly over the last few decades. The Islamic movement of the 1970s has pressured the Malays to rethink their culture.
The fault lines were established. It is like telling the world that one needs to “look Muslim” to be one. To “look Muslim” is by imitating the Arabs.
There is a new demand to be “more Muslim”, for example in attire. Gestures, too, matter.
And by being Islamic, one is also judged by the words one uses. It is no more Hari Raya but Eid Mubarak. It is no more Selamat Hari Lahir but Sanah Helwah. The term for the yearly Quran reading competition too has evolved to ensure its purity in Islamic terms: musabaqah, tilawah, ujian.
Perhaps the reading competition itself is an interesting indicator of how Islamisation has evolved in Malaysia. One should read 50 Tahun Tilawah Al-Quran, a book published by the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim). It is informative, as well as an eye opener.
The first official national Quran reading competition was started by Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first Prime Minister, in 1960. A year later, the first international competition was organised. Interestingly, the venue chosen was Stadium Merdeka, the same venue for Pesta Bola Merdeka.
Two of the most successful qariah (woman readers) were Faridah Mat Saman and Rogayah Sulong, from Kelantan and Terengganu respectively. Faridah won the international competition seven times and Rogayah, four times.
They never wore the hijab while reading. The first qariah wearing a full tudung was a lady from Perak in 1978. The 1970s was the decade when the so-called new Islamic revival and consciousness came to the fore.
Prior to that, Malay women, as manifested in the movies of the 1950s and 1960s wore what they believed suitable for them, simply Malay dress.
I am sure Malay women of my mother’s generation were never less Muslim before they adhered to the new dress code. Perhaps times have changed.
Perhaps Malay women today are comfortable trading off their baju kurung and kebaya for what they believe to be “Muslim dress”.
But again, as pointed out by the Sultan of Johor some time back, the Malays should retain their culture instead of trying to imitate the Arabs. He was concerned that there are those who do not wish to follow Malay customs and traditions.
Historically, Johor leaders have always been in the forefront in arguing for modernisation, tolerance and moderation. The religious education of the state is exemplary in nurturing students who are open-minded yet confidently Malay and Islamic.
Earlier on, the then Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister, Tan Sri Dr Rais Yatim, also spoke about the need for the Malays to put a stop to Arabisation of their own culture. “We are not Arabs,” he argued.
Lately the former Information Minister, Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin, in his controversial blog wrote about the danger of Malays unwittingly believing that what is Arab is Islam.
The debate will rage on. Sadly, despite a spirited effort by a few well-meaning and concerned Malay intellectuals, the voice of conservatism is suppressing all discourse of reason.
Religion is an emotive subject. As the result of the tyranny of the silent majority, pleas for reason are little heard these days.
The Malays have adapted well to other cultures, unashamedly embracing traits and characteristics from others. But they have been steadfast in protecting what they believe is their own culture and identity.
But Arabisation, in the name of religion, is changing all that. The entire culture (with a big “C”) is being challenged.
Something definitely is not right: the growing conservatism that comes with it. The Malays have always taken the position that adat (customs and rituals) and agama (religion), insofar as it is not against the teaching of Islam, should supplement each other.
I hope this critical issue was addressed at the Kongres Budaya (Congress on Culture) last Saturday.
Johan Jaaffar was a journalist, editor and for some years chairman of a media company, and is passionate about all things literature and the arts. The views expressed here are entirely his own.
Read more at http://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/columnists/the-bowerbird-writes/2017/04/17/with-arabisation-whither-malay-culture-you-dont-need-to-be-an-arab-to-be-a-muslim-but-many-seem-to-b/#1DI1odJVcUPAkewL.99
Petition Seeks to Restore Malay Identity to Port Dickson
A coalition of NGOs has launched a petition to rename Port Dickson to Pantai Dermaga, arguing that colonial-era names should no longer define Malaysia’s identity.
Petition to restore Port Dickson identity
Identiti chairman Islah Wahyudi Zainudin cited historical records showing the area was once a Malay village called Tanjung Kemuning before being renamed by British Governor Dickson in 1889.…
The Najib government needs to win new legitimacy at GE14 if it's to juggle Malay, Islamic, and royal claims, amid a restive East Malaysia.
The government’s determination to focus on the Malay community is shrewd politics, but it also plays into a major transformation taking place in Malaysia, the consolidation of a specifically Malay Malaysia.
What exactly this Malaysia will look like is not certain, but there is a demand for a stronger Islamic role. The Malayisation process has been underway for decades, and is partly a matter of demographic change. At the time of independence (1957), Malays were only about half of the country’s population; today they are a clear majority in Peninsular Malaysia, and together with other indigenous peoples (the bumiputra, “sons of the soil”) make up over 68 per cent of the Malaysian total. Building a Malay Malaysia will entail reconsideration of the nation’s founding document.
At a glance, the constitution of 1957 displays the strong influence of the English-speaking world, with its Westminster parliamentary system and Australian/United States federal structure, and has been said to imply a “liberal-democratic order”. But the constitution also includes local formulations that over time have influenced Malaysia’s identity as a nation, and they all bear on the process of building a more Malay nation.
First, the “sovereignty, prerogatives, powers and jurisdiction” of the nine monarchs of Malaysia are stressed, and in a manner conveying (in the words of one prominent legal scholar) that the role of the monarch “far exceeds” specific “constitutional provisions” [fn1]. Second, “the Malays” are declared to have a “special position” in the country, and are assured a particular share of appointments in public service and educational opportunities. Moreover, the constitution names Malay as the “national language”. Third, although the constitution is sometimes seen as inaugurating a secular polity, and declares itself to be “the supreme law of the Federation”, it contains the potent but confusing statement that Islam is “the religion of the Federation”. Multiple monarchy, Malay pre-eminence, and Islamic priority: these features together help make Malaysia internationally distinctive. The meaning and significance of each element, however, continue to be debated.
Following race riots between non-Malay (Chinese and Indian) and Malay Malaysians in 1969, the Malay character of the country was sharpened, with a greater stress on the Malay language and culture, as well as promoting Malay economic opportunities. In the 1980s the concept of “ketuanan Melayu”, often translated as “Malay dominance”, was enunciated. Besides UMNO, other organisations such as Perkasa (formed in 2008) and more recently the Red Shirts have played an activist role in promoting Malay rights. With respect to religious identity, Pas has long urged a greater role for Islamic doctrine in the legal system and Malay society generally. Particularly during the Mahathir administration (1981–2003), the government itself instituted policies to enhance the role of Islam, for instance through the creation of an Islamic bank and an Islamic university, and the strengthening of the role of Islamic courts.
Alongside the Najib administration’s emphasis on moderation internationally, something welcomed especially in Western countries, the domestic focus on gaining Malay support has encouraged less-moderate initiatives. In August a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said atheists should be “hunted down” and returned “to their faith”. The government also appeared to assist the attempt by Pas to strengthen the Islamic criminal code (hudud) by empowering shariah courts to impose heavier punishments. A further move was the change in leadership of PM Najib’s Global Movement of Moderates, established to further the government’s moderation objectives. The new CEO (appointed in 2015), Nasharudin Mat Isa, formerly a PAS deputy president, soon focused on how best to implement and explain hudud law in the country. “Malaysia being a Muslim state,” he said, “we can be a model of how that kind of law is implemented in a modern society.” Consistent with this appointment, the prime minister explained that moderation would now be pursued on the basis of shariah principles and insisted that “humanism and secularism as well as liberalism” were a “threat to Islam”.
The July 2017 banning of the book Breaking the Silence: Voices of Moderation, produced by a group of prominent moderate Muslims called the G25, also illustrated the changing religious climate. In Malaysia’s “constitutional democracy,” the book insists, the federal constitution is the “supreme law of the country,” and “any law enacted, including Islamic laws,” must not “violate the Constitution,” with its stress on such “fundamental liberties” as the “rights to freedom of expression and worship”. Among those opposing the ban, the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) argued that the book’s contents were in line with PM Najib’s advocacy of moderation (wasatiyyah) in Islam.
There have been protests from the non-Malay partners in the ruling coalition about the government’s support for religious conservatism. “Malaysia is a secular country,” an officer of the Malaysian Chinese Association declared in March 2017, insisting that the federal constitution requires “defending all religions.” Faced with such views, in March the government backed away from actually sponsoring the hudud bill introduced by Pas. Despite such reversals, however, the momentum toward Islamisation is strong. In 2017, for instance, public whipping was introduced in Kelantan state; and Pahang state adopted the Islamic concept of diyat, which allows a victim’s family to influence sentencing involving the death penalty. Considering these initiatives, it is important to take note of polling that suggests strong support in the Malay community for religious conservatism. Furthermore, in the view of some Islamic activists, current religious initiatives merely follow a long history of burgeoning Islamisation, reaching back before British intervention in the 19th century.
The Constitution’s reference to Islam as “the religion of the Federation” is also increasingly highlighted—placed above the claim that the Constitution itself is “the supreme law”—and seen as a basis for arguing (as a former chief justice did this year) that “anything which is in contradiction to Islam is unconstitutional”. One matter clear in the Constitution is that the nine rulers are “the Head of the religion of Islam” in their respective states. The Conference of Rulers—which in late 2015, in the context of the 1MDB investigation, had questioned the “government’s credibility and integrity in administrating the country”—took an assertive stand on religious matters in October 2017. The Johor sultan had condemned a launderette for adopting a Muslim-only policy. Johor, he said, “belongs to all races and faiths” and is “not a Taliban state.” In response, a religious teacher who supported the ban on non-Muslims insisted that “we are a Muslim country,” and that in taking a stand he was “carrying out my responsibility to spread Islamic teachings.” The Conference of Rulers then stated its concern to protect “the harmony that currently exists within our multi-religious and multi-ethnic society.”
The rulers were conveying that, despite being “heads” of Islam, and despite the king’s constitutional duty to “safeguard the special position of the Malays,” they consider themselves to be reigning over all their subjects, irrespective of ethnicity. The Constitution, in fact, refers to “rulers,” not “Malay rulers,” and there is a long record of Malaysian rulers speaking in an ethnically inclusive manner. Just what role the rulers might play in shaping a Malay Malaysia, however, will depend not only on their ability to attract non-Malay support but also on their skill in handling the increase in both Islamic and Malay nationalist demands.
Malaysia is a society in transition. Malay ethnic demands, far-reaching Islamic aspirations, and royal assertiveness—each in its particular way challenges the liberal, secular structure that many saw being ushered in with the 1957 constitution. These concepts are all, however, embedded in that document—waiting, as it were, for future opportunity. If the Najib government fails to achieve a comfortable victory in the coming election, the task of accommodating and juggling Malay, Islamic, and royal claims—and also the growing demand of the East Malaysian states for greater autonomy—will be all the more formidable.
[1] Raja Azlan Shah, ‘‘The Role of Constitutional Rulers in Malaysia,’’ in F. A. Trindade and H. P. Lee (eds.), The Constitution of Malaysia: Further Perspectives and Developments (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986): 89.
[2] Arfa Yunus, ‘‘Laws in Contradiction to Islamic Laws are Void, Says Former Chief Justice,’’ New Straits Times, March 25, 2017
This excerpt is from ‘Malaysia in 2017: Clever Politics, Deeper Transformation’, Asian Survey, Vol. 58, Number 1.
As an ideological apparatus, state multiracialism in Singapore brackets our cultural identities into the neat and static categories of the CMIO framework. This development of what Michael Barr has termed ‘ethnic silos’ has significant repercussions on issues of identity and representation. In tandem with the limited spaces for cultural autonomy and articulation, state multiracialism tends to reify dominant representations and obscure the internal heterogeneity of each cultural community.
As such, we are pleased to embark on exploring the latent narratives within Malay society, to uncover and recover different threads of identities, memories, stories, beliefs, and orientations that were hitherto hidden beneath the M of CMIO.
The title of the series is derived from a Malay “turn of phrase”: “yang tersurat dan tersirat”. Loosely translated, it plays on the distinction between the textually explicit and the implicit, echoing our attempt to read between the lines of statist and dominant narratives. We aim to foreground alternative ideas, experiences, and stories that have so far percolated beneath the public face of contemporary Malay society, as well as mull over future trajectories and directions – including those that were once possible.
The essays fall into three themes. The first set of essays deconstructs two sites of heritage. Alfian Saat reflects on the Film gallery in the National Museum and the significance of the absences in the Malay film montage presented. Khairulanwar Zaini analyses the Malay Heritage Centre, and the contesting discursive imperatives which shape the exhibits.
The second set of essays relooks at alternative historical narratives. Fadli Fawzi discusses the significance of the absence of the Malay Left in the present national consciousness. Nurhaizatul Jamil examines the life of Shamisah Fakeh, a prominent figure in Malaya’s struggle for independence. Fairoz Ahmad highlights the elements of ideological and utopian thinking in Al Imam, the first reformist Muslim journal in Southeast Asia, based in Singapore.
The third set of essays critically examines contemporary ideas in the Malay Muslim community. Hazirah Mohamad shows how the cultural deficit thesis is reproduced in mass media to construct images of Malay youth delinquency in the local production Hanyut. Annaliza Bakri postulates how a narrow understanding of culture has shaped Singapore’s Malay language policy.
While the essays cover a wide range of issues, they are hardly the final verse of an ongoing and complex litany. Rather it is hoped that the contributions help shed a more nuanced light on the rich tapestry that is the Malay community.
Fadli Fawzi is an associate tutor at the Singapore Institute of Management. He is also doing his Juris Doctor at the Singapore Management University.
Khairulanwar Zaini is a teaching assistant at the National University of Singapore.
