Latest Updates: Racism in Malaysia RSS
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johnpi
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johnpi
Root of the Malaysian controversy over ‘Allah’ may be in internalized British colonial prejudices that Malay Muslims are ‘precious flowers that need to be protected.’
The British colonial rule of Malaya set precise ethno-religious boundaries, with a certain level of protection for the Muslim Bumiputra, which the independent nation, and its constitution and legislation, have ideologically maintained.
Although there is clear evidence that the majority Muslim Malays have benefited from such privileges and closed the social and economic gaps with the other ethnic populations, particularly the Chinese, the continued reliance upon protectionist measures has helped to create a general feeling that these privileges are essential to maintain the equality of Muslim Malays vis-a-vis the non-Muslim Malaysians of other ethnic groups.
This way of thinking is arguably an internalization of British colonial opinions, in which Muslim Malays were seen as admirable for their artistic ability and beautiful “heritage”, but otherwise lazy by nature, unadapted to business and childish in their way of being. To the British, these negative descriptions were not made as criticisms but rather as statements of ‘natural’ fact. Hence, to preserve and protect this population, the British implemented particular protections, which at the end proved to be counterproductive in many respects.
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johnpi
Malaysia minorities fear Islamization in Allah row.
A dispute over the use of the word “Allah” by Christians in Malaysia is the latest sign of growing hard-line Islamic influence in what has been a relatively moderate Muslim-majority country.
The dispute has spawned attacks on 10 churches and has hardened a long-standing sense of alienation among the non-Muslim minority, threatening 40 years of ethnic peace and stability that underpins Malaysia’s economic success.
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johnpi
Malaysian Muslim cow-head protesters charged with sedition.
A Malaysian court charged 12 Muslims with criminal offenses Wednesday for parading a severed cow head to protest the construction of a Hindu temple in a case that stoked religious tensions in this multiethnic country.
….Twelve of the protesters were charged with illegal assembly and six of them were also charged with sedition, which is punishable by up to three years in jail and a fine. Illegal assembly is punishable by one year in jail and a fine.
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johnpi
Plans by a local Malaysian government to relocate a 150-year-old Hindu temple to a majority Muslim area have been shelved after continued protests, a lawmaker said Sunday.
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johnpi
In Malaysia, a Muslim journalist condemns ‘Muslim sensitivities’ as an excuse for blatant racism.
“Muslim sensitivities” was used by the Malay residents of Section 23 as the central reason to reject the Hindu temple relocation, but when some were asked today what these “sensitivities” really were, none of them could give a straight answer.
Yet Malay residents of Section 23 said they felt their religion, Islam, had been profoundly threatened by the temple relocation proposal by the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government.
It prompted them to take to the streets with a cow’s head recently to defend their religion; it drove them to discard civic consciousness and adopt extreme measures, to go as far as insulting another religion, knowing full well such action could lead to physical confrontations.
“It would disrupt traffic flow,” said one female resident of Section 23 when asked what exactly these Muslim sensitivities are.
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johnpi
An article that has been reprinted in several of the larger, English-language Malaysian news websites: The Myth of a moderate Malaysia, by a Forbes magazine writer. It’s borderline jafi (“If you’re looking for an image that captures the conflict between fervent Islam and basic human decency…”) but a lot of Malaysians are reading it, or at least seeing it online.
…most strikingly, Malaysia (along with next-door Indonesia) can claim something increasingly rare in the Muslim world: a large non-Muslim population. About four in 10 Malaysians are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu , Sikh or Confucian. (By contrast, Turkey, the poster-child for an Islam at peace with the 21st century, is 99.8% Muslim.) Recognizing the power of this statistic in our multicultural age, Tourism Malaysia promotes the country’s allegedly harmonious blend of Malay, Chinese and Indian communities with an odd but nonetheless catchy slogan: Malaysia, Truly Asia.
The reality, of course, is a lot less sunny. Unlike neighboring Singapore, which shares the same colonial past and ethnic mix–albeit with a Chinese rather than a Malay majority–Malaysia has rejected secularism in favor of a kind of ethnoreligious apartheid that belongs more in a medieval kingdom than in a modern democratic republic.
In Malaysia, Islam is the state religion. Higher education, the bureaucracy and vast swathes of the economy are operated as a kind of spoils system almost exclusively for Malays, whom the state defines as Muslim. Race and religion determine everything from your odds of getting into medical school to the amount you’re expected to put down for an apartment. The conversion laws, based on sharia, bring to mind the Eagles’ classic “Hotel California”: You can check in (to Islam) any time you like, but you can never leave.
Over the past 30 years, encouraged by the government and influenced by the Middle East, Malaysia’s growing prosperity has gone hand-in-hand with a heightened piety. But instead of making the country more humane, this has had the opposite effect.
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johnpi
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johnpi
Farish A. Noor at The Other Malaysia blog criticizes that country’s police apparatus for having caused the death of yet another Malaysian Indian suspect, and strongly implies that the police frequently engage in racist violence against Malaysian Indians.
What is deeply troubling about the death of Kugan is the fact that there seems to be a pattern of young Malaysian men of Indian descent dying under police custody for some years now. Among the other notorious cases that have made the headlines are that of B Prabakar, who reported that he was not only beaten and kicked by policemen but also had boiling water thrown upon his body. Then there is the case of Sanjeev Kumar who alleged that he was not only forced to drink urine but was also sodomised with a broom. Deaths in custody have now become a regular occurrence, and other Malaysians of Indian ancestry like K. Letchumanan and Uthaya Chandran were found dead in their cells.
