The problem with Malay unity

Jacqueline Ann Surin

ONE of the exhortations to Malay Malaysian voters as the general election looms is to vote the party that will ensure “Malay unity”. Politicians and at least one member of royalty have called on Malay voters to put Malay unity above all else when they go to the polls.

And because Malay Malaysians are also constitutionally meant to be Muslims, there has been unsurprisingly another aspect of this public service announcement. Vote the party that will ensure Muslim unity and the cohesion of the ummah. And to Umno and PAS, the two parties that represent Malays and Muslims respectively: consider a merger so that Malay-Muslim unity can be secured.

But does Malay unity exist to begin with? Does Muslim solidarity? Was either ever present historically or currently in Malaysia? And when politicians, academics and royalty start to promote Malay and Muslim unity, are they peddling an ideal for the nation or a dangerous myth for the masses?

What unity?

The presumption behind Malay and Muslim unity is that either or both groups are monolithic entities. Further, that every member of the group shares the same historical roots, cultural identity, political and economic aspirations, and religious beliefs. After all, if either or both groups didn’t have enough of a cohesive identity and shared sense of ideals, then talking about uniting would be like asking water and oil to combine into one.


To begin with, are the Malays really culturally and historically similar to each other? The series of Found in Malaysia interviews tell us that many of the foremost Malay Malaysian personalities have different lineages. In brief, the Malays we interviewed had the following ancestries: Orang Asli, Javanese, Thai, Chinese,  Japanese,  Australian, Bugis, Arab and European. And because the notion of the “Malay” is a political construct that was initiated by the British, and continues to be a construct perpetuated by the current powers that be, the definition of Malay can shift from state to state.

God, as Opposed to Religion

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Agnostic (noun)

1. A person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause and that the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

2. A person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.

3. A person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic.

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One or two readers posted comments today saying that my articles are boring or have become quite stale of late. That may be true. Education can sometimes be boring when you do not want to get educated or you feel you already know enough and do not need further education.

I do not think that I already know everything. I admit that there is still much I need to learn. And that was the reason why I signed up at Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education in 2011 plus I attended a few lectures in Oxford last year. I am currently on my third module and will be submitting my essay at the end of March.

Anyway, let me bore you, yet again, with another stale article. This article is not about God or about religion but I have titled it ‘God, as opposed to religion’ and I am going to make many references to God and religion.

The "ALLAH" Controversy

Tun Mahathir Mohamad

1. Malaysia is a multi-religious country where people can adhere to their own religion even though Islam is the official religion. For most of the time the followers of the different religions have lived in peace with each other. We do not see the kind of violence between the followers of different religions as found in Northern Ireland, Lebanon and the Indian sub-continent.

2. Malaysians respect each others’ religions and the rights of the religious practises of their followers. We avoid commenting on other people’s religion even though we may have furious debate within each religion.

3. Unfortunately now we have this controversy on the use of the name of God, Allah. Many years ago this controversy was settled through the acceptance that the Christians of Sabah and Sarawak could continue to use the word Allah in their Malay language bible and teachings but these should not be used in the rest of the country.

4. Unfortunately because some politicians want to get the support of Malaysian Christians, the demand is made that the Malay language bible be used in the whole country. Predictably the Muslims protest and the controversy is resurrected.

5. Christians and Jews know very well that in all their bibles, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and in the King James and other versions the word Allah had never appeared as the name of God. It is only after Islam and the Quran that the world became acquainted with the word Allah for God.

Don’t Sell Food to Malays, Restaurant told

B Nantha Kumar, FMT

A restaurant owner in Malacca has claimed that the state Islamic Religious Department (JAIM) has instructed him not to sell food to “Malay” customers.

P Segar, 52, who operates a restaurant in Jasin, wanted the Prime Minister’s Department to look into the matter.

Relating his ordeal to FMT, the businessman said on Jan 14, a group of six Jasin Town Council (MPJ) officers accompanied by three JAIM personnel and two Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry officers visited his restaurant.

“While MPJ enforcement officers inspected my business licence and checked on the cleanliness of the restaurant, the rest were sitting outside where we had placed chairs and tables.

All In The Name of God

Art Harun, Articulations

Many people do many things all in the name of God. The irony is the very things which they do in the name of God are abhorred by God. Or even prohibited by Him.

History will show us that human beings have tortured, maimed and killed each other, all in the name of God. Untold misery and cruelty have been inflicted all in the name of God. Yet, when they speak of God and their religion, they insist that God is most merciful, most compassionate and most forgiving. And their religion is a religion of peace, justice and fairness.

In Islam for example, history would show us all that right after the passing of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w., Muslims started arguing on who would be the right candidate to be the Caliph. Then they started killing each other. Until now that is.

The Traditionalist was a loose grouping of mainstream conservative schools who called themselves ahli-sunnah-wal-jamaah (the proponents of the Prophet’s traditions and consensus). They posit that the Caliph should be elected by the influential members of the community. This was also generally accepted by another group, the Khawarij. The only difference between these two groups was that while the former narrowed the qualification to be a Caliph to just the Quraysh tribe (Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. was from the Quraysh tribe), the Khawarij did not have such qualification. The Khawarij in fact believed that a Caliph may even be removed if he breached his mandate.

Philosophy of Religion

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Since time immemorial, humankind has mulled over three basic questions – why are we here, who created us, and where will we go after we leave this world? We are guided by the belief that nothing happens without a reason. For us to be here there must have been a cause for it to happen. Something or someone must have triggered creations. Creations can’t self-create or just happen by itself for no rhyme or reason. So we work on the premise that there has to be a supreme being – the Creator called God.

More crucial to this question of who created us is the need to believe that there is a very important reason for our creation. We are not here for nothing. We are here for a reason. Hence, to make this theory plausible, we must go somewhere after we die. If not, we will exist for nothing and after we die, we just die. That would be a total waste of life. We need to be motivated and this motivation would be that something better awaits us after we die.

For these reasons, humankind needed to invent the concept of religion, basically a set of rituals and a belief system. Religion helps explain everything and answers all these questions. Religion reveals the secrets of our existence and the secrets of the Afterlife. It gives us the comfort of knowing that our life is not in vain and, more importantly, neither will our deaths if we have lived the life of a decent human being.

Religion works on the basis of rewards and punishment, that we will be rewarded for the good deeds and punished for the bad, and which is supposed to turn us into decent human beings. However, good and bad are subjective and different religions have different value systems (e.g., the concept of Jihad, suicide squads, and the killing of apostates in Islam).

Religion also makes it easier for us to accept death, especially the loss of our loved ones. We would like to believe that those who have died are ‘at peace’ and are ‘resting’. The concept of religion and the belief in the Afterlife has helped humankind reject the finality of death and regard it as merely the process of ‘moving on’ to a better resting place while awaiting resurrection.

Contrary to what many religionists believe, religion did not come about suddenly – such as, one fine day, God spoke to the Prophet (there are 124,000 Prophets in Islam although only 25 are mentioned by name in the Quran) and religion came into being. Actually, religion evolved over thousands of years and the many religions in existence today evolved and transformed (even mutated) from earlier religions, some now extinct.

If you were to study the history of religions, a few facts are very apparent. First would be that later religions borrowed from earlier religions. Hence there are no original religions. Take the Abrahamic faiths as one example. The ‘operating system’ for the Abrahamic faiths is, naturally, the teachings of Abraham, the Father or Patriarch of the Abrahamic faiths. I would call this Version 1.0.

Then along came Moses and Abraham’s teachings evolved into Judaism, what I would call Version 1.1. Jesus then emerged to introduce Version 1.2 (at least the Christians would have us believe, although I would dispute this and argue that Jesus was a Jew and not a Christian). Finally, we have Muhammad who ‘improved’ it further and introduced Version 1.3, what we know as Islam.

Religionists believe that these are all different religions. Actually, they are all the same religion and merely mutations of earlier religions. And even these are mutations of yet earlier religions such as the old Pagan, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, etc., beliefs. It is no coincidence that stories such as the virgin birth were also believed by pre-Abrahamic faiths.

Some religions survived, mutated and grew while others died off and became extinct. This is because religion was tied to the state. And those religions that were endorsed by the state survived and grew while those that the state did not endorse died off – mainly because the state murdered all those considered deviants, heretics, etc.

Today, the three Abrahamic faiths dominate the world, only because other religions were not allowed to exist. Non-Christians and non-Muslims were forced to either convert or die. Those who refused were killed. Eventually, most converted to either Christianity or Islam and their descendants automatically embraced (or inherited) the religion of their forefathers out of tradition and through indoctrination.

Had freedom of choice been allowed and had no one been forced to adopt the religion of his/her political masters, there is no guarantee that, say, Islam would be the dominant religion of the Middle East. Most likely the majority in the Middle East today would be Zoroastrians. The Nestorian/Coptic Christians plus the Jews of the Middle and Near East also faced persecution and were forced to embrace either Islam or the Roman version of Christianity.

The survival and growth of religions has been tied to political and economic considerations. The Byzantine and Sasanian Empires became Christian and Muslim respectively for political and economic expediency. Thereafter, once the rulers made the decision to embrace a certain religion, the population followed suit to avoid the risk of persecution and/or death – such as during the Tudor reign in England when Protestant Christianity replaced Catholicism.

Rulers have always used religion as a form of control over the population. Prophets never preached religious structures or a system of priesthood. It was only about the acceptance of God. When the Prophets exited, the priests stepped in to create a religious ‘system’, which was used to dominate and control the masses. Hence, while we may argue that God created humankind, humankind, in turn, created religion. And that is why, while we may argue that there is only one God, there is not one religion but many religions. In conclusion, I would argue that religion did not come from God but is a creation of humankind.

Source

Holiday Musings and Propositions on The Genelogy of Religion

Dr Azly Rahman

As we close the year 2012 and  enter a new age of the Mayan calendar, I invite my learned readers to discuss the propositions below as a way to cleanse our minds of the flux and cloudiness of matters concerning the belief system we are all in. I suppose Malaysians especially are now ready to engage in dialogue sessions that require an open mind and  rationality in order for us to evolve more into an Athenian rather than a Spartan society still trapped in the glory of Oriental Despotism.

1 - all religious celebrations are more cultural than religious; for the roots of religion and spirituality lie in human anthropology framed by the agricultural society, and the need to engage in rites and rituals to structure the inner and outer patterns in understanding the unknown and that elusive concept called "divinity";

2 - all ideas of "god" are rooted in language and concepts in materialism and the dialecticness of it; different names of different gods signify the attempt by Man to name the Unknown and the Infinite and the Non-Being via words framed culturally, so that Man can worship the name and appease the construction of personal and social reality;

Non-muslims nabbed for 'khalwat' in Kelantan

(The Star) - Four non-Muslims two men on a plane spotting outing and a couple in a park have been issued with summonses for khalwat, a first in the country.

The summonses were for “indecent behaviour” but the four have denied any wrongdoing, claiming instead that the municipal council's enforcement officers “were merely abusing their position”.

State MCA Youth chief Gan Han Chuan said the officers “have gone crazy”, trying to enforce hudud laws on non-Muslims.

“This is a first in history where non-Muslims have been issued summonses for khalwat,” he said.

“It is unbelievable! What they do with their by-laws is now affecting the lives of even the non-Muslims,” Gan said of the two cases which occurred recently.

The incidents came in the wake of a nationwide uproar over the fines imposed on salon operators who allowed their stylists to cut the hair of a customer of a different gender regardless of whether they were Muslims or not.

Most, if not all, of the salons affected were owned by non-Muslims.

Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim

Dr. Marzuki Mohamed, ANU alumnus, and advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia recently argued that Malaysia is NOT a secular state.

The timing of Dr. Marzuki’s assertions of course fits a larger strategy undertaken by the ruling party: to use religion as a wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims in general, but also between the parties in the opposition coalition, especially the Islamist PAS, and the social democrats, DAP. Islam is also of course used to ensure compliance, and to stifle dissent.

Having next to nothing to rely on: suffering from massive deficits on the leadership and policy front, and with an increasingly debilitating track record in the economic, social and political front, this is indeed a sound strategy as there are sufficient number of Malaysians, and especially Malaysian Muslims to fall for this – that UMNO is the protector and the guarantor of the sanctity of Islam. To  paraphrase and slightly modify Samuel Johnson, “religion is indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Religion is Something Personal

Jeswan Kaur

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters. – Issac Bashevis Singer, author and Nobel Prize laureate

The antipathy being shown to Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar for her candid and forthright view that everyone is deserving of religious freedom, including the Malays, reveals the feared truth that religion is a personal choice and coercion simply does not work.

The truth is Nurul Izzah has done the Malays especially a favour through her remark that religious freedom should be accorded to everyone.

It is a different matter that her comments made in a forum entitled “Islamic state? Which vision? Whose responsibility” on Nov 3 came down with a ‘Richter Scale’-like backlash.

The statements coming from the Prime Minister’s Department were typical. Minister Jamil Khir Baharom said Nurul Izzah’s remark was “misleading” and “dangerous”. His deputy, Mashitah Ibrahim, went further, calling for the young politician’s prosecution on the charge of insulting Islam.

SIS: Recognise Freedom to Change Faith

Leven Woon, FMT

Freedom of religion as a right enshrined under the Federal Constitution must also recognise the freedom to change faith, said Sisters In Islam (SIS).

Rallying behind PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar’s call for freedom of religion for all, the NGO said faith in any religion was based on free will.

“How can Muslims demand this notion of religious freedom for those wishing to convert to Islam and at the same time argue the denial of this freedom to leave Islam?

“Faith by compulsion may lead to hypocrisy,” SIS said in a statement.

The Muslim women rights advocate maintained a strong position against legislation of faith, saying that such practice was meaningless.

Malaysia’s Commodified Islam

Alicia Izharuddin

At the World Halal Week held annually in Kuala Lumpur, you can purchase halal bone china, an exemplar of luxury and piety rolled into one. Malaysia is the leader in halal certification and a major promoter of the global halal industry. With markets saturated with a mind-boggling array of sharia-compliant goods that cater to a more discerning Muslim middle class, Islam can be seen as having entered more deeply into the lives of Malaysian Muslims in more commodified ways than ever before. The line between the sacred and the consumable profane have blurred, and true to the dictum that Islam is ‘a way of life’,  anything which supports the notion of good Muslim personhood can now be made halal. The explosion of consumer goods imbued with spiritual meaning is a new phenomenon spurred on by the broadening middle classes disenchanted with meaningless consumerism. Now consumer goods can have real intrinsic, spiritual meaning. But how did everything beyond consumables (and indeed items beyond meat) become halal.

Commodification of culture started as a phenomenon that emerged from the early capitalist period of Fordist mass production which then intensified during late capitalism. Flexible and geographically mobile post-Fordist market approaches shifted from mass production to a more fragmented, niche market to suit every possible types of lifestyle. The ‘religious’ lifestyle or public piety characterised by halal crockery, toothpaste, make-up, and even beer can be regarded an outcome of post-Fordist modes of production. Marx’s concept of ‘commodity fetish’ may be the most relevant point of entry into understanding the commodification of objects and practices that were previously not considered commercial.

In Marx’s analysis, commodity fetish requires the concealment of the origins and processes involved in the production of a consumer product from the consumer in order to maintain the ‘religious fog’ that justifies the mystery of its self-evident value. Religious symbols and meaning as commodity fetish may behave in the same manner, in that the deeper engagement of the purpose and context of a particular symbol are sidestepped and usurped by other distracting elements that vie for the attention of the consumer. The self-evident value of a religious commodity is intrinsically located within itself rather than the processes that lead to its points of ‘origin’.

Tidak Salah Jadi ‘Cina pisang’

Ridhuan Tee Abdullah

Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Najib Razak baru-baru ini mengatakan, Malaysia adalah satu-satunya negara di luar China yang mengiktiraf pendidikan Cina sebagai sebahagian daripada sistem pendidikan kebangsaan.

Beliau juga menegaskan, ketika menjadi Menteri Pelajaran, Akta Pendidikan 1996 diwujudkan menggantikan Akta Pelajaran 1961. Akta Pelajaran 1961 amat ditakuti kerana memberi kuasa penuh kepada Menteri Pelajaran untuk menukar sekolah jenis kebangsaan Cina (SJKC) kepada sekolah kebangsaan.

Akta Pelajaran 1996, memberikan signifikan amat besar kepada pendidikan Cina. Kerajaan secara langsung mengiktiraf kewujudan Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina (SJKC), Sekolah Menengah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina (SMJKC) dan Sekolah Persendirian Cina (SPC) sebagai sebahagian daripada sistem pendidikan kebangsaan yang bersifat kekal.

Sekadar makluman, selepas 1996, lebih banyak sumber kewangan diperuntukan pendidikan Cina. Pada masa itu, terdapat 78 sekolah menengah Cina yang memilih untuk mematuhi silibus dan pengajaran kerajaan dan ia menjadi SMJKC, manakala 60 lagi kekal sebagai SPC.

In Latest Tirade, MCA Warns Against Principles of 'Koran' in National Culture

(Harakah) -  Chinese-only party MCA has launched a scathing attack on any attempt at inculcating Islamic values in governance, and warned non-Muslims that Quranic principles and Islamic ethics would form national culture if Pakatan Rakyat comes to power.
The warning was made by deputy chairman of the party's publicity bureau, Loh Seng Kok, in a statement condemning an advisory by the Alor Setar Municipal Council that models on billboard should not appear scantily dressed.
Claiming that such a ruling was "detrimental to both the nation’s economic policies and competitiveness", Loh went on to suggest that it also trampled on non-Muslim rights.

"It is preposterous for the Pakatan state government to come up with such guidelines, ignoring the rights of the Chinese community and other non-Muslims," he said, adding that the instruction from Alor Setar mayor Mat Noh Ahmad was made "even without any amendments to the Constitution", in an apparent reference to the argument that the Federal Constitution must be amended if Islamic criminal laws were to be introduced.

"This is against the interest of the non-Muslims, and will even affect the state’s economic development," he added.

Membina Citra Islam Progresif

Kebangkitan aliran dan gerakan Islamisme di kebanyakan negara Islam hari ini memberi kesan positif, terutama dalam mengalih minda dan perhatian masyarakat dunia terhadap wajah sebenar Islam dan masyarakatnya.

Lebih sedekad lalu, masyarakat Islam seluruh dunia berada dalam keadaan yang amat terhimpit sekali akibat merebaknya gejala Islamophobia. Dalam tempoh itu, imej Islam dan masyarakatnya dipandang sebagai satu nilai dan perkumpulan yang ganas dan berbahaya.

Ektremisme sering disinonimkan dengan agama Islam. Sikap media antarabangsa yang gemar memberikan laporan keterlaluan terhadap pendirian dan kegiatan pergerakan yang beraliran keras dan ganas di dunia Islam memburukkan lagi agama imej Islam pada kacamata masyarakat dunia. Imej buruk yang direka-reka ini menimbulkan rasa yang cukup rimas sekali kepada masyarakat Islam terbanyak, malah dalam keadaan tertentu sering diburu oleh bayang ketakutannya.

Mutakhir ini, masyarakat Islam sudah mula boleh menarik nafas lega dan membuang perasaan terkurung dan rimas ketakutan yang ditanggung itu. Media antarabangsa nampaknya tidak lagi memberi tumpuan kepada kegiatan dan pendirian yang bercorak ganas dan keras oleh sesetengah pergerakan di dunia Islam.

Q & A on The Hudud and Qisas Enactment

1. What is the Hudud and Qisas Law?

Hudud and Qisas laws deal with offences and punishments that are interpreted by Muslim juristic scholars to be derived from the Qur’an and the Sunnah (of the prophet). Hudud literally means limit. According to some scholars, the word “hudud” is not used in the Qur’an specifically in terms of punishment. However juristic opinion has reduced hudud to mean mandatory punishment. Under Hudud law, theft, robbery, illicit sex, alcohol consumption and apostasy are considered offences. Punishment for these offences are corporal in nature, involving whipping, stoning to death and amputation of limbs. Qisas (law of retaliation) refers to offences that involve bodily injury or loss of life. The punishment is death or imprisonment, but compensation in the form of a sum of money or property (diyat and irsy) is accepted if the guardian of the victim forgives the offender. In Malaysia both Hudud and Qisas offences are contained in the set of legislation known as the Syariah Criminal Code Enactment. In Kelantan the law is formally called the Syariah Criminal Code (11) Enactment 1993 and was passed on November 25, 1993. In Terengganu the Syariah Criminal Offences (Hudud and Qisas) Bill was passed on July 8, 2002.

2. What offences are covered in the Kelantan and Terengganu Enactments?

Six offences are recognised under the Enactment as Hudud offences, namely:

• Sariqah (theft) 
• Hirabah (robbery) 
• Zina (unlawful carnal intercourse) 
• Qazaf (accusation of zina which cannot be proved by four witnesses) 
• Syurb (drinking liquor or intoxicating drink) 
• Irtidad or riddah (apostasy)

The second set of offences refer to homicide and bodily injury and listed under Qisas.

Penjajahan Minda, Budaya Sama Bahaya

Amini Abdul Manan

Kedatangan Islam ke rantau Asia Tenggara bukan sekadar menjadi anutan kepada penduduknya tetapi memberikan satu makna baru terhadap kehidupan secara menyeluruh.

Kehadiran Islam bukan seperti agama lain sebelumnya, iaitu Hindu dan Buddha. Ia memberi pengaruh yang mendalam terutama dalam membentuk pandangan sarwa.

Pandangan sarwa juga dikenali sebagai worldview, tasawur kehidupan, weltanschaung dan juga rukyah al-wujud fi al-Islam. Ia secara asasnya menjawab persoalan mengenai perihal kewujudan alam dan seisinya, tugas dan kedudukan manusia serta tujuan akhir semua kewujudan itu serta hubungan dan kedudukan Allah sebagai pencipta kepada semua kewujudan. Bauan tauhid amat kuat dapat dihidu dalam pandangan sarwa.

Pandangan sarwa berteraskan tauhid inilah yang bertanggungjawab pada permulaannya membebaskan orang Eropah daripada kegelapan tahyul dan kekeliruan faham mengenai proses alamiah. Menerima wujudnya peraturan alam yang juga dikenali sebagai hukum sains hari ini menjadikan manusia lebih teratur apabila berhubung dengan alam sekeliling.

Perkara sama juga berlaku di rantau ini apabila kehadiran Islam sudah membebaskan orang Melayu daripada perkara yang tidak logik lagi tidak munasabah. Antaranya ialah hubungan rakyat dan raja yang mempunyai takrifan baru.