The Question of the Future of Indian Muslims in Malaysia: the Post-Mahathir Legacy Era

AFRICAN AND ASIAN STUDIES African and Asian Studies 11 (2012) 219-246 brill.nl/aas The Question of the Future of Indian Muslims in Malaysia: The Post-Mahathir Legacy Era Ahmad Noor Sulastry Yurni* Department of Anthropology & Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract The Malays, Chinese and Indian community in Malaysia have been homogenized since British colonialism. The existence of Indian Muslims’ identity caused a new paradigm shift in Malaysia involving the racial discussion. This paper traces the diffference in Indian Muslims’ identities from Indian and the Hindus. I argued that Indian Muslims share Islam as their religion and faith, while maintaining a Malay way of life and custom in their daily practices. In Malaysia, the Indian Mus- lim community struggled to place their future in terms of social, economic allocation and political justifĳication among the other communities. However, the strength of ethnic politics clearly charted out their involvement in the political base and moved them to fĳight for their cause and rights. Hence, today’s Indian Muslim community has caused an Islamic resurgence, which has brought a new Indian dimension as a whole. Keywords homogenized; religion; race; identity and human rights Introduction As a multi-racial country, Malaysia has four major ethnic groups, each with its own traditions: Malay, Chinese, Indian and the indigenous people. Indians form 7.8 percent of the country’s total population of 27 million and are mostly Hindu with origin from Tamil Nadu. The Muslim Malays form 60 percent of the population while the Chinese, who account for 25 percent, are Buddhists or Christians. Malaysian Indians are largely descended from those who migrated from Southern India during the British colonization of Malaya. Prior to British * Dr. Ahmad Noor Sulastry Yurni is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology & Sociol- ogy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/156921012X629385 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 03:16:23PM via free access 220 Ahmad, N. S. Y. / African and Asian Studies 11 (2012) 219-246 colonization, Tamils had been in the archipelago much earlier, especially since the period of the South India kingdom of the Cholas in the 11th century. By that time, Tamils were among the most important trading peoples of maritime Asia (Sneddon, 2003:73). The Indian people were introduced here by the British nearly 200 years ago as laborers, many of them remained even after India attained independence. According to Syed Husin Ali (2008: 1), Malay Peninsula’s people are regarded as the ‘sons of the soil’ (Bumiputera). They live together with various immi- grant groups, most of whom were encouraged to come here by the British colo- nial rulers. In a diffferent context the term ‘Malay’ has many meanings. Taking a wide social and cultural defĳinition, the term not only refers to those who are settled in the Peninsula, but also it includes those in the larger areas of the Malay Archipelago, embracing the Malay Peninsula and thousands of islands which today form the Republics of Indonesia and the Philippines. Although they are divided into many sub-groups, and perhaps just as many dialects, lin- guistic and cultural experts always consider them as belonging to the same stock, known as the Malays or Malayo-Indonesians. Indeed the Malay world covers a wide area, and its people constitute one of the major racial groups of the world.1 Furthermore, Syed Husin Ali (2008) asserted that the defĳinition of Malay has become more complex in the context of two other issues, namely its legal defĳinition and the newly coined term Bumiputera (son of the soil). Accord- ing to the Malaysian Constitution, a Malay is defĳined as “a person who pro- fesses the Muslim religion, habitually speaks Malay, conforms to Malay custom and: (a) was born before Merdeka day, in the Federation or Singapore or born of parents one of whom was born in the Federation or Singapore or was on the Merdeka Day (31 August 1957) domiciled in the Federation or Singapore; or (b) is the issue of such a person.” (Article 160) (2008: 2).2 Both the discussion of the Malays and the question of the ‘given’ privileges to the Malays have been questioned ever since the Malayan Independence in 1957. This 1 Quite often when the term Malay is referred, we think only of those living in the Peninsula. Descendants of the Malays in the Philippines are now known Filipinos, while those in the former Dutch territories are called Indonesians (Syed Husin Ali, 2008: 2). 2 According to the Malaysian Constitution, the Malays are guaranteed a special position that is the responsibility of the Yang DiPertuan Agong to protect them. Some of the examples that the Malays have been the privilege of getting the recruitment into the civil service, awards of scholar- ships, opportunities for education and training, and the issue of licenses and permits. In 2010, with the new administration of Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Abdul Razak, he implemented the new policy of housing privilege to all races especially the low income group to encourage them to buy a house in order to encourage the economic strategy. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 03:16:23PM via free access Ahmad, N. S. Y. / African and Asian Studies 11 (2012) 219-246 221 article will identify the problems in the discussion and the Indian Muslim’s positions in the Malaysian Constitution with the new administration after the Mahathir legacy. Statistically, the majority of the Malaysian people considered Malays are Muslims. Thus, Syed Husin Ali has asked: Is there any Malay who is a Hindu today and brought a new challenge to the discussion? He pointed out that this practiced is diffferent from Indonesia, where the spread of Hinduism and its culture have left many adherents, particularly in East Java and Bali. The influ- ence of Islam on the Malays is very deep-seated from the time they discarded their animistic beliefs and embraced Islam during the days of the Melaka kingdom. The Malays have never changed their religion (Syed Husin Ali 2008: 57). The Muslims who intended to change their religion would be facing strong sanctions or downright condemnation from their families and communities. The Malaysian Constitution of 1963 does not allow others to induce Malays to leave Islam. The consequences are serious when and if Malay leaves his religion, even of his own volition. This will be highlighted in this article, whereby in the case of Muslims persistent of the race, the Muslims faced the conflict in the events such as marriage, death, wealth and many others. The objective of this paper is to highlight how the Islamic administration in Malaysia sorted out the problems pertaining to religion issues and how the Malaysians have responded to the practices. The Malays in the Peninsula had long relations with other ethnic groups, not only those who are from this region but also those from other areas. In the 2010 census, the population of Malaysia was 28,300,000: Malays were 60.3 percent, Chinese were 22.9 percent and Indians were 6.8 percent of the total population. Indians were the minority among the main three major ethnic groups, while it seems that the Malays are very signifĳicant in numbers. The focus of this article is not only to bring the Malays into a very big picture but also Indians who embraced Islam as their religion to be an important part of this discussion. However, the fact that the Malays are the majority population in Malaysia and Islam is the offfĳicial religion in the Malaysia Constitution leads to project an important scenario, necessitating the construction of a bigger picture in the country today. The analysis is about difffering characterizations of the state. Ethnicity has been depicted as variously related to the collapse of traditional authority struc- tures, the state’s managerial institutions, the factional rivalries amongst political elites, regional economic disparities, and class structure of society (Hutchinson & Smith 1996: 305). They added that if each or any of these fea- tures of the political, social and economic environment were intrinsic to the nature of ethnicity, then the discussion would contain a central inconsistency. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 03:16:23PM via free access 222 Ahmad, N. S. Y. / African and Asian Studies 11 (2012) 219-246 It has been argued, however, that these aspects of the environment are only contingently related to ethnicity, while what is intrinsic to ethnicity is its ideo- logical character – as a psychological and political kinship myth. Hutchinson & Smith asked why there is endemic ethnic violence in Burma, fragile but generally non-violent ethnic relations in Malaysia, and generally harmonious ethnic relations in Singapore – all of which pictures the real situa- tion of the discussion (Hutchinson & Smith 1996: 306). One of the crucial factors influencing the relative success of the diffferent states in implementing their ethnic strategy relates to the capacity of the state. The state’s ability to manage ethnicity, according to Hutchinson, depends on its capacity to manage ethnicity. These factors relate to the ambiguities evident in the states’ por- trayals of the nation and to the role played in ethnic-state relations by the ideology of democracy (1996: 306). It is very interesting to discuss the issue of ambiguity in the defĳinition of a nation. It is quite clear that the state elites consider cultural nationalism to offfer a stronger basis for political cohesion and societal loyalty than what does political nationalism.

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