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Chandra said Muslims must be assured their religion was not up for grabs by forces beyond their control. |
KUALA LUMPUR — Experts believe that a recent hoax SMS of a mass Christian baptism of Muslim Malays in the northern Perak state and the massive protest it sparked exposed the vulnerability of Malaysia's multi-ethnicity, especially in view of growing socio-economic inequalities.
"The gathering was an expression of frustrations with the system, with the government, which they see as perpetuating and worsening inequalities," said Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, a member of the Socialist Party of Malaysia's Central Committee.
Triggered by mobile text messages alleging that 600 Malay youth were to be baptized, an angry crowd of more than 300 Muslims assembled outside the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Ipoh, Perak, on November 5 to demand that the baptism ceremony be stopped.
The students of the polytechnic institution who had supposedly been targeted by Christian missionaries were instead a group of 110 children of Indian origin receiving their first holy communion.
Jeyakumar believes there would not have been willing and captive recipients to the SMS rumors and calls to stop the ceremony had members of the crowd not already felt marginalized and victimized by an unjust system.
"The crowd was merely expressing it’s frustrations with the establishment and what it saw as the government’s abandonment of its responsibilities towards the welfare and interests of the majority Muslim-Malay community," he insisted.
He said studies have shown that wealth inequalities have only gotten worse, even worse than when the New Economic Policy first started 30 years ago.
Jeyakumar argued that despite the NEP, an affirmative action program to lift Malays out of the poverty that engulfed them in the 1960s and put them on economic par with the other races, intra-racial wealth inequalities had only worsened and made the poor poorer.
He stressed that while will always be opportunists seeking to exploit racial and religious sentiments for short-term political gains, frustrations with grinding poverty amidst the wealth that is apparent in the rest of society can explode into conflict if triggered by such incidents as the one in Ipoh.
Political leaders of the ethnic Malay majority have warned the nation's Chinese and Indian minorities to stop questioning Malay privileges or risk hurting race relations, a touchy issue in a country that has suffered race riots in the past.
The NEP was born out of riots between Malays, who make up some 60 percent of the population, and Chinese in 1969 that killed hundreds.
The vast majority of Malays follow Islam.
Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are also widely practiced in Malaysia, where ethnic Chinese and Indians account for about 25 percent and 8 percent of the population respectively.
Threatened
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| Shamsul accused a small but ideologically-driven group of persons of manipulating Muslim sensitivity about apostasy. |
Chandra Muzaffar, a former academician who now heads the International Movement for a Just World NGO, cited fears that Islam and its practice even within such a Muslim-majority country as Malaysia was being challenged and threatened.
He argued that some in Malaysia were capitalizing on a tendency by international media to demonize Islam and Muslims.
"There is a lot of the Christian right and Zionist propaganda which has reached our shores," said Chandra, himself a revert and an internationally-respected commentator on Islam.
He said such vile campaigns against Islam and Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) have "added to Malaysian Muslims’ own sense of being besieged."
Chandra suggested the solution would be to cool down the heightened inter-religious and inter-ethnic tensions, assure the Muslim community that their religion, such an integral part of the Malays ethnic identity, was not up for grabs by forces beyond their control.
He stressed that equally non-Muslims must be assured of their religious and other civic freedoms, and this promise of fair and just treatment must be put into practice in order to prevent any perceived injustices.
Manipulation
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| Badawi vowed firm action against those disturbing religious and racial peace. (Reuters) |
For political analyst Dr Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, the Ipoh incident was simply a case of manipulation by a small but ideologically-driven group of persons of the sensitivities of Muslims towards apostasy.
"There is perhaps a small minority of middle-class, educated Muslims with their own vision and program for Islam who are exploiting their access to communications and information technology to manipulate the sensitivities of the Muslim community towards apostasy," he charged.
Shamsul, who heads the National University of Malaysia’s Institute of the Malay World and Civilization, suggested the incident was the work of persons seeking to further a personal agenda for Islam by triggering a reactionary and emotive response among Muslims against the Christians in their midst.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi vowed Wednesday to defuse religious and racial fears.
"Lately we have seen growing polemics relating to race and religious issues," he told the annual general assembly of the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO).
"It has reached a worrying stage," Abdullah admitted in his one-and-a-half-hour remarks.
"While I will protect Islam's position and the role of the Shari`ah courts from being undermined, I will also ensure that no one tries to hijack Islam in Malaysia in order to breed intolerance and hatred," he said.
"I will take firm action against any groups, Muslim or non-Muslim, that try to cross this thin line by questioning the status of Islam or inciting the public based on false allegations and fabricated threats."
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