By: Jeremy Grant
Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e9e92b3e-ad2b-11e3-8ba3-00144feab7de.html#axzz2wwyJIsXd
As any tourist visiting Malaysia discovers, the lure of the country’s pristine beaches and rainforest treks are a powerful draw.
The government has designated 2014 “Visit Malaysia” year, as part of a plan to boost tourist arrivals to 36m – 6m more than the country’s population by 2020.
Yet as well as the colourful images being portrayed in the government’s advertising campaign, Malaysia is a moderate Muslim country with a complex relationship with Islam.
As investigators scramble to figure out whether missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was hijacked, analysts will be tempted to speculate on whether this has any relevance.
On the face of it, the answer is no. Malaysia is not known as a base for radical Islamist terrorism, and it is precisely its success in managing its multi-ethnic population under the banner of moderate Islam that has turned the country into an important ally for the US.
Malaysia was at the forefront of nations condemning the 9/11 attacks on the US and provided logistical support and use of its air space for the US-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet domestically, the picture is more complex.
Malaysia’s constitution established Islam as the state religion when the country achieved independence from Britain in 1957. But its vague provisions mean that successive political leaders were “given free rein over the employment or neglect of Islam as a political tool”, says Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid, associate professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia.
The effect has been to give some Islamic institutions the same status as secular institutions, a process that started in earnest under former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who ruled for 22 years until 2003.
Mr Mahathir upgraded sharia courts and judges to the same status as their civil counterparts. Islamic think-tanks were also set up under what Mr Hamid calls an “Islamicisation drive”.
Now Malaysia is undergoing a subtle shift that few have noticed, political analysts say. “Political Islam has today emerged as a pivotal political force intent on changing the face of Malaysia towards a more Islamically inclined polity,” Mr Hamid wrote in a recent paper for the Singapore-based Institute for Southeast Asia Studies.
The current prime minister, Najib Razak, has sought to foster inclusion and launched a policy known as “1Malaysia” partly designed to woo non-Muslim voters.
Malays make up 60 per cent of the population, with a quarter ethnic Chinese and the rest Indians and other minorities. Malays are constitutionally required to be Muslims. About 35 per cent of the remaining population are Buddhist, Christian or Hindu.
But since only narrowly winning a general election last year, Mr Najib faces pressure from his own United Malays National party (Umno), which together with various smaller parties, has ruled the country uninterrupted since independence from Britain.
Fearful of losing the rural Malay and overwhelmingly Muslim vote, Umno has used religion as a wedge issue to keep such voters in the fold, analysts say.
Controversy continues to rage over the use of the Arabic word “Allah” by Christians in Bibles, an issue that first erupted in 2007 when the then home minister banned a Catholic newspaper from using it to describe the Christian God.
The government argued this was to prevent confusion among Muslims. Critics say it had more to do with shoring up Umno’s core vote by signalling its willingness to defend Malay political and religious rights.
In January the issue erupted again when Islamic authorities in Selangor, near the capital Kuala Lumpur, sparked outrage among Christians when they seized Bibles at a Bible society because they contained the word Allah. An Anglican church in Penang was firebombed.
Malaysia’s only Muslim party, the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) a member of the opposition coalition has generally pursued moderate policies, even allowing the continued sale of beer in its stronghold of Kelantan state by shopkeepers who were selling it before the party came to power there.
But its electoral fortunes have fluctuated and it has had an uneasy relationship with Umno.
Clive Kessler, emeritus professor and Malaysian expert at Australia’s University of New South Wales, says: “There has always been a strong Malay agenda and Islamic agenda in modern Malaysian politics. And the Malay agenda is increasingly becoming an Islamic agenda and Umno is more the vehicle for that.”