Malaysia back-pedals into the future

Malaysia has done much to deserve its reputation for economic dynamism and social harmony, but a flurry of actions by the country’s hard-line Islamic authorities illustrates the contradictions within the Malaysian model, and raises doubts about the country’s effort to rise to the ranks of developed nations by 2020.

In a globalised and competitive world, Malaysia cannot modernise its economy without modernising its society. In practical terms, this means choosing the universal values of freedom of conscience and freedom of inquiry over the narrow dictates of Islamic orthodoxy.

…After riots in Kuala Lumpur in 1969 between the prosperous Chinese minority and ethnic Malays, Malaysia instituted a programme to raise the Malay share of national income. The government aggressively favoured Malay businessmen, and Malays gained a virtual monopoly on government scholarships for overseas study. At the same time Malaysia followed outward-looking economic policies that encouraged foreign investment and export-led growth.

As with other parts of the Muslim world, the rupture with the past brought by prosperity rose in tandem with Islamic consciousness. The oil boom of 1973 allowed the Gulf States to bankroll efforts to Arabise the Muslims of SE Asia. The ripples of the 1979 Iranian Revolution were felt directly on Malaysian college campuses. During the 1980s the headscarf became ubiquitous among Malay women. Meanwhile, in a bid to outdo the Islamist opposition in terms of piety, the ruling United Malays National Organisation, went on a mosque-building spree.

…Meanwhile, disregard for non-Malays - for the most part Chinese and Hindu Indians, who together make up a third of the country’s 25 million people - expressed itself most clearly in the architecture of the new administrative capital, Putrajaya. Acknowledgment of other cultures is conspicuous by its absence.

By some measures, Malaysian affirmative-action policies have worked. The Malay share of corporate equity rose from less than 4 percent in 1971 to between 20 and 45 percent in 2006. Over the same period per capita income quadrupled. Malaysia is the world’s 19th largest exporter.

At the same time, rather than enable the Malays to compete effectively as equals, Malaysia has ended up creating a class of crony capitalists dependent on government largesse and a Malay population that sees special privileges as a birthright.

Often this supremacism is expressed in terms of religious intolerance. The one silver lining: liberal-minded Muslims such as lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar and academic Farish Noor have joined non-Muslims and a plethora of blogs in criticising this trend.

These troubles could not come at a worse time. Malaysia’s strength in low-cost manufacturing is being challenged by China and Vietnam. The government has invested heavily in technology infrastructure in the form of the Multimedia Supercorridor, ambitiously hailed as the Silicon Valley of the East. But amid competition for scientific talent and despite relaxing some of the usual race laws, Malaysia finds it hard to retain Indian and Chinese engineers. Meanwhile, many of the brightest students - especially non-Malays - migrate to Australia, the US and Singapore.

Source: The Nation

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