Why the Malays see Kit Siang as anti-Islam
The Third Force
If you were to make an attempt to describe the demographics of Malaysian voters in just two words, those words would have to be ‘Malays’ and ‘Chinese’. The country is so heavily divided these days it almost seems as if the word politics itself has been reduced to mean a religious-centric wrangle between the two races. And if this is not curbed anytime soon, we may need to brace ourselves for mayhem.
For us to grasp the core essence and basis to this conflict, we would first need to understand traits that define the Chinese mindset, as opposed to the Malay mindset, and realise how the differential is being played up by the opposition, in particular, the DAP.
Now, while the Chinese comprise largely of urban people who are communally knit and heavily invested in market activity, the Malays have a very casual attitude towards business, although they do share a cultural bond that seems to have been shaped by their religious convictions.
However, if there is one glaring difference between the Chinese and the Malays, it is the inherent and inalienable desire by the Chinese to strike it rich. Money means everything to them. The Malays are more relaxed in that sense, taking anything as it comes by and preferring not to indulge deeply into business activity. To the Malays, the Chinese have monopolised business in the country to such an extreme, it is virtually impossible for a budding Malay entrepreneur to survive without any government assistance.
But the Chinese did not arrive here rolling in money either. Those who came during the colonial era strived hard to better their living conditions and made inroads into virtually every field that they deemed lucrative. The accommodating attitude by the British towards the Chinese did present them leverage, undoubtedly. The British saw them to be a tight knit community that had the appetite for money and an unmistakable penchant for hard work.
That said, even the British began to face a dilemma when Chinese labourers quickly rose through the social strata and went on to own many of the plantations they had once worked in. That forced the British to ship in, among others, convicts and sepoys from India, who were indentured to some of these plantations as a form of de facto slavery. In a sense, the Chinese did once ‘own’ Indian labourers who had worked for them.
Moving on, the Chinese refused to think of themselves as being the subjects of local rulers. When asked, they would regard themselves as traders or merchants who were domiciled in the peninsula strictly for business reasons. The pre-twentieth century Chinese never wanted to return to China, and yet, never regarded the Malay Peninsula to be their home land.
Both the British and the Malays were well aware of this. The British made no qualms about it as it served to their purpose that the Chinese had helped the tin industry prosper to heights they never imagined possible. Back then, tin was in heavy demand as a metal used to line chests, which in turn, were used to store tea-leaves. Other than triad-related issues, the British had no problems with the Chinese and were very pleased with developments that had taken place in the local mining scene. So it didn’t matter to them if the Chinese did or did not regard themselves as subjects of the rulers.
But for the Malays, it was a forced compromise. With the British in charge, they learnt to tolerate the fact that the Chinese were here to stay, even though they knew that it was without Royal consent. Back in the days of the Malacca Sultanate, things were different. Chinese trade was often limited to the exchange of merchandise in barter or by employing local currency. After the transaction was complete, the traders would leave. There were limited cases of those who stayed back and wed locals, although in each case, a Royal consent was deemed compulsory.
Yet, all of that is ancient history. Right up to the turn of the millennium, you would find Malays being tolerant towards the Chinese despite there being those who believed that the Chinese had very little regard, if at all, for the rulers. That is why, if there is one trait among the Malays that has never changed over the years, it is the fact that they’re the most lenient and generous among races in modern-day Malaysia.
But the Malays have their limits.
In recent years, the Chinese have become more outspoken against Islam and are seen bandying together with the DAP against Islamic based parties. Of late, the situation has become so dire, it has boiled down to this – you don’t eat pork, I do.
With like sentiments being played up on the internet by DAP sponsored cyber-troopers, the Chinese are threatening to resurrect deeply ingrained sentiments among the Malays that have remained buried for decades. The unspoken is now being spoken – the Chinese disregard for the rulers, the Chinese monopoly in trade activity and their inalienable greed for wealth. The Malays have reached their limit.
With tensions simmering to a boil, the Malays are now accusing one man for turning the Chinese against them – Lim Kit Siang.
And this may well be true. Little by little, for almost fifty years, the senior Lim has been deepening the Malay-Chinese divide by drumming in the idea that the government was pandering to stifle freedom of religion. On many occasions, he made very toxic remarks against the government over a purported Islamic agenda he claims it harbours. To date, he has yet to show us evidence that such a conspiracy by the government exists.
As it is, tensions are simmering to a boil, and it is only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan. That is hardly surprising since the Malays have generally viewed the DAP and Kit Siang to be anti-Islam for a very long time. But lately, the senior Lim came out very strongly against those who accused him of being anti-Islam, challenging them to prove that he was actually against the religion.
So let me take up that challenge and present to you some of the many positions that Kit Siang has taken against the administration that seems to reek of an anti-Islamic agenda. However, I am not going to be the one to judge him by deciding if he is or is not against Islam. I leave that to your discretion as a reader, although, it is my wish that you ponder upon the various things that I am about to highlight without prejudice or bias.
First, I’ll start off with a speech that Kit Siang had made out to the Dewan Rakyat on the 20th of June in 1980. On that day, the senior Lim introduced a Private Member’s Bill to delete clause 21(2) of the 1961 Education Act, which reads:
Where at any time the Minister is satisfied that a National-type primary school may suitably be converted into a National primary school, he may direct that the school shall become a National primary school.
Kit Siang insisted that by repealing the clause, the government would prove its sincerity in accepting Chinese and Tamil primary schools as “an integral and eternal part of the national education system.”
“There is no doubt that Clause 21(2) was enacted with the objective of being used against Chinese and Tamil primary schools – for it’s the target is merely to convert the formerly English primary schools into national primary schools, then there is no reason for the great resistance by UMNO, MCA, Gerakan, SUPP, Berjaya Ministers and MPs to its repeal, as it would be now completely redundant with the full conversion of the English primary schools into national primary schools.”
When his attempts to force the then Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn, to repeal the act failed, he became persistent and relentless with his attacks against the government by invoking what seemed to be Islamophobia. Kit Siang began to imply that the government was playing pucks with the minds of the Chinese and soon-to-be-voters by Islamising education in local Universities.
Moving on, let us take a look at what he told a forum at Universiti Malaya on the 24th of November in 1984. Back then, Kit Siang openly accused the administration of attempting to Islamise the economy, education, administration and “other spheres of national life.”
“The UMNO in government appears more concerned about competing with PAS which wants an all-out Islamic state, then in holding firm by the constitutional provision of Malaysia as a secular and multi-religious nation,” he said.
Reading between the lines, you will see how he invoked fear among the Chinese with the idea that UMNO was attempting to indoctrinate Islamic values into mainstream policies. Two years on, he repeated some of these claims at Universiti Sains Malaysia, adding that there was a conscious attempt to force Islam upon non-Muslims.
“Recently, there have been a spate of under-aged non-Muslims being forced to convert to Islam, and forcedly taken away from their homes and parents. I do not believe that there is any religious in the world advocates the break-up of the family ties and family unit, for in Eastern society, to family unit is the integral unit of society. Of family unit is destroyed, society is also destroyed.”
No evidence was ever presented to substantiate that claim.
Five years back, on the 8th of August, his blog hosted an article, an excerpt from which reads as follows:
“I am equally alarmed at the current intellectual fad of “Islamisation” of knowledge, that is, the attempt to put an Islamic imprint on all disciplines, especially the natural sciences. Invariably it means the adulteration of science. Thus we have Islamic “scientists” who have never seen, let alone used, a test tube.”
Through this article, the senior Lim may well have been attempting to funnel doubt in the minds of the Chinese against local universities. But more than that, it seems that Kit Siang may also have been attempting to encourage the Chinese to look towards Singapore based universities.
As you may already know, Chinese families here are fond of sending their children to Singapore to further their studies. Now, academicians in Singapore are strictly guarded in their approach by the PAP government, which is known to indoctrinate its communal ideologies through institutions of higher learning. As a point of interest, the PAP government in Singapore is also known to be very friendly with the DAP.
Is that the reason why Kit Siang keeps accusing the government of Islamising education in our universities? Is it to drive local Chinese students to further their studies in Singapore? I mean, isn’t it ironical that Kit Siang does not have a problem with students furthering their studies in universities that infuse communal ideologies into the curriculum? Why the focus on Islam?
In some instances, as you have seen above, the senior Lim actually implied that the government was on a covert mission to force non-Muslim youths to convert to Islam. Now, that is a very serious implication. So Kit Siang, will you accept my challenge to come out and adduce the cut-and-dry proof that such a mission by the government exists? If you can’t accept the challenge, then, will you stop complaining when Malays accuse you of invoking Islamophobia or being against Islam?
The Malays are more than irritated. If we were to dive into some of the articles that are being written against the Chinese these days, you will see how the Malays have actually zeroed in on Kit Siang as an enemy of Islam. Not only are they calling him a racist, they’re accusing him of being the principle cause to the very enigmatic and cryptic Malay-Chinese divide that doesn’t seem to want to go away.
So Kit Siang, if you’re reading this, please, stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. It’s destroying Malaysia.
