What Malay-Muslim nationalism is, and how it matters

Ooi Kok Hin, Malaysiakini

This is a rejoinder to Bersatu supreme council member and policy and strategy bureau chief Rais Hussin’s article “No way will MMN be the future of Malaysian politics”.

The article was, in turn, a response to my essay ‘The end of ethnocentric elite rule in Malaysia’. Even though Malay-Muslim nationalism is only mentioned within a paragraph, Rais devoted his entire piece to object to this concept. It is useful to restate the concept, as it is intended to mean, first.

What is Malay-Muslim nationalism? It is a convergence of two strands of nationalism that have always had a forceful presence in Malay politics – and in extension, Malaysian politics. On the one side, Umno represents ethnonationalism. Historically, from Onn Jaafar’s mobilisation of the Malay masses against Malayan Union to Abdul Razak’s Malay economic nationalism and Mahathir Mohamad’s The Malay Dilemma, Umno is the party that unabashedly champions Malay nationalism.

It was Malay nationalism that defeated the Malayan Union, rolled in the era of New Economic Policy (NEP) and produced a slew of legislation and policy decisions that guarantee Malay political paramountcy as well as special rights and reserved opportunities in widespread socio-economic areas.

This form of ethnonationalism is also manifest in the creation of National Culture Policy and its kin, which defined Malay culture, Malay language, Malay identity as the core of national culture, the sole national language and the basis of national identity. An extreme mutation of this nationalism can be exemplified by the concept of Ketuanan Melayu.

Ketuanan Melayu possesses at least two distinct meanings within the context of ethnonationalism; firstly, the view that Malay supremacy must be asserted in political, economic, social and cultural spheres, and secondly, the narrative that Malays are the host (“tuan tanah/tuan rumah”) and the non-Malays are the latecomers who have been accepted into the house but are never equal to the host.

On the other side, there is PAS representing religious nationalism. How is PAS’ religious nationalism different from Umno’s ethnonationalism? The answer lies in their previously divergent perspectives on the role of Islam in public affairs. They differ in the degree to which they answer the following issues: How much Islam should dictate on nation-building, control and police individuals’ lives and how important Islamic credentials are for selecting candidates for public office and as leaders.

It is not that Islam is left out of Umno’s ethnonationalism but that PAS is much farther to the right of Umno in pushing for Islam to regulate society acts as criteria for selecting state leaders and becomes the basis of laws and policies. Whether it’s “Amanat Hadi” (in which PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang claimed that those who separate religion and politics are kafir) or attempts to enact hudud, PAS’ brand of nationalism is distinctly religious nationalism.

These two distinct forms of nationalism are converging. Forty years of “the race to Islamisation” in which Umno competes with PAS for the mantle of who is the better champion for Islam – brilliantly documented in Farish Noor’s two-volume study of PAS – has significantly altered national politics and the state of the nation. Then, GE14 took place. Umno lost power and found itself in the opposition, with PAS. The two strands of nationalism no longer compete with each other.

Now they have a common incentive and a common enemy. The post-GE14 political landscape and the convergence between Umno’s ethnonationalism and PAS’ religious nationalism are what lead me and Wong Chin Huat to pay attention to what he conceptualised as Malay-Muslim nationalism. I subsequently continued to write on how this new development can affect the nature of political contestation for some years to come.

In contrast to our sensitive approach to understanding this phenomenon, this is how Rais defined Malay-Muslim nationalism: “Ooi argued that “MMN” will define the future general elections of Malaysia, beginning from the next one, the 15th, in 2023. In MMN, Malays and Muslims and their nationalism will gel onto one template. As and when they do, other ethnic groups across the lay of the land in Malaysia will either inch towards MMN – out of fear for it – or keep a safe distance from it, again, out of fear, too.”

Barometer of support

Based on this understanding of concepts, Rais brushed aside the phenomena, stating that, “while DAP was willing to field more and more Malay candidates, it means MMN is not real”. That DAP was willing to field more Malay candidates is a positive development for multiracial politics, but it has nothing to do with – let alone disprove – Malay-Muslim nationalism, a concept conceived to describe the convergence of ethnonationalism and religious nationalism.

He said anyone who observes that there is a rising salience in ethnoreligious nationalism as only thinking so because they are misled by a false reading of Malay psychology, “the market seems to know that these systems of special rights and privileges do often exist, all but in name only… If there was no faith in the (Harapan) coalition… why would the market respond so positively to the new Malaysia? Thus… anyone who agrees with MMN, is not reading the Malay or even Islamic psychology of the Muslims or bumiputera accurately, if at all.”

Rais seems to conflate many things. He used FDI figures to inform us about market confidence, interpreted market confidence as faith in the government and concluded that those who presumably have less faith and worried about Malay-Muslim nationalism must be mistaken. From his own argument, FDI reflects foreign investors’ confidence and cannot be used as a barometer of support among the local masses, let alone a specific subset that we are talking about here. On the statement that “special rights and privileges exist only in name”, any bumiputera and local non-bumiputera knows this statement is so far off from reality that we should interpret in kindness that he did not really mean it.

He also said the notion that Malay-Muslim nationalism is a potent force for political mobilisation. He asked if it is so important, why didn’t the prime minister and Pakatan Harapan chairperson Dr Mahathir Mohamad ride on it during GE14? He misses the point in that what we are trying to address here is describing a convergence (of ethnonationalism and religious nationalism) that is happening as a consequence of the GE14 outcome. Thus, if Mahathir did not ride on it during GE14, it doesn’t disapprove the fact that this convergence is a significant post-GE14 event and how subsequent political developments in the country will depend, in parts, on how players respond to this development.

There is also another explanation. Because Harapan has won, the spectrum of Malaysian politics has shifted. If we were to sketch a simplistic pre-GE14 model, BN as the incumbent government had to face opposition to its left (Harapan) and its right (PAS). In the post-GE14 model, there is no real alternative to the left of the Harapan government at the national level. Instead, the two biggest threats to the incumbent government are now both to its right side of the spectrum. This is where Malay-Muslim nationalism provides an explanatory power to the kind of politics that we are witnessing today and for some time to come. We use it to describe an important area of contestation between incumbent and opposition.

It also captures the nature of the contestation as clearly seen today, with regard to Malay anxiety over socio-economic privileges and sanctity of Islam being tapped into by the opposition (e.g. anti-Icerd mobilisation) and forcing the incumbent government to respond (it cancels the ratification of Icerd and postpones human rights convention). What makes the politics on the right side of the spectrum different from previously is that the two biggest parties in the opposition are not multiracial and do not have incentives to consider minority interests.

Previously, when Umno was in a 13-member BN, it worried if supporting hudud may cost it support in Sarawak and derail the electoral prospects of its non-Malay allies. When PAS was in Pakatan Rakyat, it toned down on its ambition to create an Islamic state and was willing to channel priority to a “Negara Kebajikan”. Now, there is no such incentive to hold back PAS’ ethnoreligious nationalism. This is what is different this time and encapsulated by the concept of Malay-Muslim nationalism; the spectrum of politics has shifted and so is the composition of the opposition as well as the area and nature of contestation between the incumbent and the opposition.

Lastly, the denial marshalled by Rais Hussin that is most concerning: “Come Saturday, even if one million PAS, Perkasa and Umno members show up for the anti-International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd) rally in Kuala Lumpur, the theoretical currency and academic call of MMN would still be missing. Why? Simple. These are party members, some of whom may have been paid to attend the event. But these are not the majority of Malaysians who voted overwhelmingly to reject the corruption of BN and Umno.”

Carelessly dismissing the people who attended the anti-Icerd rally as party members or for being paid is a dangerous attitude. It shows the lack of awareness of why a large group of Malays feel as anxious as they are and how interested parties successfully mobilised them into action. This complacency and denial is a recipe for defeat. Harapan’s victory is a fragile one. Rais so confidently asserting his view that “majority of Malaysians voted overwhelmingly to reject Umno-BN” and that “82 percent of Malaysian voters who turned up on May 9, 2018, was concerned with issues like good governance, future financial meltdown and the debt of Malaysia, and of course the grand larceny of 1MDB.”

Fragility of victory

But this does not hold up to scrutiny. Out of those 82 percent that turned up on May 9, less than half voted for Harapan. Among Malay voters, it’s even less; the Merdeka Center calculated that no more than one-third of Malays voted for Harapan. In the East Coast of the peninsula, Harapan candidates not only did not win but lost their deposits in overwhelmingly Malay-majority constituencies.

In Perak, while DAP won a clean sweep of all seven parliamentary and 18 state seats it contested, the Malay-majority parties in Harapan just struggled through. Amanah lost half of the state seats contested, PKR lost 10 out of 14, and Rais’ Bersatu lost all but one of the 15 state seats it contested.

Some humility ought to be exhibited at such a fragile victory. Some serious reflection and sense of urgency ought to be possessed by Harapan leaders and strategists on what is to be done when two-thirds of the Malays did not vote for them. If Rais’ complacency and confidence reflect the consensus of Harapan leaders and strategists, we are in serious trouble.

If good governance and 1MDB are all that matter, as according to Rais, then what is the possible explanation for the two-thirds of Malays who voted for BN and PAS? Are we to assume they are all ignorant, uneducated party members? There are other things that matter to them and it is to Harapan’s own peril to be uninterested in understanding what those things are.

It seems to me that many of us are either unwilling to or incapable of “climbing the empathy wall” to make a serious attempt to understand why some people feel and act the way they do. Instead, we prefer to retreat into making assumptions that comfort ourselves and blame others for not being as enlightened. We need people who can help us understand more about the sociology of emotions, social theory, group identities and the intimate relationship between identity and the formation of an ethnoreligious nationalist movement.

As things stand, political entrepreneurs on the right side of the spectrum are deftly tapping into something – Malay anxiety – and it is neither useful nor helpful for the incumbent to be dismissive of this something. According to Thomas Scheff, professor of sociology at the University of California, pride and anger are intense emotions that guard social bonds.

There is no hope in changing the minds of two-thirds of the Malay voters in GE14 and the thousands who were mobilised to attend the anti-Icerd rally by continuously dismissing their anxiety and shaming them as racists. This shaming will only increase their anger and lead to more fervent ethnoreligious nationalists.

Malay-Muslim nationalism is neither a fearful nor a deterministic trajectory. It is a phenomenon to be understood, explained and dealt with. Recognising the convergence between ethno-nationalism and religious nationalism does not necessarily mean the government and society have to cave in. But to deny the phenomena of Malay-Muslim nationalism is to not perceive the seriousness of the ethnoreligious challenge, the depth of Malay anxiety that is real and tapped into by political entrepreneurs and the fragility of victory.

Good governance matters, economic growth matters, but they are not the only things that matter. For some people, and there’s a big group of them, ethnoreligious nationalism matters. How we deal with this phenomena as a society, and how political actors respond to and negotiate this convergence is probably the nature of contentious politics for the time being. And that is the gist of what Malay-Muslim nationalism is.

OOI KOK HIN is Monbukagakusho scholar and research student at the Graduate School of Political Science, Waseda University, and research affiliate at Penang Institute.