Malayasia Matters Podcast

As your correspondent has been in Istanbul, Turkey, for the past week—hence the sparse posting—it is an appropriate time to reflect upon the different approaches to faith in the public square taken by that country, and by Malaysia.

I: The Turkish paradox.

Turkey is well known in the West as an example of a Muslim country that has somehow “tamed” its Islam, in favor of a Westernizing approach that values secularism to the point of formal promotion by the state. This is accomplished through the corresponding suppression of faith, and its channeling into state-controlled forms of expression. Though Turkish nationalism identifies Turks through the foundational quality of Islam, followed by ethnicity, it nonetheless holds that Islam is a retrograde force which will destroy the state if left unchecked. The Turkish state therefore forbids religious dress in public (though this is erratically enforced in the case of the increasingly common abayas and female headscarfs); it forbids worship in anything but state-approved institutions; and it forbids the training of clerics except in government-controlled institutions.

The result of this is a mixture of paradox and tragedy. The paradox is a Muslim state, premised upon the Islamic identity of its citizenry, which fears and even despises Islam. (Of note, Turkish nationalism does not accept the idea of non-Muslim Turks: the Karamanli people, a band of Anatolian Turks who adopted Orthodox Christianity, were expelled to Greece in 1923.)

The tragedy is the fate of Turkey’s non-Muslim peoples, who have almost entirely disappeared as a consequence of the formation of the Turkish Republic. Corrupt and imperfect as it was, the old Ottoman Empire was genuinely pluralistic, and modern Turkey—though majority-Muslim—boasted millions of Christians, in Istanbul, Armenia, and Asia Minor, before the Republic’s founding in 1923. The rule of Turkish secularism have brought these communities (in the Greeks’ case, 3,500 years old) to near-extinction. Turkish Islam survives, albeit circumscribed and suppressed, by sheer force of numbers and the endorsement of state ideology. Turkish Christianity, by contrast, is nearly wiped out: it has no numbers to survive with, and its institutions under state control have been closed down over the years. At this writing, the only formal Christian institutions left in Turkey are the dwindling Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox in Istanbul, and a few Catholic endeavors in the interior.

The question is whether this has benefitted Turkey at all. Most cosmopolitan Turks will aver their disappointment at the disappearance of Turkey’s Christian heritage—till one proposes concrete steps to reverse it, anyway. As for the Turkish-secularist fear of Islam, which would supposedly run roughshod over civilization if left unchecked, the outcomes are contentious at best. It is true that Turkey does not suffer from Islamic excess as, say, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan do. A Parisian can move in Istanbul society with comparative familiarity and ease—and this was a tremendously important outcome in the eyes of the Republic’s founder, Kemal Ataturk. But Islam remains the faith of the people, and it is difficult indeed to imagine that it will not, at some point, reassert itself. (Indeed, in the ruling AK party, it has begun to do just that.) If it does so without a meaningful tradition and experience of civic engagement, thanks to the Republic’s suppression, the results will be baleful.

II: The Malaysian model.

Contrast Turkey with Malaysia. In doing so, we must begin by acknowledging that the two nations have dramatically different historical experiences. Foremost among the divergences is Turkey’s fight for its very existence in 1918-1923. There was a period when Turks faced the real possibility of extinction as a people, and Malaysians are privileged to have never endured that terror: however unpleasant British colonialism was, it was never exterminationist. Even the Japanese confined their impulse to wipe out other peoples to segments of the Malaysian Chinese. So, in critiquing Turkey, we do so in the understanding that the Turkish approach is shaped by a uniquely difficult history.

The point of commonality between Turkish and Malay (as opposed to Malaysian) nationalism is the foundational importance of Islam. Just as the idea of a non-Muslim Turk is a contradition, so too does a non-Muslim Malay seem absurd to the nationalist mind. Islam in Malaysian society is very definitely privileged by the state, in its explicit linkage of Muslim belief to Malay identity, and in the bumiputra policy of economic preferences accorded to Malays. (Of note, the present Prime Minister, Najib Razak, is slowly dismantling the bumiputra system as an unneeded and iniquitable relic.) The Malaysian state furthermore allows Islamic courts authority over Malays, and through these courts it circumscribes basic religious liberties, especially in the area of proselytization and conversion. This is hardly a liberal system as we’d conceive it in the West—and a Turkish secularist would point out that whereas Turkish Muslims may “escape” Islam, in a legalistic sense, a Malay may not.

That Turkish secularist would have a field day with critiques of Malaysia’s approach to faith in the public square. He or she would point out that no Turk is subject to a shari’a court; that no Turk must worry about living under the rule of an Islamist party like the PAS; that no Turk must worry about absurd and anachronistic punishments like caning; that no Turk need hide his consumption of alcohol or his breaking of the Ramadan fast; and that no Turk has achieved an Islamist-terror record the likes of the late Noordin Top.

This series of critiques is enough to satisfy most Western observers, who wrongly (though rationally) equate the outcomes touted by our hypothetical Turk with the Western interest. Yet they miss the point, which is that the Western (and Muslim) interest lies not in the supression of Islam, but in its accomodation with liberalism and modernity. In this, for all its flaws, the Malaysian model is more advanced, and more laudable. Nowhere is this more starkly apparent than in the situation of religious minorities in Malaysia.

Anyone who has traveled in Malaysia knows that it is one of the great multiethnic, multi-faith, and multi-lingual nations of the world. Malays hold a privileged place in Malaysian society due to heritage, tradition, and policy; but the communities of Chinese and Indians in particular are huge, numbering millions, and they do not generally hew to their Malay neighbors’ Islamic faith. Moreover, non-Muslim religious practice in Malaysia is open and thriving, with major Hindu and Chinese places of pilgrimage and festival dotting the landscape. The Christian community in Malaysia is not so large or impressive as these, but it too exists rather well: none of its great historial churches (unlike in Turkey) have been confiscated for use as mosques, and its communities exist unthreatened by the specter of state delegitimization and slow extinction.

Most important, the Malaysian state acts to protect this diversity. Of note is the recent case of Muslims marching against the construction of a Hindu temple in a Muslim neighborhood. The ringleaders were arrested and will face trial. This is exceedingly rare in a majority-Islamic state, and it speaks directly to the importance that Malaysia places on its mix of peoples, and their coexistence. For all the many critiques one may make of Malaysia’s privileging of Islam—and I’ve made them—this bottom line renders the Malaysian model, unheralded and unknown, far preferable to the better-known but deeply flawed Turkish secularism.

III: The Western interest.

As Turkey experiments with Islam in its politics, via the rise of the AK party, it would do well to look to the Malaysian experience. It is true that secular Turks will look with horror upon the likes of PAS: but to focus upon this is to miss the broader point, which is that Malaysian democracy accomodates these extremes—and non-Muslims alike. The Western interest, then, is very much in the success and promulgation of the Malaysian model, rather than the Turkish. Turkey has succeeded, inasmuch as it has, via the denial of religious liberty, the repression of faith in public life, and the elimination of minorities. Malaysia does not grant religious liberty in the sense that we understanding it, but it grants vastly more of it than Turkey does; it embraces faith in public life; and it actively protects and incorporates its minorities as intrinsic and indispensable to the Malaysian tapestry.

When we look toward toward Western liberal ideals of democratic pluralism, then, we must ask ourselves which looks more like our ideal: Turkey, or Malaysia? The answer, from one who has direct experience of both, seems obvious.