15 - The Christian Response to State-led Islamization in Malaysia

Summary

The state-religion relationship in Malaysia is a complex matter wherein all non-Islamic religious relations are mediated by the state's preferential relationship with Islam, as befitting Islam's constitutional status as the religion of the country. Islam's status has meant that the Malaysian government is obliged and empowered to regulate and administer the Islamic religious sphere while staying out of any direct involvement in the non-Islamic religious sphere. As a result, administrative decisions involving Islam have been made largely without considering the interests of other religions. It should be borne in mind that such decisions are not necessarily intentional or by design. Quite often, it is simply that the concerns of other religions do not fall within the ambit of the government, legally speaking. However, the practical effect of the government's involvement in the Islamic religious sphere has been the increasing intrusion by the government into the non-Islamic religious sphere. The intrusion of the government in the religious and social spheres of the non-Muslims has provoked a response by the latter to circumvent such intrusion. In this chapter, I will be discussing the response by the minority Christian community in Malaysia.

ETHNICITY AND RELIGION IN MALAYSIA

One of the major projects of all post-colonial states is the quest for a national identity that seeks to transform its diverse population into a modern nation. However, as Geertz (1973) had noted almost fifty years ago, the state's attempt at nation-building will inevitably run into the resistance of primordial sentiments (traditional identities and loyalties) that have a more concrete reality than that of the abstract notion of nationstate. What results from this encounter is a complex interplay between the state's nation-building project, and these traditional identities and loyalties that would deeply affect the political, social, and economic structures of a given post-colonial society. Malaysia has not escaped this fate.

Therefore, the Malaysian state's project that aimed at wholeness is mired with the contingencies of a plural society that reflects a basic division between the indigenous Malays and non-Malays. One needs to look no further on this issue than at the Federal Constitution of Malaysia. As with other modern constitutions, it explicitly carries the modern notions of citizenship. Interestingly, the same document also defines who is a Malay, a definition that carries with it certain social and political privileges.