Islam versus Asia's Chinese diaspora

Wang Gungwu, Director, East Asia Institute, University of Singapore, Project Syndicate

When Malaysia's prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, recently announced that he intended to resign, Malaysians of Chinese descent joined Mahathir's Malay party loyalists in demanding that he reconsider. When Mahathir agreed to stay on, if only for another 16 months, the sighs of relief from these Chinese Malaysians were the loudest of all.

That ethnic Chinese Malaysians rallied to Dr. Mahathir's side marks a quiet revolution in Malaysian politics, one that demonstrates how much Mahathir's nationalist image has softened during his 22 years in power. It also shows how much Malaysia's ethnic Chinese have changed in their views about the nationalist movement that once seemed so antagonistic to them.

When Southeast Asia's colonial rulers were overthrown four decades ago, ethnic Chinese often shunned the nationalist movements that fought for independence. Some movements saw the local Chinese as outsiders or as intrinsically disloyal for seeming to have benefited disproportionately during the years of imperial rule. Across the region, anti-Chinese communal violence was widespread. In the decades since, many Chinese remained suspicious of political parties with ties to the former national liberation movements.

In Malaysia that fear is dissipating. Malaysian Chinese citizens now view Mahathir as a bastion against a new form of violent extremism: The threat posed by Muslim fundamentalism.

Such a bulwark is something members of the vast Chinese diaspora across Southeast Asia need, not only in Malaysia, where Islamic extremism remains a small threat, but in Indonesia, where thousands, including Chinese, have been killed and injured in rioting in recent years, and where thousands among the Chinese have seen their property damaged or lost.

Among most of Southeast Asia's ethnic Chinese, the presence of even a hint of allegiance to a secular distinction between faith and state in a Muslim leader is admired like a precious gem. When found among Islamic believers like Mahathir, evidence of secular tolerance represents a rare sign of modernity and commitment to progress.

Dr. Mahathir has always been a hard-headed modernist. Lately, he has begun to admit that the "Malay first" policies he has promoted since 1969 have failed to produce the skilled Malay elite essential to a modern knowledge economy. Mahathir calls for young Malays to work harder, despite knowing that this is an unpopular thing to say.

Much of this new tone in Malaysia's ethnic politics has gone unnoticed due to the furor surrounding Mahathir's efforts to discredit his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. This campaign to denigrate Anwar cost Mahathir's party, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO), much support among ethnic Malays.

Indeed, during the 1999 national elections, Mahathir retained power only with the help of Chinese voters. Now non-Malays hope that he will reconsider the idea of special treatment for ethnic Malays. Such reform, however, remains anathema among Malays.

Malaysia's ethnic Chinese are also impressed by Dr. Mahathir's skillful response to American demands to combat terrorism. The Premier used this opportunity to soften his anti-Western image by re-affirming his modernist and secular position against those who sympathized with Islamic extremism.

By doing so he revitalized the multi-cultural base of the National Alliance that has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957. All of this helped rally Malaysia's Chinese community to his side.

Contrast this with the Chinese in Indonesia, a country where everything secular and modern is associated with political and cultural conformity to the nation-state. For 30 years, former president Soeharto systematically discriminated against ethnic Chinese, while at the same time favoring a few select Chinese cronies, who helped his family and military colleagues make huge, ill-gotten profits.

For the indigenous majority who remained poor, such cronyism spawned an image of the Chinese as corrupt and unscrupulously greedy.

Despite memories of the slaughter of Chinese during the anti- communist purges of the 1960s, Indonesia's Chinese were unprepared for the intense hatred shown in the riots of May 1998, when arson and looting, as well as reported gang rapes of numerous Chinese women, battered the Chinese community. Such violence still casts a shadow over ethnic relations in Indonesia.

Successive Indonesian governments headed by presidents B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri all welcomed the Chinese to play their customary leading role in business. Yet Indonesian officials waver from assuring the Chinese that they retain equal rights as citizens, and they have allowed various forms of discrimination to run rampant.

Today's tensions between Indonesia's secularists, religious believers, and various Muslim extremist groups has taken the spotlight off the Chinese, allowing many to resume their economic role under conditions of growing uncertainty. But the personal security they crave, and which Malaysia's ethnic Chinese are achieving, is as far away as ever. Indeed, Indonesia is unlikely any time soon to produce a leader they can depend upon in ways that Malaysia's Chinese now rely upon Premier Mahathir.