Islam versus Asia's Chinese diaspora

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.