“Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence.”
- Jack Weatherford, ‘The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire’
Sometime last year the influential - in the American context - Brookings Institution published two articles that highlight the problem with the Umno state’s manipulation of Islam in this country. I referenced the first article in my previous piece. The second by James Chin, titled, ‘Malaysia: Clear and present danger from the Islamic State’, correctly points out the sub rosa agenda of committed Islamists to subvert the idea of a post-Merdeka Malaysia.
He writes: “The use of political Islam is a deliberate move by a group of committed Islamists hidden in the highest level of the Malaysian state and bureaucracy to create a Malay-Islamic state, not a mere theocratic state. This ideology is unique and separate from the caliphate project pursued by IS.
“In the Malaysian version of the Malay-Islamic state, Sunni Islam’s supremacy is indivisible from ethnicity, i.e. the Malay race. In other words, the unique Malaysian brand of Sunni Islamic supremacy is fused with intolerant Malay nationalism. This highly committed group is trying to build the world’s only Islamic state where Islam and one particular ethnic group are one and the same.”
Umno friends of mine tell me that the culture of Umno is defined by two sets of tensions. The first are the fast fading bureaucrats who carry out their duties as if they exist in a secular country only to run into the machinations of the theocrats who view everything through a Malaysian Saudi-influenced Islam lens.
This is why the best of secular intentions are thwarted by religious mendacity. These tensions are magnified by the internal Umno conflict between Umno chieftains scrambling for power by waging war against their proxies. And let us not forget that each governmental agency has protected fiefdoms whose main objective is to service the gravy train.
For decades under the long Umno watch, infiltrators who desire an Islamic state as defined by James Chin, have worked to shape a Malay polity comprised of the locals, constitutionally-created Malays and a brand of Sunni Islam that would maintain a political hegemon in power indefinitely.
This notion of ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ does not exist in an Umno vacuum. This was a concept that was endorsed by non-Malay plutocrats and for some time, the majority of the Malaysians voting demographic. The so-called social contract was the seed of our destruction as a unified multiracial/ethnic polity.
This is our history, or as Napoleon would argue, our lies agreed upon - the idea that an official religion would act as carrot and stick to a young democracy. This is how a so-called Islamic state deals with the issue of Islamic terrorism...