Farish Noor is one of those individuals whom are able to open a door that I never thought was there in the first. At a public lecture of his which coincided with the Kuala Lumpur Alternative Book Fair today, he opened a door for me which I thought I had opened earlier. As it turned out, I did not open the door as wide as I should have.
Farish Noor delivering a public lecture at Central Market, Kuala Lumpur.
Over a year ago, I asked why the sanctioned history of Malaysia — practically the history of the Malays in this country — began only with the establishment of the Sultanate of Malacca, despite the fact that there were prominent states — especially Srivijaya — that existed well before Malacca. There is, in my opinion, too much stress on Malacca and too little emphasis granted to earlier history of this region. I went on to suggest that religion is the answer but the answer is long-winded.
At the public lecture which concerned itself with the beginning of racial classification in Malaya, Farish Noor declared that the constitutional definition of Malay in Malaysia is flawed. The Constitution of Malaysia, specifically Article 160, defines a Malay as a Muslim, speaks the Malay language and practices the Malay custom. From there on, he derived a conclusion with the intention of proving the absurdity of Article 160. Based on the Article, by right, he said, there was no Malay prior to the coming of Islam to the Malay Peninsula in the 13th and the 14th century.
The reductio ad absurdum by Farish Noor provides a more direct path to the answer than what I had managed previously.
One reply on “[1637] Of reducing Article 160 to absurdity”
Nice! :) Like it or not, the Malay racial classification in Malaysia IS based on religion. This is intertwined with the taboo subject of the Malays in Malaysian having no freedom of religion to convert out of Islam. Hence paving the way for that convenient but flawed definition of what a ‘Malay’ is.
The Article 160 definition deviates from most other ‘racial classifications’ where emphasis is stressed more on the geographical origins and culture of a group of people. Most don’t include religion in them because those people’s religious affiliations are heterogeneous.