Categories
Politics & government

[3001] The tension between popularity and values in political parties

The recently concluded PKR party elections and its ongoing repercussions have attracted a lot of criticisms.

One thread of such criticisms that I find interesting is the allegation that newer party cohorts are not guided by the original ideals of the party, which I would think was progressive politics (or at least center of left in the traditional sense before the Overton window was blown and opened wide). With PKR’s rhetoric now appearing to sway to the right, I feel the criticism has some truth in it.

The criticism goes further that by stating that most of the newer members are attracted to the party because of power (and the potential wealth it brings) more than anything else, leaving reformasi as an empty slogan.

There is some empirics to back that sentiment. Since 2018 when the party first tasted federal power, its membership has grown by approximately 44% to 1.2 million people (as of March 2025). That growth has turned PKR into the second largest party in Malaysia by the total membership in a very short time. And the sequence of events seems to fit nicely into the criticism: power came first and then a surge of membership followed.

Trivia: DAP, the party with the most seats in the Dewan Rakyat, has about 0.2 million members only. Meanwhile, Umno is the largest party with about 3 million members by far (although arguably, the figure should be lower given various defections in recent years; for instance, Bersatu in 2023 claimed to have 0.7 million members and it is reasonable to suspect a large portion of that number were former Umno members). Just behind PKR is Pas with approximately 1 million members.

With a surge in membership in such as short time that PKR experienced, it is inevitable the original value would get diluted. Even a perfect cadre system would struggle to process that kind of surge.

Yet, that criticism is only one part of a whole equation. There is a greater tension at play here due to the nature of democracy.

In a democratic framework, any political party with aspiration for power must enjoy popular support. That almost always translates into more membership and this is true for either power-membership or membership-power causality. And political party should want new members either way.

In the case of PKR, if the criticism is on target, then it suggests that the party’s the application vetting process along with its imperfect cadre system, might be at fault. But there is also a dilemma here: how tight does one need the process to be?

Too tight and one might suffer what Umno suffered back in the 2000s where complaints were often made that joining required support from the existing local leadership that was hard to get (because nobody on the inside wanted to share the gravy). Too loose, then one could argue PKR is a case in point where the party’s values get diluted.

Categories
Economics History & heritage Society

[3000] When history is blurry: reading Patricia Crone’s Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam

Mecca has a long history. It is so long parts of its history is blurry and backed by uncertain sources. Pre-Islamic sources at best give imprecise descriptions of the city, if the city described is indeed Mecca. Meanwhile, traditional understanding of Mecca’s history before and during the coming of Islam was only developed much, much later.

The orthodox understanding takes the city as an important commercial and religious center prior to the coming of Islam. This much at least has been impressed upon the minds of many who grew up as a Muslim. The seige of Mecca during the Year 570 (the Year of the Elephant), the presence of the Kaaba and Qurasyhi caravaneers are proofs of Meccan commercial and religious prestige during pre-Islamic period.

In the 1987 book Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Patricia Crone challenges the mainstream history of the city by juxtaposing non-Muslim sources with traditional Islamic ones.

The first half of the book goes with great length inspecting trade pattern of various goods that concerned Byzantium, Egypt and Syria in the north, Persia and India (including the Malay Archipelago) to the east, and Yemen and Ethiopia to the south. These chapters are really encyclopaedic entries more than anything else and reading them is a little more exciting than reading a high-level mathematical textbook.

But the conclusion is phenomenal in that all the major trade routes between these locations involving major commodities did not go through Mecca. For most goods by 400s and 500s, sea routes were preferred. The advent of sea trading meant Byzantium could now circumvent the Arabs. In limited cases where land travels were necessary, Mecca was miles off known routes. Meccan trade existed only in the sense that the city folks needed provisions and not in a way of an entrepôt or an emporium. Add to the fact that Mecca was too dry to support a large population with no special commodity of its own that others lacked, it is hard to reject Crone’s idea that Mecca was not a major trading center in pre-Islamic Arabia.

The second part of the book, I feel, stands on shakier grounds. Here, Crone argues Mecca was also not a major religious center. She states that there were three other pilgrimage locations nearby that were bigger than Mecca. This is an echo of her more controversial thesis written in a 1977 book, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World. But how does that negate the idea of Mecca as a major pre-Islamic religious center is something that I struggle to process and ultimately unconvinced. This is where other readings will come in handy.

The final part of the book explains two bigger themes that worked in the background: first it is about the state of Meccan (and the wider Arabian) society in the 500s and second, about the unreliability of sources of pre-Islamic Mecca history.

On the first subject, Crone understands Muhammad and Islam as a materialist instead of an idealist phenomenon. That is, the prophet and the religion were primarily a pan-Arabian proto-nationalist movement rising up against Byzantium and Persian influence (instead of the rise of a religion fighting the immorality and decadence of the Jahiliyah period).

On the second subject, these traditional Islamic sources were written long after the rise of Islam—the primary example being Ibn Ishaq—should be considered as an act of storytelling instead of history-writing. Crone argues many of these sources provide contradictory details of the same events. Crone goes on to claim that these Islamic sources place the need to tell ‘the moral of the story’ above the need to record history accurately. That is to say, outside proofs must be considered when (re)constructing the history of Islam.

Categories
Economics History & heritage Politics & government

[2999] The three shadows of the 2000s and an eulogy for Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

Malaysia has not had many Prime Ministers, despite what it may have felt like during the merry-go-round contest that took place from 2020 until 2022. In this age where the idea of modern state is taken for granted, it is easy to forget that the modern country is young.

Even with a short modern history—modern meaning post-colonial—it is easy to claim that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is one of those Prime Ministers who history are looking back kindly. Kindly, because when he passed away earlier this week, most have only kind words for him. Some wept. Kindly, because of the subsequent Prime Ministers who had far worse controversies and were utterly divisive.

The contemporary kindness appears incongruent to the intense emotions and harsh condemnations many felt and said no more than twenty years ago. Living through Malaysia of the 2000s, it is difficult to ignore the dramatic loss of popular support his administration underwent. I suspect there is a recency bias at work here for a majority of people. We forget.

Or maybe we forgive and forget because Abdullah was a kind man, and people generally return kindness with kindness.

I further suspect that we forgive because we now understand that many of the things that happened in the 2000s making life difficult for Malaysians was beyond his control. Living in the shadows of the 1990s was not easy for many. And living in the shadows of Mahathir Mohamad was difficult for Abdullah. But I think most importantly, we were all living in the shadow of a rising China, which could only be understood by looking back from the future, which is today.

The rise of China was a competition Malaysia struggled to address back then. The result is obvious. In the 1990s, Malaysia had a far higher per capita GDP relative to China’s. Now, it is about the same with China slightly ahead.

The rapid industrialization of China caused some Malaysian deindustrialization in the 2000s. As a result, Malaysia’s income growth of the 2000s was slower than it was in the 1990s. Already used to rapid growth, the 2000s growth slowdown (as I wrote in The End of the Nineteen-Nineties) felt like an era of unmet expectations. The Abdullah government fell victim to that. The unmet expectations fueled various dissatisfaction that were amplified by a newly popular and evolving technology that was the internet. Everything else—including the strong rise of energy prices that eventually led to the massive subsidy liberalization shock—was a second-order effect caused by China’s rise.

Abdullah cannot be blamed for China’s success. The story of China was a long-coming world-history in the making. He tried his best but the fact is, it was a tough condition for Malaysia that many would-be leaders would struggle to address. That condition was only reversed by the quantitative easing of the late-2000s/early 2010s, yet again beyond Malaysia’s control, however Najib would later like to claim.

We understand this—explicitly by those who keep a close tab on the global economy, and implicit by those who do not—and thus we forgive.

And from what we know, he had forgiven us too. Such was a gentleman.

Categories
Books & printed materials

[2998] Reading Dina Zaman’s Malayland

When communal conflicts hit the Malaysian headlines like how it did during the recent temple controversy near downtown Kuala Lumpur, identities would experience a kind of centripetal force. In this case, the Malay identity gets solidify in the popular imagination as hardliners—politicians and ordinary people alike—rally up the crowd to join in the fight. This is true with the other communities too. When egging for a fight, it is easier to rally up a generalized identity: Malays versus Indians or Muslims versus Hindus. To appeal to emotions, simplify. The controversy has been dialed down, but the ill-feeling still lingers.

How do we fight off that centripetal pull all with the hope of undoing all those riled up emotions?

Within that context, one is tempted to take the idea of centripetal forces on identities and invert it. Instead of generalizing, maybe it is useful to de-generalize and make identity a complicated idea, which it is.

If that is so, then reading of Dina Zaman’s Malayland will prove useful. In it, the author lays out the various Malaynesses that exist in contemporary Malaysia and briefly show interest of these subgroups is not always aligned and in fact almost always diverges. The Malays are not a monolithic community, a fact that is sometimes easy to forget.

The book is not an encyclopedia of Malay subgroups and the author explores what she seems to consider the most influential ones only. She provides actual individuals behind the labels. In that way, the book feels less theoretical and more real.

One criticism that keeps popping at the back of my mind while reading Malayland is its length. There are multiple instances where the author approaches the interesting (such as events that shaped the subgroups) but almost every time that happens, the elaboration does not happen. The path ends abruptly. It is a tease and the readers are left to their own devices to satisfy their curiosity.

But there are different ways to read. Different books require different approach. To approach one in a way it is not meant to be read will left any reader dissatisfied. I think here is where the foreword by Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin Tuanku Muhkriz is useful in framing the right approach:

The subjects in Malayland show case an even broader set of identities than its predecessor of seventeen years before—Dina’s 2007 book I am Muslim. [Page IX. Malayland. Dina Zaman.]

The purpose of Malayland, if I as a reader could be so daring, is to show the existing diversity within the Malay community. It is neither an encyclopedia nor an academic work, which several critics of Malayland, I feel, implicitly rest their (and mine too) criticism upon. The book is window for those who do not already know of identity diversity and there are many who still do not know while living in a cocoon where their outside world is a caricature of prejudice. For them, Malayland is a hook to change a worldview.

Categories
Conflict & disaster

[2997] The broken city walls of Mandalay

All countries are beautiful in their own way and Myanmar is a beautiful country indeed.

When the country just emerged out of its isolationist cocoon and optimism was sweeping through its population in the early 2010s, I had the opportunity to witness the liberalization of Myanmar firsthand by travelling approximately 2,000km for about 3 weeks from Yangon to Mandalay by buses, trains, cars, motorbikes and boats. What surprised me at first back then was that Yangon did not strike me as a particularly poor city. It seemed the democratic dividend was paying off.

But as with most countries, the reality in the capital does not always reflect that of the whole country. Kuala Lumpur feels and looks like an advanced ultramodern economy when taken out of context of the whole of Malaysia.

There is beauty in urbanity but it was the slow progress of modernity in the 2010s that made the country beautiful. Beyond the limits of Yangon within its glittering Shwedagon Pagoda and a confusing mix of brand new right-hand and left-hand drive vehicles on the road all at once, life was slower. The old ways still held fort. When I reached the famed romanticized city of Mandalay after a long train ride sitting next to a Buddhist monk, I felt I was entering a different country.

Myanmar has since slided back. The Rohingya crisis has made the country less popular in the region. Democratic progress has been rolled back. Civil war has taken hold. When I found myself travelling in northern Thailand recently, driving along the Myanmar border, Thai troops maintained high alert, stopping everybody with no exception to ensure that the situation remained safe on this side of the world. On the back of the range that divides Thailand from Myanmar, I could spy deep into the Shan state. Things were quiet and they gave no clue of the raging civil war happening far across the mountains.

Somewhere in Sagaing across the Irrawaddy river from Mandalay (I cannot recall the location exactly now but I think it was in Sagaing), there was a large cuboid temple standing 40 to 50 meters tall. The temple had a large crack running from the top to the bottom caused by an earthquake during pre-colonial times. Back then as I stood in wonder of the crack, that earthquake was an academic curiosity.

A strong earthquake has struck Mandalay this week and pictures of devastation are coming out online. Bridges have collapsed. Pagodas cracked and crumbled. Houses gone. Parts of the old city walls now suffer from gashes. I have been to some of those places and it breaks my heart to see them in such devastation.

I hope we Malaysians will help Myanmar even in our current state of politics where racism, xenophobia and general meanness is on the rise. Malaysia is the chair of Asean this year and Asean has failed the people of Myanmar in so many ways. This is a chance to redeem ourselves from all those failures, even if the window is only for partial redemption.