Opinion: Terrorism finally arrives in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — With much of the Muslim world beset by violence, Malaysia had prided itself on its “clean” record, with no major episode of terrorism on home soil.

That badge of distinction was forfeited in the early hours Friday when a Kuala Lumpur church was firebombed and two more attacked in a nearby suburb, apparently in response to a New Year’s Eve court ruling that allowed a Catholic newspaper to use the word Allah to refer to the Christian god in its Bahasa Malaysia edition.

Allah is an Arabic word meaning “one god” that predates Islam and is used by Christians in a number of other Muslim countries without controversy.

Five more churches were attacked over the weekend into Monday, leaving the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) to fend off accusations that it has stoked ethnic and religious tensions for political mileage among the country’s Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the population and dwarf the country’s 9-percent Christian minority. The Muslim majority in Malaysia, which is comprised mainly of ethnic Malays (all Malays are Muslim), has undergone a sharp uptick of religious conservatism in recent years.

Prime Minister Najib Razak sharply denied that the ethnicity-based party instigated the unprecedented outbreak of anonymous violence.

“Do not point the fingers at UMNO or anyone else, we have always been very responsible,” he said at a press conference.

Najib introduced the concept of 1Malaysia shortly after taking office last year so that “Malaysia will be the sum total of all [its] races” governed by “mutual respect and not just tolerance.”

But a number of his administration’s actions and statements have flown in the face of the slogan’s spirit.

Around the time that Najib introduced 1Malaysia, he appointed his cousin Hishammuddin Hussein to home affairs minister. It was a curious move considering Najib’s stated aim of uniting Malaysia. Hishammuddin had a history of inciting ethnic and religious tensions, most notably when as education minister he waved a traditional Malay dagger at UMNO’s annual assembly that was read by many to be a threat to Malaysia’s minority ethnicities — the Chinese and Indians. In his nine months as home affairs minister he has opposed human rights rallies but defended Malays who paraded a severed cow head last year in protest of the construction of a Hindu temple.

No major UMNO leader urged restraint in the days leading up to the planned protests against the “Allah” court ruling,” while the cousins — who have typically opposed freedom of expression on the putative grounds that it would threaten national stability — went as far as to defend the planned protest.

While no one has yet been arrested in connection with the church attacks, it can be said that the government’s ethnicity-based double standards have fed notions of superiority and given license to the upsurge of intolerance plaguing the Malay community.

"The irresponsible conduct of fanning the emotions by UMNO leaders has brought about this dangerous situation,” said Malay opposition politician Zaid Ibrahim in a press statement Friday. “What we see today confirms that this country is being governed not by engagement, consultation, sophistication or persuasion but by brute and mob force.”

History emboldened UMNO up to this point. Blessed with a docile citizenry, the party came to conduct its communal brinkmanship without fear of major consequence. Now it finds itself in the unenviable position of having to rein in a situation that eerily hints at the tipping point Malaysians have long feared: a brazen spate of ethnicity-based violence that begets more of the same.

At a minimum the face-saving myth of harmony that Malaysians have clung to in a bid to impress the world now hangs in tatters. That sanitized lie came by way of sloganeering, a tightly controlled media and billions spent on eye-catching infrastructure projects intended to make Malaysia appear both modern and progressive. The myth now laid bare, tourist numbers may drop. But it may also force Malaysians to look squarely at the depth of the rot in their midst and to take a more proactive approach to repairing relations between ethnicities and across religious groups. The early signs are good. One hundred thirty Muslim NGOs have reportedly volunteered to help ensure the safety of churches around the country. The Muslim CEO of a bank donated RM100,000 (around $30,000) on behalf of the bank for church reconstruction. The government plans to hold an inter-faith dialogue, after having shot down the idea in the past.

It remains to be seen, however, whether these initial gestures of good will will correspond to a humbler more inclusive approach to nation-building. Beyond the media glare, there are signs that Malaysians are retreating into the pattern of not talking through unsettling issues across ethnic lines. That tendency helped maintain a tenuous peace but engendered deep ethnically-based resentments that appear to have played a hand in the recent spate of attacks.

It reminds me of something Prime Minister Najib told me three years ago when I pointed out to him that Malaysia’s three major ethnic groups — the Malays, Indians and Chinese — have confessed to me some pretty awful feelings they have for one another. Najib said that was fine, so long as each group kept their resentments within the four proverbial walls of its respective community. This was to, in effect, treat the symptoms rather than the cause, and of course one day one of those walls would come crashing down. The day of reckoning arrived on Friday. UMNO and Najib will now have to look past the four walls for real solutions.

Ioannis Gatsiounis, a New York native, is a Malaysia-based journalist and author whose recently released debut of fiction, Velvet and Cinder Blocks, details a planned attack on a Christian landmark in Malaysia. His blog is breaklines.wordpress.com. His selected articles and essays on Malaysia are compiled in Beyond the Veneer: Malaysia’s Struggle for Dignity and Direction.