Anwar should look at his backyard, not India on minority issues

Anwar should look at his backyard, not India on minority issues

S Thayaparan
Published: Aug 26, 2024 9:00 AM


"I will not deny the fact that you also have to grapple with some serious issues affecting minorities or religious sentiments. But our hope is that India continues to play its rightful role because I mentioned to Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi, that these were the years when Nehru and Zhou Enlai and Sukarno and Nyerere were there standing up for the Global South against colonialism and imperialism and to struggle to ensure that we recognise what humanity is about, what freedom is all about, and what dignity of men and women."

- Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim

COMMENT | People who were triggered by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s comments while in India (the quote that opens this piece) have been sending me anecdotes and factoids when it comes to how India treats its minorities compared to Malaysia. I understand the sentiment.

I have no desire to defend India’s track record when it comes to this issue because honestly, India is not the issue.

The issue is that Malaysia, under Anwar’s leadership, seems to have no interest in grappling with serious issues affecting minorities and the religious sentiment of this country.

Indeed, beyond the rank hypocrisy of his statement, what we are dealing with is a political class which believes and sustains an ethnocracy - what do you think “ketuanan Melayu” (Malay supremacy) is?

Yet, we find another ethnocracy offensive, what do you think a “Jewish state” is?

This, of course, is why the international community really does not give much credence to what Malaysia thinks about the Palestinian issues and merely snickers at the performative spectacle of the aid given.

This extends to the India statement as well and how it was received by political pundits and expressed in think pieces in India.

Partisans often say, if not this coalition government, do you want the “Green Wave”? The “Green Wave” is in fact a religious extremist concept which would affect minorities.

This is why I believe that religious extremism is an existential threat to this country and why enabling them is such a dangerous strategy.

Anwar talks of freedom and dignity but he says that as a prime minister of a country where minorities are subject to unilateral conversions, banned from using certain words, banned from attending taxpayer-funded institutions, labelled as “kafirs” infidels.

This is also where the majority are banned from minority places of worship, with little Napoleons patrolling against cultural diversity and these are but a few flashpoints that minorities had to endure for decades.

And let us not forget about how the government made a U-turn on Act 355 - which was a religious dream of PAS and now has been given the green light by the Madani administration.

Remember what Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng said back in the day about this law - “This is due to PAS’ dismal record of outright hostility or failing to respect the non-Muslim community with its leaders wanting to curtail the constitutional rights of non-Muslims or diminish the participation of non-Muslims in everyday life or the government, not just in matters of religion.”

Nation of inequality

Yet, we are told we live in a country of equals and the prime minister speaks abroad as though we are.

We live in a country of equals where a young non-Muslim/Malay kid cannot dream of becoming the prime minister because this would spook the Malays.

We live in a country of equals where Malay special privileges supersede the basic rights of access to education and affordable housing in this country, with nobody caring about our sensitivities.

When KK Mart stores were subject to a boycott campaign, enabled by an Umno Youth leader, what was the response of the state?

Indeed so confident that his religious and racial provocations would go unanswered, Umno Youth chief Dr Muhamad Akmal Saleh continues his provocations with senior leaders claiming that this is his role in Umno, which means that this is his role in this coalition government.

Umno Youth chief Dr Muhamad Akmal Saleh


For the most part non-Muslim communities, although having to struggle, have overcome (for the most part) the systemic dysfunction against them and this has been used against the non-Muslim communities.

Our success in the face of systemic discrimination has been weaponised against us. If we are successful, this is at the expense of the majority of Malays. If we stand up for our rights which necessarily means everyone’s rights, we are warned not to spook the Malays.

Of preacher, Zakir Naik, Anwar said - “We do appreciate the concern expressed by some quarters here (in India), but I think as long as Zakir does not create issues between Malaysia and India and the security of the nation, I think we let the matter rest.”

Except, of course, that Zakir is creating issues between Malaysians. Here is a preacher who has not only antagonised the Indian community but enabled the worst excess of the religious right and somehow the prime minister does not think that he is one of those serious issues affecting minorities in this country.

Dr Zakir Naik


And let us keep in mind what then deputy home minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed said of Zakir - “He is more Indian and South Asia-centric but some of his ideas can be used here. That's why he was awarded the Tokoh Maal Hijrah award.”

What exactly those “ideas” are was not mentioned.

And I do not want people to think that India does not have serious issues when it comes to minorities in the country.

They have serious issues. Those issues involve bloodshed and massacres, hence no matter what people send me about how India treats its minorities, it really misses the point.

I am more interested in the reality that Anwar wishes to hide with his hypocritical stance, which is the real Malaysia and what it is becoming.

What we are witness to in this country, is the slow train wreck of a looming theocracy.

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”