FMT:
Troubled world of Malay academia – how to make it shipshape
Close ties to political power turn the Malay academic sphere into an echo chamber and allows for bold claims backed by bad or no research
Every once in a while, like every year, some academics, actual or self-appointed, working or retired, will set off a firestorm with some controversial take on topics guaranteed to create a public uproar.
In Malaysia, the easiest way to create a public uproar is to touch on race or religion, or both.
Given the large number of Malaysian universities and the pressure their academics face to publish or perish, what passes for scholarly research can at times be controversial.
Right now, we’re knee-deep in yet another controversy. And it involves ships again!
😂😂😂
I’m puzzled why ships tend to figure prominently in these controversies. If you remember last year’s controversy, that was about ships too.
I’ll spare you the actual substance of the current controversy itself. I’ll just generously describe it as an honest, well-meaning effort by an academic to uphold the dignity of race and religion.
Given the support but also the brickbats that the said academic received, it’s difficult to say whether it has been a positive or a negative experience for her and for her university employer.
But I’d have to say that for the Malays and Muslims for whom she went to bat, at least for one Malay and Muslim in particular (me), the impact of her claims has not been good.
Why does this happen?
The reason we have such academic controversies is this: when you start with the conclusion and only then look for evidence to back it up, you’re likely to end up being wrong or misleading.
Let’s explore the environment where these issues originated – the Malay academic world. This is a world disproportionately represented by those in “Malay exclusive” disciplines, meaning ones which are almost exclusively Malay-related.
These include actual Malay studies – language, literature, history etc. But these also include the various subjects and branches of the study of Islam.
And there’s certainly a growing number of universities, both public and private, which are totally dedicated to, or are based on, Islam.
These are on top of the large and growing number of faculties and schools teaching Islamic-related topics in regular universities.
OK, is there anything wrong with that? Opinions vary depending on how you see education and the future of our young people, especially if you’re a Malay-Muslim.
But here’s the point I want to make. Given the almost-exclusive Malayness of the Malay and Islamic academic sphere, and how close they’re tied to the political powers in Malaysia, things can fester.
‘Revealed’ knowledge
First, you’re in a huge echo chamber. There aren’t many substantive debates or disagreements that you’d find in more rigorous academic areas such as business or the humanities or science and technology.
There isn’t much motivation or rewards to be a deep seeker of knowledge through hard and demanding academic efforts such as original research and experimentation.
The fact many of these academic areas actually claim they’re dealing with “revealed’ knowledge makes this point very clear.
“Revealed” knowledge doesn’t require making and testing and amending hypotheses, advancing testable claims or even rigorous peer reviews.
But “revealed” here must also be understood to mean revealed to me. Come study under me, and I, too, can share and reveal the (revealed) knowledge to you.
Leadership of the ‘learned’
There’s a hierarchy of the “learneds” who do the revealing, often based on academic seniority or the bureaucracy or just university or national politics.
This hierarchy and our still-feudal culture indoctrinate us to accept that any such revelations cannot come to us directly without going through the “learneds”.
This of course applies to the study of theology or divinity of any religion with their own “revealed” knowledge, and not just Islam. By itself, it shouldn’t stop anybody from diving deep into faith and religion to become a learned person.
But there’s also no guarantee that such a deep dive will necessarily produce a good human being. A person can be “learned’ perhaps but not necessarily good. And not necessarily a good academic either. That we’ve seen again and again.
Education, including university education, is a very political matter, whether in Malaysia or anywhere else. The difference is how bad the politics are, and whether things are getting better or worse.
Malay national politics was filled with educators – lecturers and administrators and especially school teachers – from the start.
Malay-ness sells
The impact of educators on national political parties has gone down a lot since then, but national politics is still quite intense within academia.
If you’re within the “Malay-exclusive” academic areas such as Malay or Islamic studies, you’d feel you’d have to use your position and career to promote the Malay political agenda.
That often means a huge motivation to either introduce new knowledge and perspectives on Malay and Islam, or to right what’s perceived as old distortions at the hands of parties not sympathetic to the Malay agenda – orientalists, colonialists, assorted non-Malay parties.
Again, this by itself isn’t wrong. History is written by winners – the old history written by the old winners is just as susceptible to the biases and prejudices of those winners.
This should partly explain the regular surfacing of controversial takes, almost all of which position or reposition the history of the Malay and by extension, Islam.
The good ones
There certainly are enough academics who conscientiously pursue the truth through good-faith research and publication. Some of the Malay giants of academia, especially those from decades ago, truly deserve their reputation for deep and trailblazing papers and books.
But the proliferation of positions and hence career opportunities within these Malay-exclusive academic areas also mean less filtering and debating and especially little or no sanctioning of poor quality work.
Some Malay academics feel it’s their academic duty to further the narratives of the Malays being major regional or even global players on the world’s historical stage.
Nobody ever gets fired for being a Malay academic champion or hero. In fact, the rewards for being one can be considerable especially for your academic or political career.
And conversely, very few want to take on the entire academic hierarchy and orthodoxy by challenging and confronting any claims made by these people.
Flights of fancy
I’ll spare you the actual substance of the current controversy itself. I’ll just generously describe it as an honest, well-meaning effort by an academic to uphold the dignity of race and religion.
Given the support but also the brickbats that the said academic received, it’s difficult to say whether it has been a positive or a negative experience for her and for her university employer.
But I’d have to say that for the Malays and Muslims for whom she went to bat, at least for one Malay and Muslim in particular (me), the impact of her claims has not been good.
Why does this happen?
The reason we have such academic controversies is this: when you start with the conclusion and only then look for evidence to back it up, you’re likely to end up being wrong or misleading.
Let’s explore the environment where these issues originated – the Malay academic world. This is a world disproportionately represented by those in “Malay exclusive” disciplines, meaning ones which are almost exclusively Malay-related.
These include actual Malay studies – language, literature, history etc. But these also include the various subjects and branches of the study of Islam.
And there’s certainly a growing number of universities, both public and private, which are totally dedicated to, or are based on, Islam.
These are on top of the large and growing number of faculties and schools teaching Islamic-related topics in regular universities.
OK, is there anything wrong with that? Opinions vary depending on how you see education and the future of our young people, especially if you’re a Malay-Muslim.
But here’s the point I want to make. Given the almost-exclusive Malayness of the Malay and Islamic academic sphere, and how close they’re tied to the political powers in Malaysia, things can fester.
‘Revealed’ knowledge
First, you’re in a huge echo chamber. There aren’t many substantive debates or disagreements that you’d find in more rigorous academic areas such as business or the humanities or science and technology.
There isn’t much motivation or rewards to be a deep seeker of knowledge through hard and demanding academic efforts such as original research and experimentation.
The fact many of these academic areas actually claim they’re dealing with “revealed’ knowledge makes this point very clear.
“Revealed” knowledge doesn’t require making and testing and amending hypotheses, advancing testable claims or even rigorous peer reviews.
But “revealed” here must also be understood to mean revealed to me. Come study under me, and I, too, can share and reveal the (revealed) knowledge to you.
Leadership of the ‘learned’
There’s a hierarchy of the “learneds” who do the revealing, often based on academic seniority or the bureaucracy or just university or national politics.
This hierarchy and our still-feudal culture indoctrinate us to accept that any such revelations cannot come to us directly without going through the “learneds”.
This of course applies to the study of theology or divinity of any religion with their own “revealed” knowledge, and not just Islam. By itself, it shouldn’t stop anybody from diving deep into faith and religion to become a learned person.
But there’s also no guarantee that such a deep dive will necessarily produce a good human being. A person can be “learned’ perhaps but not necessarily good. And not necessarily a good academic either. That we’ve seen again and again.
Education, including university education, is a very political matter, whether in Malaysia or anywhere else. The difference is how bad the politics are, and whether things are getting better or worse.
Malay national politics was filled with educators – lecturers and administrators and especially school teachers – from the start.
Malay-ness sells
The impact of educators on national political parties has gone down a lot since then, but national politics is still quite intense within academia.
If you’re within the “Malay-exclusive” academic areas such as Malay or Islamic studies, you’d feel you’d have to use your position and career to promote the Malay political agenda.
That often means a huge motivation to either introduce new knowledge and perspectives on Malay and Islam, or to right what’s perceived as old distortions at the hands of parties not sympathetic to the Malay agenda – orientalists, colonialists, assorted non-Malay parties.
Again, this by itself isn’t wrong. History is written by winners – the old history written by the old winners is just as susceptible to the biases and prejudices of those winners.
This should partly explain the regular surfacing of controversial takes, almost all of which position or reposition the history of the Malay and by extension, Islam.
The good ones
There certainly are enough academics who conscientiously pursue the truth through good-faith research and publication. Some of the Malay giants of academia, especially those from decades ago, truly deserve their reputation for deep and trailblazing papers and books.
But the proliferation of positions and hence career opportunities within these Malay-exclusive academic areas also mean less filtering and debating and especially little or no sanctioning of poor quality work.
Some Malay academics feel it’s their academic duty to further the narratives of the Malays being major regional or even global players on the world’s historical stage.
Nobody ever gets fired for being a Malay academic champion or hero. In fact, the rewards for being one can be considerable especially for your academic or political career.
And conversely, very few want to take on the entire academic hierarchy and orthodoxy by challenging and confronting any claims made by these people.
Flights of fancy
😂😂😂
Coupled with the Malay society’s overweening respect for hierarchy and the “learneds”, this often means that unsubstantiated claims on national or even international forums are accepted or even glorified.
Some of these claims are fantastical and at times ludicrous. The ships-related ones over the last few years, including the claim that the first human to circumnavigate the globe was a Malay, are certainly strong examples of these.
I would love to laugh and poke fun at them, and I certainly have done enough of that. But I’m often more saddened by the lack of awareness about how damaging such academic claims can be outside of their own academic circles, especially the Malay-exclusive ones.
This isn’t the way to achieve excellence. Allowing bold claims backed by bad or no research only open us up to ridicule.
We’ll forever be seen as “syiok sendiri” – being full of ourselves – and insecure and unserious people on stages bigger than the ones we’ve constructed for ourselves here in Malaysia.
We’ll always be defending or justifying bad or even laughable academic claims, while disincentivising or even punishing those who truly care about the pursuit of academic excellence from doing their best.
But it’s not too late. I do hear some reasoned and even sharp rebuttals by other Malay academics against this trend, proving we do have enough smart and brave people in the academia who care about doing the right things.
Academic integrity is still possible if we keep pushing for them. That ship hasn’t sailed – yet.
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