3 cheers for multiculturalism
By Terence Netto
It is an idea that many consider to be the blood plasma of the Malaysian nation: multiculturalism.
But who these days talks about a Malaysian nation? Who bothers about the notion of multiculturalism, the ballast that keeps the idea of a Malaysian nation afloat?
Apparently, some people still do, and very important personages at that!
Last week in a matter of days, three significant voices were raised in support of the idea of multiculturalism as an important prop of the Malaysian nation.
First, the Sultan of Selangor advised Muslim authorities in the state not to discourage their co-religionists from the Bon Odori festival on grounds that the annual Japanese cultural rite sports elements that will adversely affect the faith of Muslims.
He held that the festival held no danger for Muslim beliefs and Muslims should not be barred from attending.
The federal religious affairs minister Idris Ahmad, who is from PAS, had suggested that aspects of the festival reeked of apostasy. As such, Idris said, Muslims should keep clear of Bon Odori scheduled to be held this year at the National Sports Complex in Shah Alam on July 16.
His stricture ignited a debate in which opinion congealed around two positions: one held that Bon Odori was subversive of the Islamic faith, and the other, that it was a harmless rite of passage marking in Japanese culture the transition from one climate season to another.
It wasn’t difficult to hear in the first position the “mind-forged manacles” that resound “in every ban, in every voice” which the poet William Blake warned would impose smothering brakes on thought.
The second position resonates with the view that only in an openness to how others differ from us that we can know what is of value in us and what is of value in them.
A few days after Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah of Selangor gave vent to his views that Bon Odori was kosher, the Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Shah, amplified the theme of multiculturalism as being a vital prop of the nation’s prosperity.
Sultan Nazrin, launching a book, The Malays: Pathfinders And Trailblazers, lauded its thesis that it was the openness of Malays to multicultural flows that had brought prosperity to the Malaysian nation.
He said the book “informs us, [that] for many centuries the lands of the Malay archipelago have been open to flows of trade, capital, labour and ideas, and it is this very openness to foreign influences that has shaped who we are and helped to make us successful.”
Sultan Nazrin was simply saying that glasnost (openness) had built up the Malaysian nation. Therefore, preserve it.
Barely had Sultan Nazrin’s exhortation died down than Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob weighed in with a call for the adoption of the Islamic concept of “tasamuh.”
He said the Arabic term held connotations of tolerance and open-mindedness which were ideal for the realisation of the Keluarga Malaysia (Malaysian Family) concept he espouses.
He iterated that a diversity of cultural norms was acceptable so long as it did not contradict Islamic beliefs. In other words, let a hundred flowers bloom so long as these do not fly in the face of the Islamic religion.
Thus, within a week, the fading blossom of multiculturalism received three inspiriting calls for its revival.
These calls in themselves would not invigorate multiculturalism in the polity, but coming from two royals and the top politico in the space of a few days, they are an oasis for the parched and famished multiculturalists of the country.
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
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