Malaysia silent on Muslim
retaliation By Ioannis Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - The ire that has swept through
the Muslim world since Buddhist Thailand's crackdown on
peaceful demonstrators in its underdeveloped southern
region last month is understandable given the
circumstances: 78 Muslims in Tak Bai district suffocated
to death when 1,300 protesters were stuffed into police
trucks for more than six hours.
In neighboring
Malaysia, condemnation has been more vocal than
elsewhere. The atavistic Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS)
called the incident "a Holocaust of the modern era",
while former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad compared
the region's unrest to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and urged Thailand to grant autonomy to Thai Muslims. A
popular state-controlled daily said the Thai government
now "surpasses Israel's record of aggression" against
Muslims.
In some ways such censure comes with
the territory. Malaysia's Muslims, like Thailand's, are
of Malay ethnicity. And Malaysia is Thailand's closest
majority-Muslim neighbor. But it also suggests that
Malaysia has a long way to go to fulfill its
self-proclaimed tag line as an exemplary progressive
Islamic nation.
After all, the same voices of
concern that lashed out at the Thai government's actions
have been silent on the issue of retaliation, which in
the past two weeks alone has seen Thai Muslims bomb a
bar, behead a Buddhist plantation worker and conduct
drive-by shootings. Schools in the south have been
temporarily shut amid growing fear that Muslim rebels
will try to abduct Buddhist teachers and students.
Sadly, such civilian-targeting all too closely
mirrors Muslim "liberation" efforts throughout the world
- from Chechnya to Iraq to Darfur to Bali. What is
perhaps more troubling, though, is the response these
acts have garnered: Islam's voice of moderation has been
drowned out, or gone missing, it seems.
In
multi-ethnic, "model" Malaysia, this trend is especially
worth noting, said Sheik Hizzuddin, 22, a Malay
business-administration major at the International
Islamic University here.
Malaysian Muslims "are
getting swept up in what's happening in Iraq and
Israel", Hizzuddin said. "We have stopped understanding
that violence will breed more violence." Malaysian and
Thai Muslims, he added, are failing to see how their own
behavior could mitigate the situation.
Indeed,
the dozen or so Malaysian Muslims interviewed for this
article, from college students to professionals, seemed
to evince Hizzuddin's observation.
Said a
distributor of computer-software systems here, "It is
not the duty of moderate Muslims to tell Muslims to go
moderate, but the duty of Western powers to look at what
they're doing and take an honest look at themselves
before the situation can be fixed."
Of those
interviewed, most said they agreed with the Holocaust
and Palestine analogies and approved of Thai Muslims
seeking revenge.
Said an information-technology
(IT) engineer, "As Muslims, we see and learn from the
Palestinian issue - and Thai Muslims feel like
Palestinians. What can they do?" Thailand's southern,
mostly Muslim provinces are underdeveloped and under
martial law. More than 400 people - mostly Muslim
insurgents - have died since violence began in January,
when assailants stormed an army camp in the south and
escaped with military hardware. Although most of the
non-Muslim victims have been government workers, monks,
and army and police personnel, Thai security forces have
been notoriously imprudent in counterattacks.
Mild-mannered Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah
Badawi stressed the security forces' brash actions at a
news conference after the Tak Bai incident. "We hope he
[Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra] will be able to
manage the situation without allowing the violence to
spread. It is important he manages it."
Some say
Abdullah, as a Muslim and a Malay, should have done more
to dissuade violent retaliation. Others say that as the
leader of a neighboring Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) country, and of a largely conservative
Muslim constituency struggling to adapt to the realities
of the modern world, his hands were tied.
And
yet Abdullah's decision not to warn against retaliation
comes at the expense of addressing the lack of
self-accountability plaguing much of the Muslim world,
known for a world view that amasses indignities like a
prized collection, to brandish as evidence of
victimization and persecution, and used to rationalize
brutal vengeance.
While this view has seen a
rise in extremist sympathies among Malaysia's Muslims,
they have avoided the temptation to act out on those
sympathies. There have been no large-scale terrorist
incidents on Malaysian soil, and Malays have done their
part to ensure peace with the country's Indian and
Chinese minority ethnic groups.
Some Malaysians
urge Thaksin to study Malaysia's approach to governance
that has maintained this peace. "You don't see the
Indians and Chinese here asking for autonomy," said the
IT engineer.
This, though, is no time for
Malaysia to congratulate itself, said Hizzuddin.
Malaysian Muslims, in this era in which evil "solutions"
are tempting ever more Muslims, must be vigilant in
"doing what the Koran teaches: balancing the world with
the religion. We can't think so aggressively toward
religion."
If this isn't diligently and
mindfully pursued, Hizzuddin said, it will further
eviscerate Islam and its image in the eyes of the world.
And the line of defense making the rounds - that Islam
is a great religion hijacked by a misguided few - will
begin to ring hollow - for the misguided few are gaining
sympathy, or else being pardoned. And for all practical
purposes, no religion is greater than the sum of its
believers.
Ioannis Gatsiounis, a New
York native, has worked as a freelance foreign
correspondent and previously co-hosted a weekly
political/cultural radio call-in show in the US. He has
been living in Malaysia since late 2002.
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