At the beginning of his book, he writes of the people of Malaysia: "Being in balance they resisted each other's defence, and each was compelled to recognize the other as an inescapable, ineradicable element of his own reality... Great streams of history, and of peoples, had for centuries met at that spit of land at Asia's south-eastern extremity. Sometimes they merged; often they clashed. But always they would move from then on together, whether they liked it or not, and something new and wonderful would emerge as they did so." It is a picture fixed in his mind as, after five years of living abroad, he returns to re-discover his homeland and heritage.
Reality struck him as he moves around and towards the end of his book, his feelings couldn't be hidden as he arrives by train in Kuala Lumpur, his destination: "To imagine any one of these characters, these stereotypes, smiling at another, saying hello, helping with each other's baggage, exchanging addresses, becoming firm and lasting friends... Such a mad and impossible fantasy. So be it. I had never been one for Utopian dreams; I was almost abashed at the emotions roiling within me as the train squealed and clanged to a halt at Platform Four. What have the masses ever meant anyway? Let them carry on as they will; their only relevance comes once every five years, and even then they've never been much of a bother to the half-a-dozen or so individuals who've always been the only people actually to run this country."
A decade later, in 2002, we see the country through Farish A Noor's The Other Malaysia - Writings on Malaysia's Subaltern History. Farish is described as a political scientist and human rights activist, and this book consists of some of his articles that had been published in the online news daily Malaysia Kini. The themes are wide-ranging, covering history, culture, social change and everyday life.
Farish wants to take us beyond "a static and monological account of a nation (resulting in) the creation of a monolithic historical discourse with a two-dimensional historical subject at the centre... male, Malay/Bumiputera, middle-class and Muslim." In the chapter 'Many Other Malaysias', he sees the National Day parade as a good example of "the subtle but not-too-subtle inconsistencies and unstated biases that lurk within this national discourse... We see practically all the major and minor races and ethnic communities represented, but the way in which each ethnic community is given a place and role within it tells us a lot about our shared assumptions of which are the dominant races and which are not."
The language is slightly academic in style but don't let this deter you. The reward is a broader insight into the undercurrents of Malaysian politics and society. In 'Of (misguided) Pride and Prejudice', he laments, "...this culture of slander and hate-mongering has become the norm in what is often called a traditional society steeped in its much-lauded 'Asian values'... We continue to delude ourselves with the claim that our social development and progress have been guided all along by the positive and praiseworthy values of Islam. But what kind of Islamic society, and what sort of Muslims, would indulge in the muck-raking that we have seen in this country over the past few years?" Sadly, ten years on, not much has changed or, depending on one's perspective, much has changed for the worse.
Farish's 2009 book, Qur'an and Cricket - Travels Through the Madrasahs of Asia and Other Stories', is an easier read as it moves along like a travelogue, albeit one that visits Islamic seminaries from Patani to Pakistan. He says, "... my choice of research placed me in a situation where travel would be the order of the day; and where the nomadic life became my own." This particular research engulfed him for five years, during which "I've been to, and lived in, some of the grandest institutions of Muslim learning on the planet... However in the course of my research I've also visited some rather dodgy institutions... This other world of itinerant scholars and students, hidden and shut out from the rest of the world, retains for me an allure that straddles the frontier between the exotic and mundane; it stands as living proof that there is more than one world, and that here in the midst of the everyday are pockets of alterity and difference that few of us come face-to-face-with."
Islam is also the subject of a book by Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin who has earned a reputation in Malaysia as a controversial public intellectual. Published in 2010 and translated by U-En Ng from articles written in the Malay language, Islam in Malaysia: Perceptions & Facts attempts to separate Islam "from superstition, prejudice and blind adherence to self-serving 'religious' leaders." The 47 articles examine a range of issues, including apostasy, environmental conservation and religious leadership.
Coming back to Malaysian politics and society, Teohlogy - The Word According to Patrick Teoh comments upon and asks questions of this country that we live in. He writes of what many of us are thinking and talking about when we are with friends - in a language that is authentically Malaysian. He tells it as it is in a humorous style that leaves you shaking your head and laughing your socks off. However, his stories, all of which originally appeared in Off The Edge, are also enough to make you angry.
In one article, he writes about the lack of accountability: "Do you remember the big hoohah over speed limits for commercial vehicles? Hai-yah! Very easy only. Put that little blinking light on top of their roofs, which will blink and emit a beeping noise when they go over their speed limit. Okay, everybody must put okay?... So all the commercial vehicles installed the gadgets. And for a while it was nice to see these lorries with the little yellow pimples on the roofs and occasionally hear the tell-tale beeps. But it didn't last long. The lights stopped blinking even at 100mph. After some time, they fell off altogether. Nobody asks and nobody is accountable..."
This one should make us cringe: "We Malaysians love 'to use other people's buttocks as our face'. Don't look at me; it's an old Chinese saying. Anybody that makes it into the big time on the international arena, be it sports, the arts, entertainment, we are super fast in discovering in them a chromosome of a Malaysian connection. Hey, Miss Georgia 2006! Her father is Malaysian. Never mind that he's maybe emigrated for decades... Hot babe VJ, Paula Malai is now as Malaysian as nasi lemak since she married one of us. But even before that we laid claim to her beauty and talent, simply because she chose to be based here for reasons best known to herself..."
Of politics: "We first practised People Power in the march towards gaining independence from the British... But life became so good after that that we began to relax. A little too much. And then we lost our sense of People Power altogether. We became dependent again. We were colonised again - this time by the people we chose to govern us... Our People Power came to such a state that eventually, things got bad again. We began to suffer a little bit of this and that and ask, 'Eh! What happened? How can this be happening one?'... We knew something was not right... (but) we had lost the ability to think, to do things for ourselves... And we went back to talking and grumbling in pubs, mamak stalls, restaurants or under coconut trees. But this time we added to our tokkok sessions the phrase, 'Haiyah! What to do?' Just before we ordered another jug of beer or glass of teh tarik."
Of course, Malaysians write fiction too - enough to fill another post.
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