point: in the past, he explained, elites only dealt with elites, and so Muslims would visit Chinese houses because all were part of the same cosmopolitan circle. But now newly middle-class Chinese are having to deal with newly middle-class Muslims who are fierce about their dietary restrictions.
Chinese and Indians know Malay, but the Malays, whose Islamic fervor is felt mainly in the cities, speak no Chinese and Hindi. Malays are also synonymous with the urban poorâMalaysiaâs salient problem, as it is for so many developing countries. Tensions abound, in other words, kept in check by an oil-and-gas-fueled consumerism, a plethora of social welfare organizations, and an unemployment rate that is very low by the standards of the developing worldâ4 percent by some estimates. Crucially, there have been no ethnic riots for over four decades, and despite different ethnic communities living apart from each other as in Sri Lanka and Fiji, there have been no ethnic wars and insurrections as in those places.
And so Malaysia, despite its divisions, constitutes a comparatively successful postcolonial experience, in which millions haveâwe should not forgetâbeen lifted out of poverty and social mobility enshrined.
The glittering vista of economic and technological dynamism that is contemporary Malaysia did not happen by accident. It is, to a significant extent, the product of one man: Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, a medical doctor who was prime minister from 1981 to 2003. The youngest of nine children, Mahathir was born in 1925 in a semirural slum in Alor Setar, in northwestern Kedah state, with its overtones of Islamism, and would not become prime minister until he was fifty-six.From the time of his youth money was a constant problem. In short, he had a difficult upbringing and before achieving power spent decades rising through the hurly-burly of local politics (with all of its discrimination against those from the socioeconomic margins like himself), so that once he had achieved power he was determined to do something dramatic with it. Truly, he constructed his governing worldview on his very personal experiences. During World War II, while he saw cruelty firsthandâthe bayoneting of a British soldier by Japanese troopsâhis overall impression of the Japanese occupation was of Malay âbackwardness and incompetence.â Soon after the war, while in modern Singapore, the utter lack of sophistication of his fellow Malays was etched deeper into his memory, as he witnessed them in comparison to the more modern and urbanized Chinese and Indians. It was this nose-to-the-ground sensibility about the crudeness of daily Malay life that allowed him to see a âpent-up reservoir of ill-feelingâ between Malays, Chinese, and Indians in advance of the intercommunal riots in 1969 that saw hundreds die of wounds from knives, machetes, and crowbars.
Mahathirâs rise in politics is ascribed to his ability to capture Malay resentment toward the other, more advantaged ethnic groups. Unlike the Chinese and the Indians, who had vast homelands to which to return, the Malays had nowhere else to go, and yet these
bumiputra
, or âsons of the soil,â Malay and not, felt dispossessed in their own land, even as they made up about 60 percent of the population. In his 1970 book,
The Malay Dilemma
, he upheld the indigenous Muslim Malays of the Malacca Strait and the southern littorals of the South China Sea as the âdefinitive race,â whose language non-Malay immigrants like the Chinese and Indians would simply have to learn. Muslim Malays would be in control of the bureaucracy, armed forces, police, judiciary, and other pillars of the state, as well as of the various monarchies. There would be a tyranny of the majority, in other words, something that made the nineteenth-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill worry about new democracies. 21 Indeed, Mahathirâs solution to Malay backwardness
Chinese and Indians know Malay, but the Malays, whose Islamic fervor is felt mainly in the cities, speak no Chinese and Hindi. Malays are also synonymous with the urban poorâMalaysiaâs salient problem, as it is for so many developing countries. Tensions abound, in other words, kept in check by an oil-and-gas-fueled consumerism, a plethora of social welfare organizations, and an unemployment rate that is very low by the standards of the developing worldâ4 percent by some estimates. Crucially, there have been no ethnic riots for over four decades, and despite different ethnic communities living apart from each other as in Sri Lanka and Fiji, there have been no ethnic wars and insurrections as in those places.
And so Malaysia, despite its divisions, constitutes a comparatively successful postcolonial experience, in which millions haveâwe should not forgetâbeen lifted out of poverty and social mobility enshrined.
The glittering vista of economic and technological dynamism that is contemporary Malaysia did not happen by accident. It is, to a significant extent, the product of one man: Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, a medical doctor who was prime minister from 1981 to 2003. The youngest of nine children, Mahathir was born in 1925 in a semirural slum in Alor Setar, in northwestern Kedah state, with its overtones of Islamism, and would not become prime minister until he was fifty-six.From the time of his youth money was a constant problem. In short, he had a difficult upbringing and before achieving power spent decades rising through the hurly-burly of local politics (with all of its discrimination against those from the socioeconomic margins like himself), so that once he had achieved power he was determined to do something dramatic with it. Truly, he constructed his governing worldview on his very personal experiences. During World War II, while he saw cruelty firsthandâthe bayoneting of a British soldier by Japanese troopsâhis overall impression of the Japanese occupation was of Malay âbackwardness and incompetence.â Soon after the war, while in modern Singapore, the utter lack of sophistication of his fellow Malays was etched deeper into his memory, as he witnessed them in comparison to the more modern and urbanized Chinese and Indians. It was this nose-to-the-ground sensibility about the crudeness of daily Malay life that allowed him to see a âpent-up reservoir of ill-feelingâ between Malays, Chinese, and Indians in advance of the intercommunal riots in 1969 that saw hundreds die of wounds from knives, machetes, and crowbars.
Mahathirâs rise in politics is ascribed to his ability to capture Malay resentment toward the other, more advantaged ethnic groups. Unlike the Chinese and the Indians, who had vast homelands to which to return, the Malays had nowhere else to go, and yet these
bumiputra
, or âsons of the soil,â Malay and not, felt dispossessed in their own land, even as they made up about 60 percent of the population. In his 1970 book,
The Malay Dilemma
, he upheld the indigenous Muslim Malays of the Malacca Strait and the southern littorals of the South China Sea as the âdefinitive race,â whose language non-Malay immigrants like the Chinese and Indians would simply have to learn. Muslim Malays would be in control of the bureaucracy, armed forces, police, judiciary, and other pillars of the state, as well as of the various monarchies. There would be a tyranny of the majority, in other words, something that made the nineteenth-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill worry about new democracies. 21 Indeed, Mahathirâs solution to Malay backwardness
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