It all gets filed in the "religion=insanity" basket for me.

Heh: geeks and music nerds...? :)

I'm actually surprised that it's The Star which refused to publish it - I would have thought it would have been the New Straits Times which would have refused but what do I know. Then again, papers in Malaysia have a tenuous relationship to the truth, politically speaking. There's still a lot of power that the government has to quash unpopular sentiment or "undesirable western influences", especially when it comes to the muslim population. And papers there are fairly unwilling to criticise the powers-that-be.

As to the reason why this piece would be particularly unpopular in the eyes of the ruling coalition, it's that the largest competition for Malay votes comes from a conservative Islamic party (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, or PAS (yes, it's PAS, not PIS for obvious reasons)). As a result UMNO (the United Malay National Organization), the ruling "malay" party in the ruling coalition, tries as much as possible to appear more conservatively muslim now that they feel like their popularity in the northern states is being lost to PAS. A lot of this has to do with corruption scandals and the late-90's Anwar-vs-Mahathir brouhaha which left UMNO with egg on its face, to a great extent. Anyway, it's still a chickenshit decision on the part of the newspaper editors.

nomis: I wasn't sure how to explain what MetaChat was without getting into the whole "my coworker dragged me into it" thing and the whole "you don't really have to read Metafilter to read it" thing.

ooga: I really feel for my friend quixotic_sense because she's a strong independent Malay woman trying to work in the system to get positive changes done. But it will happen! And we will burn down Carthage!

Ooo... strong independent Malay women are teh hawt. Okay, strong independent women are teh hawt anyway, but anyway...

As for Malaysia and civil liberties, I've been optimistic and skeptical for the way things have been going back there. The powers-that-be are fairly entrenched and the most viable political opposition are a bunch of religious nutjobs (PAS) which leaves the secular progressives with little hope of effecting actual change in the system since UMNO wants to pander to the religious nutjobs to keep their votes. What makes things worse, though, is that the religious nutjobs have a constitutional right to be busybodies and prosecute their wingnuttery on the malay populace with no oversight. In fact, recent reports of them getting involved in things like their forcing the burial of a hindu man as a muslim because of some apocryphal remarks and completely freezing out his wife have made me wonder about how far on the fringe these nutjobs remain and their influence on non-malay/muslims (because in Malaysia malay==muslim and you don't get a choice about that).

You do get a choice. You can choose to be ostracized by your family and get no support from friends and the government. But very few want to make that choice, even at the cost of their freedoms and what say they want in the government.

I've been following my friend's struggles for a while now and I can't imagine what it would take for the moderates over there (there MUST be moderates!) to finally say, "Enough is enough! We should be able to give our women the rights that other Muslim women are enjoying and it's NOT going to destroy the family structure or whatever..." It seems like such an uphill battle.

Ah, but you're referring to personal choice and not whether you're muslim in the eyes of the religious police. Technically, if you declare you're not muslim they get to rule that you're apostate and an abomination before god and that your blood is halal and that they can then legally go after your neck and that it's all perfectly legal and above civil law. Most people, especially in urban Malaysia, practice the public face of what's expected of them and are pretty good folks who wouldn't really care if you wanted to choose to be a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Wiccan or whatever. (Sure, they'd gossip and point fingers but they wouldn't *stop* you from doing it). There are strong conformist forces in Malay society and ostracization will probably ensue, but the average person's not going to out-and-out stone you to death, it's just that the government-sanctioned religious police can and will do it if anyone pointed them your way. Okay, I don't know if they'd stone you to death, but I'm sure they'd come up with something.

But I've always thought that Malaysia mirrors a lot of the problems that the US faces on these issues of race and religion. And don't get me wrong - Malaysia gets some of this stuff right. But just like we're faced with a choice between the Dems and the Republicans, there's not much choice going on over there, politically. As for what it would take to make the moderates stand up and take control? What would it take for the moderates to stand up and take control over here?

I'm quixotic_sense's friend too - she's not Malay, she's from a Sarawakian/Sabahan indigenous populace. And she reads MeFi ;)

Not all Muslims are Malay - QS's family isn't necessarily Malay, and my family is Bangladeshi. It is true that being a Malay automatically makes you Muslim, and you don't really have a choice in religion - it's noted in your ID and you get lumped into certain legal and governmental issues because of it.

The moderates do want to stand up and take control; thing is, laws like the Internal Securities Act don't really allow for such a thing. You'd get arrested instead.

divabat: O what a small Internet this is!

I remember what QS said once about how some people have a problem with the fact that they don't have a choice in religion based on where they were born and I think that's wrong. But what do you do when the overwhelming majority of the populace is that way? I keep thinking about the Philippines and how the country's 80% Catholic. Thank the gods that there aren't too many faith-based initiatives over there, but at the same time I can understand how the Muslim minority feels being surrounded by people who don't understand their faith. Doesn't mean they have to kidnap people for ransom money, though. But then again, those are extremists...