Poser for Sabahans – Hang together or hang loose?

Sabah mufti Bungsu@Aziz Jaafar's suggestion to "meMelayukan" the tribes in Sabah is 'allowable' under the federal constitution's definition of 'Malay'.

KOTA KINABALU: The other day Sabah mufti Bungsu @ Aziz Jaafar confessed an inconvenient truth at a symposium on “Malay Leadership Crisis” held in Purtajaya.

He candidly labelled as “successful” the mass conversions or “Islamisation movement” of Sabahans in the 1970s by state and federal leaders, which according to him played a role in making Islam the religion of the state.

The conversion programme helped overturn the original 20-point agreement drawn up before the formation of Malaysia that stipulated North Borneo would have no state religion, and the Islamic provisions in the then Constitution of Malaya would not apply to North Borneo.

However by 1973, the Sabah Constitution was amended by the state government to make Islam the religion of the state.

According to the 2010 census Muslims now make up 65.4% of the state’s population, up from 37.9% in 1960.

All this is not new. The banned book ‘The Golden Son of the Kadazan’ about the late Peter Mojuntin the Kadazan leader from Penampang who died in a mysterious plane crash on 6th June 1976, makes references to the government’s hand in the mass conversions happening in Sabah.

At last week’s event titled “Facing Foreign Agenda (Mega)” which was jointly organised by Muslim NGOs – Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA) and Pembina in Putrajaya – the topic somehow turned to ethnic groups in Sabah.

How should those from the various ethnicities in Sabah who had converted to Islam be viewed and treated?

Did those in the room realise, the mufti wondered, that many of the indigenous Muslims in the north Borneo state still refused to call themselves Malay, unlike ethnic groups like the Javanese and Bugis in the peninsula who today identify themselves as Malay?

“We need a programme to ‘meMelayukan’ (make Malay) these tribes…,” he said, pointing out that the need for this was urgent by explaining how close the Barisan Nasional government come to being toppled in the 13th General Election.

“If Sabah and Sarawak did not vote in the last polls, maybe we would have had a change in the government,” the mufti said.

“For the sake of the Malay Muslim community, these tribes who are already Muslims must be made Malay,” he said, adding that the Kadazan themselves were an “invented” ethnic group made up of the Dusun people, who are mostly Catholics.

Sabahans voicing contempt

Talk about stirring a hornets nest. The outrage was immediate.

Seen as a bid to upgrade the local natives to Malay status, it was ridiculed as “inappropriate”, “arrogant” and “hurtful”.

Local politicians and ordinary Sabahans took to the Internet to express their contempt.

They said the reclassification of the Kadazan, Dusun, Murut, Rungus, Bajau and other ethic groups in Sabah and Sarawak as Malay was a political slogan to hide the continued “ethnic cleansing” for the Borneo people.

To be fair, Bungsu was only saying what other leaders before him have long said and what native leaders in Sabah and Sarawak till now ignored.

The Malaysian Constitution defines the Malay as someone born to a Malaysian citizen, is a Muslim, habitually speaks the Malay language and adheres to Malay customs.

The definition is loose enough to include a broad range of ethnicities all of whom can be defined as “Malaysian Muslims” and it therefore has no bearing on what constitutes an ethnic Malay anthropologically.

Will the Sabah native fit in? Definitely. Do they want to fit in? No.

Their concept of a being Malaysians differs with that of the ethnic Malays in the peninsula and parts of Indonesia.

Hypocritical talk of 1Malaysia

Native Sabahans are proud of their Borneo ethnicity and have no intention of discarding their culture and joining their bumiputera counterparts on the other side of the South China Sea.

They want to remain unique and true to themselves.

But in all the hubbub, something sticks out 50 years on after the formation of the new nation.

Lost in all this is the definition of a Malaysian. It is just one example of a problem that plagues the whole of the country. Who are we?

Leaders including the religious kind love to talk about solidarity. But government policies put in place allow one community or the other to take it hostage only masks self-interest in hypocritical talk of 1Malaysia.

Most see the latest ethnic talk as a naked attempt to hang on to an unfair system that benefits one group disproportionately and, if the rancour in cyberspace is any indication, they are putting on notice those playing with fire. It’s a risky business.

In the meantime, Sabahans looking at the shimmering new roads and other infrastructure in the peninsula and seeing in comparison the wretched and dilapidation ones in the state, don’t find it hard to decide what is absurdity and mischief.