When did Malaysians get so thin-skinned?

 

Sometimes one has to wonder when Malaysians became so reactionary and thin-skinned. That’s a rhetorical question, of course. We’ve always been thin-skinned, ever since social media came about and made idiots of all of us.

Before social media, idiots would say their piece in the public square, and be laughed out of town or have rocks thrown at them. These days, we call them influencers or appoint them to public office.

That said, we’ve hit a new level of being reactionary. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the outrage cycle has become almost constant, finding a home on social media usage as people flocked to platforms in ever larger droves.

Fury and anger are fomented and cultivated on TikTok and YouTube almost every other week, if not every few days.

Fertilised by a heady stew of conservative vs liberal discourse – insofar as people calling you slurs online is “discourse” – the cycle thrives on the cultural war between conservative “trads” who brandish religion like a weapon, and tradition-bucking, institution-destroying “woke” liberals looking to make all your children gay, transgender, communists, or whatever the societal demon of the week is.

People froth at the mouth over anything and everything in search of clout. They thrive on cheap clickbait, targeting our deepest fears and insecurities, playing on the harp of us versus them, whipping others into little frenzies that grow quickly beyond the internet, harming people, businesses and governments.

Despite decades of criticism flung around about “aping the West”, we’ve fully aped the West in how reactionary we’ve become.

Religious conservatives young and old now read from the American playbook on how to win voters and alienate people. We react to everything we see as an attack on traditional Malaysian values, said “traditional” values usually being a mishmash of racial and religious thought that has gained much steam in the past two decades.

Extremist views remain on the rise online, especially among the young. At the same time, hate speech has risen drastically.

To people who don’t spend all their time online, it would seem insane how constantly on X (formerly Twitter) we argue the provenance of the word “Keling”, and how acceptable it is to call Indians by that term (it’s not). We’ve even mimicked the West in their slurs: the word “pajeet”, a stereotypical slur used by racist Western Qanon/4chan users at the bottom of the internet barrel, is now beginning to make its rounds on Malaysian X, despite having no relevance to Malaysian society.

On the face of it, this seems like pretty inconsequential rock-throwing by the perpetually online and unemployed. And it generally would be, if not for the fact that actual rocks – or petrol bombs – are being thrown in real life, instigated by a million and one petty online arguments that boil over into dangerous action.

The case of the “Allah” socks and KK Mart is a prime example of this, as is the more recent case of the Vern’s shoes.

For some reason or other, five pairs of socks with the word “Allah” woven into their design were packed in with a shipment of hosiery from a China-based company to a supplier in Batu Pahat, Johor, and thereon to KK Mart’s Bandar Sunway outlet.

Images of the socks then went viral on social media. Everything that has happened since then has been a snowball of religious indignation, tinged with a sinister hue of racial fervour. What started out as a case of mistaken shipping has become so big that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong himself has had to step in to call for peace.

It’s gone beyond what it was. First it was justified anger at the wanton misuse of religious terminology (whether the word itself is the sole province of the Muslims is another discussion). Now, it’s become a tantrum taken too far, with misplaced indignation as to the perceived attack on Islam.

To be clear to the reactionaries, this criticism is not an attack on Islam. It is a criticism of people who use the religion as a weapon against the secular and its perceived slights. And I’ve said “perceived” twice so far because in many cases, these slights are less malicious than the aggrieved would like to believe.

The case of the socks, blatant as it was, can be attributed to mainland Chinese capitalist idiocy and their outlook of making and selling whatever they can for quick money.

The case of the Vern’s shoes, however, is much more foolish. It involved the brand’s logo, embossed on the sole of its shoes, that some Muslims said looked much too similar to the name of Allah. But as some Muslims have already said, one would have to really squint at the offending logo to see any connection with the name of Allah.

It’s a shoe. It looks like a shoe. It is not the word “Allah”.

But tensions are high now, and prime for exploitation.

No doubt, no one but the Muslims themselves understand the actual importance of the name of Allah in Islam.

But we must also recognise that Islamophobia does not manifest itself in ways so petty. It is much more overt – and does not, for example, take the time to predicate a brand’s entire logo on a Muslim concept. That would be completely counterintuitive for the truly Islamophobic.

But this is an understanding that the world today does not encourage us to have. We are encouraged to flip out over the smallest, most imperceptible of attacks that would not be apparent to anyone who thinks.

Those calling for the boycott of brands understand this. Umno Youth chief Dr Akmal Saleh, the head of the KK Mart boycott, understand this. He understands his target audience very clearly. He knows that his followers seek tension and drama, and that his arrogance in positioning himself as a defender of religion gets him followers.

He is a politician who has jumped at the opportunities that social media provides, having well and truly become an “influencer”. Never mind his assertion that race plays no role in this, or that the move is not political: his position remains so, putting himself and his party as an equal or better alternative for Malays than “green wave” warriors Perikatan Nasional.

He says that he will not let up until Malay Muslims are truly “healed”. When will that be? When the business is properly humiliated for mucking up as it has?

All of these metrics are unquantifiable, and perfect for rabble-rousing. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.