Christmas and the multicultural riddle
Salbiah Ahmad
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There were musings if Rais Yatim had a fall from grace when he became the arts, culture and heritage minister in Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s government.
Whatever the untold reasons for this move, his quick response to douse the flames to a fiasco over the exclusion of particular Christmas carols signaled that perhaps there is some real hope in our multicultural project.
It was quite unthinkable for a lot of Malaysians to have Christmas sans its traditional carols, where Jesus Christ is mentioned. There is no cause for the celebration of Christmas by this exclusion.
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The sentiments expressed by the director of the Kuala Lumpur-based Catholic Research Centre, Rev Father OC Lim that the omission “for political gain” is outrageous, scandalous and sacrilegious is a shared concern.
When the New Straits Times carried the minister’s denial of a ban on Dec 13, the grouses were nipped, leaving us completely in the dark as to who bungled between the ministry and the several facilitators.
I knew about the Christian celebration of Jesus’s birth at an early age because my late father would take the younger children to the office Christmas party.
He refused to allow us to eat in homes of non-Muslims, but was happy enough to bring us to the office Christmas party where we ate from paper plates, sang carols and have Santa give out those delectable presents!
Muslim tradition holds Mary and Jesus in high regard. In fact there is a whole chapter in the Qur’an, the sura Maryam, which retold the story of the creation of Jesus. Jesus is referred to as the “son of Mary”.
This reference in Muslim tradition demonstrates the significance of the miracle of the child conceived without the biological function of a father.
The issue of Muslim celebrating Christmas is apparently a hot item not only in Malaysia. The recently hacked site www.muslimwakeup.com carried a comment on the debate among Muslims in North America as well.
Entitled, ‘A Muslim Christmas?’, editor Ahmed Nassef was of the opinion that the fact that most Christians believe in the divinity of Christ does not make Jesus off limits to Muslims as Jesus is a Muslim prophet as well.
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With a slew of unsettling complaints of obtaining prior permission of Muslim neighbours for keeping dogs as pets, the ban of sale of pork in open markets, food in school canteens and Muslim prayers in school assemblies this year, the purported ban on carols would have dashed whatever year-end goodwill and cheer.
It was remarkable that the carol bungle was not protracted as these other issues and was handled admirably I thought by church leaders and spokespersons, the media and the minister. Malaysians can discuss and negotiate purportedly sensitive issues like religion with levels heads.
The multicultural riddle
Which brings us to a whole new question - should the ministry under Rais casts its “culture” net wider?
We are feted often enough to what can be termed as an ‘organised representation of cultural difference’. A quick visual of open houses, cultural festivals and multi-ethnic parades of dances and costumes come to mind.
There is nothing very wrong with these, its great for tourism for one thing, but perhaps we need something else to gel in a multicultural project.
Anthropologists think it is a problem where the ‘celebration of diversity’ merely parades the distinctiveness of each group. It reifies each group and fixes cultural borders as if the borders are natural.
We have mulled over the question of whether one can become Malay - this is definitely not a question of blood or descent. Once we speak the language, adopt a Malay dress, one can be Malay so to speak, despite an ancestry of different bloodlines like a Chinese mother or an Indian grandfather or an Arab ancestor.
I have friends who identify themselves as native (orang asal of Sabah or Sarawak) where they have a native ancestor.
Some weeks ago when the news first broke that the refugee community of Rohingyas would be accorded refugee status, a letter in malaysiakini queried if refugee communities, which are Muslim and have ‘Malay lifestyles’ can be classified as Malays.
Malaysiakini recently reported that the Malaysian Muslim League protested being categorised as “mamak” (baroque for Malaysian, Indian-Muslim).
Its president, Haja Najmudeen Kader states that mamaks are Malays and hence bumiputeras. He reasoned that the recognition of mamaks as Malays and bumiputeras is based on the constitution.
Stating the obvious
It can be said that he is merely stating the obvious. Article 160 of the Federal Constitution, defines a Malay as one who professes Islam, speaks Malay and conforms to Malay custom. If one is a ‘properly constituted’ Malay or a native, one is bumiputera under the New Economic Policy.
I have been told by a mamak friend, that the matter is sometimes a mere technicality. He did a deed poll to eliminate the term “anak lelaki” (son of) in his name. According to him, this deletion makes him Muslim, Malay and bumiputera. He claimed that this was the ‘inside’ procedure acceptable at the National Registration Department.
Another person I know did not have the “anak lelaki” in his name, but he is Indian Muslim, not Malay or bumiputera. Another friend of Indian and Chinese parents, both of whom are Muslims, is categorised as bumiputera. The interesting question arises as to when a Malaysian is Malay enough or Muslim enough to be bumiputera?
At the moment, we cannot be sure which minister or department has the power or responsibility of converting Malaysians into bumiputeras. I am unaware if this matter is an official secret. Perhaps the good ministers, Rais Yatim or even Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz may shed light in due course.
The fact of the matter is that although the state/government or self-appointed elites appear to mete out ‘rules’ over one’s right to choose a grouping along ethnic or religious lines, it is actually the people themselves who choose.
As our lives intersect, there is a crisscrossing that occurs in real life that is often not reflected in a ‘reified’ understanding of fixed cultural borders.
We may refer to nationality to promote civic rights, refer to religious cultures to reclaim freedom of conscience or moral dissent and invoke ethnic cultures to protest discrimination or call for affirmative action.Yet, in real life, there are no fixed ‘natural’ cultural borders.
Identity is not fixed
Social scientists say that cultures change all the time. Multiculturalism should not reify national, ethnic or religious identities. Identity is not fixed beyond question and change. No identity is ‘natural’.
Some social scientists say that identities may be manipulated as “natural or “fixed” as a strategy of social action by unelected elites, who then exploit or mislead their supposed beneficiaries.
Different cultural identifications in a multicultural society cut across each other’s reified boundaries. In fact, studies of multicultural realities show that people claim their reified identities and crosscut other identifications. It was found that people need to do both to reach personal, family or community goals.
People know when to reify one of their identities and when to question their own reification. This “double discursive competence” develops processes of multicultural convergence, which is the simultaneous reorientation of otherwise separate traditions upon a new point of cross-cultural agreement.
This point of agreement need not belong to majorities alone, although it may have hegemonic force. This is the multiculturalism to aspire to.
Suggested reading
Gerd Baumann (1999), The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic, and Religious Identities (New York and London: Routledge)
Talal Asad (1993), Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press)
