Darah Kacukan | Aug 1, 07 2:01pm
MALAYSIA's Malay leaders say 'do as I say, not do as I do' when it
comes to marriage
In early June, the Malaysian media blossomed with pictures of Prime
Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in the traditional Malay suap-menyuap
ceremony, exchanging bites of coloured glutinous rice with his new
bride.
This low-key but high-profile wedding followed another elite ceremony
in May when one of Malaysia's most eligible bachelors, the Raja Muda
(crown prince) of Perak, Dr Raja Nazrin Shah, finally got hitched at
the age of 50 in an unostentatious ceremony in Kuala Kangsar.
But these two weddings had something else in common, a characteristic
not much commented on in the media but clear to most Malaysians: in
both cases the brides were locally-born Eurasians.
The prime minister's new wife is Jeanne Abdullah, a friend and
relative of Abdullah Badawi's late wife, Endon, who died of
complications from breast cancer in October 2005. Jeanne had
originally been Jean Danker, a Catholic from a Eurasian family which
spans Malaysia and Singapore and who converted to Islam when she
married her first husband, Endon's brother Othman, from whom she was
later divorced.
The bride of Oxford and Harvard-educated Raja Nazrin, son of the
current Perak Sultan, who himself was formerly Malaysia's top law
official, is Zara Salim Davidson, a chemical engineer and the
daughter of William Davidson, a British-born Ipoh lawyer and his
Malay wife. She herself is a member of the Kedah royal house and thus
related to Malaysia's first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Raja
Nazrin has repeatedly spoken out against racism in Malaysia. Zara
considers herself to be very much a Malay despite her Eurasian blood.
These weddings thus represent what should be one of the triumphs of
Malaysia - its ability to break down racial and religious barriers
and subsume them into a broader Malaysian identity. Unfortunately the
elite all too often fails to preach what it actually practices. It is
a one-way street. Marry a Malay and you will become a Malay. You will
also become a Muslim and, the courts say, you will stay that way.
The good-natured Abdullah Badawi clearly has no problem with the
mixed racial ancestry of his bride, or with the fact that she was
baptised a Christian. Yet he heads a ruling party which is not merely
race-based but at times makes a fetish of Malay racial purity. And he
heads a government that supports the recent court decision refusing
to allow a Muslim to become a Christian, an act of supposed apostasy.
But in the eyes of some Christian fundamentalists, the gentle Jeanne
is also an apostate for having forsaken Christianity.
Others have identity problems too
Malays are not the only ones with identity problems. Scratch many a
Malaysian Chinese and one may also find a strain of Chinese
chauvinism, as is often the case in Singapore. But in Malaysia it is
the Malay elite which sets the tone. This is why many believe that a
more open recognition of the sheer diversity of Malaysians' origins
would help offset the divisions caused by race-based politics that
identifies religion with race.
Just a brief look at the origins of many members of the elite gives
the lie to ethnic purity and religious dogmatism. There is Mahathir
Mohamad, Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister. His father was a
Muslim Malayali from Kerala in south India who migrated to Malaysia
and took a Malay bride. Mahathir himself was classified as an Indian
when at university in Singapore.
But instead of celebrating the upward mobility that Malaysia offered
to this migrant from India, the politics of the United Malays
National Organisation (Umno) required Mahathir to bury his ethnic
past and wear his acquired Malay identity on his sleeve. In reality
Mahathir welcomes racial mingling. His son Mirzan married into the
family of Indonesian Chinese tycoon Liem Sioe Liong, and daughter
Marina's first husband was European.
The current head of Umno Youth, Hishamuddin Hussein, who waved a kris
(Malay dagger) at last year's national Umno convention and offered to
bathe it in Chinese blood to the ominous cheers of the audience, is
another whose Malay roots are not as deep as often assumed. His
grandfather, the founder of Umno, Onn Jaafar, appeared to be a
Caucasian, which was not surprising given that his Johor-based family
was of Turkish origin. Onn was ejected from the party he founded
because he wanted to make it multi-racial and though his son went on
to become the head of Umno and a prime minister, he carried with him
his father's inclusive and moderate instincts.
Onn lost out politically to Malaysia' s first Prime Minister, Tunku
Abdul Rahman. Although the Tunku placed more emphasis on Malay
identity, he was certainly no exclusivist. Indeed, he had been born a
subject of the King of Siam and as a scion of the royal house of
Kedah spent some of his early years in Bangkok at the court of his
then sovereign. His mother was Siamese, though her family originally
was from Pegu (Burma). Of his four wives, one was Thai Chinese, one
English, one Malay and one Malaysian-Chinese. He never hid his
fondness for whisky, even while heading the Organization of Islamic
Conference, or his student days in England pre-occupied, as he once
put it, with "fast women, fast cars and not-so-fast horses."
The Malay aristocracy has anyway been quite catholic in its choice of
brides. Those in mixed marriages include Ahmad Shah, the Sultan of
Pahang, whose consort is of Pakistani lineage. The Sultan of
Selangor's divorced second consort and mother of his heir apparent
was an American citizen.
Catholic brides
Sultan Iskandar of Johor's first wife, the mother of his heir
apparent, was a British woman, Josephine Trevorrow. In this respect
Sultan Iskandar took after his own grandfather, Sultan Ibrahim, who
had two European wives, one British, one Romanian.
Maybe it is Johor's geography, its proximity to Singapore and the
diversity of Indonesia, but its politicians seem to thrive on
marrying outsiders. Former Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam's first
wife was from (Catholic) Latin America and his second was of mixed
ancestry. Another Johor politician, Tun Dr Ismail, deputy prime
minister in the early 1970s, was of part Chinese ancestry.
Conversions of convenience to Islam often mean that Malay mixtures
leave little trace compared with other cross-ethnic marriages. But
the non-Malay, but Muslim, origins of many of the elite are found
everywhere, from South Asia, Yemen, Egypt, Turkey and other
countries. They include the likes of Zeti Aziz, the governor of Bank
Negara. She is the daughter of Ungku Aziz, the European-looking
former University of Malaya vice-chancellor, whose Johor-based family
came from Turkey.
Chinese roots are also more real than apparent, often hidden by
conversions. But relatively recent high-profile marriages to Chinese
include Tengku Razaleigh, former finance minister and a member of the
Kelantan royal house who married a long-time Chinese friend who
converted and changed her name to Noor Abdullah.
Rashid Hussein, the prominent Singapore-born, Anglophile financier
whose father was Indian and mother Malay married Sue Kuok, a daughter
of tycoon Robert Kuok Hock Nian, the Malaysian-born but now Hong Kong-
based tycoon. Kuok's first wife and mother of some of his children
was Eurasian but he later married a Chinese and emphasized his
Chinese ethnic identity. In a recent book, "Asian Godfathers" Kuok
was described by an in-law as "the biggest racial bigot I have ever
met."
Among the non-Malay groups, inter-ethnic marriages are generally much
more common than among Malays. However it also seems the case that
migration is the preferred option for the numbers of Malaysians who
either marry across ethnic lines or acquire foreign spouses while
studying or working abroad. This particularly applies to Malay women
who are either not particularly religious or who see no reason why
their spouses should convert.
By one estimate, there are some 150,000 mixed marriages in Malaysia,
a number that seems impossibly small in a population of 24 million.
The leafy, winding streets of Damansara Heights and Kenny Hills
abound with matrons who entered into marriage and lives of leisure
with well-to-do Malays straight out of the universities of England,
where the government had sent their mates. It is forbidden for a
Muslim to marry a non-Muslim, so these women, with their servants and
their huge homes, stop being Jean and become Jehan in public,
although seldom in private.
But while the list of Malay elites is long and rich with instances of
intermarriage, at the lower economic levels the list is short, and
increasingly circumscribed by the growing power of Malaysia's
shariah, or Islamic religious courts. The issue was brought to the
fore in the case of Lina Joy, who changed her name from Azlina
Jailani and became a Catholic in an effort to marry a non-Muslim.
Not a catalyst but symbolic
With scores, perhaps hundreds, of outraged Muslims outside the
courtroom, demanding that she be denied the chance to change her
religion on her identity card, a high court ruled in May that she was
subject to the jurisdiction of the shariah court. The shariah courts
have allowed one conversion in history - for a woman who had been
dead for decades.
The result is that either people do not marry, or they emigrate.
Bright women who have preferred to marry foreigners found their
husbands denied work permits. There are believed to be thousands
living in Australia, Canada or the United Kingdom.
For Malaysia's young to take their cues from Malaysia's top
politicians and the cream of society outside of official policy might
not be a bad idea. Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, the Director of the
Institute of the Malay World Civilisation (ATMA) and Professor at
University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in Bangi - and himself married
to an Australian, says Abdullah Badawi's marriage to Jean Danker
Abdullah is "not a catalyst but certainly symbolic."
Marina Mahathir told Asia Sentinel that "If people think that
marrying into another culture is enriching, then it will be a good
thing. But some people make one person give up their own culture
because they think of it as inferior."
But so long as the elite indulges in kris-waving while marrying as it
pleases, multiracial nation-building may have scant grassroots impact.
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