EYE ON ETHICS

The author is a journalist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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The Malaysian government’s deafening silence and non-action in a recent issue involving a story on religion only reinforces public perception that it isn’t really interested in social unity and peace.

THREE YEARS ago, the Malaysian government suspended a 61-year-old English daily over a cartoon.

The Sarawak Tribune eventually closed down after drawing flak from the government when it published the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons to illustrate a story on the topic “Cartoon No Big Impact Here” on Feb. 4, 2006.

So strict is the Malaysian government that it would not let anything and anyone incite racial or religious sentiments that could make certain segments of society angry, or worse, trigger riots in this racially and religiously diverse society. In fact, the Sedition Act makes it a crime.

However, the government is now keeping quiet over an article by Al Islam, a magazine that focuses on the Muslim faith. In its May issue, the magazine ran an article on claims that the Catholic Church was converting young Muslims to Christianity.

The problem was the Muslim reporter who went undercover to do the story went to the extent of entering two churches during mass and receiving the Holy Eucharist (the communion wafer) by mouth. He then walked out of the church, spat out the wafer and photographed it. The photograph was also published.

So far the government has been keeping mum about it despite quiet and isolated protests from Christians.

The magazine belongs to the stable of the Utusan Melayu media organization which publishes the Malay daily Utusan Malaysia.

As recently as last month, Utusan Malaysia had been attacked by former ruling coalition leader and prominent lawyer Zaid Ibrahim as being racist for publishing a commentary saying that non-Malays are hurting Malays by insisting that their demands for employment, scholarships, land allocation and such be met.

The following day, the Deputy Prime Minister chided the daily over the same article. But nothing has come of it.

This is not the first time the daily has been accused of publishing articles and commentaries that reek of racism.

Last year, the then Chief Minister of Perak, Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, who incidentally is from the Muslim party PAS, initiated a boycott of the daily over its tendency to play up racial (pro-Malay) sentiments in its news coverage. Perak is a state in Malaysia which was then under the rule of the Opposition bloc, and after what many term as a coup d’état, is now under the ruling National Front coalition.

Last year, a multi-million ringgit lawsuit was filed against the daily by a Member of Parliament and a non-Muslim, Theresa Kok, over an article published on Sept. 10 last year claiming that she had asked mosque officials in her parliamentary constituency in her capacity as a lawmaker to stop singing the Muslim call for prayer over loudspeakers.

The mosques in Malaysia have a call for prayer five times a day – from dawn to dusk – and these calls are allowed to be made over loudspeakers.

The Member of Parliament said she did not make such a request. The mosque officials came in her defense. But the daily insists that such a request was made.

These and many other incidents have sullied the reputation of Utusan Malaysia and it no longer matters whether the daily has been wrongly accused or not. The accusations are just too many and have come not just from non-Malays but also from Malays.

Then there is the case of ownership. All media organizations are linked to the ruling coalition either directly or indirectly through proxies. The main political parties in the coalition are the political masters of these media organizations.

And the Utusan media group is no exception. In fact, Utusan Malaysia has always been seen as the mouthpiece of the Malay-based UMNO party which heads the ruling coalition. So what is said in the daily is perceived to mirror the sentiments of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet – and this has been going on since the Mahathir era.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia needs to be seen as the champion of the Malay community, its culture, language, and religion (almost all Malays are Muslims), and the Malay media, especially Utusan Malaysia, help promote this image by coming out with issues and viewpoints that are too sensitive for a leader to voice and therefore must be seen as coming from the grassroots.

The hold the Chinese have on the country’s economy and the number of Muslims leaving their faith for other religions are some of the issues that cause murmurings among Malays.

However, the Prime Minister has a bigger issue at hand – the waning support of Malays for the ruling coalition. The March 8, 2008 general election proved that the traditional support from Malays has shifted greatly to the opposition parties that are Malay- and Muslim-based.

The only way for the Prime Minister to bring back Malay support is to show that the Malay community and all that it stands for is being threatened by the other races/religions within the country, and that only the ruling coalition can protect it.

This is where the media come in. It is a strategy that has always worked and is likely to be used over and over again regardless of how disruptive as it may be – after all, remaining in power is more important that social unity.