Malaysia is a very diverse country in a variety of ways. It is important to recognize that the country of Malaysia did not exist before colonization by the Europeans. Malaysia was formed after World War II when south Asian countries were becoming independent. In the simplest case you can think of Malaysia as including all of the British colonies in the region (except for Singapore which was once part of Malaysia, but is now independent) and Indonesia as including all of the former Dutch colonies. Today, Malaysia contains the Malayan Peninsula and East Malaysia (part of the island of Borneo). Today the power in Malaysia clearly rests in the peninsula, and because I have yet to visit East Malaysia, most of my comments will apply to things going on in the peninsula.
Brief, Brief History
The orignial inhabitants of the Malayan peninsula are know today as the Orang Asli (Men of the Forest). The Orang Asli were predominantly hunter/gatherers who lived along the coasts and in the rainforests. Eventually, the Malays moved into the peninusula and became the most numerous group. Over time there has been a sizeable number of immigrants from China and India into the peninsula. When Malaysia was formed, there was already a large Chinese and Indian populations. Once it was agreed that all inhabitants, regardless of ethnic origin, were to become citizens of the new country Malaysia, the challenge became how to make this truly multicultural country work.
Race
As much of an issue race has been, is, and will continue to be in the US, race is a much bigger issue in modern Malaysian society. It seems that virtually everthing here is seen through the eye of race. In my opinion, how the different groups of Malaysians decide to live together will determine the future of this country.
According to the CIA Factbook,2004, here is the breakdown
Malay 50.4%
Chinese 23.7%,
indigenous 11% (most of the indigenous people are located in East Malaysia. The population of Orang Asli in the peninsula is very small)
Indian 7.1%,
others 7.8% (it appears that Malaysians divide this groups into two types. There are the "expatriates" who are generally well educated and work in high paying white-collar jobs and the "foreigners" who are usually poorly educated and work in low paying jobs as maids, food servers, and construction from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar).
Religion
Because ethnic origin is closely aligned with religion there is also a great diversity of religious beliefs in Malaysia.
Muslim 60.4%
Buddhist 19.2%,
Christian 9.1%
Hindu 6.3%,
Confucianism, Taoism, other traditional Chinese religions 2.6%,
Geography, Race, and Religion
In addition to the differences between Peninsular and East Malaysia, there are also great differences among the different parts of the peninsula. As I mentioned earlier, there are more Chinese and Indians in the western and southern parts of the peninsula compared to the east and the north. Thus, the eastern and nnorthern regions, which are also predominantly rural, are mostly Malay and Muslim. In fact, some of these states (Kedah and Terrenganu) maintain such close contacts with the Arabic Islanmic states that they celebrate their weekends of Friday and Saturday rather than on Saturday and Sunday like the rest of the peninisula. People in these states tend to be very conservative and at the state government is run by PAS, the Pan Islamic Party (more about politics in Malaysia to come soon)
Interesting Note
It is interesting to me that the percentages of the differnt ethnic groups in Malaysia is not too different from the percentages of the backgrounds of the current citizens of Texas (White 45%, Hispanic 37%, Black 12%). Thus, one of the reasons that I was especially interested in coming to Malaysia was to see if I could learn anything about how to have different groups of people living together by seeing how things work in Malaysia. I am afraid that I haven't figured out the answer to that question, but I am starting to think that "Texas" might have something to teach Malaysia.
photo from tonyfernandesblog.com
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