The manufacturing of moral panics in Malaysia

The debate in Malaysia on whether Muslim children born out of wedlock should be permitted to carry their father’s name is yet another sequel in the series on how religion and morality is politicised.

While the Court of Appeals has ruled that Malaysian civil law contains a provision enabling “illegitimate children” to carry their father’s name, the National Registration Department (NRD), the Department of Islamic Development and Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi have disputed the ruling.

Additionally, Perak Mufti Harussani Zakaria claimed that if children born out of wedlock are not slapped with the potentially stigmatising “bin/binte Abdullah” to their surname as required by the NRD, Muslims will not avoid having sex outside of marriage.

The contention over the Court of Appeal’s ruling follows a set pattern of developments.

To name a few, these include the decision to install infrared cameras in the halls of a Kuala Terengganu cinema to monitor and deter couples from engaging in “bad behaviour”, the banning of the Spanish song Despacito on government-owned radio stations because it contains sexualised lyrics, and the debate on whether the alleged “gay scene” in Beauty and the Beast should be censored.

Such politicisation of Islam and morality is not new. One need only hark back to the multiple arrests of Anwar Ibrahim on sodomy charges, and the contention that he was morally unfit to lead Malaysia because of this.

These events similarly present a template for how political actors in Malaysia manufacture ludicrous moral panics, characterise them as piercing threats to the country’s moral and religious fabric, and present themselves as messiahs sent to purge the country of debauchery.

Sociologists Eric Goode and Nachman Ben-Yahuda provide a useful definition of moral panics: The belief that certain groups, individuals and behaviours pose a threat to society’s dominant culture — that is, the presiding norms, values and beliefs of society.

Usually, these threats are either entirely fabricated or grossly exaggerated. Some media organisations and governments produce and circulate narratives that catalyse issues to morph into problems people “need” to be anxious about.

These threats tend to centre on the issues of poverty, drug use, immigration and, as is currently the case in Malaysia, sexuality.

In most cases, these threats are deemed to be morally repugnant precisely because they are framed as antithetical to society’s dominant culture.

The common thread tying the issues discussed earlier is the belief that, somehow, each of these “aberrations” will twist and turn Malaysia into a sexually promiscuous country.

Such positions are logically fallacious. The argument that the mere existence of a cinema will drive people to have sex in it, or the belief that unmarried Muslims will have sex since they know that children born out of wedlock will be legitimised, is highly problematic.

Yet this is precisely how moral panics come to be manufactured — by coating a particular issue with melodrama, and driving it to its logical extreme.

PERCEIVED THREAT TO ISLAM

Islam is Malaysia’s official religion. It is therefore inevitable that discussions and debates on Islam dominate the country’s public space more than any other religion.

Since moral panics are threats to dominant culture, sexual promiscuity becomes framed as a threat to Islam.

A case in point is Federal Territories Mufti Dr Zulkifli Mohamed’s statement in which he called for Valentine’s Day to be banned. He sought to do so by equating the celebration with premarital sex, immorality and, crucially, sin. To be clear, such rhetoric is by no means unique to Muslim leaders.

Similar arguments have even been put forth by India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Indresh Kumar. He claimed that Valentine’s Day leads to “rape, illegitimate children and violence against women”, and is thus a threat to “Hindu society”. Though it actively vilifies Islam and dehumanises Muslims in India, the RSS and the Islamist-leaning religious actors are ideological cousins on many issues.

In Malaysia, the notion of Islam and Muslims being under siege — whether from outside or within — becomes a fault line political actors use in their attempt to mobilise and rally mass support. Political actors compete with one another to portray themselves as messianic.

The case of the banning of Despacito is particularly telling. Opposition Islamist party Amanah got the ball rolling by describing the song as pornographic. The party argued that society would be infected by the song’s “immorality”. Communication Minister Salleh Said Keruak proceeded to ban the song from government-owned radio stations. In arguing for the ban, he postulated that the song’s mostly Spanish lyrics “are not suitable to be heard”. Both parties competed to frame the song as a manifestation of sexual encroachment into Islam in Malaysia that needed to be expunged.

In all the episodes discussed, little is known about the views of the Malaysian public on such issues. This allows religio-political actors to monopolise the narrative, insist their opinions reflect public opinion, and thus present them as the naturalistic position of the larger population.

This could have a number of consequences. First, the excessive focus on issues that appeal to hyper-conservative Muslims distorts the religious preoccupations of lay Muslims.

This could obscure how non-Muslims view their Muslim counterparts, particularly with reference to how “tolerant” they are. The dramatisation of hyper-conservatism could augment divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, in turn possibly fomenting distrust between the groups.

Second, dominating the public discourse on Islam with the “fight” against relatively trivial issues could catalyse the mainstreaming of hyper-conservative beliefs at the expense of the diverse perspectives held by Muslims.

Finally, hogging public debates with these issues allows political actors to skirt around far more morally reprehensible problems — such as issues of corruption, economic mismanagement and administrative failures.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Prashant Waikar is a research analyst at the Malaysia Programme in the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.