Malaysian society is becoming very complex: there is one element of Malaysia that's becoming very Talibanised. On the other hand, you have the reaction. If you look at the Malay Muslim community, for instance, the fault lines are deeper and wider than ever before.
You have the emerging new phenomenon of urban Malay Muslim youth who get involved in bike gangs and drugs orgies. All this is very public on the Internet. There is this open defiance. On the other hand, there is an element, like in any developing society, becoming increasingly conservative.
These fault lines are getting deeper. For me that's perfectly normal. It's a typical symptom of any developing country. We're just going through a normal developmental process.
But this is a society that's been told for half a century that change is bad, and change is not normal…Whereas it is normal. People need some sort of narrative to fall back on, to explain what is happening. Unfortunately, again and again, the narrative that is used is one of crisis, of chaos. The metaphor that's always used is that of the garden: you have to tend the 'garden', which is overgrown with 'weeds'. The 'weeds' are the kids in shopping malls and bike gangs.
Nature evolves, and as Darwin pointed out, it can evolve in ways you don't expect.
A modern state simply has to accept this and develop the means to deal with this
The state must always tries to "accommodate" new developments.
But the Malaysian state is suffering from institutional inertia: it has lost its ability to think on its feet.
Just listen to the speeches of the Malaysian politicians of the past two weeks. They betray two facts: they don't know what is happening in their own country, and they don't know how to cope.
The immediate reaction is: 'These are terrorists, trouble makers, anarchists'. I'm sorry, but the Malaysian public doesn't believe it.
Q:Can you see everything that's happening in Malaysia in isolation from what's happening on the geopolitical plane: the 'Clash of Civilisation' rhetoric, and so on. And can any reconciliation in Malaysia happen independent of geopolitical factors?
No, because the external variable factors have an immediate and profound impact.
If tomorrow, the BJP in India smashes another mosque in India, it will immediately have an impact. If tomorrow, America invades Iran, you're going to see thousands of Islamists on the streets in Kuala Lumpur.
The Malaysian state has to accept that is living in a global world, and there are so many internal and external variable factors it has to adapt to.
It has to be like a multi-cellular organism that can adapt to challenges on all sides - internal and external. But for a government that has something like 62 ministers, it doesn't seem to have evolved any means of adapting. (Laughs).
The Malaysian state used to be much more on the ball in the 1960s and 70s: it adapted to the Cold War and the Communist insurgency very well.
Q: Do you believe it was Mahathir Mohammed who let things slide?
Of course, with the onslaught on the civil service and the judiciary. As a political scientist, I can say that any state will survive so long as its key institutions are sound. If people believe in the law, they don't have to protest; they know they can go to the court.
Q: But, Dr Noor, in Malaysia, even the Constitution endorses Malay supremacist policies. So, where then do we begin?
I completely agree. The Malaysian Constitution from the outset has all these catches built into it to ensure a certain political tilt to the system. These 'corrective measures' were intended only on a temporary basis, until we had equality.
But we now have a third generation of leaders who have come to take it for granted that Malay supremacism will be the dominant leitmotif of Malaysian politics for all eternity.
But the Malay community itself is fragmented now, so what are you talking about? The Malay youth on the street who are unemployed and poor, who get involved with drug gangs and bike gangs… they too are marginalised and they don't see any point in maintaining this rhetoric of Malay dominance because they clearly have not benefited from it.
When we look at the phenomenon of plural urban spaces nowadays, it's very clear that people are opting out of the system. They don't necessarily have to turn into radical militants: they can turn to drugs or crime or alternative lifestyles.
That also accounts for why the urban arts scene in Malaysia is now very fluid and very rich. The positive side is that its allowed for a lot of artistic expression. We have everything… even Tamil-Telugu rap groups in Malaysia! I think this is good.
But without an overarching idea - an abstract concept like a Malaysian identity - these communities will remain apart and that's my worry: that after 50 years, we are not a united nation, we are increasingly a fragmented nation.
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