Malaysia seems from time to time to be a weird and delusional little corner of Asia. As a wealthier version of Indonesia, it is counter-intuitively more illiberal. One of the first things one notices is that most Malaysian women wear hijab while Indonesian women do not. That is all well and good, but there are deeper symptoms of tolerance issues such as the case of Lina Joy among others.
Take this week's flare up of the Allah Debate. Non-Muslim Malaysians can be jailed for using words like Allah, fatwa, imam or hajj, depending on the context. A Catholic newspaper's use of the word Allah is going through the courts. The law's aim is to impede missionaries from converting Muslims to their faith.
Malaysia has a multi-cultural society long reputed for its tolerance. But things have been bending in the wrong direction in the past few years. Recently "tensions escalated when churches were burned and the severed heads of wild boars, offensive to Muslims, were found in the compound of two mosques."
Pardon me but wouldn't severed heads of wild boars be offensive to anyone? Godfather fans will know what I am talking about.
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