This year’s AFoI theme is “Make or Break”.
I’ve joined the Program Development Group for the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. The Festival is scheduled for October this year, and carries the theme “Make or Break”. For more information and to make a donation or suggest a partnership, please go to the website.
A screengrab of the new ASAA website, designed by Adelaide design firm Studio Spark and integrated with cloud-based accounting processes by Adelaide accounting firm, Accodex.
I’m Secretary of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, and as part of my role I’ve commissioned a new website for the association to better support its work in advocating for the study of Asia in Australia.
The central feature of this website is the fantastic bulletin Asian Currents edited by Allan Sharp, which carries the latest developments in Asian Studies in compact and readable pieces.
If you’re an Asia scholar, or an Asia-engaged professional, joining the ASAA will put you in touch with a whole field of knowledge that can support you in your work.
Today I joined in with Welcome to Australia to run a pilot forum aimed at testing whether migrant communities are in fact willing to participate in intercultural problem-solving. Guess what? They are!
Here’s the write-up of the event on Australian Policy Online:
On 27 November 2015, the MnM Centre partnered with Welcome to Australia to hold an Older Migrants Forum. The forum was chaired by Mohammad Al-Khafaji, Chief Executive Officer: Welcome to Australia, with group discussions facilitated by Dr Amrita Malhi, MnM Centre Research Fellow, and Leah Marrone from Welcome to Australia.
The forum was devised as a pilot project aimed at testing the value of intercultural discussions between established migrant communities (in this case, mainly represented by post-WWII Greek and Italian migrants) and members of new and emerging communities (comprising migrants from Indonesia, Sierra Leone and Egypt).
Events in Paris are already provoking new debates about whether trust in multiculturalism is justified.’ A 2015 refugee vigil in Sydney, Australia. Photograph: Mal Fairclough/AAP
That’s small-l liberal debates around tolerance, multiculturalism and interculturalism , within the context of Western liberal democracies.
I think it is worthwhile even if they do seem limited in their capacity to change things — after all, the adoption of multiculturalism and the Racial Discrimination Act 40 years ago has underpinned better lives for non-white people in Australia.
And no, I don’t think anyone should be called a pseudo-white person for participating in debates about where multiculturalism is going now.
Here is an op-ed I published on this in the The Guardian.
Showing solidarity with migrants is more than ‘comfort’ for white people
Tolerance isn’t the most ‘radical’ approach to racism. So why do many non-white Australians participate in movements that promote it as a solution?
Tony Abbott’s prime ministership sparked furious debate about Australia’s commitment to multiculturalism, including a push to wind back 18c, slights against Indigenous “lifestyle choices”, and questions about Australian Muslims’ loyalty to the nation.
As this period now fades into ancient history, Australia’s politicians have begun to re-invest in the multicultural narrative, a prescient move given the polarised debate after recent events in Paris. Earlier this month, the three major political parties made sure to send a high-level representative to address a conference organised by the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (Fecca).
The mood at the conference was palpable: after years of defensiveness, it was now time to formulate a new national agenda for multicultural policy, practice and public advocacy.
Image: Thai Pai playing cards from Wikimedia Commons. By Outlookxp – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
I made a presentation on some work I’ve been doing on intercultural futures at a recent workshop on Learning to Live Together in Culturally Diverse Societies.
Yet, really? Learning? Learning what, and who from? Also, who’s the student?
Such debates are pitched at too low a level and usually involve only “multiculturalists” from across the Anglosphere, where predominantly white societies have to “learn” to adapt to their own increasing diversity. Migrants, too, are presumed to need to “learn” to fit in.
These debates also tend to assume the responsibility for imparting such learning lies entirely with schools, while adult public discussion deals in fear and racial stereotypes on the one hand, and on the other, the idea that inclusion is based on costumes and cooking, or holding summits with “leaders” who may attract little support. Add competition for government grants and political party fundraising to that mix, along with a faltering economy reliant on Asian trade and immigration, and we end up with a cluster of triggers for toxic political debates that can do real damage to social cohesion.
Australia is a diverse society, located in an exceedingly diverse region, Asia. This region, in turn, is increasingly important in the context of a multipolar world. If Australia and its institutions still need to learn this, then they need to radically improve their capacity for understanding Asia and Asians as a means of understanding themselves, their prospects and their place in the world, not limit their focus to managing discomfort with diversity behind Australia’s own borders.
It’s time for adult institutions to step up their learning as well.
Matt Williams MP, Member for Hindmarsh, speaking in Federal Parliament in Canberra. Picture: Matt Williams MP, via YouTube and Facebook.
Last week, I spoke at a forum organised in Glenelg by the Campaign for Australian Aid, where I talked about the Australian aid program as a form of regional intercultural exchange that helps us maintain a certain level of human security in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, in particular.
As a result, I was mentioned in Parliament by another speaker there, Matt Williams, Member for Hindmarsh. Here’s a video (yes, with some mispronunciation, but that’s OK): Read more
Threats might not be containable: Nurul Izzah, vice-president of the People’s Justice Party, which this week announced a new coalition with the Democratic Action Party called Pakatan Harapan, the Alliance of Hope. Khairil Yusof/Flickr
Today, I updated an essay I wrote for Inside Story, triggered by the terror alert in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend.
Malaysia’s Flashpoint
With a terror alert issued and the country’s redshirts threatening to riot, Malaysia’s intractable political crisis has come to a head, writes Amrita Malhi
With a postscript added on 27 September 2015
As Malaysia’s Muslims celebrated Hari Raya Haji – the Feast of Sacrifice – this week, American and Australian authorities warned their citizens to avoid Bukit Bintang, the popular shopping and entertainment district in central Kuala Lumpur. Authorities were especially concerned about the lively Jalan Alor eating strip, which last night remained thronged with diners enjoying Chinese food. Singapore’s Straits Times immediately linked the terror alert to warnings from Indonesia that Malaysian Islamic State fighters are known to be training in Poso, on Sulawesi. Authorities in Singapore have also recently warned that terrorist activity is again on the rise across the region. To contain the threat that terrorists pose, Indonesia and Singapore both rely heavily on Malaysia – a major transit point for foreign fighters heading for Iraq and Syria, including from Australia. Yet with the nation’s new redshirt movement warning of a possible rally and race riot this weekend, the Malaysian authorities are themselves embroiled in a serious crisis with identity politics at its heart.
The Muslim World Special Issue on Muslim Modernities: Interdisciplinary Insights Across Time and Space
Today, I had an article come out in The Muslim World, in a special issue edited by Daren E. Ray and Joshua Gedacht called “Muslim Modernities: Interdisciplinary Insights across Time and Space”.
My article is a history of the politically potent conflation between race, religion and royalty – the well-known 3Rs that have become emblems of Malay Muslim nationalism – in Malaysian public life. These are precisely the 3Rs that groups like the new Malaysian redshirts refer to in their rhetoric. This rhetoric reflects the present and historical influence of a form of statist Islamism that views nations like Malaysia as racial-religious constructions.
In the article, I argue that this conflation (at least partly) originates in negotiations between Britain and Siam as they carved up the Malay Peninsula between them, sealing off Siamese and Malayan geo-bodies on either side of the boundary they first produced in 1902. I show how arguments made by Malay Muslim rulers who wanted to be included on the “Malaya” side of the border were early examples of this conflation. These arguments were so powerful that they contributed to establishing Malaya/Malaysia as a state that remains seemingly permanently-structured by these 3Rs.
My abstract is here:
Since 1957, Malaysian public life has been organized around a historic conflation of three important political themes: “race, religion and royalty”, or “3R”, all of which are purportedly championed and defended by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). This article explores how this conflation of themes became so important to this postcolonial nation-state, specifically by investigating its influence in shaping Malaya’s territorial limits. The 3R conflation has deep historical roots which stretch much further back than the moment of decolonization, as shown by a series of approaches to Britain made by Malay Muslim rulers between 1895 and 1902—the period in which a boundary between Malaya and Siam was first negotiated. During these years, these rulers—all of whom ruled over Siamese tributaries—appealed to Britain to colonize their polities to prevent their incorporation into Siam. Their appeals were framed in terms of 3R, giving momentum to the idea of a “Malay Muslim” geo-body in Malaya, in which a transformed monarchy should preside over a modernized sacral sphere of racial and religious identity.
Tonight I was interviewed by Beverley O’Connor on the 1MDB issue for the ABC TV current affairs program, The World. The interview focused on the 1MDB scandal, which continues to shape international perceptions of Malaysia.
Seminar Flyer, MPOz
Today, I gave a public talk at an evening lecture series organised by Malaysian Progressives in Australia. Why? Because they invited me!
Here’s the description:
With last Saturday and Hari Merdeka fresh in our memory, MPOZ presents “Can Malaysian NGOs Create A New Multiracial Politics?” where we explore and analyse the true impact of NGO movements like #Bersih4.
With us will be Dr Amrita Malhi, Research Fellow at the University of South Australia. Dr Amrita’s research is in South East Asian multiracial politics and for the purpose of this forum she will be sharing with us the history of Malaysians attempting to drive multiracial politics.
How much have Malaysians managed to integrate ourselves since our independence from the British? Can Malaysians, independent of political parties, create multiracial politics?
See you for some stimulating Saturday sembang-sembang!