Changing taboos

A couple of months ago, an e-mail was sent out to an e-group I belong to. A member of the group was helping her husband find a secretary for his new Kuala Lumpur office.

Her message included the relevant information about salary, qualifications, and the commencement date. All fairly routine information regarding a job vacancy.

What was disconcerting, however, was the last line in the e-mail. It said: "Only non-Malays (too much trouble otherwise with pork, etc)."

"Only non-Malays" need apply was a message I found rather unsettling. Surely, this was a form of discrimination. After all, why should anyone be disqualified from applying because of one's racial identity?

Imagine if the announcement had said, "Only men" or "Only whites" or "Only pretty women" need apply. Those would have been clearly discriminatory, and even though this particular case was a little more complex, I couldn't help feeling that discrimination was at work, even if it was inadvertent.

I shot off an e-mail to the group, explaining my discomfort. And reminding the e-group that if pork was the issue, then the message should have more accurately stated "Only non-Muslims" need apply. After all, not all Malays are Muslim (neighbouring Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population, is an example) and not all Muslims are Malays, not even in Malaysia.

I also wanted to know how we could reconcile ourselves with such an employment policy if we ourselves felt it was unfair when quotas and privileges were only accorded to fellow citizens of a particular racial grouping because of official policy.

The woman who announced the job vacancy apologised for causing offence but offered this as an explanation: "Well, in this country, Malays are generally Muslims ... The office will be staffed by mostly Americans, who like their ham and cheese sandwiches, bacon, etc ... so it won't be very appropriate to have a Malay secretary."

Two of us suggested that the job announcement should stipulate what the work environment would be like so that Muslims who don't feel comfortable that their non-Muslim colleagues are consuming bacon and ham can refrain from applying. That way, Muslims who may not mind such a work environment because they don't believe it will affect their faith, would not be barred from applying.

I must admit though it can be hard not to emphatise with the woman's logic.

We cannot deny that recent events have reinforced the notion that all Malays must be Muslim in Malaysia, even though historically, the Malays were Buddhists and Hindus first before embracing Islam. And even though, when you think about it, one's faith cannot be contingent on one's ethnic identity.

But aside from that, it's easy to see why the job announcement was written the way it was.

It seems that increasingly, non-Muslims in Malaysia are being made to feel they need to refrain from eating pork in the presence of Muslims.

And unfortunately, that proscription has been enlarged to other areas beyond food consumption.

Guardian pharmacy, for example, currently has a Winnie the Pooh gift redemption promotion that has left out the character Piglet from its posters and the range of soft toys being offered as reward.

The company hasn't offered any explanation for the removal of a cartoon character central to Winnie the Pooh, and the sales assistant I asked couldn't give me one either. One can only imagine that Piglet was left out strategically so as not to offend Muslim shoppers.

We shouldn't be at all surprised at this move since there were calls for the animated film Babe, which starred a pig as the lead character, to be banned several years ago, presumably because it was offensive to Malaysian Muslims.

And recently, one columnist wrote that the word "pigmentation" was censored from a documentary he was watching. The most likely explanation: the first syllable was "pig".

We also know that some schools have issued clear instructions to non-Muslim children about what they can pack in their lunch boxes in deference to presumed Muslim sensitivities.

As one other e-group member pointed out: "Normally, we won't refrain from non-vegetarian food when going out with a vegetarian, or stop drinking alcohol when going out with a non-alcohol drinker, so why the big fuss over pork?"

I won't try and offer an answer to that, but the reality we now face as Malaysians in our daily lives - whether at schools or the cinema or at a pharmacy - is, logically, what has contributed towards a firm in Malaysia stating that "only non-Malays" need apply.

The question we all need to answer is: How did we come to this? And are we at all bothered that it has come to this, 50 years after we secured the right to govern ourselves?

Jacqueline Ann Surin believes that as one of the greatest religions in the world, Islam cannot be threatened by cartoon characters. Nor by non-Muslims eating bacon and ham. She is assistant news editor at theSun. Comments: feedback@thesundaily.com