Probe ripples under surface calm of 'racial harmony'
Issues like Islamophobia in Singapore require us to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves and have honest dialogues
By Tee Zhuo, The Straits Times, 10 Apr 2019
Racial and religious harmony is an ideal deeply ingrained in our national consciousness. When an issue disrupts our self-image of a socially harmonious society, you can expect Singaporeans to react strongly.
So when a recent survey showed that 15 per cent of Singaporeans and permanent residents (PRs) find Muslims threatening, it drew an overwhelmingly negative response online.
Many commenters labelled that finding “fake news” and said it stirred up issues where there were none. Some even asked for a Straits Times article on it to be taken down.
The finding was from a recent Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) study on religion based on face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,800 residents late last year. One question was: “Do you consider those belonging to the following groups as threatening or non-threatening?”
Buddhists were seen as the least threatening; 2.8 per cent of respondents found them very or somewhat threatening, followed by Hindus (4.2 per cent ), atheists (5.1 per cent), Jews (5.3 per cent), Christians (6.5 per cent), and Muslims (15.6 per cent).
An ST article on the finding shared on Facebook attracted hundreds of “angry” reactions and now has over 1,600 irate comments.
A typical comment was: “Who even allowed this to be published? Irresponsible journalism. In this climate, such an article is totally uncalled for. Please take it down!”
Several said publishing the finding was “dangerous”, “divisive” and “insensitive”.
Such reactions, to my mind, point to a certain desire to be protective of racial and religious harmony, and a perception that the finding is inimical to it. To be sure, the intensity of the sentiment is not a bad thing in itself. We are, understandably, fiercely protective of an ideal that has guided diverse Singaporeans to co-exist peacefully for years.
But beneath the desire to protect “harmony”, I wonder if the angry response to the finding is also the result of Singapore having been “too” successful in maintaining social peace, so much so that any negative fact or feeling around race and religion proves highly discomfiting.
When the surface of a lake is too calm, any ripple can cause unease. Indeed, two-thirds (66 per cent) of those surveyed in a different 2016 Channel NewsAsia-IPS study felt that talking about racial issues causes “unnecessary tension”.
ISLAMOPHOBIA IN SINGAPORE
The value of the IPS survey is that it confronts Singaporeans with an unpalatable truth: That Islamophobia is a fact of life in Singapore.
Seeing Muslims as threats is a classic example of Islamophobia, or prejudice based on an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims.
It was not just that 15 per cent here found Muslims threatening. This figure was more than double the number of people who found Christians threatening, and about thrice the respective numbers for Hindus, atheists and Jews.
IPS senior research fellow Mathew Mathews said last month that the frequent association of global terror with Muslims may have fed into some minds here.
Media coverage after an attack is a factor, IPS research associate Leonard Lim told ST last week.
“Extremists and terrorists, as the Christchurch attack showed, can come from any race or religion,” said Mr Lim, who co-authored the recent IPS study with Dr Mathews and research assistant Shanthini Selvarajan. “But media portrayals since 9/11 have cast Muslims in a negative light, often unfairly singling them out,” he added.
Indeed, an Economist article last month said that attacks by neo-Nazis and white supremacists actually outnumbered those committed by Islamists in the United States from 2010 to 2017.
Singapore is not exempt from the growing global climate of Islamophobia – despite our self-perception as a multicultural, religiously harmonious haven.
Last month, the Centre for Research on Islamic and Malay Affairs said it was seeing more anti-Muslim sentiment on local social media. It also found more instances of micro-aggression and discrimination against the community.
In January, a man was arrested for scrawling racial slurs about Malays and Muslims at a sheltered walkway near Aljunied MRT station.
In a similar 2017 incident, the word “terrorist” was written over the picture of a woman wearing a tudung outside the upcoming Marine Parade MRT.
After the Christchurch terror attacks, Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam said that societies have to “face squarely the reality that Islamophobia is rising” and deal with the ideology behind it.
“For that you got to start by acknowledging that it is there. When you do not acknowledge it, the problem just grows,” he said.
Mr Lim agreed that being upfront about something like the 15 per cent finding was the right decision.
“I think it is better to admit there are pockets of society that still have prejudices or see those from certain backgrounds negatively so that we can work on it, rather than skirting the issue and pretending we live in a utopia where everything is hunky-dory,” said Mr Lim.
IS SINGAPORE READY?
Some may ask if Singapore society is mature enough to discuss uncomfortable truths about race and religion. After all, the official narrative is that we only had five decades to build a cohesive nation out of a group of communities with no common language or religion.
Writer Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh disagrees with the belief that Singapore’s multiculturalism is a fragile balance maintained only by overbearing policies. He points out that Singapore’s tradition of harmonious inter-ethnic relations goes back at least 200 years.
“The brief racial riots in the 1960s... are remarkable only because they are the exception,” he notes in his blog post.
Whether one believes that social harmony today is an ideal imposed from above by law and policies or is already the lived reality of most Singaporeans, our concept of social harmony has to evolve.
Striving for “harmony” may have seemed satisfactory in the past when co-existence and tolerance were the priority. But it has been less effective in dealing with “sensitive” truths and emerging tension.
Instances of casual racism, for example, may be ignored instead of being called out for fear of disturbing the peace. But if we ignore stereotyping remarks or racist jokes, we are adding to an atmosphere that breeds unhappiness among those so targeted.
Race and religion are complex and difficult issues to discuss publicly. They need sensitive handling. But the worst thing Singapore can do at this juncture in its development is to permit a bit of discomfort to lead to wilful ignorance of serious societal issues and injustices.
MOVING BEYOND HARMONY
Singaporeans need courage to move beyond a focus on “harmony” to confront hard truths about our own prejudices. How does one do this? The first step is to at least be open to the fact that things may not be as well as they seem.
Instead of being fixated on harmony, be honest about bias, prejudice, discrimination, shortcomings.
If a survey shows that 15 per cent of us consider Muslims threatening, then acknowledge that fact; do not pretend there is no ripple across the surface calm. Acknowledging that a problem exists is the first step to solving it.
Next, be empathetic in trying to understand those shortcomings.
A person’s “reality” is often limited by what he or she knows. On the 15 per cent finding, Dr Mathews said that the lack of exposure to and opportunities for learning about Muslims might have left some Singaporeans’ fears unchallenged.
If so, the solution is to reach out and understand more.
Lack of empathy towards what it means to be a Muslim in Singapore may desensitise the majority too.
There is an 85 per cent chance that those of you reading this are not a Muslim. How can we know? The most recent census data (2010) states that about 15 per cent of the population aged 15 years and over are Muslims.
But imagine you are one, and step into the shoes of that 15 per cent for a moment. You are a Muslim.
Given that the recent IPS study is representative, this means that for every 100 members of your community, there are 15, in a country you call home, who fear you. One in six people you meet today find your beliefs threatening.
How does that make you feel?
With that empathy as a starting point, we can then begin an honest conversation to seek better mutual understanding.
Mr Vadaketh wrote that different communities in a multicultural city will have “varying levels of confidence in expressing themselves”, due to issues like income or access.
He suggested the need for safe spaces for groups such as the Muslim community to share their thoughts without fear that their beliefs will be attacked.
We should be clear – it is not the duty of those maligned to create spaces and do the labour of, say, explaining why they should not be seen as threatening to others.
Social harmony is an ideal. But the point of an ideal is that it can never be fully achieved; its meaning lies in the ceaseless engagement and pursuit of it. It is always a work in progress.
The same national pledge that emphasises the need for unity regardless of race or religion also stresses that these ideals are in service of “progress for our nation”. It also notes the importance of justice and equality.
We cannot be so afraid of disturbing harmony that we would ignore the prejudice that will eat away at these foundations. Nor should we abuse the spirit of what harmony truly entails, by using it to justify inaction in the face of injustice.
Instead, upholding social harmony for Singapore means probing beneath the surface calm to confront our collective irrational fears and personal biases. We do this to reach greater understanding and trust. For that, it is surely worth suffering some discomfort.
Issues like Islamophobia in Singapore require us to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves and have honest dialogues
By Tee Zhuo, The Straits Times, 10 Apr 2019
So when a recent survey showed that 15 per cent of Singaporeans and permanent residents (PRs) find Muslims threatening, it drew an overwhelmingly negative response online.
Many commenters labelled that finding “fake news” and said it stirred up issues where there were none. Some even asked for a Straits Times article on it to be taken down.
The finding was from a recent Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) study on religion based on face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,800 residents late last year. One question was: “Do you consider those belonging to the following groups as threatening or non-threatening?”
Buddhists were seen as the least threatening; 2.8 per cent of respondents found them very or somewhat threatening, followed by Hindus (4.2 per cent ), atheists (5.1 per cent), Jews (5.3 per cent), Christians (6.5 per cent), and Muslims (15.6 per cent).
An ST article on the finding shared on Facebook attracted hundreds of “angry” reactions and now has over 1,600 irate comments.
A typical comment was: “Who even allowed this to be published? Irresponsible journalism. In this climate, such an article is totally uncalled for. Please take it down!”
Several said publishing the finding was “dangerous”, “divisive” and “insensitive”.
Such reactions, to my mind, point to a certain desire to be protective of racial and religious harmony, and a perception that the finding is inimical to it. To be sure, the intensity of the sentiment is not a bad thing in itself. We are, understandably, fiercely protective of an ideal that has guided diverse Singaporeans to co-exist peacefully for years.
But beneath the desire to protect “harmony”, I wonder if the angry response to the finding is also the result of Singapore having been “too” successful in maintaining social peace, so much so that any negative fact or feeling around race and religion proves highly discomfiting.
When the surface of a lake is too calm, any ripple can cause unease. Indeed, two-thirds (66 per cent) of those surveyed in a different 2016 Channel NewsAsia-IPS study felt that talking about racial issues causes “unnecessary tension”.
ISLAMOPHOBIA IN SINGAPORE
The value of the IPS survey is that it confronts Singaporeans with an unpalatable truth: That Islamophobia is a fact of life in Singapore.
Seeing Muslims as threats is a classic example of Islamophobia, or prejudice based on an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims.
It was not just that 15 per cent here found Muslims threatening. This figure was more than double the number of people who found Christians threatening, and about thrice the respective numbers for Hindus, atheists and Jews.
IPS senior research fellow Mathew Mathews said last month that the frequent association of global terror with Muslims may have fed into some minds here.
Media coverage after an attack is a factor, IPS research associate Leonard Lim told ST last week.
“Extremists and terrorists, as the Christchurch attack showed, can come from any race or religion,” said Mr Lim, who co-authored the recent IPS study with Dr Mathews and research assistant Shanthini Selvarajan. “But media portrayals since 9/11 have cast Muslims in a negative light, often unfairly singling them out,” he added.
Indeed, an Economist article last month said that attacks by neo-Nazis and white supremacists actually outnumbered those committed by Islamists in the United States from 2010 to 2017.
Singapore is not exempt from the growing global climate of Islamophobia – despite our self-perception as a multicultural, religiously harmonious haven.
Last month, the Centre for Research on Islamic and Malay Affairs said it was seeing more anti-Muslim sentiment on local social media. It also found more instances of micro-aggression and discrimination against the community.
In January, a man was arrested for scrawling racial slurs about Malays and Muslims at a sheltered walkway near Aljunied MRT station.
In a similar 2017 incident, the word “terrorist” was written over the picture of a woman wearing a tudung outside the upcoming Marine Parade MRT.
After the Christchurch terror attacks, Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam said that societies have to “face squarely the reality that Islamophobia is rising” and deal with the ideology behind it.
“For that you got to start by acknowledging that it is there. When you do not acknowledge it, the problem just grows,” he said.
Mr Lim agreed that being upfront about something like the 15 per cent finding was the right decision.
“I think it is better to admit there are pockets of society that still have prejudices or see those from certain backgrounds negatively so that we can work on it, rather than skirting the issue and pretending we live in a utopia where everything is hunky-dory,” said Mr Lim.
IS SINGAPORE READY?
Some may ask if Singapore society is mature enough to discuss uncomfortable truths about race and religion. After all, the official narrative is that we only had five decades to build a cohesive nation out of a group of communities with no common language or religion.
Writer Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh disagrees with the belief that Singapore’s multiculturalism is a fragile balance maintained only by overbearing policies. He points out that Singapore’s tradition of harmonious inter-ethnic relations goes back at least 200 years.
“The brief racial riots in the 1960s... are remarkable only because they are the exception,” he notes in his blog post.
Whether one believes that social harmony today is an ideal imposed from above by law and policies or is already the lived reality of most Singaporeans, our concept of social harmony has to evolve.
Striving for “harmony” may have seemed satisfactory in the past when co-existence and tolerance were the priority. But it has been less effective in dealing with “sensitive” truths and emerging tension.
Instances of casual racism, for example, may be ignored instead of being called out for fear of disturbing the peace. But if we ignore stereotyping remarks or racist jokes, we are adding to an atmosphere that breeds unhappiness among those so targeted.
Race and religion are complex and difficult issues to discuss publicly. They need sensitive handling. But the worst thing Singapore can do at this juncture in its development is to permit a bit of discomfort to lead to wilful ignorance of serious societal issues and injustices.
MOVING BEYOND HARMONY
Singaporeans need courage to move beyond a focus on “harmony” to confront hard truths about our own prejudices. How does one do this? The first step is to at least be open to the fact that things may not be as well as they seem.
Instead of being fixated on harmony, be honest about bias, prejudice, discrimination, shortcomings.
If a survey shows that 15 per cent of us consider Muslims threatening, then acknowledge that fact; do not pretend there is no ripple across the surface calm. Acknowledging that a problem exists is the first step to solving it.
Next, be empathetic in trying to understand those shortcomings.
A person’s “reality” is often limited by what he or she knows. On the 15 per cent finding, Dr Mathews said that the lack of exposure to and opportunities for learning about Muslims might have left some Singaporeans’ fears unchallenged.
If so, the solution is to reach out and understand more.
Lack of empathy towards what it means to be a Muslim in Singapore may desensitise the majority too.
There is an 85 per cent chance that those of you reading this are not a Muslim. How can we know? The most recent census data (2010) states that about 15 per cent of the population aged 15 years and over are Muslims.
But imagine you are one, and step into the shoes of that 15 per cent for a moment. You are a Muslim.
Given that the recent IPS study is representative, this means that for every 100 members of your community, there are 15, in a country you call home, who fear you. One in six people you meet today find your beliefs threatening.
How does that make you feel?
With that empathy as a starting point, we can then begin an honest conversation to seek better mutual understanding.
Mr Vadaketh wrote that different communities in a multicultural city will have “varying levels of confidence in expressing themselves”, due to issues like income or access.
He suggested the need for safe spaces for groups such as the Muslim community to share their thoughts without fear that their beliefs will be attacked.
We should be clear – it is not the duty of those maligned to create spaces and do the labour of, say, explaining why they should not be seen as threatening to others.
Social harmony is an ideal. But the point of an ideal is that it can never be fully achieved; its meaning lies in the ceaseless engagement and pursuit of it. It is always a work in progress.
The same national pledge that emphasises the need for unity regardless of race or religion also stresses that these ideals are in service of “progress for our nation”. It also notes the importance of justice and equality.
We cannot be so afraid of disturbing harmony that we would ignore the prejudice that will eat away at these foundations. Nor should we abuse the spirit of what harmony truly entails, by using it to justify inaction in the face of injustice.
Instead, upholding social harmony for Singapore means probing beneath the surface calm to confront our collective irrational fears and personal biases. We do this to reach greater understanding and trust. For that, it is surely worth suffering some discomfort.
Related
Institute of Policy Studies report on Religion in Singapore 2019
IPS Working Paper No. 33 - Religion in Singapore: The Private and Public Spheres -28 Mar 2019
Regardless of Race: Channel NewsAsia - Institute of Policy Studies Survey on Race Relations 2016
New Zealand terror attack: Societies must acknowledge rising Islamophobia, tackle right-wing hate ideology, says Shanmugam
Hate speech: Singapore is prepared to err on the side of caution to preserve racial harmony, says Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam
Institute of Policy Studies report on Religion in Singapore 2019
IPS Working Paper No. 33 - Religion in Singapore: The Private and Public Spheres -28 Mar 2019
Regardless of Race: Channel NewsAsia - Institute of Policy Studies Survey on Race Relations 2016
New Zealand terror attack: Societies must acknowledge rising Islamophobia, tackle right-wing hate ideology, says Shanmugam
Hate speech: Singapore is prepared to err on the side of caution to preserve racial harmony, says Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam
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