“The way they teach religious matters in our country is not suited to the current situation and to Malaysia’s character as a multiracial country,” Tajuddin Rasdi of UCSI University told FMT.
He said the curriculum for religious education, as well as the style of teaching, needed to be updated.
“Have you seen the way the ustazes teach Islam? It’s as if they are teaching in sekolah pondok.”
The sekolah pondok system is a madrasah system, usually with boarding facilities. It operates much like Indonesia’s pesantren system.
Tajuddin said there was nothing inherently wrong in the sekolah pondok system, but he added that the teaching must be relevant to the times and to Malaysia’s multireligious environment.
He acknowledged that racial political rhetoric was also to blame for intolerance among Malaysians, but he said “irresponsible politicians” were merely using to their advantage the racism that was already pervasive.
“It is as if we are living in a house full of cracks and there are those who are shaking the house down,” he said.
Recently, Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in the United States, was quoted in The Diplomat as saying that Malaysia’s shift towards a more rigid, political Islam, was resulting in greater intolerance in the country.
“Malaysia has become steadily more intolerant, and this has been a top down government policy,” he said.
“I was just in Malaysia, and the intolerance displayed by Malays is growing. I don’t know one Malaysian of Chinese or Indian ethnicity who is not alarmed at where all this is headed.”
The report also quoted researchers and Muslim figures as saying that intolerance was becoming a part of Malaysian life.
Abuza, who studies Southeast Asian politics and security issues, described Malaysian Islamic religious leaders as state-sponsored.