It’s not Sunni or Shi’ite. The majority are secular Muslims. The Japanese are spiritual. The Tibetans are religious. The Malays are secular. The islamisation and arabisation are skin deep. Enabled by economic progress and improved discretionary income. Started mid 1980’s and on going for three decades now. If it were genuine, the hygiene standard would be world class and Mr Najib would be out of the PM office by now.
Nice piece. One wonders if this blossoming of these Angel Dolls with their whimsical appearing paraphernalia is not also a response to the emptiness of current public discourse in Thailand. Authority never speaks the truth; commentators must always bow to nonsense; public rituals demand that ordinary people forget much of the very recent past and replace what they once knew with poorly articulated fabrications. That’s all a very serious test of the cognitive dissonance mechanism of the culture. Hey, dig my doll? Let me tell you all about it.
R.N.: I think you are referring to the popular definition of neurosis as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” rather than anything to do with ‘superstition’.
In this sense, I think we actually have something to work with regarding Thai political discourse.
From the endless attempts to create a workable governmental system by writing ever more detailed constitutions to the equally repetitive rhetorical effusions riffing on the rather banal point that “the junta is BAD” that always result in yet another corrupt “democracy” justifying yet another BAD coup we have a near-perfect example of a rather large scale neurosis.
As to ‘superstition’, I think that is more appropriately illustrated by the waving of the banners of “freedom” and “democracy” and “republic” and expecting something to change as a result.
The dolls are rather innocuous compared to that particular delusion if you compare the unease provoked by sitting next to a doll on a 737 to the number of deaths and serious injuries the other has often led to.
There is a down-to-earth definition of superstition: behaviour that is repeated despite the lack of good evidence that it is effective. A wise friend will lead the victim of superstition back to the path of effective behaviour. He won’t scold or scoff at the victim, because those methods are unlikely to be effective. Neither will he multiply the victim’s troubles by drawing him into a post-modernist bog.
Condemning the ‘folk religion’ is indeed nothing new. Think of the hostility of the Myanmar junta against Nat worship and the Ariya weizza sect. Two things, however: Not all social and religious phenomena are ‘good’ or ‘legitimate’ just because they originate from the bottom-up (look at Germany’s right-wing movements at the moment). Second, same question as Sam: ‘re-appropriation of power’? Hardly. Rather an escape (remember Marx: opium of the people?). So, let people have their Luk Thep, but do not romanticise. Finally: I think I give up on TG. I do not want to end up next to a Luk Thep on the plane….
That is why Singaporeans (the young ones at least) are more than willing to migrate out. As one of my friends who had migrated out told me, and I quote, Singapore is a sh1thole (sorry for the expletives but I’m just quoting what he said).
Shisha is banned but cigarettes are allowed? Don’t you see the irony here?
It is in dealing with this sort of imaginative appropriation of objects of everyday life that a certain kind of “western” rationality finds itself in the position of Wile E Coyote just before the fall: legs spinning furiously and eyes wide shut in order not to look.
The scathing social media response to the sudden eruption into consciousness of this rather old news and its subsequent adoption by the “aren’t non-white people just too bizarre?” department of the mainstream media was yet another measure of the narrow-minded and profoundly dull worldview promoted by such folks as the New Atheists and so many others.
Well, OK I suppose. Point taken. But “a re-appropriation of power by the people”???
I would rather think of religion as just another form of superstition joining luk thep dolls and the like as a means of diverting people from their true potential.
It is not as if the world of superstition as described by the author is devoid of its own hierarchies of power.
From the excellent “Oligarchy” by Jeffrey Winters, “It is useful to think of five main individual power resources: power based on political rights, the power of official positions in government or at the helm of organizations, coercive power, mobilizational power, and finally material power.”
Oligarchy is elite power based on material power (wealth), particularly material power so concentrated that it is like a black hole warping the behavior of other forms of power.
He also distinguishes different forms of oligarchy based on how the oligarchs organize the coercive power required to maintain their wealth. The book also includes a fascinating discussion of how Indonesia transitioned from being a sultanic (strong man) oligarchy into a democratic one, with the power of the oligarchy as a whole actually increasing in the process.
Thailand is definitely an oligarchy, but then again the United States pretty much is too.
[…] ethicist and director of the Campaign Against Sex Robots, Dr. Kathleen Richardson, stated that the very business idea of sex robots is modelled on the already existing businesses of the sex […]
The tudung and aurat covering bit is but a simple example on how things have changed in malaya in the last 20+ years. They are endless examples, some clear, some subtle. Other examples are “changes in vacabulary” like “apa khabar” to assamulakum for greetings.
I do not underestimate the ability of “foreigners” to understand malaysia, but I do believe, with good reasons, foreigners, especially arm chair ones, usually miss the subtle changes and signs affecting the undercurrents in malaya (peninsula)
#5- You seem to have missed the bit where the Democrat Party displays again and again its opposition to “democracy” by boycotting elections it is sure to lose and by setting up or supporting anti-democratic street wings whose sole purpose is to bring down elected governments and ensure their replacement by military junta or parliamentary proxies of same.
Let’s just say that if they were to “reconcile” with the UDD/PT to work toward an election it would hardly be the same thing as working together toward “restoring” something as anathema to their principles as democracy.
Unless of course, like so many journalists and social media pundits, you like to pretend that an elected “government” that needs to engage in continuous negotiation with the sovereign RTA and various other extra-democratic institutions like the CC, the NACC and the EC just to remain “in power” can be adequately labeled “democracy” and let it go at that?
The bogus notion that what has never been achieved can be “restored” should share pride of place with the substitution of ‘electoralism’ for ‘democracy’ as one of the greatest strategic victories of the “unreconcilables” who have kept this country in their pockets since forever.
If ever a time to “reconcile” demands urgency, that time is now. By reconciliation, I am referring to the Peau Thai party/Red Shirts on one side, and the Democrat Party at the other — combined accounting for 85% of Thailands electoral votes in the past election. The urgency to unite in a common cause to let it be known to all their party memberships, followers and the undecideds to reject the draft of the proposed Prayuth/Meechai constitution in the next referendum.
There is nothing more urgent than this one mission, if democracy is to have a real crack at being restored in the Kingdom of Thailand.
You’re raising a red herring. The tudung and aurat are not new to Malays in Malaysia, although the aurat is newer but only just. When the majority or all Malay women begin to wear the burqa, then perhaps your claim might have some merit. But remember — and many of the burqa-clad women will tell you, if they’re free to tell you — that they are being forced by Muslim men (fathers, husbands, clerics, et cetera) to wear the garb, albeit some women wear it voluntarily.
You’re what Manjit Bhatia would call a crude prositivist. You’re looking for “evidence” of the Arabization of Malaysia when you should be looking at the nuances of such symbolisms, most of which are artificial, which Manjit Bhatia has well argued, that are being used by the Umno-Malay state to shore up the Malay-ness of Malays that otherwise seems to be slipping from its political grasp.
I can never understand why Malaysians like you always fall back on the tired old assertion whenever a foreigner like Manjit Bhatia writes on Malaysia that he or she should spend time in Malaysia more closely observing “reality” there. What “reality”? And how do you know that he has not spent or does not spend time in Malaysia doing just that? Often I find his insights on Malaysia’s political-economy (and the region) rather sharp and poignant. He seems to have his finger of that country’s pulse. Which is more than I can say for a lot of Malaysians who live there and, sadly, remain largely ignorant of their own country’s politics, economy, and even its history. Pitiful. Don’t you think?
Manjit should really pay a visit to malaysia – more notably Peninsula malaysia. Stay for a couple of months to observe the subsumming of the “malayness” with Islamisation or “Arabism”
P Ramlee, the malay actor, director and film maker represented Malayness – The tudung and complete aurat covering represents “Islamisation” and adoptio of Arabic culture – very alien to malayness in the 21st century…
Most folks here have heard about the birth of the future Dragon King. It doesn’t seem like 10 years since the crown prince was last in Thailand, but here we are. Two salient items (not to make comparisons, but . . .):
– Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the present king’s father, saw to a quality education for his heir in the UK and the US. He abdicated the throne well before losing his physical and mental faculties, as he recognized that his son was better-fitted to lead Bhutan into modern times.
– From an article in Vanity Fair some years back. The newly-minted king spoke to a large crowd of “common” citizens.
“Throughout my reign I will never rule you as a king. I will protect you as a parent, care for you as a brother, and serve you as a son. I shall give you everything and keep nothing.”
Convincing argumentation! I highly appreciate the article. It allows to fully raise the question, whether, what and how an alternative to UMNO/BN might emerge in Malaysia.
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Muslim politics is not subsuming Malaysian politics
It’s not Sunni or Shi’ite. The majority are secular Muslims. The Japanese are spiritual. The Tibetans are religious. The Malays are secular. The islamisation and arabisation are skin deep. Enabled by economic progress and improved discretionary income. Started mid 1980’s and on going for three decades now. If it were genuine, the hygiene standard would be world class and Mr Najib would be out of the PM office by now.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
Nice piece. One wonders if this blossoming of these Angel Dolls with their whimsical appearing paraphernalia is not also a response to the emptiness of current public discourse in Thailand. Authority never speaks the truth; commentators must always bow to nonsense; public rituals demand that ordinary people forget much of the very recent past and replace what they once knew with poorly articulated fabrications. That’s all a very serious test of the cognitive dissonance mechanism of the culture. Hey, dig my doll? Let me tell you all about it.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
R.N.: I think you are referring to the popular definition of neurosis as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” rather than anything to do with ‘superstition’.
In this sense, I think we actually have something to work with regarding Thai political discourse.
From the endless attempts to create a workable governmental system by writing ever more detailed constitutions to the equally repetitive rhetorical effusions riffing on the rather banal point that “the junta is BAD” that always result in yet another corrupt “democracy” justifying yet another BAD coup we have a near-perfect example of a rather large scale neurosis.
As to ‘superstition’, I think that is more appropriately illustrated by the waving of the banners of “freedom” and “democracy” and “republic” and expecting something to change as a result.
The dolls are rather innocuous compared to that particular delusion if you compare the unease provoked by sitting next to a doll on a 737 to the number of deaths and serious injuries the other has often led to.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
There is a down-to-earth definition of superstition: behaviour that is repeated despite the lack of good evidence that it is effective. A wise friend will lead the victim of superstition back to the path of effective behaviour. He won’t scold or scoff at the victim, because those methods are unlikely to be effective. Neither will he multiply the victim’s troubles by drawing him into a post-modernist bog.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
Condemning the ‘folk religion’ is indeed nothing new. Think of the hostility of the Myanmar junta against Nat worship and the Ariya weizza sect. Two things, however: Not all social and religious phenomena are ‘good’ or ‘legitimate’ just because they originate from the bottom-up (look at Germany’s right-wing movements at the moment). Second, same question as Sam: ‘re-appropriation of power’? Hardly. Rather an escape (remember Marx: opium of the people?). So, let people have their Luk Thep, but do not romanticise. Finally: I think I give up on TG. I do not want to end up next to a Luk Thep on the plane….
Living in sin in Singapore?
That is why Singaporeans (the young ones at least) are more than willing to migrate out. As one of my friends who had migrated out told me, and I quote, Singapore is a sh1thole (sorry for the expletives but I’m just quoting what he said).
Shisha is banned but cigarettes are allowed? Don’t you see the irony here?
Silencing by means of “superstition”
Wonderful piece.
It is in dealing with this sort of imaginative appropriation of objects of everyday life that a certain kind of “western” rationality finds itself in the position of Wile E Coyote just before the fall: legs spinning furiously and eyes wide shut in order not to look.
The scathing social media response to the sudden eruption into consciousness of this rather old news and its subsequent adoption by the “aren’t non-white people just too bizarre?” department of the mainstream media was yet another measure of the narrow-minded and profoundly dull worldview promoted by such folks as the New Atheists and so many others.
Silencing by means of “superstition”
Well, OK I suppose. Point taken. But “a re-appropriation of power by the people”???
I would rather think of religion as just another form of superstition joining luk thep dolls and the like as a means of diverting people from their true potential.
It is not as if the world of superstition as described by the author is devoid of its own hierarchies of power.
Review of Unequal Thailand
From the excellent “Oligarchy” by Jeffrey Winters, “It is useful to think of five main individual power resources: power based on political rights, the power of official positions in government or at the helm of organizations, coercive power, mobilizational power, and finally material power.”
Oligarchy is elite power based on material power (wealth), particularly material power so concentrated that it is like a black hole warping the behavior of other forms of power.
He also distinguishes different forms of oligarchy based on how the oligarchs organize the coercive power required to maintain their wealth. The book also includes a fascinating discussion of how Indonesia transitioned from being a sultanic (strong man) oligarchy into a democratic one, with the power of the oligarchy as a whole actually increasing in the process.
Thailand is definitely an oligarchy, but then again the United States pretty much is too.
Sex robots and the sex trade
[…] ethicist and director of the Campaign Against Sex Robots, Dr. Kathleen Richardson, stated that the very business idea of sex robots is modelled on the already existing businesses of the sex […]
Muslim politics is not subsuming Malaysian politics
The tudung and aurat covering bit is but a simple example on how things have changed in malaya in the last 20+ years. They are endless examples, some clear, some subtle. Other examples are “changes in vacabulary” like “apa khabar” to assamulakum for greetings.
I do not underestimate the ability of “foreigners” to understand malaysia, but I do believe, with good reasons, foreigners, especially arm chair ones, usually miss the subtle changes and signs affecting the undercurrents in malaya (peninsula)
Life under Thailand’s 2016 constitution
#5- You seem to have missed the bit where the Democrat Party displays again and again its opposition to “democracy” by boycotting elections it is sure to lose and by setting up or supporting anti-democratic street wings whose sole purpose is to bring down elected governments and ensure their replacement by military junta or parliamentary proxies of same.
Let’s just say that if they were to “reconcile” with the UDD/PT to work toward an election it would hardly be the same thing as working together toward “restoring” something as anathema to their principles as democracy.
Unless of course, like so many journalists and social media pundits, you like to pretend that an elected “government” that needs to engage in continuous negotiation with the sovereign RTA and various other extra-democratic institutions like the CC, the NACC and the EC just to remain “in power” can be adequately labeled “democracy” and let it go at that?
The bogus notion that what has never been achieved can be “restored” should share pride of place with the substitution of ‘electoralism’ for ‘democracy’ as one of the greatest strategic victories of the “unreconcilables” who have kept this country in their pockets since forever.
Life under Thailand’s 2016 constitution
If ever a time to “reconcile” demands urgency, that time is now. By reconciliation, I am referring to the Peau Thai party/Red Shirts on one side, and the Democrat Party at the other — combined accounting for 85% of Thailands electoral votes in the past election. The urgency to unite in a common cause to let it be known to all their party memberships, followers and the undecideds to reject the draft of the proposed Prayuth/Meechai constitution in the next referendum.
There is nothing more urgent than this one mission, if democracy is to have a real crack at being restored in the Kingdom of Thailand.
Muslim politics is not subsuming Malaysian politics
This book is an attempt to understand and explain that tension (between Malayness & Islam’s many variants] in Malaysia.
http://www.niaspress.dk/books/modern-muslim-identities
Muslim politics is not subsuming Malaysian politics
You’re raising a red herring. The tudung and aurat are not new to Malays in Malaysia, although the aurat is newer but only just. When the majority or all Malay women begin to wear the burqa, then perhaps your claim might have some merit. But remember — and many of the burqa-clad women will tell you, if they’re free to tell you — that they are being forced by Muslim men (fathers, husbands, clerics, et cetera) to wear the garb, albeit some women wear it voluntarily.
You’re what Manjit Bhatia would call a crude prositivist. You’re looking for “evidence” of the Arabization of Malaysia when you should be looking at the nuances of such symbolisms, most of which are artificial, which Manjit Bhatia has well argued, that are being used by the Umno-Malay state to shore up the Malay-ness of Malays that otherwise seems to be slipping from its political grasp.
I can never understand why Malaysians like you always fall back on the tired old assertion whenever a foreigner like Manjit Bhatia writes on Malaysia that he or she should spend time in Malaysia more closely observing “reality” there. What “reality”? And how do you know that he has not spent or does not spend time in Malaysia doing just that? Often I find his insights on Malaysia’s political-economy (and the region) rather sharp and poignant. He seems to have his finger of that country’s pulse. Which is more than I can say for a lot of Malaysians who live there and, sadly, remain largely ignorant of their own country’s politics, economy, and even its history. Pitiful. Don’t you think?
Muslim politics is not subsuming Malaysian politics
Manjit should really pay a visit to malaysia – more notably Peninsula malaysia. Stay for a couple of months to observe the subsumming of the “malayness” with Islamisation or “Arabism”
P Ramlee, the malay actor, director and film maker represented Malayness – The tudung and complete aurat covering represents “Islamisation” and adoptio of Arabic culture – very alien to malayness in the 21st century…
Soccer wars in Southeast Asia
What an interesting insight of the soccer match among the South-Asian countries.
I see the same level during the India-Pakistan cricket series. It’s not less than a battle.
“Precious Prince of Hearts” takes Rangsit degree
Most folks here have heard about the birth of the future Dragon King. It doesn’t seem like 10 years since the crown prince was last in Thailand, but here we are. Two salient items (not to make comparisons, but . . .):
– Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the present king’s father, saw to a quality education for his heir in the UK and the US. He abdicated the throne well before losing his physical and mental faculties, as he recognized that his son was better-fitted to lead Bhutan into modern times.
– From an article in Vanity Fair some years back. The newly-minted king spoke to a large crowd of “common” citizens.
“Throughout my reign I will never rule you as a king. I will protect you as a parent, care for you as a brother, and serve you as a son. I shall give you everything and keep nothing.”
Muslim politics is not subsuming Malaysian politics
Convincing argumentation! I highly appreciate the article. It allows to fully raise the question, whether, what and how an alternative to UMNO/BN might emerge in Malaysia.
Hope and reality in a new Myanmar
Shall we venture to state that “Myanmar way to NC” unlike any as the West expected to be.