Managing ethnic and religious diversity in the United States and Malaysia

Race relations in Malaysia – and the same goes for relations between religious groups – have raised perennial challenges for politicians, community leaders, policy-makers, and even judges. The same can be said, at least when it comes to matters of race, for the United States. Finding solutions to flashpoint issues has become particularly burdensome in recent years given that political polarisation and the rise of fundamentalist attitudes have shown a markedly upward trend in both countries. This book, based on papers presented at an international conference organised under the auspices of the Malaysian Association for American Studies (MAAS), attempts to identify and dissect some of the key factors relevant to an understanding of the problem. The eight substantive papers deal with, respectively: the role of the judiciary in protecting racial and religious minorities; understanding ethnicity in the context of culturally diverse societies; the integration of Asian immigrants in the United States; the management of ethnic and religious diversity in Malaysia; national security and governance implications of ethnic and religious divisions in the American population; the management of peace, inter-ethnic harmony and religious diversity in Malaysia; the promotion of stability and peace in American society; and the impact of globalisation on religious and cultural diversity, with particular emphasis on US-Malaysia co-operation in combating terrorism in Southeast Asia. There is also a useful summing up, by Professor K.S. Nathan, the current President of MAAS and a leading international relations expert in his own right, of the difficult and uncomfortable questions which need to be tackled in this increasingly fraught debate. One of those questions which Nathan does not shy away from raising is: ‘Can religious identity be harmonized with the requirements of being a global citizen?’ (p. 173). By itself, this may not seem to be a particularly controversial or provocative question, but he discusses it in the context of Malaysia where, as he notes, ‘there is a degree of ambivalence’ [p. 173] in the matter. His anxieties are based on certain ground realities: