He’s trying to make me go to rehab;
I said no, no, no.
I ain’t got the time
And if my daddy thinks Im fine…
He’s trying to make me go to rehab;
I said no, no,no.
– Amy Winehouse, ‘Rehab’ (2007)
So now its ‘political rehabilitation’, is it? As a corrective measure for kids who go to demonstrations and who have been ‘bad’ in the eyes of the government? That Malaysia’s leaders can even suggest such a thing speaks volumes about the extent to which the space of alienation between the state and the nation has grown over the years, and points to the lack of contact, communication and understanding between the powers-that-be and the real Malaysian nation made up of the rest of us. (1)
But are we surprised? After all this is the same country whose geography is now cluttered with a smattering of ‘faith rehabilitation centres’ that have been set up under the auspices of an Islamist project said to promote some skewered vision of a modern, pluralist, democratic Islam that is benevolent and accommodative: So accommodative in fact that it can accommodate dozens, if not hundreds, of Malaysian citizens deemed ‘immoral’, ‘deviant’, ‘apostate’ and out of the ordinary according to the norms set by an invisible and unaccountable cabal of Islamic experts in the pay of the state. We already have rehabilitation centres whose job it is to ‘turn over’ these alleged deviants and misfits and force them to conform to the normative praxis of Islam that is deemed correct by the state, so should we be surprised if the leaders of UMNO and the government can go one step further and call for the rehabilitation of children as well?
From the viewpoint of an academic who studies the development of modern postcolonial states, Malaysia seems to be a textbook example of postcolonial development turned awry. What began as a country with so much promise — its plural racial and ethnic composition, blessed with plentiful resources that was also strategically located at the cross-roads between East and West –has been squandered for the sake of one ruling party that seems to cater primarily to the needs and demands of one specific ethnic-religious constituency. Continue reading “Rehabilitation for whom?”