Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald on Malaysia:
Malaysia is a good example of the way in which Muslims, even in a country in which they are a bare majority, have managed to create a situation that, to the extent possible, reduplicates the dhimmitude of yore. When it first became independent, Malaya (later Malaysia) did not have a Muslim majority. But just as in every country where Muslims and non-Muslims have lived, the Muslims have driven out or killed enough of the non-Muslims to diminish their numbers. In the early 1950s, Lebanon was 40% Muslim and 60% Christian; while censuses are no longer taken, the proportion is likely reversed. At independence, West Pakistan was 15% Hindu; now it is 1% Hindu; East Pakistan was 38% Hindu, and is now 8% Hindu. Meanwhile, the proportion of Muslims in India has risen and continues to rise. While non-Muslim birthrates everywhere, from Europe to China to Peru, go down, Muslim birthrates remain the highest in the world -- in Infidel lands and Muslim lands alike. And Infidels have been prompt with transfers of wealth to Muslims, both within Muslim lands and within Infidel lands.In Malaysia, the "jizya" is disguised. It is called the "Bumiputra" ("Sons of the Soil"), and it supposedly was intended to help the indigenous Malays. But the indigenous tribes, the real Malays, are Christianized. In fact, the "Bumiputra" system helps only the Muslims in Malaysia. By its terms, those who are Chinese or Hindus (i.e., non-Muslims) must include in all of their economic undertakings, as equal partners, Malaysian Muslims. So, for example, if two Malaysian Chinese were to open, say, an architectural office, they would have to take on as a full partner a Malaysian Muslim, who would receive a share even if he contributed little or nothing to the enterprise.
And steadily, state by state, Malaysia is introducing more and more Islamic features into its social and political life. Anwar Ibrahim (he of the famous "trial") makes Mahathir Mohamed (he of the rants against the "Jews" and the speech to the O.I.C. in which he called upon fellow Muslims to embrace "progress," which he then defined entirely in terms of military technology and other means to defeat the Infidels and spread the banner of Islam) seem "moderate."
Malaysia's famed "economic success" is owed primarily to four things:
1) The British commercial and legal inheritance (Singapore, incidentally, briefly part of Malaysia, had as its first Chief Minister a member of a family of Iraqi Jews, spread throughout Asia like the more famous Sassoons and Kadoories, the Marshalls -- Marshall's nephew attended school in Bombay with the late President Bhutto of Pakistan, in those relatively relaxed pre-Partition days).
2) Extensive natural resources.
3) An energetic mercantile and entrepreneurial class of Chinese and Hindus, whose economic activity both supports, and serves as a useful model, to the Muslims.
4) The encouragement by Malaysia of the assembly of high-tech goods due to low costs, and that entrepreneurial class described in #3 above.
But now the Chinese in China, not the Bumiputra-hobbled Chinese in Malaysia, and the Indians in India, not the Bumiputra-hobbled Hindus in Malaysia, will be able to replace Malaysia entirely as a center for technical assembly. And as Malaysia further islamizes, it will drive more and more of its energetic non-Muslim population away, and the economy is likely to suffer.
It is surely worth observing what happens to the Bumiputra system -- that disguised jizya. If it is abandoned, there may be mild hope for Malaysia. But as in every other state where Muslims slowly seize control, the likelihood of reversing course and making things better, rather than worse, for a large community of non-Muslims, is slim. See Nigeria, Lebanon, Sudan, Egypt.
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Interesting as all Hugh's posts are. However, not all Muslims are lazy parasites. I'm thinking particularly of the Indo-Pakistanis who emigrated to places all over the world from Uganda to Canada and points in between. I recently heard a radio report that Britain's restaurant industry is suffering a manpower shortage as the children of restaurant owners move on to less demanding work and immigration, particularly from Bangladesh, can't keep up with the demand. And Toronto's restauranteurs are similarly dependent on Bangladeshis to staff their kitchens and diningrooms. There are probably other examples; these just happen to be two that I am aware of.