Pursuing light over darkness

SINCE my last article on the international impact of domestic elections, the US midterm elections have already overtaken the ones I mentioned in terms of worldwide significance.

The stunning victory of the Democrats over the Republicans (described by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as “an extinction-level event”) led to a sell-off of AI stocks on the Nasdaq, rooted in fears of greater regulation of AI (and in the case of Nvidia, a further drop occurred upon the revelation of an extra-marital affair by its CEO with an alleged Chinese spy).

Those results will also impact US policy towards Russia and Ukraine; as well as Iran (in relation to the Strait of Hormuz) and Israel (a country for which support among American voters is at its lowest).

Already, President Donald Trump has declared that US$4bil of US aid to Israel would end this year – although that sounds more dramatic than it actually is, the need to point it out to American voters is significant.

Some of the Democratic candidates won in areas that had not elected a Democrat for decades: in Mississippi, Scott Colom became the state’s first Democratic senator since 1982, and its first Black senator since 1875.

Meanwhile in Michigan, Abdulrahman Mohamad El-Sayed, a former epidemiologist and academic, became the first Muslim to be elected to the US Senate, complementing the superstar persona of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Highlights from his campaign continually appeared on my social media feed, especially his riposte of an Islamophobe who asked him to “disavow the Muslim Brotherhood”, and effective messaging from his Christian step-grandparents.

His victory excited Muslim observers all over the world, ironically including in Muslim countries where Muslims don’t have a vote for their leaders at all. Malaysia consistently ranks as among the most democratic countries which are members of the OIC – and while the positions of mayor and senator exist in our country as well, the former are always appointed and the latter are either appointed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong or indirectly-elected by state assemblies – and have far fewer powers compared to their American counterparts.

Yet, if Mamdani or El-Sayed were somehow to be candidates in any of our elections, it would be practically impossible to place their policy positions within any Malaysian political party, so different are our political landscapes. So while it’s normal to get excited by “someone like us” doing well somewhere far overseas, it does expose the substantive differences.

Luckily, we have our own genuine and much cherished traditions of unity, too.

At the gorgeous venue that is Sutra House – and after enjoying an art exhibition happily featuring cats in every piece – I recently watched Genggaman, a wonderful dance production combining performers from Sutra Foun­dation, DiDance and Dua Space Dance Theatre.

Since then, I had been replaying in my mind this metaphor of how Malaysians are capable of bringing their own unique traditions together on a common stage and move purposefully and beautifully together.

At the Ideas Autism Centre in Port Dickson – where the haze had lifted thanks to a fortuitous change of wind direction – a multi-racial assembly of enthusiastic children were ready to learn about Deepavali traditions; I never knew there was so much animated content in Malay describing Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesha!

In assembling the kolam, the kurta-clad Malay and Chinese boys gave way to the twin Indian girls, letting them sprinkle the colourful beads onto the curved geometric patterns before following suit (they let me have one petal), but when it came to making the kaara sippi (aka kuih siput), everyone bounded in excitedly. These children on the autism spectrum were able to appreciate their classmates’ cultural traditions in a way that many Malaysian adults in high positions are not.

From the state with the highest proportion of ethnic Indians in its population, I flew to the state with one of the lowest (Negri Sembilan’s 15% to Sabah’s roughly 0.5%). Kota Kinabalu was still bedecked with diyas, torans and kolams, and at Rumah Sri Gaya, I asked my host how many Sabahans celebrate Deepavali, and he said it ran to the mere thousands: a reminder of how today’s ethnic diversity varies across our states due to different legacies of migration, geography and colonial policy. And yet, the Chief Minister’s next event was precisely to mark that festival, showing how the embrace of all of Malaysia’s population was alive and well in Borneo.

“If only Semenanjung politicians took equal interest in the diverse ethnic groups of Sabah,” lamented a friend later. “You keep saying Sabah and Sarawak are the ‘true’ Malaysia but you need to put in the work to understand it.”

I had no defence, and could not have said it better.

Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin is chairman of Ideas Autism Centre.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.