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Singapore Religion and Ethnicity
In the 1980s, members of all ethnic groups lived and
worked
together, dressed similarly, and shared equal access to
all public
institutions and services. Religion, therefore, provided
one of the
major markers of ethnic boundaries. Malays, for instance,
would not
eat at Chinese restaurants or food stalls for fear of
contamination
by pork, and a Chinese, in this case, could not invite a
Malay
colleague to a festive banquet. Funerals of a traditional
and
ethnically distinctive style were usually held even by
families
that were not otherwise very religiously observant. The
Community
Associations and the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board
encouraged
the public celebration of such ethnically distinctive and
appropriately colorful and noncontroversial festivals as
the
Chinese lantern festival and the dragon boat races.
The marriages, divorces, and inheritances of members of
religious communities and the management of properties and
endowments dedicated to religious purposes were of concern
to the
government, which interacted with some religious bodies
through
advisory boards dating back to the colonial period. The
Hindu
Advisory Board, established in 1917, advised the
government on
Hindu religion and customs and on any matters concerning
the
general welfare of the Hindu community. It assisted the
Hindu
Endowments Board, which administered the four major Hindu
temples
and their property, in organizing the annual festivals at
the
temples. The Sikh Advisory Board acted in the same way for
the
Sikhs.
The Singapore Muslim Religious Council (Majlis Ugama
Islam
Singapura) played a very important role in the
organization of
Islamic affairs and therefore of the Malay community.
Authorized by
the 1966 Administration of Muslim Law Act, the council,
composed of
members nominated by Muslim societies but appointed by the
president of Singapore, was formally a statutory board
that advised
the president on all matters relating to the Muslim
religion. It
acted to centralize and standardize the practice of Islam.
The
council administered all Muslim trusts (wafs);
organized a
computerized and centralized collection of tithes and
obligatory
gifts (zakat harta and zakat fitrah); and
managed all
aspects of the pilgrimage to Mecca, including registering
pilgrims,
obtaining Saudi Arabian visas, and making airline
reservations. The
council also helped the government reorganize the mosque
system
after redevelopment. Before the massive redevelopment and
rehousing
of the 1970s and 1980s, Singapore's Muslims were served by
about
ninety mosques, many of which had been built and were
funded and
managed by local, sometimes ethnically based, communities.
Redevelopment destroyed both the mosques and the
communities that
had supported them, scattering the people through new
housing
estates. The council, in consultation with the government,
decided
not to rebuild the small mosques but to replace them with
large
central mosques. Construction funds came from a formally
voluntary
contribution collected along with the Central Provident
Fund
deduction paid by all employed Muslims. The new central
mosques
could accommodate 1,000 to 2,000 persons and provided such
services
as kindergartens, religious classes, family counseling,
leadership
and community development classes, tuition and remedial
instruction
for school children, and Arabic language instruction.
The government had regulated Muslim marriages and
divorces
since 1880, and the 1957 Muslim Ordinance authorized the
establishment of the centralized Sharia Court, with
jurisdiction
over divorce and inheritance cases. The court, under the
Ministry
of Community Development, replaced a set of
government-licensed but
otherwise unsupervised kathi (Islamic judges) who
had
previously decided questions of divorce and inheritance,
following
either the traditions of particular ethnic groups or their
own
interpretations of Muslim law. The court attempted to
consistently
enforce sharia law, standard Islamic law as set out in the
Quran
and the decisions of early Muslim rulers and jurists, and
to reduce
the high rate of divorce among Malays. In 1989 the
Singapore Muslim
Religious Council took direct control of the subjects
taught in
Islamic schools and of the Friday sermons given at all
mosques.
Data as of December 1989
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