Arabs Seek Revival of Singapore’s Glory

SINGAPORE — Helmi Talib’s forefathers were Arab traders, pioneers in southeast Asia who spread the Islamic faith and used Singapore as a trading post before the British discovered its strategic value in the 1820s.

Arabs quickly moved into the mainstream of native Malay communities in the region, respected as Muslim teachers and accepted as marriage partners. The two cultures influenced one another and intermingled through the years.

But today Talib feels many of his contemporaries have lost the sense of belonging to the Arab community, to the point where some opt to remain oblivious to their heritage.

“We face an identity crisis,” said Talib, a 32-year-old accountant.

In Singapore, a country where maintaining ethnic roots is strongly promoted, a majority of young Arabs are now unable to speak Arabic, he said.

“The role of Arabs in Singapore has also kept shrinking since their influence reached its peak in the 1930s,” he said.

Early Arab influences in Singapore are still visible. Apart from Arab Street, one of the island state’s tourist attractions, many roads are named after Arab households such as Aljunied, Alkaff and Alsagoff.

Mohamed Harun Aljunied and his nephew Omar Ali Aljunied first set foot in Singapore around 1815, four years before Stamford Raffles set up the first British trading post.

Arabs are proud that Omar Ali built Singapore’s first mosque in 1820. The mosque, the Masjid Omar Kampong Melaka, is now a monument preserved by the government.

His descendant, Abdullah Bin Haroon Aljunied, president of the Arab Assn. here, said Arabs’ close assimilation and common faith with Malays had made some local media and officials treat them as a sub-group of Malay or a Malay/Muslim group.

Hassan Ali Hafiz, an oil company executive, said he and other young members of the local Arab community resent being lumped into the Malay group, which makes up 14% of Singapore’s 2.7 million population.

“We do borrow some of their cultures and they borrow some of ours. But that doesn’t mean that we are totally assimilated or we should subsume under the Malay race,” Hafiz said.

Some 78% of Singapore’s citizens are ethnic Chinese, 14% Malay, 7% ethnic Indian and the balance Eurasians and others.

Young Arabs here pointed to a recent report by the Straits Times newspaper referring to “Malays of Arab descent” and saying most Arabs lived like Malays and spoke Malay at home.

But Khaled Talib, publisher of biweekly newsletter for the Arab community here, vehemently rejects the term.

“I am a Singaporean of Arab descent. It is absurd to call me a Malay of Arab descent because I am not a Malay.”

Arabs in Singapore are mostly descendants of traders from the Hadramout Valley in Yemen and number between 6.000 and 10,000. But Hadramis number about two million in neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia--almost three times the total back home in the Yemeni valley.

“Arabs in Indonesia and Malaysia remain in the mainstream of their societies while Arabs in Singapore face declines in their educational and economic levels,” accountant Talib said.

Oil company executive Hafiz said many Arabs registered themselves as Malays on their identity cards to qualify for benefits intended for what the government terms “underperforming or poor” Malays.

Khaled Talib, Helmi Talib and his brother Ameen Talib, a lecturer at the National University of Singapore, jointly wrote a paper recently urging the Arab Assn. to take an active role in revitalizing the Arab community.

Leaders of the association acknowledge the need to promote use of Arabic and maintain Arab culture but warned against jeopardizing harmony with those sharing the same faith.

“Let us try to be reasonable. We don’t want the Malays to feel alarmed,” said Osman Bagharib, honorary secretary of the Arab Assn.