No Black Eyed Peas for Malaysian Muslims

Posted By Elizabeth Dickinson Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 4:23 PM Share

The band, that is. Thanks to a government decree today, Muslims in Malaysia will not be allowed to attend the group's concert next month. The policy, as told to the AP goes like this: "Muslims cannot attend. Non-Muslims can go and have fun."

So... Where is the Love? It's not the hip-hoppers that Malaysia is concerned about; it's the event's sponsor, Guinness. It's part of a bid to crack down on alcohol use among the Muslim majority. On top of this incident, liquor sales are being watched more closely, and sharia courts -- set up for the civil cases of Muslim adherents -- are taking the laws seriously, granting rough penalties for infractions.

Not everyone is happy about all this, and not just because they will miss a rockin show. The country's minority Indian, Chinese, and other ethnic populations have often chafed against the government's pro-Malay (and hence pro-Muslim) politics. In regional elections earlier this year, ethnic and religion tensions came to fever pitch. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim led a multiethnic coalition that came the closest in memory to actually challenging years of pro-Malay rule by the United Malays National Organization and its partners.

So why did Malaysia give this concert a go-ahead in the first place? Tourism revenue, it seems. But there's more Humps on the road to winning Black Eyed Peas cash than it seemed.

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

EXPLORE:SOUTHEAST ASIA, CULTURE

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BRETT

5:18 PM ET

August 27, 2009

Considering that they heavily

Considering that they heavily subsidize the (largely muslim) Malays, it's possible that they simply can't bypass any potential revenue (particularly revenue that could then be taxed and turned into more subsidies for Malays), what with the Malay population growing.

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