Statelessness to citizenship in the Malaysian state of Sabah and the making of a Malay-Muslim state

The acquisition of citizenship is laid out in Articles 14 to 22 of Malaysian Federal Constitution. However, in the state of Sabah, citizenships were awarded by the Malaysian Federal government to Muslim migrants through ‘Project IC’ (Identity Card Project). ‘Project IC’ is a term to describe the issuance of Malaysian citizenship to illegal Muslim immigrants. Analysis of an official Report on the proceedings of Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) which was set up in 2012 revealed the existence of this toxic project. This thesis is a single case study on how this came about and how a state can supplant the legal and administrative laws to favour one group in the award of Malaysian citizenship.
Six key consequences flowed out of ‘Project IC’: (1) Reengineering of demography – Sabah is now a Muslim majority State; (2) Political changes and re-delineation of constituencies in Sabah – the Non-Muslim Natives have lost their numerical political power; (3) Consolidation of Muslim control – By 2013, Muslims had gained the absolute majority in electoral politics; (4) Trust deficit – Non-Muslim natives do not trust the local government and are fearful of a repeat of Project IC; (5) Unresolved issue of statelessness – Not all participants in Project IC were granted Malaysian citizenship. For those participants who chose to remain in Sabah, their children were also considered stateless; (6) Unresolved migrant issues – many undocumented persons in Sabah became the victims of Project IC and remain undocumented to this date.
This thesis seeks to contribute to an understanding of politics in Sabah by investigating the citizenship process. It reveals that the selection of citizens can affect the political outcome of a state and in this case, Islamisation and citizenship are interrelated. Islam and loyalty to United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) are important components in securing citizenship in Sabah. From the data collected and analysed from a field study, together with an extensive investigation into the citizenship process and the mechanisms of Project IC, they showed that conventional theories such as consociational democracy and federalism do not fit into the current political development in Sabah, even though Sabah is a plural society. Instead, the theory of Ketuanan Melayu (Malay Supremacy), or in more recent times, Ketuanan Melayu Islam (Malay Islam Supremacy) is the most accurate theory to describe the politics in Sabah.
Project IC enabled illegal Muslim immigrants to become Malaysian citizens without following the legal process. Once awarded Malaysian citizenship by the Federal Government, such immigrants were regarded as Malays and inevitably became part of the Muslim indigenous groups in Sabah. This is how the Federal Government misused the citizenship process to secure its autonomy in Sabah, thereby establishing Sabah as a Malay-Muslim majority State. In view of this, Project IC became a platform for Ketuanan Melayu Islam to take root in in Sabah and effectively prevented Sabah from breaking away from the federation of Malaysia.