Written by Anna Tan and Arts-ED Team

What is the meaning of “harmony”? What can we learn about ourselves and our identity as a society from the stories of the houses of worship at the Seberang Jaya Street of Harmony?

These were the two driving questions behind our recent Jelajah Harmoni (Journey of Harmony) Seberang Jaya programme. For someone living outside Malaysia, it might seem unusual to have various houses of worship in close proximity to each other. Yet there are several such “Streets of Harmony”—areas where various houses of worship can be found clustered together—scattered across the state of Penang. Which begs the question: why, then, the need for this programme?

Despite Malaysia’s outward emphasis on multiculturalism, society in Malaysia has become increasingly segregated by race, religion, and language. With a national constitution that equates being Malay with being Muslim and a dual legal system for Syariah and civil offences, many Malaysians grow up with the concept of religion being tied to a specific ethnicity. Adding to that the various language streams available for education which inadvertently compounds segregation by ethnicity, it is no surprise that many young Malaysians grow up in cultural silos without the opportunity—or reason—to learn more about their own fellow citizens.

Yet, in order to promote global citizenship, it is important for the youths of Malaysia to learn about the culture and religions that surround them and shape their everyday lives—more so when such knowledge is so easily and readily accessible.

The Jelajah Harmoni Programme

Jelajah Harmoni is a 4.5-hour programme targeted at 15–18-year-olds that involves visiting various houses of worship (HOW) in Seberang Jaya’s Street of Harmony (SOH). By teaching students to identify the religions around them and understand how various HOW function as not just religious entities but communal hubs that promote the well-being and sustainability of their surrounding community, Jelajah Harmoni emphasises the GCED themes of identity and diversity and conflict and peacebuilding.

At the start of the programme, students are invited to reflect on their own identity and what harmony means to them. Such reflection helps them connect vague concepts such as “harmony” to their daily lives and how they view themselves. 

Students visit four to five HOW along two available routes, where a facilitator guide or community member provides an introduction to the HOW, including their space and function, religion and main deities, key festivals, and core values. At each HOW, they complete tasks, including documenting observations of various practices and interviews with the community. These activities were selected by the HOW themselves to answer the question “What unique aspect of your HOW do you want to share with youths who are unfamiliar with you?” Examples include a masala tea-making demonstration in Gurdwara Sahib Butterworth to share the continued importance of their ties to Punjab and a show-and-tell about the free medical, food, and funeral aid provided by Ku Cheng Tse Temple.

For Jelajah Harmoni, we wanted to push beyond a surface-level understanding of “Streets of Harmony”, a term coined by the state government on the assumption that being neighbours guaranteed harmony. Instead, we wanted to understand—and let students interpret for themselves—how the communities viewed the term. This moved us from covering the tip of the cultural iceberg, such as foods, festivals, and games, to exploring the submerged parts: how their practices and activities are not only related to worship but community identity; the services provided to the community at large, not just their own devotees; and that all communities need to work together to create harmony. 

The last hour of the programme is dedicated to analysis and reflection. Students analyse the diverse practices of the HOW they visited, ideate a “Harmony Project” to promote harmony between the HOW, and reflect on what they have learnt. This circles back to their initial thoughts about identity and harmony, and how these may have changed through learning about other communities.

Putting It Together

As a non-profit organisation, Arts-ED has always pushed for promoting cultural richness and diversity through learning about history and heritage. So when Penang Harmony Corporation (HARMONICO) asked us to partner with them in coming up with a “Journey of Harmony” in Seberang Jaya, a somewhat new area of Penang to us, we were eager to jump onboard. 

Jelajah Harmoni Seberang Jaya was modelled on the 2014 Journey of Harmony Street Interpretation Project in George Town. Given our experiences in George Town, we continued using the Community-Based Learning (CBL) approach, where the focus and starting point is on inviting the communities involved to lead the conversations about themselves.

Increasing Community Involvement

CBL is an educational approach that shifts the focus from textbook-based classroom learning to allowing students to learn by doing and interacting with a real community and environment—in this case, the HOW in Seberang Jaya. Students got to hear personal perspectives on the HOW’s key principles and practices that go beyond pure information and observe concrete examples of these principles of harmony, tolerance, and respect in action.

But while CBL helps students connect experiences and skills, it requires a lot more coordination with and cooperation from the communities involved. Besides being open to sharing their stories, community leaders and members must avail their time to not just be part of focus group discussions during the planning and research stage, but to also host the students at their HOW and assign someone to share during the programme. It requires a lot of positive involvement—and not all of the houses of worship were willing to take up those formal tasks.

The Seberang Jaya community rallied around, supporting us by sharing key insights and comments on the programme from the first draft, observing pilot programmes and giving improvement suggestions, and providing continuous input as we refined the syllabus.

Expanding the Notion of Cultural Diversity

A key balance that we had to keep in mind when selecting facilitator guides was to ensure that they could be neutral towards all HOW and not push their own values and agendas on the students. The HOW communities were also concerned about what they can or cannot say—discussing religion is taboo and they were not familiar with sharing to youths from varied backgrounds. How could they share their stories to create mutual understanding while avoiding coming across as being “preachy”? 

Drawing on our experiences in George Town that highlighted historical migrant settlements as an entry point to talk about ethnic and religious diversity, we shaped the main thrust of Jelajah Harmoni to highlight the HOW’s role as communal hubs and their impact beyond worship services, rather than the religious beliefs behind them. 

The focus of Jelajah Harmoni, in that sense, is not to understand world religions, but to discover what core values are shared across religions and how that is shown in action.

Creating Opportunities for Growth

There are not many platforms for youth in Malaysia to talk about religion, so their base of knowledge is very small. Students from a national school had at least heard about some of the religious groups before, but students in another pilot group knew very little other than their own religion. 

This was evident in the students’ reflections. Answers to the prompt “One thing that left a strong impression on me is...” ranged from “the mutual tolerance among the different religions” to “religions in Malaysia are not limited to Chinese, Indian, and Malay”.

Teacher Wong, who accompanied one of the pilot groups, wants more programmes like this. “We often tell students to respect diversity and differences, but if we do not create opportunities for students to have personal contact [with people of other religions], [they will not] produce deep internalised feelings. Respect that only stays at the level of knowledge is ineffective.” She adds that localised learning makes it easier for students to connect their learning and their lives and has taken her students to visit other communities near their school.

For many students, Jelajah Harmoni was the first time they interacted with people from other religious backgrounds who answered questions that they didn’t know who or where to ask and weren’t even sure they were allowed to ask. This had a strong impact on them, breaking the stereotypes and challenging assumptions they held.

Conclusion 

As a half-day programme, we may not be able to see the long-term impact, but it is heartening to know that all the students left with more curiosity to learn about other cultures and religions, including their principles, songs, history, and foods.

As one of the student reflections says, “From this trip I realised the importance of harmony, especially in Malaysia, a country with diverse races and cultures. It is all the more crucial that we respect, tolerate, and understand more about each other’s religion, culture, and customs.”

Find out more about the Seberang Jaya Street of Harmony:  https://www.harmonico.my/harmonysj

This article was published and extracted from SangSaeng, a magazine by Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU) under the auspices of UNESCO.