1Malaysia What?

posted by din merican- September 12, 2009

Source: The Straits Times

September 11, 2009

NO 1Malaysia without better race relations

By Hazlin Hassan

UNTIL last Saturday, I had never really seen The Ugly Malay.  Malays are generally a polite, peace-loving and tolerant people. Traditionally, they set great store by manners and good behaviour, especially towards elders.

But last Saturday, that image was shattered. I was covering a public forum on the relocation of a 150-year-old Hindu temple from one neighbourhood in Shah Alam to another.

A week earlier, angry residents in the Muslim-majority Section 23 neighbourhood of Shah Alam, where the temple was to be relocated, protested against the move. Some stomped on a severed head of a cow to express their displeasure.

The September 5 forum was called to resolve the dispute and was attended by the Selangor Chief minister, the Shah Alam Mayor and other officials.

Hooligans masquerading as Muslim Malays made sure the meeting had no chance of resolving anything. They shouted, booed and hurled obscenities, jumped on chairs or took them away from any Indian who wanted to sit down. They harassed middle-aged women by pulling at their scarves and made threatening gestures at Indians and the officials.

Such shameful behaviour – and during the holy month of Ramadan too – left me feeling ashamed to be lumped into the same racial category as them. Even some of my more conservative Malay friends could not understand their actions.

‘What planet do they come from? Why are they so sick? It’s just not normal for Malays to behave like that,’ said a 30-year-old tudung-wearing friend.

A 42-year-old Malay civil servant told me: ‘The cow’s head incident made me sad as I don’t think we want people to demonstrate against a mosque with a pig’s head or burn the Quran or an effigy of Prophet Muhammad.’

It is even harder to fathom when one thinks of Hari Raya Haji, when Muslims slaughter cows, lambs and goats with the utmost respect and dignity.

What makes the whole incident even more ironic is that around this time every year, multi-racial and multi-religious Malaysia tells the world it is a model nation, as it celebrates National Day on August 31.

Overt and extreme displays of racism, such as the ones I saw last Saturday, are rare in Malaysia. Most Malaysians are visibly proud of their multi-racial heritage. We celebrate all our different religious festivals together. This Ramadan, like any other, non-Muslims join their Muslim friends for buka puasa (break fast). Some of my non-Muslim friends have even taken to fasting, in solidarity with Muslims and for health reasons.

As a result, I had always been confident that Malaysia would never witness a repeat of the bloody May 13, 1969 race riots. After 52 years of independence, I believed that Malaysians would be mature enough to have learnt the lessons of their past.  But on the streets, it is apparently a different story. A Malay resident told the forum that he and his Indian neighbours had stopped talking to one another since the temple issue blew up.

The racist and religious slurs heard at the forum were indeed shocking. And as tensions escalated, I have to admit that I began to feel fearful for my own life.

In recent months, several controversies relating to the sensitivities of the Malays have made headlines. In July, a Muslim woman caught drinking beer in a public place was ordered to be caned. Then came the calls to ban a concert by Danish group, Michael Learns To Rock, because PAS considered it an insult to Muslims during the fasting month.

This was followed by the government’s decision, since rescinded, to bar Muslims from attending a Black Eyed Peas concert because the event’s organiser is Irish beer giant Guinness.

These cases come amid growing demands by non-Malays for equal rights. Some Malays feel threatened and some Malay mainstream newspapers have not helped matters by exploiting the issues.

My conservative friend gives a telling glimpse into how strongly some Malays feel about the issue. While she was disgusted with the behaviour of the cow-head protesters, she was also adamant that non-Malays have no right to ask for more rights or privileges.

Her views are not unusual. Many other Malays fear they will lose out and become, to quote a resident at the forum, ‘beggars in their own land’.

Western-educated Malays are likely to disagree. Many of them did not benefit from any of the special perks accorded to Malays and have worked hard to be where they are now. Moreover, they believe that Malays are more than capable of making it on their own.

Whether the Malay community takes a unified stand on the issue of equal rights remains to be seen. But what is certain is that the past few weeks have been one of the most racially charged periods in Malaysia in recent years.

I am saddened by the sight these days of young people hanging out with only members of their own race. Growing up in the 1980s, I made many wonderful friends among the Chinese and Indians as well as my own Malay community. So for the sake of my young daughter and future generations, my fervent hope is that race relations will improve.

I miss the Malaysia of my childhood. I want to see my daughter play masak-masak or Microsoft’s Xbox with her Malay, Chinese and Indian friends and not have to be bothered by squabbles over where to build a temple or by hooligans hurling racist profanities as they brandish a bloodied animal head.

1Malaysia? We are nowhere near that.

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