Open season: Shoot a Muslim/Malay

Well. I wasn’t expecting such a hullaballoo from the articles I wrote a few weeks ago.

Perhaps I should have captured the zeitgeist in a more sedate manner.

But there is one thing that we must do: we need to talk about us.

My interactions with fellow Malaysians these days can be rather intense and combative experiences – I am a great believer, no matter how offensive one’s rationale is, that you are entitled to your opinion and beliefs.

But in a multicultural country like ours, anger does not contribute to interfaith and interracial engagement. Anger is very powerful: it makes you an instant pop figure when you claim to scream for the rakyat, and it also pushes you to action.
However, I feel that the anger that is demonstrated in Malaysia is passive – it is hostile and does not lead to any affirmative action.

Much of the conversations that I encounter now with a number of (not all) non-Malay, non-Muslim acquaintances revolve around these arguments:

• That we Malays/Muslims are dragging us back to the dark ages by wanting a return to a fundamentalist Islam.
• That we Malays/Muslims are turning our country into a backwater for wanting Islam.
• It is their right to want to use Allah when they refer to God.
• It is their right not to want to participate in interfaith activities, because they have their own way of practising their faith and interracial relations.
• It is their right to conduct their lives the way they see fit and the Malays/Muslims are not to interfere.

While I empathise and can see their point – 50 over years of marginalisation is no laughing matter – I do feel very battered and bruised when I have these interactions.

After my colleague’s column on the Arabisation of Malays which had many twist their knickers in anger, I helped another colleague with her article on the very same issue.

Hamagad, as my friend Mimi Harlequin would say, did I get an earful from the people I interviewed.

I told myself that the next time I was sent on an assignment to ask Malaysians contentious issues, I’d carry an umbrella and shield myself from the vitriol and spittle.

Much as I do not want to make this racial, but let me quote a friend, “Bloody hell. It’s like fashionable to hate us Malays/Muslims in Malaysia now, innit?”

In Malaysia, everything is personal and Malaysians are myopic. Everyone wants to pick a fight on anything and everything.

They cannot see that people who are at the frontline – members of the media, public intellectuals et al – are conveying (1) a party’s idea (2) their sentiments (3) a topic to discuss, and do so in good faith.

None of us are naïve to think we would be loved. We know that when we took this path, we would face brickbats, but when the attacks are personal, we are stumped. And it’s worse when you are Malay and Muslim, and a woman – not even the Malays and Muslims out there are empathic to your situation. Gila la you all ni.

The recent Low Yat incident was most unfortunate. On the one hand, there were many voices appealing for calm and reason: this was about a theft, not racism.

But on the other extreme, it became racialised and politicised. As all of us Malaysians watched in horror, I can only be grateful for our warped but barbed sense of humour.

A young would-be hero had pleaded to his friends to be careful and not repeat the May 16 riots. A social media user responded by posting this (right) on his Facebook which went viral.

If we argue, let it come from a position of positive curiosity, and genuinity. We don’t have to agree with each other, but we don’t have to be hateful. The country is going to pot and here we are staking our turf. Of all places, Facebook. Something wrong somewhere la you.

We need to put aside our ego (and may I stress here, ego. Not our problems) when we discuss heated and sensitive matters. We want to help heal our country and rebuild it in the best way we can.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to everyone. Let us start this month of Shawwal on a better note. – July 24, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.