Malaysiakini.com（http://www.malaysiakini.com）
(1) ‘1Malaysia' gov't should usher in Race Relations Act, 29 December 2009
by Humayun Kabir
The government should introduce the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act to ensure that discrimination in job opportunities is not practised both in the public and private sectors.
In making the call, DAP national labour bureau chief A Sivanesan said, “This move will ensure that only qualified Malaysians are hired.”
“At present, there are no mechanisms to ensure the best applicants are selected for these two sectors.
“The Malays complain that they are being sidelined by the Chinese in the private sector while the Chinese and Indians feel left out in job opportunities in the civil service sector,” lamented Sivanesan.
He said that by implementing a Race Relations Act, all Malaysians will be given equal opportunities in both sectors.
Sivanesan, who is Sungkai assemblyperson and Perak DAP vice-chairman, also highlighted the plight of women who are often sidelined for promotions.
“This form of discrimination against women will be addressed when the Sex Discrimination Act is implemented,” he said.
According to him, women form 65 percent of the teaching professionals but few could be seen occupying top posts.
Give true meaning to '1Malaysia'
Sivanesan cited England as an example where the Race Relations Act and Sex Discrimination Act were introduced to ensure that its citizens would get jobs based on meritocracy.
“Does the Barisan Nasional federal government have the political will to implement both these two acts to give true meaning to the 1Malaysia concept as preached by (Premier) Najib (Abdul Razak)?” he asked.
Sivanesan claimed that the implementation of these two acts would ensure a more efficient civil service in Malaysia.
“The Barisan government has to change its mindset of only looking after the interests of one particular race and ignoring the other races who are also Malaysians,” he alleged.
According to the DAP leader, Pakatan Rakyat has resolved to introduce the Race Relations Act to ensure that every qualified Malaysian irrespective of race is ensured a job in the civil sector if it takes control of the federal government in the 13th general election.
At its first convention two weeks ago, the opposition coalition has also vowed to implement an Equal Opportunity Act should it be voted into power.
(2) Indian Muslims - in defence of Mahathir, 28 December 2009
by Neil Khor
Indian or Muslim, you cannot be both to be Malaysian!
Just when one hopes for clarity of vision or some astute observation from our senior statesmen, out comes this really strange statement. But to be fair, what was the context and what was the situation that Dr Mahathir Mohamad was referring to?
Former premier Mahathir never minces his words. He tells it as it is. He also does not need the government to “protect” him. He calls a spade a spade. He gives as good as he gets.
In this case, he was speaking at a function organised by the Kadayalannur Muslim Society, telling a group of people who still define themselves by their place of origin to be less tied to their 'homeland' and instead focus on being more Malaysian.
He said that for 1Malaysia to succeed, those of migrant origins must be less attached to their homelands. By this, he was referring to a metaphysical attachment to the “mother country”, the reference point that migrant societies often use to anchor their new-found identities in their country of adoption.
To be Malaysian, to Mahathir, means giving up this emotional link to one's country of origin. He also said that the Indian Muslims must decide whether to be Indian or Muslim. In the context of his speech, this means deciding whether one was Indian as an ethnic category or Malay, as Muslims are defined constitutionally.
Almost immediately, Mahathir was condemned as racist and Islamically “unenlightened”. To my mind, our ex-premier was merely stating a fact when speaking about Indian Muslims. He could very well be referring to himself or speaking from self-experience.
To be or not to be
Malaysia is a very diverse country with a very complex history. Indian Muslim refers to a very wide group. It could refer to a person of Indian ancestry who is also a Muslim; or it can refer to a long-time domiciled group whose way of life is the result of many years of integration and, who at some point in time, have been accepted to be part of the wider Malay Muslim community.
Readers must also be reminded that Mahathir was speaking in Penang, where there is a large Indian Muslim community that have for more than 200 years contributed to the development of the state, particularly in Georgetown.
Like the Peranakan Chinese in Malacca, some Indian Muslims no longer speak Tamil or their inherited 'mother-tongue'. Constitutionally, they can be considered 'Malays'.
What is particularly interesting here is that historically the definition of Malay as “a person who habitually speaks Malay, practices a Malay way of life and is a Muslim” was created in Penang in the 1920s.
In fact, the Penang Malay Association (now called Pemenang) defined its members in this fashion to avoid the more exclusionary definition then prevailing in Singapore.
In those days, the British colonial government accepted representations from various 'ethnic' groups and it was worthwhile for the more urbanised 'Malays' of Arab and Indian ancestry to identify themselves as 'Malays'.
When we became an independent country with the introduction of electoral politics and race-based parties, it became imperative that the 'Malay' category be boosted by co-opting groups that may not previously be considered Malay. In fact, in the pre-World War II Pan-Malayan Malay Convention, the Penang Malay Association was excluded precisely on the grounds that its members were not 'Malays'.
So, to Mahathir's mind, Indian Muslims have an essential choice: be Indian or be Muslim. He is not asking them to leave Islam, he is telling them that if they are less India-oriented and emphasise their Muslim identity more, they can enjoy the privileges associated with being a 'Malay'. He might as well say: “Look at me... I am a Muslim and have become a Malay and the sky is the limit”. What an inspirational speech.
The problem is that Mahathir was speaking to Malaysians in 2008 and not 1948. In an intensely 'racialised' environment with a bureaucracy that is very 'race-conscience', it is simply not good enough to be more Muslim than Indian.
Many Indian Muslims have been asked to produce their parent's birth certificates before they can qualify for privileges reserved for the 'bumiputeras'. When it is learnt that they have Indian parents, they fail to obtain the desired scholarships.
The conundrum of 1Malaysia
Mahathir is not racist. He cannot be because he does not believe in race. As a medical doctor and a man of science, he knows that scientific research into the human gnome has made race theories, even the ones employed in his famous book 'The Malay Dilemma', obsolete.
His most recent statement about Indian Muslims confirms this but he should go one step further and help Umno make the transformation from a 'Malay' to a 'Malaysian' party.
After all, if one can be less 'Indian' and more 'Muslim', surely a 'Malay' than be less 'Malay' and more 'Malaysian'? Of course, Mahathir will say that being Malay is being Malaysian.
Here is the conundrum: the 1Malaysia formula is an integrative one – where everyone should come together based on our common national experience. If that was true, then we all have to give a little. This means everyone – the Malays included.
Confused? It now seems that the 1Malaysia rhetoric has managed to create ambivalence. This is the only way the government can win back the middle ground and yet retain the race-based political set-up.
But you cannot fool all the people all of the time. The reality is that so long as the political structure is based on outdated interpretations of 'race', and is therefore very narrowly race-based, nobody will be “allowed” to be more Malaysian.
Action speaks louder than words, even when one does not mince one's words. For the BN to truly reflect their own 1Malaysia rhetoric, they have to become more integrated. The political parties in the BN must bite the bullet just as Pakatan Rakyat has done in its first convention. The BN really does not have a choice. It must lead by example – integrate or bite the dust.
As for the Indian Muslims, in a non-sectarian society, they would not have to make the choice that Mahathir has put to them. They can be both Indian Muslim and Malaysian.
One can only hope that the scales have fallen from the eyes of all Malaysians. None of us need to set aside our ethnic heritage for scholarships or other privileges, and Indian Muslims would not have to be asked to be less 'Indian' and more 'Muslim/Malay'.
・NEIL KHOR has recently completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He is co-author of 'Non-Sectarian Politics in Malaysia: The Case of Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia' (2008).
(3)Dr M wrong on choice between Indian and Muslim, 27 December 2009
by Terence Netto
Former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad's advice to Malaysia's Indian Muslims to choose between their Muslim and their Indian identities puts one in mind of a resonant episode in the immediate prelude to the partition of India in mid-1947.
A delegation of Indian Muslims, contemplating abandoning their homes in India for the new entity called Pakistan, went to see Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the highest ranked Muslim in the Congress Party and a strong foe of partition.
Islamic scholar Azad, who was born in Mecca, was renowned for the battles he had waged for communal unity in India, for its freedom from Britain, and for secularism.
His visitors were in no doubt about where Azad stood on the matter of partition: he was unalterably opposed and an arch critic of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, head of the Muslim League and fervent proponent of separation.
The delegation just wanted to see for themselves if Azad would waver from his resolute anti-partition stance at a perilous time.
June 1947 comprised an exaggerated moment in Indian history. It is just such moments of extremity that best reveal the essence of things. And Azad demonstrated the seer-like qualities of his stature as a leader when he posed this question to the delegation: “Where will you go should you discover that Pakistan is not your home?”
Of course, none of his visitors could countenance the notion that their anticipated new abode could turn out to be forbidding.
Many of those who went to see Azad settled in the Sind region of newly-formed Pakistan, of which Karachi is the metropolis.
Fast forward 40 years to the late 1980s: The city becomes a maelstrom of communal violence between the muhajirs (Indian Muslims from India who moved to Sind and west Punjab after partition) and the indigenes.
The bursts of violence were frequent, horrific and sustained, and were caused by muhajir resentment at being marginalised by the indigenes of Sind.
Two decades before the muhajir-inspired convulsions in the Sind of the late 1980s and after, the world had already witnessed the animosity between Muslim Bengalis and the Punjabi Muslim-dominated Pakistan army that led to the war of secession in East Pakistan, which then became Bangladesh.
A notable feature of this war in 1971 was that here the muhajirs (Bihar Muslims who had immigrated at the time of partition to East Bengal/East Pakistan) backed the elitist Punjabi soldiers of the Pakistani army in the battle against indigenous Bengali Muslims.
From not only these facets of subcontinent history but from several others the world over in the last century, particularly if you take the flux and flow of sectarian allegiances in Lebanon, it is not hard to conclude that parochially-constituted identities provide no lasting solder by which to glue a national identity.
One can be both Indian and Muslim
Mahathir's positing of a dichotomy – either you are Indian or you are Muslim (and therefore Malay) – to Muslim Indians in Malaysia has been proven by recent history to be a delusive conceit.
Maulana Azad espoused a composite view of national identity to partition-leaning Muslims of the Indian subcontinent six decades ago: He held you could be Indian and Muslim at the same time, in contradistinction to the great Indian poet Mohamed Iqbal, who in a famous disquisition in 1930 argued that the Muslim identity would fade in an independent India. Hence a separate homeland for Muslim Indians was imperative.
Admittedly, it is a long way from Maulana Azad to Gerald Manley Hopkins, a 19th century English poet, of special resonance in these ecologically fraught times.
Hopkins loved nature in which he saw a “dappled” and “pied” quality of contrasting elements forming the same pattern which he tried to reproduce in his poems.
“Glory to God for dappled things,” he rhapsodised in one of his best poems, a cosmic plea for seeing things as nature would have us - as “both/and” and not as “either/or”.
Muslim Indians in Malaysia can be Malaysian, Muslim and Indian at the same time, a triple and sustainable (nice ecologically friendly word that!) identity that betters Azad, and tributes Hopkins.
(4) Dr M 'confusing race and religion', 25 December 2009
'Mahathir is confusing race with religion when he talks of Indian Muslims having to choose whether to be considered Indian or Muslim.'
Forget the roots, we're Malaysians
Zainal: Dr Mahathir Mohamad, instead of advising the Indian Muslims to choose to be either to Indian or a Muslim, you should advise the Malays to choose to become either a Malay or a Muslim.
I know Umno people choose to be Malays while PAS people choose to be Muslims. That is why PAS rejects 'Ketuanan Melayu' which is an un-Islamic practice while Umno people fight for it.
SameSame: What a joke. He finally realised that we are Malaysians. He started all this, and now he wants to make amends. He sowed the seed of the hate within his own community and Umno so let him start telling them that we are all one and equal in the eyes of the country and his religion.
Mahathir, we already were Malaysians way before you decided to tell us so.
Kee Thuan Chye: Firstly, most Chinese and Indian citizens of this country consider themselves Malaysians. I certainly do. I have no links whatsoever with China. I am committed to the idea of a Bangsa Malaysia and I gave my children Malay, Indian and Chinese names.
However, we cannot eschew our ethnicity and our roots. We practise Chinese customs but also integrate the best from other cultures, including the Malay culture. Many of us are not like Mahathir, who seems keen to deny his Indian origins. Even the Balinese of Indonesia retain their Hindu way of life.
Secondly, Mahathir is confusing race with religion when he talks of Indian Muslims having to choose whether to be considered Indian or Muslim. This is the great fallacy of this country, and it's shocking that he, a supposedly learned man and former prime minister, does not know the distinction between the two.
He is clearly resorting to his favourite subterfuge to deliberately fool the people. This is patently wrong.
Doc: I'm getting a bit confused here. When I was young, I was called a Malaysian. A couple of years ago, Umno called me a 'pendatang'. Two weeks ago, Umno's mouthpiece, Utusan Malaysia called me a 'keling'. Now Mahathir says I'm a 'Malaysian'. Not sure what Umno will call me in 2010.
Thiang YH: Please know the difference between race and religion. You can change your religion, but not your race. And if all of us are Malaysians, why are we still classified under the different races in all our statutory forms?
Kanasai: I am 58 years old. Out of the country, I am known as a Malaysian in all immigration forms without the need to identify my religious belief or race. In Malaysia, I have to tick on the space 'Chinese' first and religion next.
A couple of days ago, this Mahathir defended the 30 percent quota for a particular race in our institutions of higher learning. What is he talking about now?
Jimmy Ng: For a person like Mahathir, who was the PM for 22 years, to make a comment like this is a farce. After all, he was the one who was responsible for perpetuating racist-tainted policies during his 'tyrannical reign'.
Why didn't he end the practice of having to state one's race in all those government forms then? He had 22 years to do it. Such a hypocrite.
Perak Boleh: Mr Ex-PM, we are all Malaysians now, is that right? Then, please tell all the government departments and agencies to amend their official form to remove the need to state what race the applicants are.
Just have a single box to tick 'Malaysian' or 'Non-Malaysian'. Then you can start telling us that we are really '1Malaysia'.
Madeline Loh: Dear Tun, the majority of non-bumiputera Malaysians are already second- generation Malaysians (probably more than second-generation). We think of ourselves as Malaysians but we had, and have, leaders who created and widened the divide between the races to suit their own ends.
Even you lacked the courage and the inclination to stop it. We have no home but Malaysia, and China and India are as foreign to us as Malabar is to you. People like you propagate the divide.
Malaysia will happen when people like you stop labeling Malaysians as bumiputera, Chinese, Indian, etc, and start accepting us all by the content of our character and the fact that we are all children of one god rather than treating some as children of a lesser god.
Dood: For someone who was the architect of many of the country's racist policies during his rule, I find his sincerity and honesty very much in question.
Visvalingam: Deceit is Mahathir's acronym and synonym. Even after all that has been exposed on his cheap deception, he still does not understand the difference between a Muslim and an Indian. How can religion change one's race?
Jbss: For 22 long years, you reigned supreme as the 'dictator' of the land called 'Malaysia'. You thought of every possible way to usurp the independent roles of the judiciary, the legislature and the administrative wings and all the other enforcement agencies in Malaysia just to hang on to power. You chose to 'divide and rule' by differentiating the races just like the way you accused the British of 'divide and rule.'
Your race-based policies brought disunity, religious intolerance, corruption, destruction of all our democratic institutions, gross injustice and lawlessness as seen now in this country.
Even now in your twilight years you are still talking about differentiating according to ethnicity and religion when the simplest solution to unite all Malaysians irrespective of ethnic origin is to call all Malaysians 'Malaysian' and treat every Malaysian alike.
(5)Mahathir book 'pending approval' by Home Ministry, 23 December 2009
by Rahmah Ghazali
A book containing unflattering claims about Dr Mahathir Mohamad's tenure as premier is in the hands of the Home Ministry, pending approval for distribution.
This was confirmed today by the Customs Department, which reportedly had held up the 800 copies for the past three weeks in Port Klang.
An official, however, clarified that the books are at the Home Ministry's office in Port Klang.
When contacted, a ministry official corroborated this, saying that "one copy (has been) sent to our headquarters in Putrajaya for approval (for distribution)".
However, she was unable to provide further details on the status of the book, while the official in charge was said to be at a meeting and could not be reached for comment.
The book, 'Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times', is written by former Asian Wall Street Journal managing editor Barry Wain.
It is described as a warts-and-all, critical but fair account of Mahathir's 22 years in power.
Wain wrote that Malaysia squandered an estimated RM100 billion due to financial scandals during Mahathir's tenure, adding that direct financial losses amounted to about RM50 billion.
This doubled once the invisible costs, such as unrecorded write-offs, were taken into account.
The total loss was equivalent to US$40 billion at then prevailing exchange rates.
Author not fazed
Irked by the allegations, Mahathir wrote in a blog posting yesterday that the book should be released immediately as he is "not in need of government protection".
He also said he welcomes DAP leader Lim Kit Siang's call for a royal commission to probe the allegations.
"Depending on the result of the commission, I reserve the right to sue Wain, Lim and Malaysiakini.com for libel for a sum to be disclosed later," Mahathir said.
Wain, when contacted via e-mail, was unfazed by the threat, saying he welcomes Mahathir's support for immediate release of the book.
"If the 800 copies of the book being held by the government are cleared for sale, Malaysians can judge for themselves my 363-page assessment of Mahathir's political career,"he said.
(End)
