Faith and the nation: Why the Malaysian project needs rescuing

At a time when Malaysian politics is characterised by the worst and narrowest forms of provincial sectarian and communitarian thinking; with groups calling for narrow ethnic-linguistic ghettos and enclaves; when communitarian distrust leads to repugnant expressions of ethnic and racial supremacy and bigotry; this is when rational human agency is needed more than ever.

By Farish A. Noor , The Malaysian Insider

 

 

Reading the comments that we received after the posting of the article “Migration as protest”, we were somewhat dismayed at the overall negative tone of so many who wrote in to say that they were despondent and had given up with the Malaysian project itself, to the point where many Malaysians were contemplating leaving the country for good.

That this can come at a time when the Malaysian project is still being debated and contested in the public domain does not bode well for a country that is, after all, only half a century old. Have we, as a nation, grown so jaded and pessimistic already?

Let us remember the crucial fact that all nations are imagined entities that are composite and put together via the collective aspirations of its members. And let us remember that nations only exist as long as we believe in them. To paraphrase Nietzsche: Once we begin to doubt and question the existence of God, then God is, in a sense, already dead to us. Likewise nations are sustained by faith and belief, and faith that is translated into action and commitment.

Malaysia is not made up of the buildings, towers, shopping malls and highways that dot our urban landscape. Those edifices do not even know that they are part of the Malaysian landscape, in fact they don’t know anything at all.

But we — citizens — are the building blocks of the nation and we constitute Malaysia and Malaysian identity. We also hold the key to Malaysia’s future and we are responsible for the twists and turns the country had made in the past. To determine how and where this country heads in the future is therefore the collective responsibility of all Malaysians and those who recognise themselves as such; and our agency and responsibility implicates all of us in the grand project that is called nation-building.

While working and living abroad may be an option for some who cannot find a better means of earning a living at home, it would be wrong to say that that is the only way that one can get one’s voice heard in the country. In any case, one can remain a member of a virtual national community even when abroad, and many of us have done so for decades now.

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