The Contemporary Malay Dilemma
Our politics is never about policy. It’s about identity. We constantly flex our imagined political muscle to the non-Malays and non-Muslims because our politicians tell us to do so.
By Farouk A. Peru
I read Tun M’s ‘Malay Dilemma’ in secondary school and didn’t think much of it then (I suppose I was too immature). I then read, about 10 years later, Bakri Musa’s ‘The Malay Dilemma Revisited’. Bakri’s scathing critique of the government’s policies and race and the negative aspects of Malay culture stays with me till now. Now, about 9 years after reading Bakri, another favourite Malay thinker of mine, Azly Rahman’s opined about the Malay Dilemma in his blog yesterday.
Azly, in his ‘The Newest Malay Dilemma’, believes that the real malay dilemma is about mind control. How we’ve been sold a bill of goods about slogans and visions all designed to blur us while we’re still being exploited by robber barons and emerging dynasties. I concur with this but wish to add, if I may, my two cents.
To me, Tun M, Bakri and Azly have put forward good points in their works but if you ask me, what is the Malay dilemma, I would have to say our dilemma is our positions on race and religion. We have effectively become the most bigoted people in the world, even daring to ban others from using words to express their faith.
Why are race and religion a dilemma at all? They don’t have to be but they are for the very simple reason of politics. In our political expressions, the Malays are limited to the racialist UMNO and the religious fundamentalists PAS or the ill-fated PKR (who are still full of UMNO and PAS types as well). Our politics is never about policy. It’s about identity. We constantly flex our imagined political muscle to the non-Malays and non-Muslims because our politicians tell us to do so. In the meantime, outrageous amounts of money flow into certain pockets while many Malays are still mired in poverty. Yet when it comes to ‘hak orang Melayu’ or ‘mempertahankan Islam’, we still see Malays dutifully doing their bit for these reprobates.
Truly, we are puppets in their dastardly scheme.
Read more at: The Contemporary Malay Dilemma
