Royalty Extraordinaire
Rather than simplify and shy away from sensitive issues, we should fight destructive rhetoric with constructive dialogue. It is shameful when apparently educated and mature individuals use such terms or suggest fellow Malaysians go back to where they came from.
By Dr. Lim Teck Ghee (CPI)
With their front page headlines highlighting developments on the massive Sime loss, readers of the country’s two main English papers may not have noticed the news report of the speech by Raja Zarith Sofiah Sultan Idris Shah, the consort of the Sultan of Johor, which was buried in the inner pages.
The occasion of the speech was a conference on ‘Voices of Peace, Conscience and Reason’ held on Nov 16 in Kuala Lumpur. The prime mover of the meeting in which I participated as a panelist was PCORE, a group that is representative of Malaysians who embrace and share the notion of peace as the way forward to achieve unity and integration.
Credit must go to the PCORE leadership for bringing together a diverse mix of young and older people from different backgrounds to voice their frank concerns on current issues and developments in the country.
For me the real star of the conference was Raja Zarith Sofiah. Readers who missed the news item may be interested in the excerpt from the news report of her speech.
“In her keynote address at the Voices of Peace, Conscience and Reason conference, she described the use of ‘pendatang’ to describe non-Bumiputeras as “hurtful and ignorant”, and that more discussions were needed to address and resolve the gulf between ethnic and religious communities.
“Rather than simplify and shy away from sensitive issues, we should fight destructive rhetoric with constructive dialogue. It is shameful when apparently educated and mature individuals use such terms or suggest fellow Malaysians go back to where they came from.
Describing her own ancestral background as a mix between Sumatran and Peranakan Chinese, she said it was important to recognise the diversity of Malaysian society, brought about by centuries of interracial and interfaith marriages and communication.” (New Straits Times, Nov 17, 2010)
This open and proud acknowledgment of her mixed ancestral background is quite unprecedented. It puts to shame the way in which many of our leaders who have a similar mixed ancestry either try to hide or suppress the inconvenient truth, or engage in flaunting or agitating a mono-ethnic or religious stance as if this has been part of their, and the country’s DNA from time immemorial.
Raja Zarith Sofiah’s speech was much more than what was reported in the newspapers. It also covered her personal experience and thinking on religions and the importance for Muslims to learn about other cultures and religions and their heritage.
