Is Malaysia A Nation of Cowards: Lessons From Tunisia & Egypt
Is Malaysia a nation of cowards, who only sit and moan at what is going on around them?
People are still lulled by a false sense of security, not understanding that the carpet will be pulled out from under their feet anytime, at any moment.
By Clarissa Lee, Loyarburok
It’s only January and I foresee an exciting year ahead, for me personally and for the bigger world at large. In light of everything going on now, I am transported back to the 1979 revolution in Iran that overthrew the dictatorship of a monarch but which unfortunately instated a new form of quasi democratic theocratic dictatorship. While I am not claiming that theocracy has to be undemocratic, the complexity of syaria’s history and other forms of religion codified-laws makes it difficult to negotiate the hermeneutics of these laws within the parameters of Enlightenment democracy.
Of course, many countries have undergone many revolutions, some beginning as a fight for sovereignty before transforming into resistance against cruel rulers.
What would Tunisia’s fate be? There are talks in the media about how suppressed Islamist groups are becoming a force to be reckoned with. They overthrew a dictator, but I hope a vacuum is not left behind to cause a worse form of dictatorship to take over. But as long as the people are adamant about freedom and democracy, and as long as they can keep all forms of millitary-led coup at bay, they have a fresh new start ahead of them. Social media is said to be one of the main media that fueling the revolt in Tunisia. If I get a chance, I would love to visit the country in the aftermath of the revolution, to see what it has sparked off.
Tunisian pro-government demonstrators hold a national flag during a protest on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis January 25, 2011. (FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images)
Now, Egypt is on fire, and the people are revolting regardless of what Mubarak does to them. Incidentally, I met a Lebanese graduate student at my room-mate’s birthday party and we commiserated over the state of politics in our respective countries.
If we look closely at what is going on there, we know that much of the revolt is fueled by the educated class. The last time Malaysia had a revolt, it was fueled by the incumbent government’s sponsored thugs. But not so in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt. Ironically, Malaysia sent tonnes of its “religion-studies” students to Egypt to Al-Azhar but none of them have ever imbibed or learnt anything from that cradle of civilisation with thousands of years of history because they spent much of their years there immersed in their own little ghetto, trying to simulate the life of the different little villages they came from in Malaysia.
These countries saw a revolution led by the intelligentsia, and the intellectuals. One of the main fuel is Tunisia’s horrific economic and unemployment problem at this time, while Egypt is strangled by its iron-fisted dictator who did not even bother to be nuanced about the way in which he is trying to control his people (he probably thought he could do it ala North Korea, whose people had spent generations under a gulag-like dictatorship). Or Iran. Iran has clamped down on access to much social media. A friend of mine studying there is completely incognito now, as the last email I received from him informed me that he has very little access to the cyberworld.
It is also interesting that in most news reports on Tunisia, they always prefaced the story of the revolt with the remark of how successful Tunisia’s education system has been (with the revolt as one of the domino effects of it) yet how underemployed the young people are (it would be interesting to study more closely how and what is the cause of that underemployment, beyond to-your-face economics). There are a number of Tunisian Fulbrighters in the US, and from what I have heard from some of the Middle-Eastern Fulbrighters, many were concerned about returning home to no jobs. I heard first heard of all these in 2008. But I also suspect that they didn’t want to return to the politics of their country. I distinctly remember a guy from Tunisia who voiced the concern of economics, as did also a Lebanese woman, as being the cause of their desire to be able to remain in the US (even though US financial crisis was beginning to escalate at that time). Both these countries have remarkable European influences to this day, and this shows by the dual cultures straddled effortlessly by the more educated citizens.
