What the Malays fear

By MT Webmaster Last updated Nov 16, 2014

Hence fear divides Malaysians. And until Malaysians can get rid of their fears, we shall still see a divided Malaysia. While we can blame the Malays/Muslims for having what we can consider unfounded fears, are the non-Malays totally innocent of spreading fear?

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

The one thing that I have been saying for some time is that change has to come through education. If the people are not educated we can never expect to see change. But then we have to be very cautious when it comes to change because you may not always like what you see when change does come.

Now, when I say ‘education’ please do not confuse this with going to school. Going to school does not mean you are getting an education. It is just means you are going to school. Education only comes when you open your mind and free yourself from the shackles of mental slavery and rid yourself of taboos, superstitions, old beliefs, fears and whatnot.

And fear is the most damaging of all. People do crazy things when they suffer from fear. Malays would kill non-Malays and Muslims would kill not only non-Muslims but fellow Muslims as well when they suffer from fear. Hence fear is a very potent political weapon, which I will come back to later.

I relate what is happening in the Muslim world, and that would include Malaysia, of course, to Europe of the pre-1800s. Fear was used to enslave the population through absolute monarchies that ruled via theocracies. Basically, the church crowned the kings, queens and emperors and the monarchs were God’s chosen rulers. And the church controlled education, which was open to only children of the elite, which meant that only a handful received an education, and a church-run education at that.

It took someone like Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 1800s to change this when he removed the powers of the church in all the countries he conquered, France included, and hence the church lost its monopoly on education. He then replaced this with public schools and opened these schools to the entire population, not just for the children of the elite.

Before the end of the century, the monarchies were overthrown and the great empires collapsed and were replaced with republics. The 1800s was also the era of revolutions and nationalism. Unfortunately, that also set the stage for WW1 exactly 100 years ago in 1914. Hence nationalism can be as destructive as theocracies and republics as bad as monarchies — mainly a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire, as history has proven.

And all this happened because the people were educated and no longer accepted the old ways of the church. They now found freedom, freedom of the mind and thought, and used this new freedom to change Europe. But with freedom came other ills and the republicans and nationalists brought as much damage to humankind as the church did.

Under the church-appointed monarchs and the rule of the empires, the people were subjected to fear. They feared God and opposition to the monarchs meant you opposed God. And to oppose God meant a crime that attracted the death sentence. Hence the people were ruled by fear, fear of death, which the church endorsed.

When the church was castrated and the masses taught how to think, and hence no longer considered the church and the church-appointed monarchs as supreme, a new fear replaced the fear of God. And this was the fear of domination and colonisation. So the people rose in revolt and grouped themselves under the safety of nationalism.

As empires collapsed, new territories were drawn up and people grouped themselves under ethnicities. Culture, traditions, languages, religious sects, and so on, became the new unifying factor. And this separation brought about many wars and eventually The Great War of 1914, which also saw the collapse of the last empire, the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

On hindsight we all know the damage that the collapse of the Ottoman Empire brought to the world. In fact, we are still suffering the affects of this until today, in case you did not notice. And it is fear that is also the cause. The Muslims fear that Islam is being compromised by western culture so they want to restore the Islamic Empire to protect Islam.

Fear. That four-letter word that is more potent that the other four-letter word — love. People who love their country, race, religion, or whatever, tend to be more docile. People who fear that their country, race, religion, and so on, are under threat tend to be more militant.

And that is what Malays and Muslims in Malaysia are suffering from — fear.

How do we ensure Malays/Muslims that they have nothing to fear? How do we convince them that no one is trying to subjugate the Malays/Muslims? How do we guarantee the Malays/Muslims that Islam is not under threat? How do we tell Malays/Muslims that they are not going to end up as slaves in their own country?

This is the task ahead of us. But then this task is the job of our political leaders. We voted for them and sent them into Parliament and the various State Assemblies. So they must do this job. This is what we are paying them for.

But when the politicians themselves play politics of fear what hope has the country got? And it is even worse when both sides of the political divide play the same politics of fear. We saw what it did to Europe in the 1800s and 1900s. And it is still going on until today in some parts of Europe — no need to even talk about Africa or the Middle East.

In 1999, the non-Malays did not join the Malays to vote opposition because they feared PAS and the brand of Islam that PAS was propagating. So good for Barisan Nasional, which lost quite a lot of the Malay vote but managed to retain a sizeable non-Malay vote.

Almost ten years later, by 2008, the non-Malays buried their fear of PAS/Islam and voted opposition, as they did in 2013 as well. But then this loss of fear from the non-Malays was replaced by the fear from the Malays. Now the Malays fear that the non-Malays are gaining too much political power and that this is a threat to the Malays/Muslims.

The Malays/Muslims perceive the non-Malays as being much bolder than they used to be in the past. Today, the non-Malays question things regarding Islam that they would have never dared question in the past. And this is what makes the Malays/Muslims fear the rising political influence of the non-Malays.

In 1999, the Malays invited the non-Malays to join them in voting opposition. Out of fear, the non-Malays did not. Now it is the other way around. The Malays now fear that the opposition is getting too strong with non-Malay support.

How do we convince the Malays that unity with the non-Malays does not mean that the Malays must sacrifice their position, status, religion and more? If I have the answer to that question then I should become the new Opposition Leader.

Alas I do not have the answer. The answer does not lie with the politicians. It lies with you. And so far you are not doing a very good job in convincing the Malays that the non-Malays are not the enemy of the Malays or Islam.

Maybe you can ponder on this before posting any comments because it is your comments that convince the Malays that their race and religion are under attack.

Raja Petra Kamarudin RPK