Reply From Cheong Knooi Cheng

Dear Sir,

Thank you for responding to my letter Questions for YTM Raja Petra Kamarudin. I can see that there are some questions from you that need clarification and I’ll be very happy if you allow me to do so.

Question 1 – 3:
My definition of “religious extremists” is “a person who use excessive or fanatical methods, far from moderate and humanistic norm, especially when integrating religion into politics, causing political decisions heavily dependent on religion.”

The key sentence is “causing political decisions heavily dependent on religion” such as what I read, in Brunei restaurants are not allow to decorate for Christmas. Religious extremism also include Maya and Aztec human sacrifice.

Question one and two can be condensed as such: Why PM Najib governs in such a way that put the country in peril with succession talks gaining momentum by the day? Are we waiting for things to happen such as Timor Leste succeeded from Indonesia before we act? I believe there aren’t anything wrong with these questions, are there? I asked because many people have relatives living in Sabah/Sarawak and I do have too, some are natives.

As for question three, I could understand very clearly from theological standpoint, but I still couldn’t understand from pragmatical standpoint after pondering about it overnight. People can call me anything they want and sir, if you don’t have the answer it’s fine.

Question 4:
Sir, I didn’t expect you to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ because if it doesn’t come close to the truth it is useless. I think the dialectical approach is better.

The “weak” I mean here is academic weakness (the prime cause) which causes the effect of financial weaknesses (the effect we see). I didn’t mean other weaknesses. For example, if you compare a person with a medical degree and another without a degree, the probability of a person with a medical degree to have a better financial standing is higher because of his/her education although the other way round could also be true because life is uncertain. On the question of “prioritize”, there was a case where a girl had set a goal to memorize the whole Quran, spending so much time and energy that affected her study of other subjects such as Mathematics. The way you study the Quran may affect your priority. I do not discriminate knowledge and I study to understand the Quran through the internet when there was an issue about Islam. I search for commentaries of experts from western universities and I don’t memorize.

It is not correct to say that to become rich you must become less religious, it is a question of time management, you see some rich Chinese are very religious but they spend the smallest amount of time for their religious activities, some spend a lot of money and time but are still poor.

I’m from a Peranakan family, we used to speak Malay at home, eat with our hand on the floor, wear sarong, and had many Malay friends when I was small. I attended primary and secondary national school with majority Malays and if you don’t look at my name or see my face when I speak Malay, you won’t know that I’m a Chinese. There were instances when Malays protected me during fights and a poor Malay friend helped me when I didn’t have enough money to buy something. So to say that I resent the government policies that are aimed at helping the Malays to catch up is totally untrue. I oppose the lousy tactical implementation of the policy and of course the abuse of it. If I were the Prime Minister, I’ll bring in American, British, French, German, Russian, Canadian, Australian and more Japanese schools with the principles and teachers from their respective countries. This is the greatest gift for the Malays to improve their lot but if they still choose to study in ‘sekolah pondok’, go ahead.

Regarding the big businesses the Chinese own, they are nothing if they are not being back up by academic acquisition and more importantly, science and technological knowledge in the future. The economic equity is closely tied to these factors.

Question 5:
I could source the information from the internet, why I didn’t think of it.

My response to comments:

Hussin Zin: I’m not a DAP symphathiser, but I’ve seen with my own eyes DAP is working very hard to help everyone regardless of race and religion and that is the scary part for BN.

Nazri Ariffin: Bang, cakap biarlah beradab, cinabeng apa beng semua saya dah dengar

Mat Topeng: Don’t judge because of my name, baca artikel dulu

Nazir Dalimi: Bila dah dapat kepala besar, dapat apa? Duit, bini?

Mankok Hayun: Saya selalu nasihat orang cina kalau kaya jangan beli BMW Mercedes nanti Melayu cemburu, pakai kereta kecik dah

Mohamed Daud: Pakcik kalau Syaitan Besar masih ada jangan harap negara Islam boleh aman

Rama Chandran Muniand: Which questions are stupid? Why don’t you write la something like how to make Malaysia a better place.