Jul

24

Islamic State or otherwise

July 24, 2007 |

chandra-muzaffar.jpgOnce again, I’d like to comment on Dr. Chandra Muzaffar’s article, but this time, I agree with what he’s saying.

Basically, I agree that “when we go beyond labels such as ‘secular’ and ‘Islamic’ and connect with the substance of our three principal documents we will discover that there is a degree of congruence between the two positions.” And the three documents that Dr. Chandra is talking about are the Federal Constitution, the Rukunegara and Vision 2020.

Now, my question is, how do we move forward from this apparent impasse? It’s very obvious that the current hooha is created by the Deputy Prime Minister for political reasons. Indeed, it’s so idiotic for him to make such a statement that I won’t even go into the so-called debate.

What I’m interested in is what can we do to solve the real problems that all Malaysians are facing, irrespective of our race, religion or gender. For example, the Wanita MCA chief Datuk Dr Ng Yen Yen, who is a Deputy Minister, has raised the issue of social problems. This is a very real problem faced by the community. Is MCA or Barisan Nasional going to do something about it, or are we happy to just get our names and photos published in the newspapers?

The range of problems that Malaysians face are so wide and varied that it’s sometimes even difficult to find a starting point. Politically, we have mono-ethnic parties that divide us to rule. Legally, we have a supreme law of the land with silly notions of race mixed up with religion. Socially, we have escalating crime rates and, worse still, our youth are being led astray by politicians and their lies.

Sadly, our value system was lost in the midst of all this talk about secularism and spirituality. The situation in Malaysia has become absurd. We have a Deputy Prime Minister that is somehow linked to a murder case, proudly going around announcing that Umno is the conscience of the Malays. We have a police force that is implicated in involvement with triad gangs. We had an anti-corruption agency Director who was allegedly corrupt.

And yet, this government pretends to have legitimacy, and the Rakyat plays along so that their convenient lifestyles are not disturbed. If anything, I find all this media control and realpoliticking to be very disturbing, indeed.

No doubt, this country has a unique history, both in terms of its racial composition and the development of Islam. Nevertheless, if we are serious about transcending this superficial debate and want to reconcile ourselves with the notion of Malaysia, we need to do some profound soul-searching… and perhaps ask, what we can do for our country.


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