Malaysian perspective in the overall sense

Submitted by Dr Mustapha Kamal Shahrom (Malaysia), Jul 9, 2008 at 13:34

Thank you Mr Jaladhi for your comments.

I was describing the Malaysian perspective in the overall sense in my contribution of July 6th, 2008.

It describes what has happend between the various communities in Malaysia over the last 50 years or so. However, recent sad events involving the demolition of a Hindu temple in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur and the detention under the ISA of Hindraf activists proved to be a watershed in Malaysian politics and it is NOT a general rule of the Malaysian Malays or Muslims to discriminate against adherence of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and so on. If one looks back into the records he or she will discover that in the past mainly Muslims were detained under the ISA, not for want of fairness to all communities but because the Muslims were the earliest to go up against the predominantly Muslim government at that time for reasons too long to be put down here.

Please, I was not defending and still do not intend to defend at all such regretable actions of certain quarters in the ruling government, even though the Deputy Prime Minister did apologize to the Hindus in general over the incidences. As for the cases of "wrongful" burial of Hindus and the recognition of conversions of Muslims to other religions, these involved technical but complicated matters of the civil law and the Islamic law, but they are being resolved very recently through cooperation from all the leaders of the various religious organisations and the legal institutions. At least they are trying their best. And there is no forced conversion to Islam either, no never and it can never be because Islam in its Holy Book alQur'an teaches us "La Ikraha Fiddin" meaning "there is No compulsion in religion". And that is FAIR to all. Religion and belief is by choice not force. There is no need for Taqiyyah here, it is plain simple and clear.

As for the government's weakness in addressing problems like these which only cropped up lately over the last few years they paid a heavy price in that they lost lots of seats in the recent General Election on March 8th, 2008 for not only Hindus, Buddhists and Christians did not vote for them but many Malay Muslims as well. The government National Front party won 140 seats against the Opposition or the People's Front 82 in the Lower House (Parliament) and that is the best the Opposition has achieved ever since independence and it is worth to know that both the NF and the PF consist of multi-racial parties. Voices of the people are being heard louder and faster in the parliament. Both the government and the opposition are encouraging the Malaysian Indians and Malaysian Chinese to join the civil service but it can ve noticed very easily that the Malaysian Chinese people prefer to concentrate on doing business as they are generally doing very well there. So there is no discrimination in employment opportunities. Even in the educational system, the student intake structure has been rectified to give fairness to all.

Malaysia is changing rapidly on the political scene my friend and let us have an open mind on these issues and not build a mountain out of a molehill. In other countries, may they be Muslim or otherwise, you will see opposing sides resorting to violence and massacre upon each other but not in Malaysia. This is the message I am trying to give to the world and it happens that Malaysia is predominantly Muslim by historical reasonsand as Muslims we feel that we have done quite well to achieve national development and prosperity in peace and harmony. Still there is a lot of room for improvement and we shall get there without bloodshed. Thank you.

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