Published: 27 August 2014
In many senses, it seems funny that
Malaysians, particularly the Malays, find great difficulty in the idea of a
united, harmonious and happy Malaysia. I am a Malay. All my Malay friends at
UTM and other universities and all my relatives and that of my wife are…
racist.
If I were to invite all of them to
a marriage ceremony, the number would easily reach 3,000. Based on a simple
sampling of 5% of this population that I engage in socialising, I have
established that they know nothing about the idea of “Malaysia”.
All they know is the condition of
“we just have to tolerate those immigrants and make sure they don’t make us
like Singapore” mindset.
I have always thought that some of my
friends and relatives whom I respect as pious Muslims would be different, but
they too turn out to be racist when political issues are discussed. It came as
a shock to me.
I thought that Islam would be one
of the answers to eliminate racism, but apparently, the “Malay-view”
interpretation of Islam always take precedence. Islam is not the problem but
its racist interpretation is. I know this for a fact because of my vast reading
of Islam, thousands of hadiths and many versions of Quranic Tafsir.
In this Merdeka celebration, the
“idea” of Malaysia seems only in a dream or in a Petronas or a DiGi commercial.
The idea of Malaysia does not exist
in our schools, in our public universities, at our housing and our cities. But
I still remain optimistic. Why? Because my family is not racist. My wife who is
a retired teacher is not racist.
My 28-year-old lecturer daughter
educated at IIUM is not racist. My 26-year-old journalist daughter educated at
TAR College and Taylor's University is not racist.
My 23-year-old son in his third
year at UCSI University is not racist.
My 20-year-old SEGi University
daughter is not racist.
And my 18-year-old Inti University
son is also not racist. How did I manage to form my own small country of
“Malaysia”? There are a few simple strategies that I had developed. I will save
the most important one for last.
One of the simple strategies I used
was the choice of schools for my children. All of my children had gone through
some years at a public school. When we could afford it, I sent my eldest
daughter and second child for two years to an all-Malay private religious
school so that they could immerse themselves in some Islamic culture.
However, I was most careful to take
them out after two years and put them back in the public school because I did
not want them to grow up without having any Chinese or Indian friends. All my
daughters’ friends who had gone through 11 years of “Islamic” education are
racists.
When my daughters were put in a
“special Arabic” class in a public school which was a poor excuse to put all
the best Malay students in one or two classes and given the best attention, I
wrote to the school, much to the dismay of my wife, to take them out and put
them back into a multiracial class. I did not want my children to grow up
knowing Islam as being synonymous with racism and bigotry.
For my three other children, I was
able to send all of them for two or three years at private international
schools, but following the national curriculum. If I had more money, I would
have insisted on an international curriculum.
But sending them to private schools
was already a strain on our two salaries. We were both extremely happy to see
the three of them playing, gossiping, going to McDonald’s and movies with
Chinese and Indian friends without any shred of racist thoughts.
My two sons are not as
intellectually developed as my three daughters and the private schools did not
have the best teaching staff. I even had to take my sons out for two months to
coach them personally before their SPM. But we were both happy that our
children were free from the racist and bullying issues of public school life.
My children would sometimes spend
the night at their non-Muslim friends’ homes and we always welcome their
friends at ours. I made sure that our children grew up in a well-balanced
society and not stuck in a Malay or Malay-Muslim centred social prison.
When the time came for my eldest to
choose a college or university, I had already decided as a grand strategy for
creating a new Malaysian citizenry that none of them would ever step foot in a
public university like UTM, UKM, UM UPM, USM and worst of all… UiTM.
Let me explain why. First, I would
like to go on record as saying that our public universities have the best
trained academic staff to turn our children into architects, engineers and
doctors, regardless of race.
That Chinese students dominate the
honour lists is testament to the non-racist policies of public universities in
terms of academic teaching and instruction. But the racist attitudes of the
Malay lecturers, professors and administrators are a different story
altogether.
I have 28 years of seminars,
administrative meetings and socialising with academics and administrators as
well as private conversations with graduating non-Malay students to testify to
this fact. The university culture of students choosing group work members of
the same ethnic background still persists and this was one of the things that I
had wished to avoid.
However, at the public
universities, I was not as concerned about racism as I was about the freedom of
my children to be exposed to political consciousness. What I mean by political
consciousness is not about joining DAP or PAS or Umno, but a keen awareness of
the social and political issues of the day and the freedom to contribute
towards solving these issues through organising clubs, societies, meets and
even dialogues with political leaders of all parties.
At the time, my daughter was 18, I
had already had 20 years of experience in the university and I knew for a fact
that my children would never have the opportunities to grow politically like I
had at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, US.
In my assessment, our public
university students from undergraduates to PhD graduates are politically
“dumb”. Not because they are stupid or slow thinking, but because of the
academic culture that thrives on praising the “political masters”.
I, in my classrooms always remind
the students that Umno and BN are not the “political masters” of this country
and that PAS or DAP are not “political masters” in their respective states.
They are all our “political representatives”. The real political masters are
you graduates in the classrooms that are over 21 years of age.
I always tell the students to “take
back” their country from those who seek to milk its wealth selfishly. In
private conversations, it seems mine is the only class that seeks to inspire
the students to be true democratic Malaysians at our faculty in UTM. You do not
ever get that kind of talk from the vice chancellor, dean or head of
department.
It was then to my wife’s dismay and
surprise that I suggested my eldest daughter go to TAR College. My plan was to
send my children to private universities and colleges away from public
universities. But my eldest wanted to go to the International Islamic University. Why? Well… her boyfriend was there. If it were before 1997, I would have said
okay, but the Anwar-saga left me dangling in the shredded faith of a true
Malaysia by a political party that I had voted for twice before that and from a
prime minister that I had once had the privilege of meeting with other student
leaders in his hotel room in Chicago.
But I reasoned that IIUM still had
a strong Islamic spirit from its international staff that would be void of a
racist flavour. And so I said yes, and so she went through an education that
still had a pure spirit of non-racist Islam for five years. However, her
political consciousness suffered because IIUM was becoming a political prison.
Fortunately, I was able to light this fire of consciousness through my many
discussions with her about the social and political events after 1997.
My second child had no problems
accepting my idea of TAR College. Although she had enough subject distinctions
to attend public universities, she did not like the Malay dress code imposed
there and I supported her simply because of my political strategy.
Between the two of us, we outvoted
my wife. After her diploma, she spent a year at SEGi University but changed to
Taylor's University with a Mara partial loan. In all this time, I monitored
closely all her assignments and smiled inwardly as they took on a more critical
discourse of local social and political events that would have been a taboo
subject matter at any local university.
I noted also that Taylor's
University had invited Nurul Izzah Anwar for a talk a month after inviting Tun
Dr Mahathir Mohamad for a special speech. In a public university, the likes of
Lim Kit Siang, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Mohamad Sabu would never grace the
podium of a lecture hall but at Taylor's perhaps they still could.
If I were a rich man, I would spend
every sen on educating my children overseas so that they could bloom into a
whole human being conscious of social, spiritual and political issues and with
the inspiration to change the world. You can’t do that at local universities,
and I suspect eventually at the private universities also.
It was thus that my wife finally
accepted my grand strategy of developing our children at the private universities.
As a Muslim mother, my wife was
very concerned that our children would grow up “wrong” Islamically because her
definition of Islam was restricted to tudung or head covers and prayers.
However, after listening to
religious scholars and leaders spouting racist statements and tudung-ed
individuals with vileness in their hearts against other religions and races,
she began to accept that though our children were not too ritualistically
Islamic with the tudung and prayers, they were good-hearted individuals without
a shred of racism in their hearts.
This proved beyond a doubt that the
religious curriculum of our country, not through the fault of Islam per se, is
the most important contributor to the sustaining of racism in this country.
Thus, if our children had had a “proper” religious education, they would
eventually turn up racist also. I had the fortune of being transferred to a
national-type Chinese school in Taiping where I chose to stop learning Islam
from Form 2 onwards even though the Chinese head teacher wanted to hire a
single ustaz to teach me alone. I was, therefore never indoctrinated, and being
in the US for graduate and post-graduate schools, I was further away from a
Malay-centric Islamic university education.
Amid all these strategies of choosing
schools and universities, I would constantly engage my children in private
conversations on the simple values of human survival and what they mean for
being a Malaysian.
First, Prophet Muhmmad taught a
non-racist Islam and that all other religions like Christianity, Judaism,
Buddhism are God’s guidance to mankind to rise above petty ethno-centric
concerns to rise higher than the angels in human kindness that is a key to a
peaceful existence. When you stand in front of God on judgment day, you stand alone
with your deeds and values, not your race or social status.
Second, motivation gurus and
Western spiritualists teach us that our differences in race and religions are
our strengths and not a cause for conflict. No man can live alone and so
likewise no race or society can exist. A simple example would be a husband and
wife.
Two completely different
individuals with completely two different physiological and psychological
make-up have to live together to raise five to 10 other individuals with
different ideas and emotions. If we can accept our spouse and children’s
different views and concerns, why can’t we accept other races and religious
concerns?
Third, although man can determine
many things in life, there are four things that he cannot: his time of death, a
natural disaster and his fate in heaven or hell. Do not judge poorly or look
down on others, for it may be the grace of God that they may be favoured more.
Finally, in a democracy, you
control the destiny of your children and never let any politician tell you
otherwise.
In closing, I have written this
anecdotal piece to politely tell Malaysians that we have serious problems in
our school values and in the way our universities produce the next generation
of professional Malaysians.
If things do not change
politically, I told my children that I will leave them with one house each, one
car each and a RM20,000 start-up capital so that they can start saving to be
able to educate their children in private schools with international curriculum
and finally send all of them off overseas.
This is the only way that they will
be free from a Malay-centric Islam and a university system that thrives on
producing a professional slave labour force dancing to every racist beat
choreographed by irresponsible political leaders who have defiled our
Parliament.
Only then can our sons and
daughters return to rebuild and reignite the dreams of Datuk Seri Onn Jaafar
and our politician forefathers of a united, harmonious and intelligent society
deep in spiritual consciousness. Happy Merdeka! – August 27, 2014.
* Prof Dr Mohamad Tajuddin Mohamad
Rasdi reads The Malaysian Insider.
* This is the personal opinion of
the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The
Malaysian Insider.
- See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/raising-a-family-of-true-malaysians-mohamad-tajuddin-mohamad-rasdi#sthash.B4OxkOoW.dpuf
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