How much more abuse should Malays receive from the likes of Mahathir and the Umno elite?
First. Former Prime
minister Mahathir Mohamad told us that the country belonged to the Malays and everyone else had to accept the culture and language of the dominant community.
He said, “This country belongs to the Malay race. Peninsular Malaysia was known as Tanah Melayu but this cannot be said because it will be considered racist. We must be sincere and accept that the country is Tanah Melayu”
Second. Mahathir said that Malays will feel less threatened if the country adopted the concept of “Bangsa Malaysia”. According to him, “Bangsa Malaysia” would allow better co-operation between the different races and thus guarantee the future of the country.
Third. Mahathir said that the race affirmative programmes such as the New Economic Policy (NEP) were still important as the Malays were still weak economically.
“We must not reject every government effort to help us. We must push away the crutches and realise that we are still limping.
Mahathir has not disappointed us. He is as divisive as ever and many Malays, his target audience, simply cling onto every word.
So, when will Malays understand that this man is insulting our intelligence?
Mahathir made the comments during his talk “Malay race and the future", at the Tun Hussein Onn Memorial. He is insulting the memory of Hussein Onn who was called ‘Bapa Perpaduan’ for his unceasing efforts in promoting racial unity.
Where is our integrity and Malay pride that we continually allow him to abuse us? He tells us this is our land and at the same time manages to insult us by saying we are too stupid and incapable to hang onto it.
He said the Malay community may risk losing the country without the affirmative action policies.
He alluded to this: “Which is better? To be dependent on policies which will save us or depend on others hoping that they will save us? Sooner or later, we will be under their rule”.
When he said that the Malays owned Tanah Melayu, he callously ignored the Orang Asli, the Sarawakians and Sabahans. He managed also to slight the non-Malays without whose help, we would not have gained our independence from the British.
Why are Malays condoning the various acts of discrimination?
Isn’t it time we took charge of this country, wrestle it from the likes of Mahathir and others like him, and tell them that their ingrained prejudices against non-Malays and non-Muslims are unacceptable?
Mahathir claims we are weak. Why do we continue to take orders from a non-Malay?
Why do the majority of Malays keep quiet when racist leaders divide us?
At some point in time, Malays must alter their mindset. Now, would be perfect.
We have been conditioned for decades by leaders who only wanted to promote their own interests.
They told us we were weak and that we could not think for ourselves.
They offered to do the thinking for us and make decisions on our behalf.
They softened us with their policies which made us lazy and gave us incentives which meant we need not work as hard.
They denied us a good solid education and flip-flopped in between policies. They broke up the mission schools which was once the bedrock of education.
They encouraged large families and allowed polygamous husbands to proliferate and act irresponsibly, so that many children lacked a father figure and thus were denied a solid family unit. Single mothers had to manage on one income and struggled to support their children. Some children became feral. Large families lacked adequate health-care.
These Umno leaders control the Malay mind. They realise the importance of influence over the Malays.
They dominate and control the Malays, by keeping us in a hopeless and continually pessimistic state. That is what Najib, Mahathir and the other leaders are doing to us.
First, they frighten us and second, they demoralise us.
It is all about power. Control the Malays and power is all theirs.
These uninspiring leaders cannot afford to lose their domination over the Malays.
Without the weak Malays, they are nothing.
They know that educated, healthy and confident Malays are much harder to govern.
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had pointed at the direction of the police over Ops Lalang, which saw 106 people arrested including top
political dissidents under the Internal Security Act in 1987.
In the most recent book on Mahathir, 'Doctor M: Operation Malaysia - Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad', the former premier of 22 years revealed that he was furious over the mass crackdown.
"Well, I would have handled it differently, except that the police wanted to do these things because they say it is necessary...
"I actually met all of the opposition members (beforehand) and assured them that they would not be arrested. And you know what the police did? They arrested them. My credibility is gone," he said.
"You must have been furious!" retorted Tom Plate, the interviewer and author of the book.
"Yeah, but what can I do? You see, I have to accept that they are the people on the ground that makes a decision. I give general authority to them," continued Mahathir, who was known as a strongman who brook little dissent.
Regrets, I've had few
In the 1987 crackdown on Oct 27, over one hundred people - mostly opposition and a handful of MCA and Umno politicians - were arrested while the publishing permits for The Star and Sin Chew Jit Poh and Watan were revoked.
The government had explained that the second largest ISA swoop since the May 13 racial riots were 'necessary' to contain rising 'racial tensions' from the protests over the appointment of non-Chinese educated principals to Chinese vernacular schools.
In response, Umno held a counter protest, where notably then Youth chief Najib Abdul Razak led a mammoth rally in Kampung Baru days prior to the arrests.
Mahathir, who was the PM at that time, also said that in retrospect, he may have had some regrets over the clampdown.
"Yeah. Regrets ... I mean you have to trust the police, because you have to work with them. They are the people who have to look after security, and when they advise you that the tension is very high, that it might explode into racial riots, and they need to take this action, you can't tell them no.
"You don't, you see, because you know less than they do. See, and you have to trust the people who are the implementers. I have no means of verifying everything that they say," he said.
You don't argue with men with guns
Later on in the book, Mahathir betrays a hint of timidity with the police force.
When Plate asked whether Mahathir's control over the police, even as a powerful prime minister, was not absolute, the elder statesman agreed.
"No, not absolute. You have to learn to live with the people with guns," he said.
"But then, does that make you to some extent a hostage of the people who have guns?" asked Plate.
"To a certain extent... everybody is. You see, you have to give people the means to enforce, and then of course they are better equipped than you are. You have to accept the fact that when they tell you that certain things need to be done, you have to respect them.
"If you keep running them down - there have been instances where they were run down by the government as being incompetent, corrupt and all that - what happens then?" he asked, hinting that the police may in the end go on strike.
Choosing the 'wrong' successors
While recounting his previous experience with former protege and deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim - whom Mahathir would later sack from the cabinet in 1998 - the former PM conceded that he had problems picking his successors.
"I got my blind spots, you know. You could say that I choose all of the wrong successors," he said.
"One of my biggest mistakes was choosing my successor," Mahathir repeated himself later.
Mahathir had quarrelled with most of his anointed deputies, including former deputy premier Musa Hitam.
After stepping down from power in 2003, he appointed Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as the fifth prime minister. However, the two too quickly fell out of favour.
'Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad' is based on a series of interviews by veteran American journalist Plate.
It is the instinct of rulers to greedily take credit for any success and to shed responsibility for any failure. Barack Obama has perfected this art form. His repertoire ranges from the magical transmutation of manifest failure into alchemic 'success' to the "I take full responsibility; so now let's together go forward in bipartisan spirit rather harp on the past" gambit. The stuttering, contradictory response to the crisis in Egypt has prompted something cruder. It's all the fault of the intelligence people who didn't tell me when, how, by whom and with what consequences this uprising was going to occur.
Our intelligence agencies, all five of them, do have a far from impressive record. But this accusation is misdirected. A responsible government would have been acutely aware of the Mubarak regime's crumbling support and loss of credibility. It should immediately have recognized in the Tunisian revolution a spark that could ignite the highly combustible conditions in Egypt. A responsible, competent government would put itself on alert by anticipating an uprising and thinking on a contingent basis as to how it might respond.
Barack Obama has told people that he in effect is his own National Security Adviser. This despite his total lack of experience in foreign policy and diplomacy, and a lack of interest in foreign affairs throughout his adult life. That helps to explain his selection of someone as unqualified as Thomas Donilon to serve in the post. Donilon spent the last decade as Executive
Vice President for Law and Policy at the disgraced Fannie Mae after serving as a corporate lobbyist with O'Melveny & Roberts. The rest of the Obama team is little better prepared for crises of this delicacy, complexity and profound implications.
The misjudgments that have prompted our hesitant, 'stick with the friendly despot we know' response to the Egyptian convulsion is not due to an alleged 'intelligence' failure. It is due to a failure in intelligence. Mr. Obama's exalted sense of his abilities once again has been exposed as a national liability. To tell the Egyptian youth who are passionately and bravely reaching for their freedom that "we hear you" while maneuvering behind the scenes to stymie them is no more convincing than telling his dispirited young American ex-devotees that he still is the prophet of "change that you can believe in." Some change, some prophet!
 | | Armed women on guard at one of Tehran's main squares at the start of the Iranian Revolution [Getty] |
I remember the images well, even though I was too young to understand their political significance. But they were visceral, those photos in the New York Times from Tehran in the midst of its revolutionary moment in late 1978 and early 1979. Not merely exuberance jumped from the page, but also anger; anger fuelled by an intensity of religious fervour that seemed so alien as to emanate from another planet to a "normal" pre-teen American boy being shown the newspaper by his father over breakfast.
Many commentators are comparing Egypt to Iran of 32 years ago, mostly to warn of the risks of the country descending into some sort of Islamist dictatorship that would tear up the peace treaty with Israel, engage in anti-American policies, and deprive women and minorities of their rights (as if they had so many rights under the Mubarak dictatorship).
I write this on February 2, the precise anniversary of Khomeini's return to Tehran from exile. It's clear that, while religion is a crucial foundation of Egyptian identity and Mubarak's level of corruption and brutality could give the Shah a run for his money, the situations are radically different on the ground.
A most modern and insane revolt
The following description, I believe, sums up what Egypt faces today as well as, if not better, than most:
"It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us - but more specifically on them, these ... workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.
One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say ... All of them are based on the elimination of the [president]. What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguration of this world?"
The thing is, it was offered not by some astute commentator of the current moment, but rather by the legendary French philosopher Michel Foucault, after his return from Iran, where he witnessed firsthand the intensity of the revolution which, in late 1978, before Khomeini's return, really did seem to herald the dawn of a new era.
Foucault was roundly criticised by many people after Khomeini hijacked the revolution for not seeing the writing on the wall. But the reality was that, in those heady days where the shackles of oppression were literally being shattered, the writing was not on the wall. Foucault understood that it was precisely a form of "insanity" that was necessary to risk everything for freedom, not just against one's government, but against the global system that has nuzzled him in its bosom for so long.
What was clear, however, was that the powers that most supported the Shah, including the US, dawdled on throwing their support behind the masses who were toppling him. While this is by no means the principal reason for Khomeini's successful hijacking of the revolution, it certainly played an important role in the rise of a militantly anti-American government social force, with disastrous results.
While Obama's rhetoric moved more quickly towards the Egyptian people than did President Carter's towards Iranians three decades ago, his refusal to call for Mubarak's immediate resignation raises suspicion that, in the end, the US would be satisfied if Mubarak was able to ride out the protests and engineer a "democratic" transition that left American interests largely intact.
The breath of religion
Foucault was also right to assign such a powerful role to religion in the burgeoning revolutionary moment - and he experienced what he called a "political spirituality", But, of course, religion can be defined in so many ways. The protestant theologian Paul Tillich wonderfully described it as encompassing whatever was of "ultimate concern" to a person or people. And today, clearly, most every Egyptian has gotten religion from this perspective.
So many people, including Egypt's leaders, have used the threat of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover to justify continued dictatorship, with Iran as the historical example to justify such arguments. But the comparison is plagued by historical differences. The Brotherhood has no leader of Khomeini's stature and foreswore violence decades ago. Nor is there a culture of violent martyrdom ready to be actualised by legions of young men, as occurred with the Islamic Revolution. Rather than trying to take over the movement, which clearly would never have been accepted - even if its leaders wanted to seize the moment, the Brotherhood is very much playing catch up with the evolving situation and has so far worked within the rather ad hoc leadership of the protests.
But it is equally clear that religion is a crucial component of the unfolding dynamic. Indeed, perhaps the iconic photo of the revolution is one of throngs of people in Tahrir Square bowed in prayers, literally surrounding a group of tanks sent there to assert the government's authority.
This is a radically different image of Islam than most people - in the Muslim world as much as in the West - are used to seeing: Islam taking on state violence through militant peaceful protest; peaceful jihad (although it is one that has occurred innumerable times around the Muslim world, just at a smaller scale and without the world's press there to capture it).
Such imagery, and its significance, is a natural extension of the symbolism of Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, an act of jihad that profoundly challenges the extroverted violence of the jihadis and militants who for decades, and especially since 9/11, have dominated the public perception of Islam as a form of political spirituality.
Needless to say, the latest images - of civil war inside Tahrir Square - will immediately displace these other images. Moreover, if the violence continues and some Egyptian protesters lose their discipline and start engaging in their own premeditated violence against the regime and its many tentacles, there is little doubt their doing so will be offered as "proof" that the protests are both violent and organised by the Muslim Brotherhood or other "Islamists".
A greater threat than al-Qa'eda
As this dynamic of nonviolent resistance against entrenched regime violence plays out, it is worth noting that so far, Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have had little - if anything - of substance to say about the revolution in Egypt. What they've failed to ignite with an ideology of a return to a mythical and pure beginning - and a strategy of human bombs, IEDs, and planes turned into missiles - a disciplined, forward-thinking yet amorphous group of young activists and their more experienced comrades, "secular" and "religious" together (to the extent these terms are even relevant anymore), have succeeded in setting a fire with a universal discourse of freedom, democracy and human values - and a strategy of increasingly calibrated chaos aimed at uprooting one of the world's longest serving dictators.
As one chant in Egypt put it succinctly, playing on the longstanding chants of Islamists that "Islam is the solution", with protesters shouting: "Tunisia is the solution."
For those who don't understand why President Obama and his European allies are having such a hard time siding with Egypt's forces of democracy, the reason is that the amalgam of social and political forces behind the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt today - and who knows where tomorrow - actually constitute a far greater threat to the "global system" al-Qa'eda has pledged to destroy than the jihadis roaming the badlands of Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen.
Mad as hell
Whether Islamist or secularist, any government of "of the people" will turn against the neoliberal economic policies that have enriched regional elites while forcing half or more of the population to live below the $2 per day poverty line. They will refuse to follow the US or Europe's lead in the war on terror if it means the continued large scale presence of foreign troops on the region's soil. They will no longer turn a blind eye, or even support, Israel's occupation and siege across the Occupied Palestinian territories. They will most likely shirk from spending a huge percentage of their national income on bloated militaries and weapons systems that serve to enrich western defence companies and prop up autocratic governments, rather than bringing stability and peace to their countries - and the region as a whole.
They will seek, as China, India and other emerging powers have done, to move the centre of global economic gravity towards their region, whose educated and cheap work forces will further challenge the more expensive but equally stressed workforces of Europe and the United States.
In short, if the revolutions of 2011 succeed, they will force the creation of a very different regional and world system than the one that has dominated the global political economy for decades, especially since the fall of communism.
This system could bring the peace and relative equality that has so long been missing globally - but it will do so in good measure by further eroding the position of the United States and other "developed" or "mature" economies. If Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and their colleagues don't figure out a way to live with this scenario, while supporting the political and human rights of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, they will wind up with an adversary far more cunning and powerful than al-Qa'eda could ever hope to be: more than 300 million newly empowered Arabs who are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.
Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books). |
"I think there are Malaysians who have asked for his help. There must be people behind him, asking him to give negative views of our prime minister,Malaysiakinireported him as saying.
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