The Keris is in reference to the Malay noble sword. How we view it's status depends on oneself including politicians who uphold their supremacies of rightful land. Many times we see it as an icon of our national heritage but for the last few years, it had been exploited to good use, in symbolic nature, from ministers to maintain a griphold of their social standings, including over ours. Why the difference?
Malaysia: The Bumiputera tongkat that my son does not need
Written by Kazi Mahmood
My son did feel sad that he is not ‘classified’ among the other Muslims. Yes the ‘other’ Muslims who are Malays. To comfort him, I told him the story of the ‘tongkat’ and the old man.
Malaysia is probably living one its most exciting yet volatile days with a high profile murder case resounding loudly in almost all blogs and portals in the country while its political scene is dipping in an unending game of cat and mouse.
In the limelight of the current situation, the Malay-Muslims are taking a severe bashing on Internet blogs and at times in local dailies. Muslims in the country, forming a majority of 60 percent of the 25 million populations, are getting more confused and fearful of the outcome of this bashing.
However, the 60 percent Muslims are segregated into a confusing and totally un-Islamic racist grading that not only divides the Muslims in Malaysia but put many Muslims in direct opposition to the Malay majority race. Race is a very persistent factor in Malaysia and it is getting uglier altogether.
My son, a young and prolific writer has fallen victim of the system last month. He is the third son in a family of 3 kids. My wife, a Malaysian considered a Bumiputera. She has two kids (Bumiputera's) from a first marriage with one local Malay who, classically, ran away with a younger wife to lead a new life. I came in the picture a year after her divorce was settled and married her in Mauritius, the Paradise Island in the Indian Ocean.
After much struggle with the Malaysian immigration, I am now like a ‘suami import’ or imported husband. I do not have a red IC after 18 years here and I find it fine too since I could not be bothered with a red IC or a blue IC. These are insignificant items of ‘collection’ for someone like me. Yet what is very significant to me and to my son – he just penned down a lengthy article in which he wrote about the Bumiputera thing – is the race issue.
In my country, racism was pretty much under control though existent, and we journalists and writers fought dearly to prevent it from raising its ugly head in Mauritius. Then came the darkest days of Mauritius political history in the 1983-1986 years in which racism and a form of religious fascism reared its ugly head and threatened to annihilate the great civilian values we enjoyed.
The press, the writer’s guild, the independent journalists and the freelance writers-reporters fought bravely and won. The leader of the movement to instigate racism in Mauritius was forced out of the government and I am glad I was the only journalist in Mauritius to have predicted the very week and almost the day he was kicked out of the government by the then Prime Minister Aneerood Jugnauth.
I wrote extensively against the character, without creating a character assassination type of campaign, but targeting instead the idea of chaos and dangers impending if racism was allowed to win and a mafia group given the powers to literally administer the country. The human interest stories I delivered were of help to the government in place as it opened the eyes. I was also the only journalist involved in the creating of a 100 pages report on the status of Journalism and freedom of the press in Mauritius for the United Nation. I was queried by the ‘thugs’ of the deputy Prime Minister, the very person who promoted Hindu extremism in Mauritius.
I was followed, targeted and in at least one incident, I was almost attacked by a group but I was salvaged by an army friend of mine who grabbed me with the help of two other soldiers to throw me in their jeep and drove me home safely. I was lucky but that was because I did give a severe blow to the mafia and the racist head. Subsequently he was thrown out of the regime and has since then been denied a seat in our August Parliament for good.
That is to say that I am not afraid of racism and like my son, we both are not at all taken aback by the fact that he is a non-Malay according to the schools classification. But it is the classification itself that resounds like a Hitlerian project to divide the Muslims, setting them apart and calling the Malays Bumiputera while the rest are called anak lelaki or anak perempuan or are classified under lain-lain. Why is my son not classified a bumi? Simply to feed a Malay Bumiputera the golden spoon in the future and give him or her, however dumb that person may end up to be, a safe haven in a local university. To trade Islamic principles for a university post is a shameful act by itself. It is needless to guess the type of 'education' these people will be 'fed' in the Area 51.
The very fact that Islam condemns such segregation and insists on the unity of the people under one banner is what we may call the very reason why Malaysia should at all cost, stop practicing such segregationist, apartheid and racist policies. My son did feel sad that he is not ‘classified’ among the other Muslims. Yes the ‘other’ Muslims who are Malays. To comfort him, I told him the story of the ‘tongkat’ and the old man.
In Malaysia I told him, referring to the Bumiputera status, the Malays from very young are given the ‘tongkat’ to survive in a world where they may automatically fail. The fear of failure, of being defeated at a young age by non-Malays have grown so much after my 18 years in Malaysia that it is funny to see how the regime will go the extra lengths to ‘classify’ Muslims as Bumiputeras and non-Bumiputeras. My son’s mother is a Malay by all rights and her right as a Malay is trampled by the Malays themselves to tell, indirectly, to a foreign father of a Malaysian born boy that you and your son will not get a piece of the ‘tongkat’.
In my country and in 99 percent of the world, we see old folks walking without a ‘tongkat’ and they are healthy and they are wealthy too in most cases. They never needed the ‘tongkat’ to be protected from more intelligent races. They may die without a ‘tongkat’ after all and it will be bravo to them as it will be bravo to my son for since his young age he has learned a great lesson: That he does not need a ‘tongkat’ to be somebody, to succeed and he is already a growing success as a young Malaysian non-Malay but a 101 percent Muslim writer. This is the kind of shame that will overshadow the Malays in general if they continue to support, and in particular the teachers, the head masters and head mistresses and the activists who supposedly are trying to ‘protect’ their Malay rights, the racist policies of this country.
To my knowledge, the rightful Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is not a racist and he does not at all promote the racist policies that segregate my son from the ‘other’ weaker Muslims and tramples on the very Malay rights of my wife in this country. This policy became prominent during the time of Tun Mahathir Mohamad and he is the only one to blame today for the perpetuation of the very apartheid and Hitler policy of Islamic segregation by dividing Muslims into Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera.
If the Malays can eat the rights of their own Malay women who dare marry a foreigner, then imagine what they are capable of doing to keep their piece of cake that is fast dwindling. I was told by a subdued non-Bumi that I have to write to the ‘Penghulu’ of the place where I live in Ampang and to ‘rayu’ that my family follows the ‘Malay’ customs and ‘adat’ hence my son must be given the right to be a Bumiputera. I replied to him that cowards would do that but since I do not follow anything Malay and I follow the pure, true Islamic ‘adat’ I found it implausible for me to ‘rayu’ to a bloke who calls himself ‘penghulu’ and who promotes, perpetuates and even imposes racism in his midst!
This is the very reason, the racist and inter-Islamic racist segregationist policies in Malaysia that has undermined the Muslims and allowed the non-Muslims to bash the Malays and claim that Allah is the name of their God and that they have absolute right to use it. The Malay bashing will continue until the Malays are diminished in return since they will keep ‘segregating’ the Muslims into non-Bumiputera citizens and trust me sooner or later this will make the Malays yet an infinite minority in their own country.
After this, the process will be for the ‘true’ Muslims, known as non-Bumiputera’s to impose their will on the nation in alliance with non-Muslims. The next general elections will give a definitive reply to the ‘racist’ policies in Malaysia. By then, I will not be in this country but I will be too glad to see that the ‘protected’ but ‘weak’ Bumiputera segment of the Malaysian population will be given a beating and will lose seats in way they have never even dreamt possible!
Are you a Bumiputera I asked my son? “I am a Angkasaputra’ he replied because we both are from Nabi Adam AlayhisSalaam and we come from space, a dimension where Bumiputera’s will fear to thread.”
Written by Kazi Mahmood
My son did feel sad that he is not ‘classified’ among the other Muslims. Yes the ‘other’ Muslims who are Malays. To comfort him, I told him the story of the ‘tongkat’ and the old man.
Malaysia is probably living one its most exciting yet volatile days with a high profile murder case resounding loudly in almost all blogs and portals in the country while its political scene is dipping in an unending game of cat and mouse.
In the limelight of the current situation, the Malay-Muslims are taking a severe bashing on Internet blogs and at times in local dailies. Muslims in the country, forming a majority of 60 percent of the 25 million populations, are getting more confused and fearful of the outcome of this bashing.
However, the 60 percent Muslims are segregated into a confusing and totally un-Islamic racist grading that not only divides the Muslims in Malaysia but put many Muslims in direct opposition to the Malay majority race. Race is a very persistent factor in Malaysia and it is getting uglier altogether.
My son, a young and prolific writer has fallen victim of the system last month. He is the third son in a family of 3 kids. My wife, a Malaysian considered a Bumiputera. She has two kids (Bumiputera's) from a first marriage with one local Malay who, classically, ran away with a younger wife to lead a new life. I came in the picture a year after her divorce was settled and married her in Mauritius, the Paradise Island in the Indian Ocean.
After much struggle with the Malaysian immigration, I am now like a ‘suami import’ or imported husband. I do not have a red IC after 18 years here and I find it fine too since I could not be bothered with a red IC or a blue IC. These are insignificant items of ‘collection’ for someone like me. Yet what is very significant to me and to my son – he just penned down a lengthy article in which he wrote about the Bumiputera thing – is the race issue.
In my country, racism was pretty much under control though existent, and we journalists and writers fought dearly to prevent it from raising its ugly head in Mauritius. Then came the darkest days of Mauritius political history in the 1983-1986 years in which racism and a form of religious fascism reared its ugly head and threatened to annihilate the great civilian values we enjoyed.
The press, the writer’s guild, the independent journalists and the freelance writers-reporters fought bravely and won. The leader of the movement to instigate racism in Mauritius was forced out of the government and I am glad I was the only journalist in Mauritius to have predicted the very week and almost the day he was kicked out of the government by the then Prime Minister Aneerood Jugnauth.
I wrote extensively against the character, without creating a character assassination type of campaign, but targeting instead the idea of chaos and dangers impending if racism was allowed to win and a mafia group given the powers to literally administer the country. The human interest stories I delivered were of help to the government in place as it opened the eyes. I was also the only journalist involved in the creating of a 100 pages report on the status of Journalism and freedom of the press in Mauritius for the United Nation. I was queried by the ‘thugs’ of the deputy Prime Minister, the very person who promoted Hindu extremism in Mauritius.
I was followed, targeted and in at least one incident, I was almost attacked by a group but I was salvaged by an army friend of mine who grabbed me with the help of two other soldiers to throw me in their jeep and drove me home safely. I was lucky but that was because I did give a severe blow to the mafia and the racist head. Subsequently he was thrown out of the regime and has since then been denied a seat in our August Parliament for good.
That is to say that I am not afraid of racism and like my son, we both are not at all taken aback by the fact that he is a non-Malay according to the schools classification. But it is the classification itself that resounds like a Hitlerian project to divide the Muslims, setting them apart and calling the Malays Bumiputera while the rest are called anak lelaki or anak perempuan or are classified under lain-lain. Why is my son not classified a bumi? Simply to feed a Malay Bumiputera the golden spoon in the future and give him or her, however dumb that person may end up to be, a safe haven in a local university. To trade Islamic principles for a university post is a shameful act by itself. It is needless to guess the type of 'education' these people will be 'fed' in the Area 51.
The very fact that Islam condemns such segregation and insists on the unity of the people under one banner is what we may call the very reason why Malaysia should at all cost, stop practicing such segregationist, apartheid and racist policies. My son did feel sad that he is not ‘classified’ among the other Muslims. Yes the ‘other’ Muslims who are Malays. To comfort him, I told him the story of the ‘tongkat’ and the old man.
In Malaysia I told him, referring to the Bumiputera status, the Malays from very young are given the ‘tongkat’ to survive in a world where they may automatically fail. The fear of failure, of being defeated at a young age by non-Malays have grown so much after my 18 years in Malaysia that it is funny to see how the regime will go the extra lengths to ‘classify’ Muslims as Bumiputeras and non-Bumiputeras. My son’s mother is a Malay by all rights and her right as a Malay is trampled by the Malays themselves to tell, indirectly, to a foreign father of a Malaysian born boy that you and your son will not get a piece of the ‘tongkat’.
In my country and in 99 percent of the world, we see old folks walking without a ‘tongkat’ and they are healthy and they are wealthy too in most cases. They never needed the ‘tongkat’ to be protected from more intelligent races. They may die without a ‘tongkat’ after all and it will be bravo to them as it will be bravo to my son for since his young age he has learned a great lesson: That he does not need a ‘tongkat’ to be somebody, to succeed and he is already a growing success as a young Malaysian non-Malay but a 101 percent Muslim writer. This is the kind of shame that will overshadow the Malays in general if they continue to support, and in particular the teachers, the head masters and head mistresses and the activists who supposedly are trying to ‘protect’ their Malay rights, the racist policies of this country.
To my knowledge, the rightful Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is not a racist and he does not at all promote the racist policies that segregate my son from the ‘other’ weaker Muslims and tramples on the very Malay rights of my wife in this country. This policy became prominent during the time of Tun Mahathir Mohamad and he is the only one to blame today for the perpetuation of the very apartheid and Hitler policy of Islamic segregation by dividing Muslims into Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera.
If the Malays can eat the rights of their own Malay women who dare marry a foreigner, then imagine what they are capable of doing to keep their piece of cake that is fast dwindling. I was told by a subdued non-Bumi that I have to write to the ‘Penghulu’ of the place where I live in Ampang and to ‘rayu’ that my family follows the ‘Malay’ customs and ‘adat’ hence my son must be given the right to be a Bumiputera. I replied to him that cowards would do that but since I do not follow anything Malay and I follow the pure, true Islamic ‘adat’ I found it implausible for me to ‘rayu’ to a bloke who calls himself ‘penghulu’ and who promotes, perpetuates and even imposes racism in his midst!
This is the very reason, the racist and inter-Islamic racist segregationist policies in Malaysia that has undermined the Muslims and allowed the non-Muslims to bash the Malays and claim that Allah is the name of their God and that they have absolute right to use it. The Malay bashing will continue until the Malays are diminished in return since they will keep ‘segregating’ the Muslims into non-Bumiputera citizens and trust me sooner or later this will make the Malays yet an infinite minority in their own country.
After this, the process will be for the ‘true’ Muslims, known as non-Bumiputera’s to impose their will on the nation in alliance with non-Muslims. The next general elections will give a definitive reply to the ‘racist’ policies in Malaysia. By then, I will not be in this country but I will be too glad to see that the ‘protected’ but ‘weak’ Bumiputera segment of the Malaysian population will be given a beating and will lose seats in way they have never even dreamt possible!
Are you a Bumiputera I asked my son? “I am a Angkasaputra’ he replied because we both are from Nabi Adam AlayhisSalaam and we come from space, a dimension where Bumiputera’s will fear to thread.”
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