Race and religion

A group of friends came over yesterday and we had a good two hour discussion on race and religion in Malaysia. Issues covered were numerous. We reflected on how ethnicity heavily influenced Malaysian politics, how the ethnocentric pull dominates policies proposed by almost any Malaysian political parties, and the influence of ethnicity in PAS. A signifincant amount of time was spent on debating whether the rise of ulama' in PAS did actually transformed PAS into a religious-based party. History tells us that Dato Asri was dethroned by the ulama' camp because the ulama' disagreed with Dato Asri's nationalistic stance. But did the ulama' actually remove narrow-minded racism (ie: the struggle to represent just the Malays at the expense of the non-Malays) from PAS? We did not reach a solid conclusion but we agreed that, many times, ethnicity played a bigger role than religion even within PAS. I took the opportunity to ask if we can ever imagine PAS proposing to abolish bumiputera policy. As expected, nobody thinks PAS will ever make such a move. But on the other hand, everybody agreed that policies in favour of one race is unfair. The solution is meritocracy. Nobody doubted the need for meritocracy, but the question was how to get to that aim? We suggested that perhaps we do not need to abolish bumiputera-ism just yet. That would be political suicide. Meritocracy is the ideal, but we need to get there in stages. What we really need first is to ensure all Malaysians receive the help they need regardless of race. Thus, we need to develop a policy to help the non-Malays to complement the bumiputera policy. This additonal policy will enable everybody who needs help be helped regardless of the colour of their skin. Once both policies work in full swing, society will move towards equality, and at that stage, the bumiputera policy and its counterpart will naturally become obsolete.