What kind of Malaysian are you?

What kind of Malaysian are you? Take this not-so-fun quiz and find out:

1. A little boy gets beaten by his religious teacher at a religious school. He later dies of his injuries.

a) This is a cultural and religious matter. Anyone not of that religion has no business commenting.

b) His parents have forgiven the school and the religious teacher. Everything is settled.

c) Someone must be punished. I don’t care who.

d) Why is there no regulation about this?

2. A child plays in a chess tournament. Half way through a match, someone decides that her dressing is too seductive and distracting. She is asked to leave the tournament.

a) Officials always know best. Girls have no business playing chess anyway.

b) She should apologise for disrupting the tournament.

c) I want to go and wallop the official in charge.

d) Chess tournaments should be regulated better.

3. A politician writes a biography. She is religious and talks about how her faith has played a key role in her journey.

a) She is trying to convert people to her faith and the book must be banned.

b) She should apologise.

c) I want to go and wallop her.

d) We need more laws about who can write books. Books are dangerous.

4. The prime minister has a forum for artists. Two artists have a difference of opinion. One artist slaps the other.

a) The guy who got slapped was causing trouble. He should be locked up for being “kurang ajar”.

b) Everyone should apologise and the matter will be settled.

c) I want to wallop someone but I don’t know who - so I will go eat two roti canai instead.

d) We need a new ministry to regulate forums or maybe even ban them.

5. A woman voices her concern about crime to a minister during a public forum. He tells her if women dressed less glamorously/attractively, they wouldn’t become the target of thieves and other criminals.

a) She should be flattered that the minister finds her attractive and so doesn’t feel the need to take her seriously.

b) Someone should apologise but I don’t know who and for what.

c) Criminals should be walloped.

d) We need to regulate attractive women. Probably also unattractive ones.

What your answers mean:

Mostly a’s, mostly b’s, mostly c’s, mostly d’s:

Congratulations. You are a true, patriotic Malaysian. You truly deeply care about your country. God knows you have spent enough hours of your life, posting, sharing, and stating your views loud and clear on any number of social media fora. You know you must be right. All your friends agree with you and anyone who has different answers from you is just plain wrong.

The only way for this country to move forward is for more people to be like you. But how to talk to those other people? They are not your friends. Anyhow they are too bigoted/liberal/religious/not religious/not your race and/not your religion/corrupt/uneducated/brainwashed (select as appropriate) so they will never understand your perspective.

Anyway, there is only one way to run the country, your way! Compromise is for losers. And who cares about national unity? Maybe we’ve just been pretending to get along for the past 60 years or has our nation’s narrative been hijacked by extremist views leaving no room for the middle ground?

The question is how far have we moved beyond consensus? Too often it appears Malaysians seem to think that violence is a solution. Might is right. Most of us cringe from the prospect of violence and violent confrontations especially if the other guy happens to be a bigger. When we don’t dare hit out at someone ourselves, we seem to have no scruples about turning to the forces of law to do our bullying for us. Don’t like what someone has said or done? Just make a police report.

Saying sorry too seems to have come into its own. Like kids in a playground we are told to shake hands and apologise. Like sullen kids, we can cross our fingers behind our backs, say sorry and cock-a-snook at authority because really, we didn’t mean it anyway. To err is human, to forgive divine.

Forgiveness however can only be genuine when we feel that justice has been done. In the absence of justice, all apologies are meaningless. When we don’t feel our grievances have been heard, we feel powerless. On the flipside, there is also a deep fear of change. Fearful and powerless people are so easy to manipulate.

So where is power in Malaysia? Is it in the political parties that seek to represent us? At recent count Umno announced its membership at 3.4 million, MCA has just over a million members and MIC stands at just over half a million. PAS reports a membership of close to a million according to a recent report in the New Straits Times. No figures are readily available for the other opposition parties.

A couple of days ago however, the MIC president announced that MIC was on a drive to register at least 90,000 members as voters by June 15, despite many widespread announcements that the cut-off registration date for the 14th General Election was March 31. Do they know something the rest of us don’t?

The meantime, 20 percent of those registered to vote in the last election didn’t do so. According to one study 43 seats were won with a majority of less than 2,000 in the last election. The state seat of Bukit Baru in Malacca was won with a majority of just 43 votes. Moderate Malaysia needs to reclaim the national political narrative. It’s not going to happen through violence, blame or rants on social media.

The appropriate response to this article is:

a) I’m allergic to contact with real people.

b) The writer should apologise for calling me too bigoted/liberal/religious/not religious/not your race and/not your religion/corrupt/uneducated/brainwashed.

c) Who should I wallop now?

d) This is not sensational enough for me to post, share and comment about on social media.

---

SHEENA GURBAKHASH is a writer and communications specialist.- Mkini