Siti Kasim squares off with Tajuddin Rasdi over Malays’ unwillingness to change, hold on to racial identity

“JUST what are you smoking there, Prof Taj?”

That semi-mocking retort from vocal social activist and lawyer Siti Kasim to a seemingly pro-Madani political observer/commenter Prof Mohd Tajuddin Rasdi’s loaded opinion piece in Free Malaysia Today spoke volumes.

Entitled “7 Harsh Realities Facing Non-Malays and Non-Muslims”, the academic stated that “if we do not accept or merely deny these realities, the country will go nowhere – or worse – will slide even further down this perilous road”.

Though there are seven, let’s just focus on the professor of Islamic architecture’s first contention – that the Malays will never change. He argued:

There is no gentle way to go about it: as an academic who has examined the matter thoroughly, I have come to the conclusion that the Malays will still hold on to their racial identity above being a Malaysian.

The Malays have been fed a narrative that they were here first and that they need not discard their identity, while others have to tiptoe around them.

Simply put, non-Malays are ‘pendatang’ as former prime Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad would say. And there is no use arguing about this with any Malay – that is the reality.

It is a line of thinking adopted regardless of their academic qualifications, be they a professor or an SPM school leaver.

I once tried very hard to assemble a team of 10 Malay intellectuals to spearhead a movement to change the mindset of the Malays but there were no takers.

I also previously belonged to a G70 group of Malay professors and pushed for the same cause but they refused and I left. The Malays will simply not change.

“Lay Malays do change”

This line of reasoning brought about an impassioned rebuttal from Siti Kasim who from the outset admitted that her YouTube video was hard to make for “it breaks her heart to counter a friend in such a direct and brutal fashion”:

Really? I remember a time when hardly any Malay women wore a hijab. I remember a time when there was hardly a ”sekolah tahfiz’ or Malay parents wanting their children to be put into tahfiz dorms to only later be found to be abused, bullied or sodomised or worse, end up dead.

 

Malays change. And Malays can be changed. Except that the political leaders we have has advocated to keep Malays chained in a racial and Islamist mindset.

That is the real problem. And people like Prof Tajuddin who keep advocating for the same leaders who introduce Islamisation into our society as if that is a progressive society.

I am a Malay. And I know many Malays who do not subscribe to this supremacist racial and religious indoctrination and beliefs.

The problem is not they are not there to advocate. The problem is that our leaders have designed a system that punishes those who speak out against such a system.

Agree to disagree

The aboriginal rights advocate was also confused by at Tajuddin’s interpretation of Quranic verses when he claimed: “If we cannot be patient, then we do not deserve change. In the Quran, God said that He will not change a society until the society changes itself”.

The 62-year-old legal eagle lambasted the erstwhile author: “I am not sure what the hell Taj (abbreviation to Tajuddin) means by this.

“He advocates us to be patient against corruption, unfairness, cruelty to non-Malays and non-Muslims – to accept all this as inevitable and unchangeable because of what he concludes as the unchangeable nature of the majority Malay/Muslim people.

“And in the same paragraph invoke that God will not change a society until the society changes itself.

“Is this what you teach your students for them to have critical thinking? Which logic do you use in coming with this argument?”

Opinions differ, sparks fly.

Which of these well-known political commenters have hit the nail on the head? Both make pertinent points that is sure to lead to more discourse among citizens of this country, both Malays or otherwise.

On that note, FocusM wishes all Malaysians a belated Happy Merdeka! –  Focus Malaysia