IT’S ALL ABOUT INDOCTRINATION AND BRAINWASHING

Malays are not poor. Malays are just less wealthy than the Chinese but far richer than the Malays of 50 or 60 years ago. And if the excuse we go to war in Syria or Iraq is because the Chinese are richer than the Malays, then I will make a far better mufti than this chap Harussani.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

(Malay Mail Online) – Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan accused Putrajaya last night of rewriting history purportedly to justify its race-based policies and to strengthen its hold on power by driving wedges between the country’s different racial communities.

The renowned lawyer and activist told a forum last night that to achieve this end, Putrajaya has been drilling falsehoods into the minds of school kids through history textbooks.

“Rewriting our history books must stop, as you are narrowing their (children) minds..they will never be able to compete abroad as they don’t have the required broad-mindedness, and you are doing them a terrible service,” she added.

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(Malay Mail Online) – The policies of the Mahathir administration with its focus on safeguarding non-Malay interests, have pushed Malay youths towards the Islamic State and jihadism, Perak mufti Tan Sri Harussani Zakaria said.

Harussani said the government during Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s tenure gave too much emphasis on industrial growth, a sector dominated by the non-Malays, leading to Malays becoming impoverished.

“When he was ruling, he focused too much on industry. And who dominates industry? Not the Malays. This led to the Malays to become poor and because their development was neglected, they are attracted to the idea of martyrdom because they have nothing else on this earth,” he added.

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Most interesting comments indeed by Ambiga and Harussani in their prognosis as to what ails Malaysian society, the Malays in particular, against the backdrop of Dr Mahathir’s statement that if the Malays do not succeed (meaning, do not own 30% of Malaysia’s corporate wealth) then they have only themselves to blame.

Basically, Ambiga is saying that the Malaysian youth is being indoctrinated and brainwashed with lies while Harussani says too much development allows the non-Malays, the Chinese in particular, to prosper, which creates dissatisfaction amongst the Malays and hence causes them to go to Syria and Iraq to fight for IS (or ISIS, ISIL, etc.)

I have already addressed this issue in an earlier article where I said that when success is measured in the context of wealth then you would definitely come to the conclusion that the Malays have failed.

There are many issues to discuss so allow me to kupas (directly translated to mean peel, such as in peeling an onion) one-by-one.

When politicians talk about the success or failure of the Malays, the yardstick they use is Malaysia’s corporate wealth. Say, for the sake of argument, Malaysia’s corporate wealth is RM1 trillion (businesses, private companies and listed shares on the stock exchange included). If Malays do not own at least RM300 billion of that corporate wealth then they have failed. They are not successful.

First of all, who set this target of 30% back in 1970? Was this target of 30% fixed after careful research or just a figure plucked from the air? Why 30%? Why not 50%? Why not 15%? Why has the target been set at 30%? Can Umno or the government give us an explanation as to why it has been set at 30%?

When this target of 30% was fixed almost 45 years ago, did Umno or the government calculate what the growth in corporate wealth was going to be half a century from 1970 (meaning in 2020, the year that Dr Mahathir quoted when the target should be met)? Would even the best economic brains in the world have been able to calculate what Malaysia’s corporate wealth would be 50 years from 1970?

So you see, while the government strives to achieve a 30% share of the corporate wealth for the Malays, they were looking at 1970 to base their projections and not at 2020, which in 1970 no one knew what was going to be Malaysia’s corporate wealth.

Let us say that in 1970 Malaysia’s corporate wealth was only RM100 billion. So the government wanted the Malays to own 30% of that or RM30 billion.

Today, Malaysia’s corporate wealth is RM1 trillion. The Malays now own 20% of that or RM200 billion. The target in 1970 was for the Malays to own RM30 billion but they now own RM200 billion. That far exceeds the target but when compared to RM1 trillion it is only 20%. So it is far short of the target.

However, if the government targeted for the Malays to own RM30 billion, and they now own RM200 billion, would that not mean the Malays have not only succeeded but in fact far exceeded the target? But then if you move the goalposts and now use RM1 trillion instead of RM100 billion as the yardstick, then definitely the Malays have fallen short of the 30% target.

The problem is, we are comparing what the Malays own, today, against what the non-Malays own. So this means the non-Malays own much more and the Malays own less. But if we compare what the Malays own today against what the Malays owned 45 years ago, would the Malays have not succeeded and succeeded far beyond expectations?

I compare what I own today against what I owned when I first started working back in 1972 (I owned just a second-hand car), which is 42 years ago. And based on that comparison I am far better off today and can actually be considered a success (by comparison).

However, if I compare what I own against what Vincent Tan owns, then I am a dismal failure because Vincent Tan was equally a ‘nobody’ like me back in 1972 (and only 20 years old) while today he is worth US$1.6 billion.

At the time of Merdeka, very few Malays owned cars. Most lived in timber houses with no modern toilets and either used outhouses or went down to the rivers and beaches to answer the call of nature. Many also did not wear pants and wore only sarongs.

Compare that with the Malays of today and would you say the Malays have not advanced since then?

How many Malays went to secondary school, let alone to college or university back then? Even one of Malaysia’s deputy prime ministers was a primary school ‘graduate’. Since then, millions of Malays have been given a college or tertiary education.

Now, whether they deserve or qualify for this higher education and whether they received it at the expense of more deserving non-Malay students is another issue and a topic not for debate in this article. The point I want to make is that if education is also used as a yardstick (and not just corporate wealth) then we have exceeded the target of 30% because more than 30% of the Malays have benefited from an education.

We might say, yes, but there are still many school dropouts, mostly Malays, so it is not 100% like, say, in Kerala, India. True, but this is not because they were not given the opportunity of a higher education. It is because they chose to drop out.

So whom do we blame? Is this a lack of opportunity issue, Umno must be blamed issue, the government is at fault issue, or a problem with the Malay community and their parents who do not put too much emphasis and importance on education?

Anyway, most Malays today do put emphasis and importance on education. Some even send their children to Chinese schools (for better quality education) or to more superior private schools where they pay an arm and a leg. I know my children send my grandchildren to good schools even though it costs them a lot of money. I, too, paid with my own money to send my daughters to UK universities. And I borrowed the money from a couple of friends and sold my house to pay back those loans (in full).

We have to stop comparing the Malay share of the corporate wealth to that, say, of the Chinese. Around 50 years ago, the Malays owned just 1% of the corporate wealth while the Chinese owned 30%. Today, the Malays own 20% (trust agencies included, of course) while the Chinese own 60% (the rest are owned by foreign investors, which even the Pakatan Rakyat states are focusing on).

Hence the Malays have seen their corporate wealth increase 20-fold while that of the Chinese has just doubled. Would not the Malays be more successful than the Chinese when we compare where they started to where they are now?

Now compare the Chinese in Malaysia to the Chinese in China. In just 20 years the Chinese in China have surged ahead. How far have the Chinese in Malaysia come in 200 years? Are not the Chinese in Malaysia failures when compared to the Chinese in China?

So it is quite relative. It all depends on what yardstick you use and what you compare it with. And whether the Malays have succeeded or failed will depend on what formula you are using. Based on where the Malays are today compared to where they were 50 or 60 years ago, I would say the Malays have certainly come a long way.

If the government (state governments like Penang and Selangor included) can ban foreign investments in their states, then by 2020 the Malay share of the corporate wealth will increase because the cake will shrink so the Malays will own 30% of a much shrunken cake.

You increase your share by reducing the share of the others such as foreign investors. But as long as large amounts of foreign investments come in then the Malays can never catch up because we just cannot match the power of foreign money.

Even Perak mufti Harussani is using wealth as the yardstick to argue why Malays are going to Syria and Iraq to fight and die in the civil war there. What has money got to do with it? In fact, Ambiga raised a very valid point regarding indoctrination and brainwashing, which is what Harussani should look at and not cite the lack of wealth as the cause.

We are all victims of indoctrination and brainwashing, not just in history class, as Ambiga grumbles. After all, is history not written by the victors? Hence what we know about history is what people before us tell us. And there is much distortion and lies in history, especially the history of the many religions.

And that is why Malaysian historians plus Malaysian theologians need to research history and get to the truth. The truth is very different from what we have been told and when we point this out the religious fanatics will quote verses from the holy books and tell us to go read those holy books to better understand religion.

But that is just it. It is religious teachings that are the problem so if we confine our research to just the holy books how are we going to discover the truth? And this is why religionists become fanatics and resort to violence to uphold their doctrine, never mind what religion that may be.

Harussani is also not consistent in his views. Islam believes in predestination and whatever happens to us is preordained. Can we choose to not be born a slave when both our parents are slaves? Can we choose to be born rich when our parents are rubber tappers? Can we choose to be born Muslim when our parents are Eskimos in Alaska?

Hence we are what we are because, according to Islam, that is the will of God. Hence if Malays want to go fight in Syria or Iraq can that happen unless God wills it? And if Malays want to leave Islam to become Christians is that not also the will of God? Islam says nothing happens unless God wills it.

And that is the contradiction in Islam. Muslims shun freewill and say nothing happens unless God wills it. But when something does happen they say we are going against what God wants. How can we go against what God wants when God wills what happens?

And when Muslims are indoctrinated and brainwashed and are not allowed to research and seek, we will end up with Malays thinking that Muslims brutally killing other Muslims in a civil war is what God wants us to do.

And then people like Harussani come out and say that Malays are killing other Muslims because Dr Mahathir’s policies allowed the Chinese to become rich leaving the Malays poor, and hence dissatisfied because of their poverty.

Malays are not poor. Malays are just less wealthy than the Chinese but far richer than the Malays of 50 or 60 years ago. And if the excuse we go to war in Syria or Iraq is because the Chinese are richer than the Malays, then I will make a far better mufti than this chap Harussani.

Now, whether with the high cost of living middle-class Malaysians (not just Malays) can make ends meet is another thing altogether. Even in super-rich UK the middle-class finds it hard to make ends meet.

But that is another issue altogether and has nothing to do with the subject of Malay success or failure.

Oh, and Ambiga should not grumble about the indoctrination and brainwashing that Malaysians are being subjected to. We have all been subjected to that, Ambiga included, and not just by the government. Aren’t you Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever, because of indoctrination and brainwashing? If not because of indoctrination and brainwashing, you would not be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.

You have been indoctrinated and brainwashed into believing that God (or Gods) exist and that your religion is the true religion. And that is why you believe what you believe. So you are already an indoctrinated and brainwashed community in spite of thinking that you are enlightened.