Ridhuan Tee, won’t you please shut up?

Integration does not mean an ethnic community has to give up its cultural identity.

COMMENT

Perhaps we can forgive his occasional pandering to Umno interests. Perhaps even a slip of the tongue here and there. But the constant attention grabs of columnist and alleged scholar Ridhuan Tee Abdullah have just become tiresome and downright irritating. Not content with throwing tantrums over civil society’s lack of concern when he was under investigation for sedition, Ridhuan is back to rant about vernacular schools and, of course, the “ultra kiasuness” of Malaysia’s Chinese community.

Please, please, just shut up already.

I say this out of an earnest yearning for Mr Tee to learn to hold his tongue and perhaps apply more diligence in his study of the Quran instead of spouting empty rhetoric under the guise of being ethnically Chinese. Every time he opens his mouth, or pens a column, all he does is drive a bigger wedge between Malaysians, as if we didn’t already have enough wedges to deal with.

It seems like he must have an opinion on everything, and his opinion will always lead back to, surprise, someone being “ultra kiasu” (usually Chinese). If there ever was a perfect illustration for the Malay proverb “kacang lupakan kulit”, it would have to be Ridhuan Tee Abdullah.

Let’s appreciate the irony of Tee’s use of “ultra kiasu” for a moment. He often uses this to refer to Chinese whom he perceives as more “cina than China”, whereas Tee often attempts to be more Malay than a Malay himself. Sweet, delicious irony in the form of an identity crisis if there ever was one. And yet he has the cheek to offer himself up as a “guide” for non-Malays to better understand the Malay people.

Here’s the catch: the only way anyone ever succeeds in understanding someone else is by facing him and engaging with him, which usually leads to a realisation that there are other ways of looking at and understanding this world. We don’t learn anything about each other through harangues and diatribes spouted by people like Ridhuan, who expects non-Malays to lend a ear to him while he consistently and constantly refers to them as “ultra kiasu tribes” or “ultra kiasu groups”.

Damage to the nation

Wong Chun Wai once said that Tee suffers from an identity crisis, and I’m tempted to concur. Ridhuan, you can’t change who you are and who you are born as. But why the need to spout divisive rhetoric, seemingly without realizing the damage you’re causing us as a nation? Your words will not bring us together as Malaysians. Look at your comment on Thaipusam, for example: “A sea of people of one colour only, as if there are no other colours in this country.”

Congratulations. You hurt the feelings of an entire people that day, as if they don’t figure at all in your daily life.

One could suppose this is Ridhuan indulging in a form of intellectual blackface, wearing a Malay mask as he writes and then stripping it off to assert that he is still of Chinese ethnicity when questioned. Despite claims that he never claimed to be Malay (genetically impossible considering his ethnic background), he certainly writes from a perspective that suggests he wishes that he could lay claim to the privilege.

Integration does not necessarily mean the loss of cultural identity. It does not mean that the dominant culture oppresses or represses that of the minority in the name of “unity” but assimilates it as part of the whole. That has been the guiding principle for most Malaysians throughout our history, and despite the hubbub and noise caused by extremists, for the most part we have integrated and accepted our different cultures as part of a greater whole, Malaysian culture.

I am proud to call myself a son of this country. I am a third generation Malaysian Chinese raised in the capital city of our country. I went to a kebangsaan school that hosted all the colours of Malaysia and do not speak a word of Chinese outside basic greetings and some food names. Most of my friends are Malay, across the strata from the liberal through the apolitical to the conservative. And I have found that they respect my cultural inclinations the same way they expect to be given respect in how they conduct their lives.

We have debated about religion with no animosity and shared a teh tarik together afterwards while laughing over football. I have been to their houses for Raya, and shared cakes my mother baked with them. Nothing, as far as this life here in Malaysia has shown me, has pointed to this idea that the Chinese need to give up their identity to be Malaysian. In fact, our identity is Malaysian because this is the only homeland we have ever known or will ever know, and the only culture we are familiar with.

Ridiculous suggestion

Your disingenuous assertion that we want to get rich so we can die in China is possibly the most ridiculous suggestion I have ever heard. I’m sure you know as well as I do that in China we are barely regarded as “true” Chinese anymore, and I believe China’s culture would be so alien to me that I would pack my bags and head back home to Kuala Lumpur not long after touching down in my so-called “motherland”.

I believe I speak for the majority when I say that Malaysia is my motherland and will be till the day I die, no matter where life may yet take me. This is my home, and has been my family’s home for three generations, and I will not accept the idea that I am “ultra kiasu” or somehow less Malaysian because I do not ape Malay culture. I am who I am, and that is Malaysian.

So Ridhuan, please, enough already. Stop driving a wedge between us the peoples of Malaysia for some obscure reason that only you and God know. As I said before, integration does not mean the loss of identity. With your position, you should be able to spread a message of wasatiyyah, a message of unity and not division. One could even argue that with one leg in your ethnic roots and the other in the majority religion of this country, you should be a bridge in the gaps, that it is your responsibility to be that bridge.

If you can’t, and instead insist on spreading your message of hate—and I’m sure you’ve heard this—“Much silence and a good disposition, there are no two things better than these.” (al-Bukhari)