We didn’t start the fire

Keeping the peace:Federal Reserve Unit personnel standing guard outside the temple.

WE didn’t start the fire.

It was always burning since the world’s been turning.

We didn’t start the fire.

No we didn’t light it but we tried to fight it.

That’s the chorus of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. It was one of the most popular songs in 1989.

In an interview in the November 1989 issue of the Rolling Stone magazine, Joel explained that the song was “not meant to sound preachy”.

“What I’m trying to get across is that we didn’t start this stuff, we inherited it,” he said.

In the context of the Seafield Sri Maha Mariamman Temple attack which started around 2am on Monday, the “fire” is some Malaysians perceiving the incident as a racial and religious conflict.

Some of us inherited our racial or religious-tinted glasses. Some of us see events in Malaysia in the context of race or religion, or both.

Take the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple violent attack as an example. The devotees at the temple were Indians/Hindus and the attackers were Malays/Muslims.

Some of us, therefore, would conclude that there was religious and race violence because it involved Malays/Muslims and Indians/Hindus.

Some of us can’t see the devotees as Malaysians and the attackers as Malaysians.

When friends sent me a seditious WhatsApp message blaming a certain race for attacking the devotees, I replied:

“The attackers were Malays. But it is not about Malays attacking Indians. But gangsters (who are coincidentally Malays) hired by someone to get rid of the people in the temple so that the land where the temple was built could be developed. It is not a racial conflict but about taking over a piece of prime land.”

When they shared WhatsApp messages blaming a certain race for the attack on fireman Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim, who is in critical condition after suffering severe injuries during the riot, I replied:

“Don’t read it that way. Malaysians, who are coincidentally Indians, attacked a Malaysian, who is coincidentally a Malay.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad stated that the riot at the Hindu temple was criminal in nature.

He stressed that there was no racial or religious element in the incident although it was linked to the relocation of a temple.

Despite the Prime Minister’s statement, some Malaysians were insisting that they had to defend their race and in defending their race, they spewed provocative words that could enrage another race.

Either these people are less clever than a carrot, or they want to stoke racial tension, or they are reacting to unverified messages.

I have to admit, I’ve fallen for unverified messages.

In 2014, a viral 23-second video showed an Ori Sabahan (original), who was lying face down on the road, kicked in the face when he lifted his head by a group of allegedly Photocopy Sabahans (fake) in a town in the interior of my state.

My blood boiled seeing orang kita (our people) attacked by PTI (pendatang tanpa izin or illegal immigrants).

Certain groups had exploited the situation. They posted gruesome photographs to incite the local folk.

Enraged, the local folk wanted to teach the PTI in the town a lesson. They wanted revenge.

If local politicians and community leaders did not intervene to cool down the fired-up natives, there could have been bloodshed.

It turned out that there was more to the story.

The attackers were not PTI but Sabahans. The victim was a member of a gang infamous for stealing luxury vehicles. And a hot woman sparked the fight during a moginum (Kadazandusun for drinking) session in a pub.

The lesson learnt from that incident is not to jump to conclusions or to believe an unverified message. Get your facts right before reacting.

Find out facts such as the attackers in the temple violence were not motivated by racial hatred but money. Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the thugs were paid RM150 to RM300 each.

“Because they hired Malays to ‘take care of things’ at a Hindu temple, you can imagine the reaction it would trigger,” he told the media on Wednesday.

“As an example, imagine what would happen if you send Hindus to take care of a mosque?”

Perhaps, in race and religion-sensitive Malaysia, to stop a criminal incident from being perceived as an ugly racial conflict, the politically correct thing to do is hire thugs to whack people of their race.

This may not be politically correct to say. But, there is a racist or bigot inside some of us.

Some of us grew up identifying ourselves based on our race or religion and not our nationality.

It doesn’t help that there are politicians frightening their race with racial bogeymen. It doesn’t help that some of us live in a racial silo.

We should go beyond seeing our country with our religious or racial-tinted glasses. We should be colourblind.

We should see ourselves as Malaysians. However

We didn’t start the fire.

But when we are gone.

It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on.

-Star