Let’s drown out hate speech with more love speech

It’s the Hari Raya season and I am excited! I am excited to spend time with my family because I have to admit, I have a pretty cool family and I like to show them off.

I feel so proud that my family is a truly multiracial family if I do say so myself. We boast Malays, Chinese and Indians in our family.

We’re pretty multireligious too with Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and Christianity being a few of the more prominent faiths our family members practise.

If you came to our larger family gatherings, there is potential that you might confuse it with one of those BN open houses in the 1980s - when Umno, MCA and MIC were still dominating the political scene.

The only difference is that my family members actually interact with each other genuinely without having to think about abiding by any cabinet portfolio or seat allocation rules.

We like each other because we actually like each other and not because we need to “stay in power”.

To think about it, most of my relationships are like that even with people who are not my family members. I have many friends of different racial and religious backgrounds.

Recently, I had sort of a reunion dinner with some of my friends from SMK La Salle, Brickfields. We do this once a year since one of us lives in New Zealand and he only comes home once or twice a year.

So, we try our best to get together then, with as many of us as possible.

Jimmy usually comes back from New Zealand during Qing Ming for prayers. This year, Qing Ming fell in the month of Ramadan. So, dinner was during “buka puasa”.

Of course, it was for my benefit but nobody made a big fuss about it. Then, we talked about Qing Ming, and some of my other Chinese friends started talking about which cemeteries they were going to the next morning.

I said that my family goes to the one in Kampung Tunku but we might not go this year.

Then, we started talking about Hari Raya and how they used to always come to my house (my parents’, actually) every year to eat my mother’s Laksa Johor.

Laksa Johor

However, since most of us got married, it isn’t as regular anymore because it’s hard to find a time which is convenient for all of us at the same time.

But it really is okay because we don’t really need a festival to get together. If most of us are free, we’ll just arrange a hangout and catch up. It’s no big deal.

Cracking jokes

I have other non-Malay friends too. One of my best and dearest friends is Deva, a university lecturer and Hindu priest at one of the oldest temples in Klang.

Another one of my oldest friends and the best man at my wedding is Seng Tat, a Chinese from Jinjang. In all my friendships (and family relations), race and religion have never been a topic of focus or become an issue of any kind. We share so many things in common that race and religion are so insignificant.

If at any time race and religion becomes a topic of conversation, it’s usually us joking and poking fun at how politics in Malaysia is so obsessed with it.

For example, when Jimmy sips on his drink 10 minutes before “buka puasa” time, I would yell at him “Hoi! Please respect me or I’ll report you to (insert the relevant political party here)!”.

Jimmy would then scream back and say, “Well, I can complain to (insert the relevant political party here) about you threatening my economic rights!”.

Then we would all laugh and acknowledge how stupid all of this is. Most of the time, we are thankful that in real life, our small group of friends has no issues with how different our races and religions are.

We have known each other for more than 30 years and we respect and love each other very much. For the most part, we believe that most Malaysians are like us. We recognise that we are all Malaysians and that we have different cultures and beliefs.

We also recognise that there is a very specific type of political strategy where a specific political group is trying to shape a political narrative that they want to push into the public sphere.

We understand that this is very dangerous because it will definitely create a divide in our multicultural and multireligious society. Although most Malaysians can see right through this, some small groups can be influenced by this narrative.

This is very dangerous so we need to ensure society can be more resilient towards this kind of propaganda.

We need to create awareness for recognising hate speech when it comes to the country’s political narrative.

Promote multiculturalism

Maybe what is needed is to flood the media and social media with more positive narratives that promote multiculturalism and religious pluralism. We need to counter the negative narratives and drown them out.

So how about that, fellow Malaysians? Let’s start posting more of our hangouts with our friends of different races and religions. Let’s celebrate the many interracial marriages in Malaysia.

Let’s highlight stories of different people helping each other and paying no mind to race or religion. I know there are more people like us than them. So, let’s have our love speech be much louder than their hate speech.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to all Malaysians. May we all be blessed with a happy, healthy and harmonious Malaysia! - Mkini

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ZAN AZLEE is a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist and academic. Visit fatbidin.com to view his work.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.