Hi. It's not often I get visitors off a google. :)
It's hard to find a freethinking, particularly an atheist, Malay. Quite a few are agnostic, quite a number more are liberal. More often than not, they're too quiet to be seen.
I've always found it horrible that people immediately wonder where you're from by speaking decent English in Malaysia. It's not like people don't speak decent English in Malaysia at all. Almost as if people have temporary memory loss when they meet a Malaysian who speaks English by default. Didn't we all not go through the same educational system?
That look of the headscarfed, mousy Malay girl is becoming a kind of standard by which we are defined. I find it disgusting, since the foreign press has picked up on this. News broadcast overseas actually are pointing us out by "headscarf, baju kurung, hey, this must be a Malay!" It's unbelievably crude. It wouldn't have happened in my parents' time.
I worry a lot about our country, but again, I think a lot more of us are smarter than we appear in the vocal minority. There's growing conservatism, but there's growing liberalism too -- you'd be a product of this growing class. The one group can't really form without the other. Malaysia's good at finding middle grounds. So we will eventually find a middle ground for this, I think, because our political system and our social make-up will refuse anything less. (60% of Malaysia is Malay -- that's hardly a majority. And if you consider that not all Malays/bumiputeras have to be Muslim, (lots of the aboriginal groups aren't), that's a pretty good mix of religions and cultures).)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-12-25 06:59 am (UTC)It's hard to find a freethinking, particularly an atheist, Malay. Quite a few are agnostic, quite a number more are liberal. More often than not, they're too quiet to be seen.
I've always found it horrible that people immediately wonder where you're from by speaking decent English in Malaysia. It's not like people don't speak decent English in Malaysia at all. Almost as if people have temporary memory loss when they meet a Malaysian who speaks English by default. Didn't we all not go through the same educational system?
That look of the headscarfed, mousy Malay girl is becoming a kind of standard by which we are defined. I find it disgusting, since the foreign press has picked up on this. News broadcast overseas actually are pointing us out by "headscarf, baju kurung, hey, this must be a Malay!" It's unbelievably crude. It wouldn't have happened in my parents' time.
I worry a lot about our country, but again, I think a lot more of us are smarter than we appear in the vocal minority. There's growing conservatism, but there's growing liberalism too -- you'd be a product of this growing class. The one group can't really form without the other. Malaysia's good at finding middle grounds. So we will eventually find a middle ground for this, I think, because our political system and our social make-up will refuse anything less. (60% of Malaysia is Malay -- that's hardly a majority. And if you consider that not all Malays/bumiputeras have to be Muslim, (lots of the aboriginal groups aren't), that's a pretty good mix of religions and cultures).)