I am a proud citizen of a beautiful country. A country that manages to paint a portrait of itself that isn’t always forthcoming. When i travel, my flag travels with me. Malaysia is a ‘multi faceted, multicultural society’, the one thing about our multicultural society that is good is the fact that we celebrate all the culture’s significant festivals because they are declared national holidays and everyone gets a day off. Its wonderful because i then get to spend that day doing absolutely nothing.
Did you know that Malaysia is so multi cultural that people can say racist things on, oh I don’t know a not so well known news network like Al Jazeera? Or that by virtue of ethnicity be denied access to certain facilities or certain privileges? That despite the successes of certain members of society, you can be blamed for being a little to successful! Then just yesterday what struck me most and was last the straw that broke the horse’s back was my discovery that what i had thought about a school Silat was all wrong. I was told that I couldn’t join certain schools of silat because i wasn’t a muslim. But imagine my sadness when i learnt that a friend of mine, who isn’t muslim, isn’t Malaysian, and not even of asian decent was given the privilege to train in this form of silat.
It seems that we if born of a minority can be made to be more worthless than that of foreigners even though we are citizens by birth. Doesn’t that make you just feel so sad?
yes, there is such treatment in this world. i was not allowed to compete in silat championship in uni cos i was not muslim.
back then, i moved on. no need to stress so much, you taught me that
The point of this isn’t the fact that we are Muslim or not.
The point here is ‘My friend’ who was allowed to train in this martial art was neither Malaysian nor Muslim!
If it were based on religion, then fair enough I would exclude myself for religious reasons too. I mean if you give someone the choice to do something and his religion contradicts it, it then becomes, well a matter of personal choice.
This is a travesty.