It is very difficult to make public critical comments about any ethnic or religious community in Malaysia without getting oneself embroiled in a stormy controversy.

In his article entitled "Not just a Malay-Muslim problem", malaysiakini columnist Farish Noor has wondered aloud why non-Muslims have not come forth in defence of those poor Malay youths who have been harassed and humiliated by the authorities for behaving in a public place in such a way as can be construed by some as less than Islamic.

He is right of course. People who are not of the Islamic faith ought to have spoken out in defence of the personal dignity and the civil liberties of the victims of overzealous morality police, as Elizabeth Wong has done. Irrespective of our religious faith, we live in one world, and we are citizens of one single country. Ideally, what affects members of other ethnic or religious community affects us personally.

Unfortunately, ours is a country that is far from ideal. The Malaysian consciousness has too long been steeped in the divisive politics of race that has imprisoned our nation of brothers and sisters in segregated mental cages according to their ethnic and religious identification.

We have long been conditioned to observe certain social taboos. One of them is that one should always be "sensitive" to the racial and religious sensitivities of others to the extent that one should never comment on affairs outside of one's racial and religious domain.

Being sensitive to others' feelings is not necessarily a bad thing; it is the essence of good breeding in a plural society, engendering such virtues as tolerance, mutual respect and good will.

In Malaysia however, when the demand for ethnic and religious sensitivities has so often been accompanied by threats of racial hatred and bloody riots, sensitivities to others' feelings have been distorted to mean ugly apathy. So Malaysians tend to reserve their ultimate concern, in public and in private, only for those of their race or faith.

Supporting their own

Perhaps this is a result of the politics of race that has entrenched itself in Malaysia through nearly half a century of independence.

There is the underlying assumption in that brand of politics that Malaysians will only fight for or support members of their own race or religious groupings - at the expense of other races or religious communities if necessary. Anybody who tries to fight for members of other ethnic or religious communities are then seen to be hypocritical, merely trying to fish in muddy water, and probably motivated by the evil design to divide and weaken other ethnic or religious groups.

This deep-seated ethos of mutual mistrust has been created by race-based political parties of course, and it is itself constantly reinforced through public discourse by the rank and file of political cronies and activists alike throughout the length and breadth of our nation.

Living in our truncated, fragmented, compartmentalised Malaysian universe, many people seldom have a close friend from another ethnic community. Inter-racial or inter-faith romance tends to be frowned upon. We conduct our public and private life within our respective racial or religious boundaries. God forbids that we should step out of our self-imposed prison, and touch upon controversial subjects that affect other ethnic or religious communities with the proverbial ten-foot pole!

The crux of the problem is that any critical commentary on any ethnic or religious communities tends to be interpreted, understood and judged according to the commentator's own ethnic or religious identification.

This is the problem with what novelists and short story writers would recognise as one's point of view. When Malaysians speak on ethnic or religious matters, others assume that he always speaks from his perspective as a member of one particular ethnic or religious community.

Certain expectation

Therefore, we generally have preconceived ideas of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Ibans expressing their respective Malay, Chinese, Indian or Iban views. Alternatively, we have Muslims, Christians and Buddhists expressing views quite typical of their Islamic, Christian and Buddhist beliefs.

People look at the ethnic or religious affiliation of the writer or speaker, and immediately they form certain expectation of what the person is going to say.

Unfortunately, most Malaysians do live up to that expectation. More often than not, they begin their sensitive discourse with this ethnic or religious qualification, "Speaking as a Malay/Chinese/Indian.., I feel that...." Alternatively, they proclaim their religious platform, "As a Muslim/Christian/Buddhist/Animist, I feel."

I suppose that manner of speaking comes naturally to most, if not all people. One cannot speak without a fixed reference point, and what more familiar and immediately given point of reference can one get than one's ethnic and religious identity?

Identity is the key word here. People cannot even function in the world without a sense of who they are. In this multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-religious nation that we live in, people tend to derive their self-identity from their sense of ethnic, religious and cultural belonging.

Here, perhaps half a century of bad politics has bred a misplaced importance attached to one's ethnic, religious and cultural identity. When the distribution of the nation's resources among citizens is so dependent on classification of race, religion and culture, when a citizen's survival in the earthly world of socio-economics is so closely related to his ethnic, religious and cultural affiliation, people's ethnic cum religious cum cultural identity assumes paramount significance in his self-consciousness as a human person.

Magic of nationalism

But then, perhaps the idea of struggle for survival alone is not adequate in explaining why ethnicity and religious faith are so central to people's sense of self-identity. Perhaps the sense of belonging to an imagined community somehow assuages the individual's cosmic loneliness and his fear of mortality, as some social scientists would have it.

Given any political expression at all, the imagined ethnic or religious community always looms out of an immemorial past, and marches on into a limitless future, and this abstract entity born of human construct suddenly assumes the quasi-religious meaning of near divine sanctity. The magic of nationalism often turns the chance of birth into a personal and collective destiny.

Like some monotheistic deity, this idea of race, or ethnic group, or religious community seems to demand, and often get, near absolute love, devotion, loyalty, and sacrifice from each and every member of the group. That is probably why some people are ready to die for their race. On the other hand, self-exile or expulsion from one's ethnic or religious membership is the worst fate that can befall upon anyone, for it is akin to a fall from Paradise, and a direct descent to hell.

Therefore, to have one's racial or religious group criticised publicly is tantamount to be subject to the ultimate personal insult of experiencing sacrilege against what one considers to be sacred and inviolable.

For this reason, it is very difficult to make public critical comments on affairs that affect other ethnic or religious communities. By the same token, it is even more difficult to criticise the ethnic or religious group, to which one is allegedly affiliated. Those writers who try any kind of critical analysis on their own cultural tradition, such as Farish Noor and Raja Petra Kamarudin, do so at their own peril. And now, Josh Hong seems to have joined this unenviable rank.

Ethnic identity

Nevertheless, I am perturbed, and have been so for many years.

It may be a fact most of the time, that for most Malaysians, their ethnic identity is the most important element in their sense of self-identity. People seem to identify themselves and others in ethnic terms first. In so far as religion has been closely knit with the concept of ethnicity, one's religious faith too, has become one's premier identification tag.

Of all the premises and assumptions that govern most Malaysians' worldview and judgement of human affairs, ethnicity and religion are probably the two foremost terms of reference. In their daily life and in their public discourse, Malaysians begin their reasoning, wittingly or unwittingly, with their ethnic and religious identity as their mental fulcrum, with which they go forth and lift the globe.

If only we can all pause on this established track of thought and examine what we have always accepted as self-evident truth, and listen to what we say ourselves. Do we really know what is meant by concepts like "identity", "race", 'ethnicity", 'faith", "culture", "tradition", and "religion"? Do we know what it really means to say," I am a Malay/Chinese/Indian/etc"?

Pascal's deafening question reverberates down through the centuries: "Who am I?" He was the French-philosopher who wrote, "Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed."

Perhaps, thinking reeds in Malaysia have too often forgotten to put on their thinking cap, when it comes to questions of their race.