Kindly allow me to offer my view on the concept of ethnicity. Membership to an ethnic group varies from one to another. Some use religion as their distinctive marker. The case of former Yugoslavia provides a great example. The Croats, Bosnians and Serbs share a common language with very little variation and are all of Slavic origin.

What differentiates them from one another is religion; the Croats being Christians, Bosnians are Muslims and Serbs belonging to the Orthodox Church. Hence a Serb can easily become a Bosnian just by converting to Islam.

A more common ethnic marker would be race. A Chinese is a Chinese no matter what religion she subscribes to because the criteria for this ethnic group is race or common descent. The unique feature of race is that membership is based purely on biological basis hence a Vietnamese can never be a Chinese no matter how much he wants to or how much his physical appearance resembles a typical Chinese.

But it becomes problematic when the ethnic marker shifts to a voluntary common experience like the Malays here. The Malays' ethnic membership is open to anyone who embraces Islam and, lives and behaves like a Malay. But more importantly, that person having fulfilled the above criteria must voluntary profess to be a Malay.

It might sound shocking but the Malays are not the only ethnic group that subscribe to this system. Another example would be the French. In France, officially there is no other ethnic group besides the French. People like Zinedine Zidane would still be considered French of Algerian descent. Do take note that I am not referring to French citizenship here but French as an ethnic group.

Of course by now, all of you would be able to foresee the dilemma here. What is the status of a converted Kadazandusun who satisfies all the criteria to be a Malay? Here, I profess my ignorance of the Kadazandusun culture.

But if religion is the ethnic marker, then he could be a Malay and even if race is the marker then I am still convinced he belongs to Malay ethnic group but in term of race, he is a Kadazanduzun.

With all the confusion, it is hardly of any surprise therefore that in United Kingdom for example, most institutions in their application forms normally use the word ethnicity rather than race. This may seem trivial to some people but it does drive home the point about the word we use so casually in our everyday life.