Malay youths are more inclined to help members of their own community first before helping others - that is as far as a recent national youth survey showed.

According to Merdeka Centre programme director Ibrahim Sufian, 63% of Malays put helping their own ethnic group before others.

On the other hand, 44% of Chinese and 22% Indian were willing to help members from their communities first.

In relation to the above, he noted that the integration between Chinese and Indians ethnic groups have became more diversified where they were mixing more with other youths from different ethnic groups.

"At the same time, a majority of those interviewed feel that the people of various ethnic backgrounds are 'coming closer together' than moving apart" Ibrahim noted.

Meantime, he stated that the awareness of Malaysian youths in regards to the importance of civic participation appeared encouraging.

It was well motivated because a large majority of Malaysian youths showed more concern over civic activities that have carried out in their immediate community in which it carried 71 percent.

Nevertheless, he noted that only 3 percent of Malaysian youths perceived their ability to resolve local community problems as very capable.

Therefore, this indicated that the concerns expressed by the youths did not translate into action.

" Malaysian youths are well aware and motivated about those civic activities such as seeking of volunteers for orphanage, old folk homes and disabled centres for those who are disabled, but they don't have the initiative to participate in such activities," he commented.

Islamic influence in government affairs

Meanwhile, Ibrahim said that, in regards to Islamic influence in government affairs, 61 percent of Malays think that the government implementation of Islamic values and institution should remain at the current level.

Simultaneously, he elaborated that 34 percent of Malays think that the government should implement more Islamic ideas by introducing the hudud law for Muslims.

He said that compared to Chinese and Indians, they were more preferred that the government and religion should be kept separate.

"There were 64 percent of Chinese and 47 percent of Indians think that the government and religion should be kept separate," Ibrahim said.

Therefore, he said that respondents' ethnic background appeared to be an influence on many factors such as interest in civic participation and their preference in Islamic influence in the affairs of government.

"We will conduct a segmentation and further analysis about the 'National Youth Opinion Poll On Civic Engagement' in order to have a clearer picture of the survey," he added.

The national youth survey was conducted by Merdeka Centre, an independent opinion research organisation, with the aim to improve public discourse and act as a bridge between young Malaysians and their leaders.

The survey was conducted among 1,505 young Malaysians aged between 18 and 32.