Malay excellence a transcending legacy

Malay excellence a transcending legacy

The Malays Par Excellence ... Warts And All; An Introspection

Ismail Noor and Muhammad Azaham

Published by Pelanduk Publications (M) Sdn Bhd, Selangor

Paperback xvii + 166 pp

JAKARTA (JP): Having lived for four years in predominantly
ethnic Malay areas of Malaysia, I came to this book, I must
admit, with some well-formed opinions about them as a people. Two
years teaching Malay children in Kelantan, Malaysia's
idiosyncratic north-eastern state followed by two years teaching
in Perlis over the mountains have given me a pretty close view of
their community.

Kelantan, of course, is known for its religious fervor and the
Kelantanese, who do not merit a separate mention in this book
surprisingly, for their barely concealed hostility to outsiders,
even other Malays. Having seen this first-hand and having had
west coast Malays complain to me of a certain Kelantanese
tendency to keep them at arm's length, I have to confess to a
certain reluctance to believe in Malay unity as a transcending
force.

Nonetheless, it is important to see how others view
themselves. Ismail Noor and Muhammad Azaham have set out a Malay
view of their own people and a Malay view of history and,
although one might beg to differ on certain points, is an
affirmative statement of self-belief. This is no re-hash of Dr.
Mahathir's The Malay Dilemma, which was both a scathing look at
Malay faults and a call to action on their behalf, but an honest
look at what makes them tick.

It has often been the case that the Malays, most of whom are
easy-going, self-deprecating people (Mahathir a major exception),
have been overlooked and the authors blast the British for just
this in their treatment of the people. The colonial British did
have a condescending attitude towards them for which they paid
rather dearly.

Failure to recruit sufficient Malays into the forces pre-WW2
was a crucial factor in the rapid collapse of the colony when the
Japanese attacked in 1941-42. That the Malays were indeed good
fighting men, contrary to British opinion, was proved in spades
by the heroic stand of the Malay Regiment at Kent Ridge in
Singapore, a stand made all the finer by the fact that many
others deserted the front.

If one wants to take exception to anything said here it must
be with the assertion that the New Economic Policy, initiated in
the wake of the 1969 inter-ethnic riots that rocked Malaysia to
its very foundations, is "bold and dynamic". There may have been
a serious need for affirmative action to lever the Malays up
economically but it is fair to wonder aloud whether the NEP is
past its expiry date. Having witnessed first-hand the
featherbedding of Malay students in the secondary school system,
I cannot help but feel that certain aspects of it are deeply
unfair to the other ethnic groups including other 'bumiputera'
such as the Dayaks.

Ismail and Muhammad do make a courageous assessment,
nonetheless, of some of the faults of the Malaysian education
system. "Several situations of imperfect and relatively
unwholesome years in primary and secondary education become
compounded by the problem of time-constrained social
maladjustment at university level," they say. A bold assertion.

The authors have provided a catalog towards the back of the
book of distinguished Malays, many of whom are unfamiliar to me.
Indeed many Malays have distinguished themselves in various
fields, not least UN military service, where their traits of
collective loyalty serve them well, but I was disappointed to
note the absence from the list of scholars of the historian of
the Malays, Syed Hussein Ali, an important voice of dissent in
Malaysia.

This is a worthy attempt, however, to put a people's point of
view.

--David Jardine