Sunday, August 10, 2008

eyewitness at Bar Council forum: conversion to Islam

A letter to the editor that I wrote. This is my first letter that has an emotional tone. If you think I sound angry in this one, this is nothing compared to how I felt as I exited the building, pelted by jeers and insults to my ethnicity, scorned with hatred and anger. I was not a person to them - I was a symbol of a perceived threat to their rights.

Compared to the Bersih demonstration I witnessed, this demonstration was boiling with rage and hatred, ready to ignite into violence at the slightest spark. The obstreperous crowd would probably have stoned me if there had not been police and FRU officers. Anger removes the guise of civilization and reveals our true beastly nature. Their anger and hatred made me equally angry and I was ready to fight back at them, if it had not been the Holy Spirit cautioning me restraint. "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9). So, I calmed myself and just left without saying a word.

Now that I'm in a calmer mood, I wrote this:

Eyewitness at Bar Council Forum

I attended the Bar Council forum on conversion to Islam, hoping that I would gain insight into the legal and practical difficulties of having two legal systems in this country. Instead, what I learned was how fearful some people can be, how that fear leads to close-mindedness, and how such close-mindedness leads to anger and violence.

The demonstrators were afraid that such a forum would cause them to lose their special rights and privileges. Hence, they were not willing to listen to a multifaceted dialogue about the issue, to which even Syariah experts were invited. When other people exercised their right to hear such a dialogue, they reacted violently by disrupting the forum and insulting other ethnic groups. When a Muslim woman bravely spoke up in defense of the dialogue, she was angrily told to shut up.

As I left the Bar Council building, demonstrators jeered at me and insulted my ethnicity. The whole incident left me feeling angry, sad, and disappointed that despite 50 years of independence, the Malaysian mindset remains the same. We are not mature enough to have open inter-faith dialogues. The thin veneer of peace that we have is based on fear and silence. Such fear only exacerbates misunderstandings that will eventually lead to anger and chaos.

What disappointed me further was the bias of the government in handling this matter. When Bersih and Hindraf organized peaceful demonstrations, the government cracked down heavily on them. However, when demonstrators illegally assembled outside the Bar Council building and disrupted the forum violently, the government did not even talk of arresting them. Instead, the government threatened to use the ISA and Sedition Act against the forum organizers! Will the government please stop being so hypocritical? If you allow some illegal demonstrators to continue, then for goodness sake, stop playing favorites and give all illegal demonstrators that same freedom!

Unless the government actually practices what it preaches, fancy promises about justice and equality remain empty words. I do not feel like a Malaysian. I feel like a foreigner discriminated by my ethnicity and religion. If the government is serious about rebuilding Malaysia into a solid, unified nation, the government needs to take active measures in protecting the equality of all Malaysians, regardless of ethnicity, religion or gender. Right now, Bangsa Malaysia is just a frivolous concept.

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Written at 11:53 PM