Easily Felt Threatened

There is one phenomena that actually hit the Malaysian society and to be specific, the Malays since the glorious day of Malacca. Nothing was put into official record but the old book of “Hikayat Hang Tuah” and many other epic stories told that Malays are easily felt threatened. Whenever these happened, the one(s) felt threatened would succumbed to use whatever means available to feel secure again. This is nothing to do with jealousy (dengki/ khianat/ hasad) but insecurity. Being the migrants from Indonesia, Acheh and Sumatera, the Malays really want the newly found peninsula to be of their own. Just like the American who migrated from England and the Japanese from China, the Malay need to have certain amount of power and sense of belonging to be the righteous owner(?) or founder cum ruler of this beloved peninsula. When I mentioned whatever means to feel secure again, I really meant it. Let’s study some of the threats faced by the Malays since the era of Sultanate in Malacca. The presence of Hang Tuah amongst the “pembesar-pembesar” threatened their control over matters in the government (so to speak). They started their scheme to oust Hang Tuah and they partially succeeded. Hang Tuah was supposed to be assassinated but he was saved by the “Mamak Bendahara”. Then Hang Tuah was threatened by Hang Jebat ability to be a more powerful man after conquering the palace. He got rid of his best buddy by killing him.

Then came the 12^th General Election of Malaysia. The UMNO to be more specific felt threatened when 5 of the 13 states in Malaysia fell to the opposition coalition. The UMNO is using all ways and means to clobber the opposition parties to surrender the states which they rule. They feel threatened that their absolute power in the country would deteriorate. The UMNO gets back Perak. Kedah and Selangor will be theirs again soon before 13^th GE.

Then there was the big issue of the use of name Allah instead of God in the catholic church periodical. The Malays again felt threatened that this might result in mass conversion of Malay youth to Christianity since “Allah preaches” Christianity through the churches.

Last night (19 Mar 10) there was a documentary slot on TV3, the 999. One of the cases reported was the selling of sex toys in Kelantan and Perak which were referred as “obscene/illicit materials. Again the Malays felt threatened that boys and girls would go for this toys rather then playing with the real things.

The strength, the faith/ iman, the ownership and the confident are so brittle and it needs something else to cover-up our weaknesses. It is easy to point our fingers to other elements/ factors instead of admitting on our own weaknesses.