blogtunm.blogspot.com Tun M
1. Malays are a generous people. When other countries insist that foreigners who want to be citizens of the country have to assimilate and be assimilated with the definitive people of the country, the Malays were willing to accept unassimilated foreigners as citizens. The migrants can retain their languages and customs and even their schools and scripts upon becoming citizens.
2. They can even stay apart from the indigenous people and retain their identification with their original country. They retain their racial identification with their economic functions.
3. Despite all these unusual tolerances, the country, under predominantly Malay rule remained stable and peaceful. In fact it developed faster than most other countries where conditions and restrictions are imposed.
4. But when this generosity is taken for granted and the beneficiaries propose that the land does not belong only to the Malays as the definitive people, that it belongs equally to the unassimilated migrants and their descendants, then the Malays have a right to object to this demand.
5. To call this objection racist is a contradiction in terms.
6. It is the demand of those who refused to be assimilated, refuse to be identified with the definitive people who continue their identification with their racial origins who are racist.
7. The English people who seized the land of the natives of North America, set up a new nation, the United States of America. The later immigrants and their descendants probably outnumbered the descendants of the English settlers. But the United States of America remain the English-speaking United States of America despite the citizenship of so many people who are not of English descent.
8. Indeed new citizens are tested in the mastery of the English language, in the history of the country and loyalty to it before being conferred with the citizenship of the country.
9. Such is their loyalty to their adopted nation that they would fight to the death against their countries of origin.
10. Clearly the Malays had not followed the usual conditions for accepting foreigners as citizens.
11. This is the cause of the problem facing the nation now.
