Menjelang Hari Malaysia, kita seperti anak kecil yang sedang nyenyak tidur kemudian terbangun daripada lena buaiannya. Setelah sedar, kita disua dengan bermacam rempah ratus patriotisma menggantikan muluk-muluk yang pernah disepakati sejak lebih 50 tahun yang lalu. Demikian sejarah diimbau dan diselak dari kerumunan kertas-kertas lusuh tinggalan orang-orang lama.
2022 started with some hope that the year will be better than 2021, but alas the realities of the socio-economic fallout of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns started to kick in.
Malay-Muslim’s identity and Malaysia’s political arena are inseparable. Due to the existence of ethnoreligious based parties such as United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), and other ethnic minority parties such as Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and Malaysian Indian Council (MIC), ethnoreligious issues have always been used for political mileage.
As this advisory goes ‘to print’ so to speak, 2021 is ending on a rather sombre note. Many Malaysians are still trying to recover from the worst flooding experienced since the 1971 Kuala Lumpur floods which paralysed the city.
This publication from IMAN Research is a landscape review of how the situation in the Deep South of Thailand has spilled over to Malaysia.
In a previous brief, I wrote and discussed about how Malay-Muslim women were increasingly being socialised into a hardline brand of Islam.