Malaysia - The Absence of A Common Ground

I would at times get in some serious thought. Lacking of a friend to bounce around ideas with, I am glad I finally have a blog to write on so to express these thoughts. I must say my analysis you would find the shallowest of all. My explanation could be very elementary as well. So bear with me. Hopefully a lost wanderer would stumble into my blog and write some comments.



Right now what I am thinking about is- Our country, comprised of mutli-racial communities and religious beliefs, has actually not quite found the common ground to bind these different communities together. Malaysian community is made up of people of different culture and religious beliefs. Our people talk and even dress up differently, almost. What is lacking after 50 years of independence is a formula which almost capable of expressing and bringing together these different groups together. Bind them, strongly.



To my humble judgement, the 'muhibbah' spirit had almost solved it all. However, what is lacking is that, the spirit of 'muhibbah' seemed very superficial. It had failed to penetrate the very core of each individual. Yet, it is worth mentioning that the spirit of muhibbah has its own success. It is this spirit, no matter how shallow and superficial it may be, loosely binding the different ethnic groups in this country along the path of tolerance.



From many leaders, we find many outlooks. Some of them closely resemble the other, but some are very different. Some of the leaders came up with ideas on 'identity'. Malaysians must have one common identity. Bangsa Malaysia is an identity that could bind all of us together. It is somewhat 'physical' as some interpret it. Many people remained unclear.



I tend to like the idea of bringing people together on a non-physical realm. Like how religion brought many people together. We do not need to emphasize the 'faith' aspect of it, but stress more on values and virtues. Being a muslim, I couldn't help myself from agreeing that every religion on the face of the earth calls for good values and virtues. Afterall, every religion is offering as set way of life for its people.



I think, right now in our country, that is what people are asking for. Everyday in the news and blogs, we find issues discussed are all related to good values and virtues. People are crying out for justice, honesty and fairness.



Plus, to bring this about is not difficult at all. These values can easily be tied to or associated with the processes and procedure. Both when made transparent could be a big help to win points in openness. Many people will get very comfortable with it. We have our own set of law and legislation, all we need to do is make things transparent. The culture then is set, we go by the book.



In many instances, there are ways by which processes and outcomes can be quantified. The usage of key indicators using pure, unmanipulative data will help us steer our way in the right direction.



It requires a little bit of science knowledge to apply all these, yet I don't think it is going to be that difficult given the amount of brain and skills we have in our country.



So, these good values and virtues would finally be translated as doing the job right. The processes must be clean. It follows as what it is said in the books. Afterall, it is what all the religions are asking for, if we choose not to defy God. The first in the RUKUNEGARA.