Book Review
A second look at Bolehland
Dr M Bakri Musa writes an open letter
|
Book Review
A second look at Bolehland |
| A guide to Bolehland M BAKRI MUSA'S TWO BOOKS, "The Malay Dilemma Revisited" and "Malaysia in the Era of Globalization," written three years after, are indispensable for the hitch hiker looking for a guide to Bolehland. Among other valuable sites he will find of the following landmarks: Education. The leaders lament the lack of Malays in sciences but one third of Malay students opt for religious schools; of the remaining two thirds half opt for the non-science stream. Education has less to do with educating the young but everything to do with politics and cultural symbols. The schools and universities are a mess. Teachers are assaulted and schools vandalised. Drop-out rates are horrifying. New universities are set up but they are nothing more than glorified community colleges, described by Musa Hitam as 'kampong campuses'. The plan, Education Development - 2001 - 2010, is nothing but handicapping every one to the same level of mediocrity. This will come as a shock to the tourist who picks up the local paper and reads that a minister is urging higher learning institutions to be world class. Critical thinking. A heavily bureaucratised Islam is a Malaysian phenomenon. Religious teachers and ulama are treated with undue reverence. There is a "current frenzy of Islamisation" and the Islamisation of knowledge. There is a glut of religious teachers and Islamic scholars who blame computer viruses on the jinn. Critical thinking is not encouraged or allowed. The right answers are given at the end of the book or in some sample essays written by somebody. The quickest path to the top is to write toadying articles such as urging universities to teach "Mahathirism." You are not considered meritorious if you do not support the government or, more specifically, the ruling party The country's leaders. "Malaysian leaders have not demonstrated excellence in any endeavour... they are busy paddling their resumes rather than achieving anything of significance." Their mindset is that if technology does not support the existing power structure that technology is dangerous; hence, the web is a curse. "Many members and leaders [of UMNO] are fighting not for the party but for the bounty." Incompetent but politically powerful operatives took over control of publicly listed colonial companies with disastrous consequences. Bakri Musa is appalled that immediate families of ministers get government scholarships, subsidies or otherwise depend on the public dole when special privileges for bumis should have concentrated on the 50 per cent who belong to the lower income group. Mega weddings. Bakri Musa describes Abdullah Badawi's daughter's wedding as even more spectacular than that of a princess; it "topped the extravanza" of minister Samy Vellu's son. Islamic banking. The so-called Islamic banking is expensive for the customer. Investigating his late sister's mortgage with an Islamic bank Bakri Musa discovers the cost of her mortgage was at least 200 basis points above that offered by conventional banks. Hence the headlong rush to set up such banks by the western banks Although the good doctor is an unashamed worshipper of American capitalism, he does not like those who kow-tow to the white man. He speaks contemptuously of those who think colonially and assume the superiority of the white man and, as an example, cites the case of a Singapore deputy prime minister who was said to have admitted that he nearly failed his Chinese class. Bakri Musa read this statement to mean that the man was saying that the study of Chinese "did not not merit the expenditure of his considerable intellect." The author is as critical of Tun Mahathir as he was in the earlier book. To the orientalists' caricature of Malays as lazy, not prone to saving and lacking a passion for knowledge, Mahathir has added a new categorisation: an "ungrateful and forgetful" bunch. Blame the Malays for their leaders' failures! The book ends with an open letter to the then prime minister. Very briefly: - Harping on bumi and non-bumi rivalry is shortsighted and counter productive. You should make all Malaysians competitive when your policies fail you upbraid us. We have changed but you have not. Instead of scolding you should liberate us. Malays voted for PAS not because they were enamoured of the party, rather they were fed up with corruption and money politics of UMNO. If your party does not change there will be an implosion and you will win fewer seats than PAS. You are like an insecure mother who cannot notice the subtle changes in her brood. Relent. Encourage us instead. In his "Ugly Chinaman," Bo Yang advocates Christianity as the medicine to rejuvenate China. Bakri Musa would have Bolehland take the American capitalist system and free enterprise to its bosom and whole-heartedly globalise by using the dollar. He argues that it is only with globalisation and the spread of capitalism that change will happen and "the control freaks controlling everything and everyone will go". It's that simple.# Book reviewed: Malaysia in the Era of Globalisation by M Bakri Musa Writers Club Press 2002 |
| Bakri Musa's book is available
at The BOOKSHOP Chow Thye Road : (Telephone 228 2252) |
| _____ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index page Baba words Book review
Contempt Food guide Letter
to the editor Lim Huck Aik Pulau Tikus letter PoW
Gazette Road names
|
| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 34 |