Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jinju]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/30/news/malaysia.php

[thepeel]

Westerners have no idea what they are talking about when they say Malaysia is 'moderate'. It is an explicitly racist nation with Malay-supremacist policies that would make any actual moderate of any group sick to the stomach.

But, at some point someone decided that Malaysia and Indonesia would be the high-on-high examples of islamic "tolerance" and the myth has grown. I guess they are moderate compared to saudi, but would be hitler.

[On the other hand]

[thepeel]

Leftist thought at its full best.

1) Hey, x nation does some bad stuff.

2) Oh yeah?! Well so does (America or Jews, only).

This followed by a smug 'hmph'.

Why bother learning about the world outside of Israel or America?

[On the other hand]

I guess what I'm wondering is why exactly conservatives want me to be outraged about something happening in Malaysia, when similar things are being done in a country that conservatives routinely hail as a great democracy.

Now, of course, if Jinju wants to come on and tell me that Israel, like Malaysia, is also a "backwards hole in the stone age", then I will withdraw the suggestion of inconsistency.

[thepeel]

[charlieDD]

The Malays were not really all that Islamic or all that religious until they began to search for an identity around which to rally themselves into a nation, independent of British rule.

So, Malay supremacy and Islam do go hand in hand there. But the overriding goal of the government and the Malay people is to keep Malaysia "Malay" - - not Chinese. (Which is why they had to jettison Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew.)

The Chinese are the smarts behind the businesses in Malaysia, but they are required by affirmative action law to keep certain executive positions available to Malays only. So, you'll see Malay names and faces, but rest assured, it's the Chinese who keep that country running eonomically (The Chinese, by the way are still, legally, considered "guests" or "guest workers" in Malaysia, though they've been living there for hundreds of years. The British brought them in because they just couldn't get the locals, the Malays, to conduct business for them in any reliable, efficient manner.)

The affirmative action / national identity bent of events in Malaysia after the country's independence led to "Malay-only" schools, where English was kicked out of the curriculum in schools, even as a foreign language course. The Chinese, however, kept it in their schools, with many classes taught in both Chinese and English, or only in English.

The result: The Chinese young were well prepared for globalization and were highly successful in dealing in Malaysia's prime economic movers: foreign investent and tourism. (At the same time the Chinese also had to learn Malay, while the Malay students learned no Chinese. This, once again. gave the Chinese youth a great advantage. Most Chinese in Malaysia speak Cantonese [[ only because it's popular among the young ]], Hakian (the tongue of their parents / grandparents), English, Malay and a bit of various Indian languages.)

In the mid-1990's the government began putting English back into its elementary schools in an effort to allow the Malay young people to catch up with the realities of the world for a country like Malaysia.

[jinju]

Holy crap, talk about off topic. Why bring up Israel? This is about MALAYSIA. But ok, Ill tell you about Israel: I hate religious fanatics of any faith. Thus the same applies to those in Israel. The reason why we defend Israel is not because it is a Utopia but because compared to what surrounds it, it might as well be.

[thepeel]