Faham bangsa dan kebangsaan

Salam and good day everyone. 

Wishing all of us find the meaning of happiness for this world and hereafter.

On 14 of September 2013, I had attended a glorious event namely as Saturday Night Lecture by a wondrous scholar, Syed Muhammad Naquib Al Attas for the third time.This is the first lecture of the third series held at Dewan Utama, Menara Razak, UTM Jalan Semarak.

Tonight, he is lecturing on the Meaning of Nationhood. What is the meaning of nation and nationhood?

He said that to build a nation, it comprises of 4 elements of which we need to acquire for us to be united as a nation. The unity, he said, needs to be based on mutual sentiment of solidarity. And these sentiments which are the 4 elements I mentioned above.

So, the 4 elements are to based on :-

1) Same race

2) Same language

3) Same political destiny or history

4) Same religion

He also gave example of few nations that are united based on the 4 notions.

First example; he mentioned of Arabs' unity. He said although the Arabs were different in their religion but they consisted of all the other elements. The Arabs are from the same race, same language and also the shared the same history and politics.

Another example he said is Switzerland which he mentioned the example that our leaders always used when talking about building Malaysia as a nation. He said the example cannot be use as a reference for Malaysia because Switzerland although has different language but they have same religion and the unity as a race is there already and also they shared the same history and political destiny.

So, when we take these 4 elements and analyse our beloved country, Malaysia, we realised that these 4 elements are not in sync with Malaysia.

Malaysia has 3 major races and other smaller races as well. By inculcating them into one race called Malaysian will be absurd and to let history takes its toll will be another absurdity. Why is that happening is because to create a new race, you will need to intermarriage and this cannot be enforced through Law. Also the fact that marriage is governed by religion will lead to another disaster as Malaysia consists of different religion. Prof Al-Attas mentioned that by history, it is not deeply ingrained as it is only been 50 years of togetherness. This method (read: history and political destiny) will needs hundreds or even thousands to ensure that the sense of together is instilled. Some might said that there is interaction between Malay, Chinese and Indian way back to Malaccan Empire time but Al-Attas brushed it off by saying that it was merely due to trading and was not due to building a nation together. Thus, the sense of building a nation and working together started when we gained our independence.

Therefore the last possibility is through language. Why is that? It is because that this method can be enforce through law. As such this had lead to the development of the Malaysia's national language back in the 70's through the program called Dasar Kebudayaan Negara which stated that the National Language will be the Malay Language.

As a conclusion, to instil solidarity of our nation,

Adios,

KA

p/s: Few snaps of the night