Friday, April 19, 2013

The Awkwardness and The Otherness


I can't deny the awkward feeling I had when attending DAP's ceramah, and giving my support to DAP candidates since my return to kampung from overseas, due to my Malay, Islamic Studies and PAS background. Maybe many DAP supporters among the non Malays especially those in Pasir Pinji and Ipoh Timor would also feel the same now when DAP candidates are decided to contest using PAS logo because of what the ROS did recently.

But let us put aside the awkward feeling we experience. We have been living together in this beloved country for so many years, feeling awkward towards each other, suspicious due to "the otherness" planted within us.

It is time for us to make the change necessary, so that our children will have a better togetherness based on justice, mutual respect, learning from each other and working together to fight against corruptions.

"And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God." ~ Karen Armstrong

For a better Malaysia, sīrū 'alā barakatillāh.

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