The Difference
Lee Kuan Yew in 1988, defending the introduction of GRCs: “when [Muslims] feel differently and want to eat separate from me, I respect them.”
Mr Lee then went on to speak of how his own generation of politicians who worked with him had integrated well, including sitting down and eating together. He said: “But now, you go to schools with Malay and Chinese, there’s a halal and non-halal segment and so too, the universities. And they tend to sit separately so as not to be contaminated. All that becomes a social divide.”
He added that the result was a “veil” across peoples. Asked what Muslims in Singapore needed to do to integrate, he replied: “Be less strict on Islamic observances and say ‘Okay, I’ll eat with you.’”
Nonsense. It’s the confucianisation of the chinese that leads to others keeping away from them. Every tried talking to a confucian? - provided you aren’t that is. Shallow, arrogant, self-absorbed. I do associate with them, but try not to get analytical about things, don’t talk about things they are not accustomed to, and you’ll get along fine. I can talk to the other races about anything. But not to those chinese whom are confucianised - which includes just about every chinese i’ve encountered in singapore the past decade - not so in the 70s or up to the mid-80s when mandarin wasn’t ‘cool’ and chinese culture wasn’t lauded as it is, unfortunately, at present, over all others.
As for Muslims, they have no problem eating with anyone. They just don’t eat what everyone else is eating. There’s nothing wrong with them. And given the discrimination and marginalisation they have had to endure, given that singapore was actually their country once, is it any wonder that they might not be as thrilled with the chinese? But the Malays are an accommodating lot. If not, they might have branded all you chinese, and indians as well, as ‘foreign talent/trash/etc’ and kicked us all out. They didn’t. Too bad the chinese learnt nothing from that, hence, their xenophobia. Something for the chinese to think about. They may be ‘native born’ now, but they are a product of a foreign culture that has its way by ignoring all difference and the potential of cultural (malay/indian/chinese,western)fusion in singapore. Nothing local about that, if you think about it.
Comment by ed — May 10, 2011 @ 10:49 am
I have no idea what you’re objecting to in my post. If you’d read it carefully, you should have realised that I was showing how LKY contradicted what he said in 1988.
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