On The form he left the boxes marked race & religion blank. How can you define the race when both parents are both mixed ? The official looked at the baby & made a decision. Religion : the BBC guy said "the baby is 3 weeks old, how can he have an opinion about religion ?" When pushed he wrote Jedi (from the the Starwars movies). This was accepted.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/6150340.stm

UMNO stay in power by means of saying they are the natural party of ethnic Malay.

Keeping the Malay vote
trick A - with UMNO Malay get special treatment
1. Priviliges for Malay - 5% discounts on houses, scholarships and government jobs
2. This has to be justified, so they try to say that Malay are the true people of Malaysia & that Indians & Chinese are later immigrants. The problem is that Malay are not indigenous. Although generally Malay have been around longer than Chinese and Indian they migrated from other countries within the last 1000 years. There are in fact tens of thousands of real indigenous people, but traditionally they have been ruled by the Malay. So that priviliges could not be justified just for Malay, so they are grouped together with indigenous and called Bumi. In fact the ancestors of some people counted as Malay came recently and the ancestors of some Chinese may have come before Malays.
B. keep the numbers of Malay up
See in a normal country as people inter-marry or one group have more children the dominance of one group falls. E.g. Once in the US you could have had a Germany party or an English, but now everyone is intermarried and just American. This is a problem for UMNO; if Malays become "Malaysian mix", then the party loses it's voter base. So it has to use all kind of tricks to keep the vote up
trick 2 - Cannot lose numbers of Malay through intermarriage : since under normal Islamic rules you cannot leave Islam they got a rule written into the constitution, that all Malay are automatically Islamic. So all Malay must obey Islamic law
1. cannot change religion
2. Can only marry other Muslims
3. The children of one parent Malay are automatically 100% Malay not 50%.

A Malay can't marry a Hindu Indian and their children be called half Malay. No she must convert and then their children are counted as Malay. So it cuts down the number of intermarriages and reduces them to only Muslim.

Boost the numbers of Malay.
1. So the numbers of Malay are boosted by intermarriage not reduced. E.g. PM Mahatir's father was born in India, but Mahatir is counted as Malay.

2. Blur the line between Malay and Muslim. If indigenous people change to become Muslim they are counted as Malay. They have 2 motivations for this the unofficial privilege like maybe it's easier to get a government job when you are a Muslim and secondly when the government "improves" an indigenous village it automatically provides a mini-mosque and imam to gide the people.

blurring" means UMNO can project itself as the party of all Muslims ie Chinese & Indian as well as Malay.

Islam as a control The government is able to get away with a lot of controls and minimise questions by saying we are the true protectors of Islam. If you criticise us you are criticising islam.

Can't be liberal cos UMNO is playing the Islam card it cannot be as liberal as it wants as it has to appease the Islamic leaders. It ends up playing a game with the opposition Islamic party PAS saying "we are more muslim than you"

That's the games, but the lies come in, cos the Chinese & Indians have to control their speech otherwise their jobs might be threatened. The Malay who are not really Islamic can't say this either. So the political power ends up in a balance between the vested interests and the Right Wing Islamists.

True numbers - real Malay 50%
of Malay I would Guess 30% don't believe, 50% are soft Islam, and 20% are real obey the Koran Muslims. So I am saying 20% of Malay are real Muslims,so that's 10% of the total population. Now there are a small percentage of Chinese, Indigenous and Indian who are Muslims , some of them also will be "Real Muslims" ie not just "Muslims of convenience" for their job or marriage so add another+ 3%. So 13% of the country is Islamic, but the government iends up trying to conform to Islamic laws.

The government/UMNO is not bad, it's clearly not evil. Though it would be good if it could get away from these political games, which damage equality and implement more policies which bring about a more fair & just society.

Is Malaysia a first world country ?

Selva I was trying to summarize my instinctive feelings about your Americans friends attitude towards Malaysia. She sees a black and white world of countries : developed ie successful with skyscrapers & undeveloped with nothing except diaster, wheras travel teaches us the world is technicolor. A country with skyscrapers, but garbage in the street, some dirty toilets, bureaucracy and unjust government, a controlled media etc. isn't a disaster, but isn't at the white side of the spectrum either.

If you ask UK people if the UK is 3rd world or not. They will say it is 3rd world: there's only 2 months of good weather a year, the newspapers are full of lies & distortions, the TV is full of crap reality shows and the surburbs are full of aggressive young kids waiting to swear at you.

UK people have a very negative way of thinking.. Of thinking about what could go wrong instead of what is right .. But this a correct way of thinking it's no use seeing a beautiful waterfall on the other side of the river and rushing across the rope bridge unless you check the rope bridge is safe first. So UK people complain about everything all the time cos they can see it could all be better. But the fact is when one goes to other countries almost everything is worse. We think our TV is bad then we see the crap they have in other countries etc.

In the year of Merdeka & patriotism Malaysians need to remember that prides comes before a fall.

It doesn't surprise me that an American doesn't know much about Malaysia and is surprised that she sees "first world things" like good roads, skyscrapers and international brands. Americans live in a kind of media cocoon most of their media is by city not national so if you live in Chicago you are lucky if you see any news about the rest of America never mind the rest of the world. And what do you expect the rest of the world to know about Malaysia ? The UK is a pretty insignificant country as it has only about 1% of the world's population & Malaysia has half that. Mexico City has a population bigger than the whole country of Malaysia. In fact there are many regions of China we have never heard of that have bigger populations.

When Americans do hear of a foreign country it's usually cos there has been a natural disaster there. Couple this with the constant message of patriotism that they receive that the US is the worlds No 1 country. It's common for them to lump all the "unknown" countries with images of disaster countries in Africa.

This is what travel is about that we don't live in a clear black & white world, where things are either X or Y but a full color one where there is a huge variety of types. In her untravelled world she imagines there are 2 types of countries : rich or poor .

But I have difficulty in explaining why I know that Malaysia is not a disaster, but IS NOT a first world country. It's almost instinctive. Instinctively I know that most Northern European countries, US, Canada & Australia are first world & that some of the African countries with no electricity in the villages and genocidal conflicts are 3rd world. When I think about it I know that South Korea & Chile are almost 1st world & that the Baltic states changed very quickly from Soviet states to become first world & that Singapore definitely isn't. That Japan is only just .. Yes it has all the infrastructure, stable democracy & justice, but as with almost all Asian countries you can never really believe their statistics, they cannot resist the temptation to lie instead of admitting problems and facing up to their mistakes. Recently it was found out that a big Japanese architecture firm had cut corners so their buildings don't actually conform to earthquake safety laws .... This doesn't surprise me wheras if a German company did the same it would be completely surprising. In the last 30 years Korea has gone through amazing changes. A top scientist announces Korea leads the world .. then it's revealed he's been faking his results. Heads of super large companies like Hyundai, Samsung & Daewoo etc are revealed to be massively corrupt. That's why Korea is not yet first world.

Malaysia is way ahead of Indonesia. It can build big buildings and constantly go for records. Having the infrastructure & education is one thing, but not all. When you buy a building in the UK you will have to pay a ridiculous price, but you know that it's yours and that it will still be standing in 100 or 200 years time. There will be no unscrupulous characters turning up saying they have title, no corrupt judge who'll take it away from you, no government who'll unjustly change the law on you. You'll have cast iron security. In countries like Malaysia it's not like that , the risk is much bigger so that makes the price much lower. Not only that I have seen the quality of the brickwork before they plaster over it and it's usually appalling. And there's quite a chance that the construction standard doesn't meet the Malaysian legal standard never mind the European standards. So of course property should be much cheaper.

With a much better climate than the UK then Malaysia has the capability to be a much better place to live so with the same standards Malaysian property should actually be more expensive than crappy cold countries like the UK.

The risk factor applies all the way through foreigners doing business. Unless the wages are considerably lower one should build ones factory in a First World country where you can be sure the government isn't going to do something crazy.

As well as the judicial system working for business one has to be sure that it works in the family sense as well. One has to be sure that the police will do their job properly if ones wife or daughters are attacked by strangers or their husbands.

One thing you could say to your US friend is that the US had legal racial separation 40 years ago. The UK has only had racial/sexual equality laws for 30 years. But what makes them first world is not that they never had any bad things in the past, but that they have a tradition of dealing with their mistakes and that they are on a path of getting better and better.

Malaysia has the capability to be a 1st world country and many of the changes Mahatir instituted were steps in the right direction, but apart from the inequality inbuilt into government systems it's not certain that things/standards might not take dramatic steps backwards instead of advances. That's why Malaysia is not exactly nipping at the heels of countries like South Korea & Chile to come into the club of first world countries.

The first world countries have a duty not to abandon developing countries by saying "it's too risky to invest" there, but to lead & encourage by example. Left in isolation countries like Afghanistan and North Korea are free to spread lies about modern ideas, but for example if their people had contact with foreigners doing business they could see governance and business works better if you have respect & equality between the sexes etc.

We have all go a long way to go though. When I visited Ghana I could see it was a long way behind the UK. But even so I would say it's 18% truly civilised .. I would put the UK at maybe 27% with Sweden, Holland etc about 28% .. Malaysia I don't know maybe 23-25%, but is it heading in the right direction ?

Some Characteristics of 1st world
country Good Infrastructure Easy to do business little bureaucracy Justice Equality Educated population Safe Clean Expensive ? No excluded people Good standards Honesty not denial Freedom of speech Comply to international standards Moving in the right direction

Characteristics of 3rd world country
Moving in the wrong direction

Malaysia fails on some e.g. UN declaration of human rights, freedom of religion, People have no real say in government etc