Under:Stand:Up

The Christian Union meeting took a break from it's regular schedule to have an inter-faith night instead known as Under:Stand:Up which consists of students from the CU, Jewish Society and Islamic Society. No doubt the polytheistic groups are excluded since they are a minority over here, so it becomes more like a gathering of Abrahamic societies. All the sons and daughters of Abraham under one roof..lol. The main guest-of-honour of the night is the stand-up comedian Imran Yusuf and he's really really goood with his funny materials. One thing that I respect him about is that he is able to poke fun at his own heritage in a graceful way. As I made an observation, quite a number of the Muslims in Britain are Pakistanis by origin. Mhmmm..I would like to touch a little on multi-culturalism in Britain since I'm on topic about it. Recently, David Cameron, the British PM declared that multiculturalism in Britain has failed. Of course, he refers to the extremist and terrorist elements but there are some elements in the truth of that statement even in the standard British community.

As somebody coming from multi-cultural Malaysia, I find the Brit's idea of multiculturalism to be a very different form. To them, it's just migrants coming in and living in a tolerant way towards them. Little attempt is made to understand them better because they just don't find it neccessary. It is true in Malaysia that the 3 main races don't always get along so well with each other but underlying all the politicised tensions, the common average Malaysian folk actually has a decent amount of knowledge about the other races and we often infuse our cultures together to make it uniquely Malaysian. Every Malaysian is comfortable with Nasi Lemak and Mamak. We speak Malay and even adopted some Malay words into the Chinese dialects. We get to experience the festivals of different races in Malaysia too. Every Malaysian is usually accustomed to knowing more than 1 language. The Indians happily waltz into a bak kut teh stall while the Malays are perfectly alright in dining at a Halal Hainanese Kopitiam.In comparison at Britain, most of the local Caucasians know only their English culture and 1 language - English. There are minorities living among them - the Punjabis, the Pakistani Muslims and to some extent the Hong Kong Chinese. But ask the Brits about even the most simple thing about their minorities, they are almost clueless about it. The only thing they know about the Chinese is "Ni hao?" and the Indians are curries. Even among the minorities, they have little idea about each other's group. At least the two main minorities in Malaysia, the Chinese and the Indians, interact constantly and they are comfortable and do know much about each other. The new generation of Brits has little inkling about the former colonies of Britain and they don't even know that Malaysia and Singapore are former British colonies. If one loaths about racial segregration in Malaysia and how the different races actually restrict themselves only to their own circle, it's the same over in Britain. But I would say that Malaysia is better than Britain in the multicultural level because at least we have the opportunity to meet and interact with other races. We get to know about other religions and cultural practices. We are so diverse and yet we still try to learn from each other. I find the local British to be lacking in this adventurous spirit of learning about other cultures. Hence, this also contributed to the low levels of welcoming spirit by the Brits in addition of the subtle xenophobia that may be present in them.

Well, the interfaith event organised by the societies are a good first step to encourage integration and understanding. I think that it will be harder to organise something of a similar nature in Malaysia due to the sensitive nature of religion in the Peninsula. A similar idea based on inter-ethnic relations could work better for Malaysia but the inter-ethnic approach may not work as well for Britain because the ethnic communities there are not as intergrated and overlapping as the ones in Malaysia. Anyways, I'm very thankful that I'm raised up with a multi-cultural perspective attached in me in a different part of the world known as Southeast Asia xD