UNIVERSITI Sains Islam Malaysia – that flushing sound is your reputation swirling down the drain.

If there is any silver lining to the two young USIM researchers’ bigoted op-ed article, Is it wrong for Malaysia to be a permanent ethnic Malay polity?, it is that there is now enough information available to reveal why the university might have been underperforming in Asia for so many years.

Upset by an Asia Sentinel article, Mohd Hazmi Mohd Rusli’s and Fareed Mohd Hassan’s ethnonationalist musings on Malaysian minority rights are so riddled with weak scholarship, magical thinking, a poor understanding of Malay imperial history and illogical reasoning that they likely reflect USIM’s actual capacity to educate its students.

The two authors’ favourite word is “always”. They trot out nonsensical absolutisms such as, “Although Malaysia is a majority Muslim nation, Malaysia has always respected the culture and tradition of other races”.

They peddle outrageous falsehoods such as, “Although the thrones of the Malay rulers are hereditary and remain exclusively within the Malay royal families, Malaysia has always been able to provide for all of its citizens. All lives matter in Malaysia.”

The two USIM authors’ next favourite word is “never”. For example, they write: “Although the Malays form bulk of the population of Malaysia, the non-Malays have never been ignored, excluded or left behind.”

Literally nobody – even the most ignorant ketuanan Melayu extremists – believes that the non-Malays have “never” been ignored, excluded or left behind. Except, perhaps, Rusli and Hassan.

Where to even start? Their laughable worldview, already strange by any normal Malaysian standard, is made even more bizarre by perhaps the most ridiculous example of their epistemological totalism, asserting that “there has never been a non-white prime minister” in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Besides their obviously selective cherry-picking of these three nations – because the United States, Canada, Singapore, Indonesia, Ireland, and numerous other governments have all enjoyed non-majority heads-of-state and national leaders – Rusli’s and Hassan’s fascist whataboutery tries to excuse Malaysia for failing to live up to its ideals – let alone empty slogans like “1Malaysia” and “truly Asia”.

However, in contrast to Malaysia, for more than 70 years, these very Western countries have endeavoured to create political systems where all people – despite religion, culture, beliefs, or race –could all integrate and live harmoniously together.

In contrast to Malaysia, embracing multicultural diversity has been the key to these nations’ success. There are no “Bumiputera” laws or “ketuanan Melayu” norms there.

Just ask Barack Obama what he frankly thinks about them.

Indeed, while other Western nations, including the United States, are now proactively discussing how to address the scourge of racism in their societies, Malaysia has missed a once-in-generation opportunity to finally deal with its own longstanding racism.

As the result of Perikatan Nasional’s “Sheraton move”, the government will no longer be incentivised to address xenophobia, ethnocentrism and bigotry, which have left Malaysia as one of the most divided and polarised nations.

Therefore, contrary to what Rusli and Hassan believe about minority rights, while white-majority nations are having a national reckoning on race, it is the current “Malay-first” government that is still lagging behind and out of touch.

The racism long accepted in Malaysia is astounding. Why do 32 million people tolerate a divided society that has ignored its open discrimination and prejudice for 63 years?

Rusli and Hassan are mere symptoms of this ignorance. Article 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest this religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.

Malaysia has been forcefully criticised by the UN high commissioner for human rights, World Bank, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other independent, nonpartisan watchdogs for failing to provide for Article 18 and a range of other minority rights.

Even Islamic scholars have criticised Malaysia for its poor record on minority rights: Tariq Ramadan publicly announced that Malaysian Muslims who complain of discrimination by the West should first acknowledge the injustices against minorities in their own country.

Fellow Islamic scholar Reza Aslan has ridiculed Malaysia’s ethnonationalist policies, as well. “We are laughing at you,” he tweeted.

Trying to prop up the current prime minister, Rusli and Hassan claim, without a shred of evidence, that “Malaysia has also been successful under the leadership of Muhyiddin (Yassin) in combating the Covid-19 pandemic”, in addition to ignoring that ever since Azmin Ali’s “Sheraton move”, Malaysia still has one of Asia’s highest infection rates, the ringgit has weakened sharply against other currencies, dedak corruption is skyrocketing again, Muhiyiddin does not have enough public political support, jobs and foreign investment have been vanishing and international public confidence in Malaysia has plunged since the “Sheraton move”, after which RM43 billion was lost in a single day on Bursa Malaysia.

The PN government has never taken any responsibility for sabotaging Malaysian voters’ mandate – which was for a clean, culturally diverse representative democracy.

As the wider world watches in horror at the decline and irrelevance of Malaysia, the contrasting ascendance of its Asean neighbours will provide a glimmer of hope elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Yes. Of course, it is wrong for Malaysia to be a permanent ethnic Malay polity. As history shows, ignoring minority rights rarely ends well for any country.

Still, people like Rusli and Hassam will fiercely insist that they aren’t racists, and that they respect all cultures. They will claim that they just simply want to protect their own culture.

But in reality, they fear losing the Malay-only privileges that have damaged the country for so many decades. True equality in Malaysia is too much for them to bear, so indulging in fantasy is much easier.

Because when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. – June 14, 2020.

* Athena Angel reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.