AUG 25 — Last month, our prime minister spoke about the colonisation of the mind. “We might not be at war but there is the threat of the colonisation of the mind, our spirit and character,” he said.

I happen to agree with him that there is indeed a threat of the colonisation of the mind, but perhaps not in the way he thinks.

I personally was not affected by the London riots, but my local area, Clapham Junction, was one of the areas of London that was badly affected. For days after I felt very angry every time I walked past boarded-up shops on my way to my local train station.

A friend of mine asked if such things could happen in Malaysia. Of course not, I said, because our authorities would get the water cannons and tear gas out at the first sign of trouble. 

From the Malaysian side I heard and read a lot of comments about how such trouble hasn’t taken place in our country because “God still loves Malaysia”, or “see what happens when you have too much freedom.” Even our political leaders have weighed in with comments like “this is why we don’t allow demonstrations.”

As someone who has been to rallies and demonstrations, and witnessed teenage boys smashing up the windows of one of my local shops, I can categorically tell you that riots and demonstrations are two different things.

Yes, some demonstrations descend into violence and riots, but that is the price a democratic society has to pay sometimes. There may have been riots or disturbances in the former Communist countries and some in America during the Vietnam War, but would you rather live in the USSR, or the US?

To me, a colonised mind is one that cannot tell the difference between a gathering of citizens intent on change through peaceful means, and a gathering of groups intent on malice and mayhem.

Then there is Ashraf Haziq Rosli. What a thing to have happened; as we Malays would say, “sudah jatuh ditimpa tangga”. The mugging was sickening, but many people have been very generous and donated to “do something nice for Ashraf,”

Sadly it was a Malaysian poster who denigrated the effort, somehow claiming that there was no need to do anything for Ashraf because of the government’s policies. 

I have also read similar spiteful comments from other Malaysians who either ridiculed Ashraf for being out during troubled times, or poured scorn over Umno for the “publicity”, or questioned the need for “paying” RM20,000.

Sad, isn’t it? Londoners (and people elsewhere) were so moved by his plight that they were willing to club together to help him out. The people who donated the money didn’t care about Umno, or the Malaysian government, or whether he was black, blue or white.

Malaysians (some, not all), on the other hand, can’t even discuss what happened to him without bringing up race, politics and the government. Another sign of the colonised mind, perhaps, that some of us are unable to display a generosity of spirit towards a young man who had suffered a bad experience in a foreign land.  

I would also like to mention Tahir Jahan. His son was one of the three men who were deliberately run into and killed in Birmingham. It would probably be fair to say that he single-handedly defused the very tense atmosphere in Birmingham (and possibly the entire country) by saying the following when many were itching for revenge: “I lost my son. Blacks, Asians, whites: We all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this? Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home, please.”

Powerful words, from a man who had just lost his son. So powerful that even the leader of the odious English Defence League was moved to say the following: “That was so f***ing dignified. We’re going to hold a minute’s silence for that boy ...”

That, in case you didn’t know, is like Ibrahim Ali promising to hold a minute’s silence out of respect for the death of a non-Malay. The British have embraced Tahir Jahan as a quiet hero. And in case you were wondering, yes, he is a Muslim. You see, to the British his religion didn’t matter, it was how he behaved that matters. Thanks to Tahir, many more are beginning to admire the way his faith is sustaining him.

Compare his quiet dignity with the behaviour of some Muslims in our country every time they think they have been slighted or “insulted”. Another example of a colonised mind, I fear: so many Muslims in our country are so used to thinking that the world is against them that they are unable to think objectively and rationally about anything and everything.

You know, I could write about the lessons the British could learn from us. How we prevent riots from happening. How we bring up our kids. But what would be the point in that? I would merely be perpetuating the view that some of us have about ourselves and our country — everything Malaysian is good, and everything Western is bad. 

I don’t deny that the riots have been very bad. It is frightening to think that there are people who think nothing of destroying things just for the “fun” of it, or because they can.

Yet out of the terrible things that have taken place, the British have shown an extraordinary kindness and generosity towards those who have been affected. Whether the victims were black, white, brown, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, English, Indian, Malaysian simply did not matter.

Would we Malaysians show the same kindness and generosity if a real disaster happened here? Or, true to our colonised minds, would we degenerate into pointless sniping about Christians helping Muslims (and vice-versa), Umno/the government milking the publicity, and how immigrants are a bad lot who always start trouble?

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.