Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 9/9/2016 ‘Vote for PAS and your place in Heaven will be secured’; ‘Vote for Umno to prove that you are a pure Malay’; ‘Without Umno, the Malays will vanish from this earth’; ‘Vote for PAS, you uphold Islam to the highest’; ‘Vote DAP and you are betraying the entire Malay generations’; ‘Vote DAP, you are a traitor to the Malay race’; ‘Vote DAP, you are a kafir harbi’; Vote PKR, your Malayness becomes lesser’. These words are usually coined among Malaysians by certain political parties who claimed themselves to be champions of the superiority of the race and religion today. The intimidation of voters with such words or should we say, blackmailing, has become a norm today among competing political parties, their leaders and supporters in our nation in order to gain or regain support from the voters. Are all these so-called racial and religious political parties running out of practical ideas and policies for our people and...

By Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid The grim reality of elusive unity, plagued by ethnocentric and ethno-religious divisions, is underlined by the continual existence of fault lines that anthropologist Shamsul A. B. calls ‘axes of contradictions’ . The stubborn presence of such social cleavages, after half a century of nationhood, raises the issue of the efficacy of integrative policies pursued by successive Barisan Nasional (BN: National Front) governments. Momentarily eclipsed by the modernisation ethos of Mahathir’s Vision 2020 and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s Islam Hadhari (civilisational Islam), the ‘national unity’ agenda has made a comeback during Najib Razak’s era since 2009 in the form of his ‘One Malaysia’ (1Malaysia) scheme. It has not been smooth sailing for Najib. It is understandably difficult for him to admit that the multiple polarisation of Malaysian society was effected at the hands of none other than his colleagues and former bosses in the ruling United Malays National Organisati...

We are very certain what the Penang Umno youth chief had previously quote, "There will be trouble, not from Umno, but we cannot control them" . These are the word uttered by the said Umno leader in a press conference earlier at Penang after he received some rumours of a PKR leader who criticized the role of the security forces in handling the Sabah crisis. As promised by the Umno youth chief, the trouble starts in a timely manner. Umno members and supporters started to run out of control, turned violent and began to issue life threatening messages onto the PKR leader in his number of ceramah series recently. We wonder if this is what the Umno youth chief had warned. It shows that Umno leaders are incapable of controlling their members and supporters for being too emotional when come to issues that touches their mind or whatsoever. Will Umno leaders come out and sincerely admit that being party leaders, they had indeed failed to educate their party members and supporters ...

On the recent statement by the Parliamentary Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim citing the importance and need to have more interfaith understanding, Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS) applaud his call as a step forward towards a stronger political will to ensure interfaith understanding in this country is in place. IRAS has seen this call by the country's top opposition leader as encouraging and we would like to see that the future government would take this step towards implementation once the voters decide the who should be the new government after the next general elections. Interfaith understanding is what the current sitting government in Putrajaya has failed to preserve. What we had seen and are seeing now is the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition is disintegrating from within just because of this problem. Umno wanted a more "supreme" position for the Malays (actually for Umno leaders and elites), while MCA, MIC, PPP and Gerakan couldn't do much to pre...