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ETHNIC RELATIONS
Informed toleration Society should be built on the basis of common understanding and appreciation
by Inside Observer
A few observed instances, as well as three years of living here, have led me to this conclusion: A Chinese woman, educated and a successful �self-made woman�, was not sure whether Hindus believed in reincarnation. She was a Buddhist of sorts, in the eclectic manner of many Chinese, and knew that Buddha was originally a Hindu, but apparently had not made the connection. A Chinese man, doing a PhD in Psychology, was explaining how he hardly spoke any Chinese because he had been brought up in an area where there were mostly Malays and had therefore always spoken Malay and had Malay friends. However, when discussing the times to buka puasa (breaking fast during the month of Ramadan) he was surprised to hear that Muslims in the further reaches of the Southern or Northern hemispheres have to fast as long as 17 hours because of the different times of the rising and setting sun. �Don�t you have set times?� he asked, imagining a timetable established perhaps based on Arabian times. He must have lived his early life with the constant background of the call to prayers � had he never noticed that the time changes? A young Malay man in an interview with the BBC commented that �We seem to have been programmed as to when to be friends and when to be hostile to each other� Parallel blindness Explanations for ignorance of cultural history can be sought in educational policies, political sensitivities and communal imperatives. Malaysia has made a virtue of its diversity, but seems to have developed a contradictory parallel blindness to the existence of difference. One possible explanation for this is that Malaysians are taught from an early age not to question other religions � a laudable practice, but it seems to extend to not seeking to find out about other religions either � questions being, of course, the starting point of any endeavour to increase knowledge. On the basis that one may offend by touching upon a �sensitive� issue, it seems that the result is that one does not seek to learn more about others� religions. Living close to a mosque a non-Muslim gets used to the call for prayers, the recitals and other sounds that come from the loudspeakers. How much does the non-Muslim really understand? This couldn�t be known without some research, i.e. going and asking questions of a Muslim neighbour or friend. How do non-Muslims perceive these sounds: is it seen as a pleasant reminder of the value of faith, just background noise, or something else? To find this out one would have to ask people in a survey, for example. However, asking people what they think would be seen as disturbing �sensitive� issues � meaning that it is feared that by questioning people about their attitudes to other faiths, sensibilities will be offended: the end result of this is that ignorance is preferred to stirring what is understood to be a cesspool of unknown dangers. Ignorance breeds intolerance In a country whose social policy is based to a large extent on the predicate that the ethnic groups, �races�, will enter into conflict if they are not controlled, the major concern is to avoid any direct clash of communities. One way to describe discussion is as a �clash�, with all the negative connotations that implies; another way would be to view it in terms of the usual process of diffusion: i.e. communities comparing ideas and values in a common process of integration and �co-assimilation�. Yes, historically it is also a source of conflict, but conflict is not always negative as long as it stays in the realm of verbal as opposed to physical conflict. Assuming conflict will mean that issues of relevance to both communities� core values are not discussed, therefore little co-development of communities will happen � and the danger is that the values of the dominant community will be by default the values that gain the most prominence and become the stated norm for the rest of the society. This in turn will lead to the tensions that the original policy was designed to avoid. As a habit of not questioning other communities develops, a parallel habit of ignoring them will also develop. Ignorance breeds intolerance which in turn breeds violence. The above argument could be seen as arguing for the assimilation of all communities into one blend that denies the original uniqueness and value of the cultures involved. That is not the way one wants to go either � however, denying the inevitability of change is a short-sighted approach. An ideal outcome would be informed toleration of each other, with cultural borrowing and sharing of ideas. Blinkered approach Cultural ethical relativism is an issue here. Cultural ethical relativism argues that whatever a culture believes to be morally right, is right. It is an attractive argument, allowing for the acceptance of moral differences based on mutual respect for other cultures. However, it has a basic logical problem that can be explained using the following analogy: Culture A believes that a person may steal from anyone as long as they are not from their nuclear family; Culture B believes that private property is a fundamental principle that should never be violated and for which the penalty is death. Person A (from Culture A) steals a loaf of bread from Person B (from Culture B) who happens to be passing by: Person B chases after him, catches him, and kills him. Was Person B right to kill Person A? According to his culture, yes � according to Culture A, no: but cultural ethical relativism states that both cultures� moral values are equally right � it is a paradox that cannot be resolved. The value of cultural ethical relativism is that it promotes tolerance, however to argue that everyone has to be tolerant would be making an absolutist statement, and thus moving away from cultural relativism. In itself, cultural ethical relativism is logically and practically untenable. Rather than seeking to celebrate each other�s cultures and forge a common identity � it is �live and let live�. This has no doubt contributed to the stability of the past 30 years, but the blinkered approach � epitomised by the key discursive term �sensitive� could be problematic. To understand the potential dangers, other ethnically diverse countries should be looked at and examined. Living side-by-side in relative ignorance need not be dangerous, but often is. Major changes to the economic or socio-political environment rapidly expose the fault lines between the communities, based as they are on the different tectonic plates of �diversity�. Informed toleration is a call for exploration and knowledge, criticism and valuation; it is a rejection of any unipolar cultural construction and a proposal for multi-centred diverse communities. These involve the development of attitudes that both encompass other cultures, give space for the different expressions of individual cultures, and allow for the development of new cultural values and practices. Society should be built on a basis of common understanding and appreciation � the salad dressing is, after all, the element that combines the flavours and gives uniqueness to any particular type of salad. 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Informed toleration is a call for exploration and knowledge, criticism and valuation; it is a rejection of any unipolar cultural construction and a proposal for multi-centred diverse communities.
