Somebody sent me an email wishing me a Happy Australia Day. Funny. Because I have been to Australia once for 7 days and I have never considered myself Australian. But it got me thinking about why we think who we are in the first place. A topic of consideration which usually fucks with my brain that I fall asleep from exhaustion.
I then started to rank myself in terms of my allegiance. I like to think that I am a world citizen foremost, a malay who is a friend of other Malaysians and a Muslim to my faithful brothers and sisters. But the truth is; I think I have never been a good Muslim and fear that my faithful siblings will disown me. And since being a Muslim is such an integral part of being a Malay in this country, well… I am fucked in that department too. I have pre-conceptions about Blacks and Jews, Indians and Indonesians, not too mention Indonesians; I have no idea what it means to be an American Native either. So, how can I claim to be a citizen of the world?
Such a quagmire is Identity.
I began to wonder what would happen if I just cut up my MyKad. I wonder if it would be a crime to destroy your own MyKad. Perhaps we could rally Malaysians to cut up their MyKad. Is that sedition? I mean more like a kind of performance art rather than a protest in the vein of Feminism’s bra-burning. Thereafter, we can all go the NRD and kinda claim back our identity. That would be so cool.
I then started to rank myself in terms of my allegiance. I like to think that I am a world citizen foremost, a malay who is a friend of other Malaysians and a Muslim to my faithful brothers and sisters. But the truth is; I think I have never been a good Muslim and fear that my faithful siblings will disown me. And since being a Muslim is such an integral part of being a Malay in this country, well… I am fucked in that department too. I have pre-conceptions about Blacks and Jews, Indians and Indonesians, not too mention Indonesians; I have no idea what it means to be an American Native either. So, how can I claim to be a citizen of the world?
Such a quagmire is Identity.
I began to wonder what would happen if I just cut up my MyKad. I wonder if it would be a crime to destroy your own MyKad. Perhaps we could rally Malaysians to cut up their MyKad. Is that sedition? I mean more like a kind of performance art rather than a protest in the vein of Feminism’s bra-burning. Thereafter, we can all go the NRD and kinda claim back our identity. That would be so cool.
