POSITION PAPER 2

NORANISA BT IBRAHIM
0732118

Everyone has a religion but the way their follow the religion are different. Besides that, religion
plays an important role in human way of life. How they behave, what they think and even what they eat is influence by their religion. Based on the topic, I disagree that “I am a Malay first before I am a Muslim.”

In Malaysia Islam is a formal religion, where most of the followers are Malay. There have
perceptions that, when we talk about Malay they will think about Islam and when we talk about Islam they think about Malay. That means Malay and Islam is interrelated. Yes, I agree with that but there are totally different. Malay is a race but Islam is a religion. Malay was created by human itself, the custom, the thinking and the culture. Then, Muslim is a people that believe in Islam and the contents of Islam religion are come from Allah through Prophet Muhammad s.a.w with Quran and sunnah.

It cannot be said that I am a Malay first because religion is more important. Means that, every
action that I want to take must obey Islamic rules. Actually there have some custom in Malay that is not permitted in Islam because it brings harm and opposite in Islam thought. For example, ‘lenggang perut’; it is a ceremony done by a family who has a pregnant woman where they can decide the gender of the baby. It is wrong and consider as shirk.

In order to get reward from Allah, we have to think first before we do something, either it allow
by Islam or not. It does not mean when we do not follow the Malay custom we are not Malay. We still Malay as long as we behave and think like Malay, such as practice polite and well-behaved, take care of their dress up and practice Malay custom that allow in Islam.

In society, people always assume that when Malay does the rightness so they are Muslim. It is true? But there may be argued that there also have other races that do the rightness likes Dayak, Kadazan, Bajau and Melanau. Other than that, when we talk about Muslim, how about Chinese Muslim or Indian Muslim? They are also a Muslim but are they included as Malay? It clear that does not means that Malay is Muslim. It does not matter if Malay and Muslim come together, but we have to follow custom that permit by god.

People that agree with this topic might say that Malay follow all the Islam rules and completely
same. For instance, in Malay custom, they should bow down their body when they are walking in front of old people. It shows that they are respect old people like in Islam; Muslim should have respect old people by speak nicely, did not fight or against and do a good things to them. It can be argued that not all custom permitted in Islam, But for this people they still believe and hold with this word “ Biar mati anak, jangan mati adat”; stress that customs are more important than their son.

I want to stress here that Islam do not judge people, we have to be fair with all of human kind.
Only Allah can judge them either to be in paradise or hell. In the way to get blessing from Allah we have to be Muslim that practice a good deeds and omit bad deeds. In a nutshell, I want to say that Muslim is more important than Malay because what we do as Muslim will get reward and counted for hereafter but Malay is just a races that will judge by people around in the world only.