JULY 19 — It seems these days the only thing worth celebrating during Aidilfitri is the fact that the country has returned to a state of relative normalcy, away from the rabid zealotry that seems to permeate Ramadan.

If Muslims believe that in Ramadan all the devils are shackled and the sins humans commit during the holy month is the real reflection of their virtue, then what did the last fasting month say about some of the Muslims in this country?

This year, as Muslims apologise to each other for the wrongs they have committed in the past year, there are those who will probably never apologise for their vile act.

They are those who started the rumours of a Malay getting swindled in Low Yat Plaza last weekend, just to justify a group of Malay youths carelessly trashing a gadget store in the popular mall, subsequently sparking the most heated racial incident in recent years.

And the worst offenders of all are the ones who continue to peddle this stinking pile of lies even to this day, just to justify their racism.

By now, most of the facts that culminated in a brawl last Saturday, followed by a rally on Sunday night, have since been made clear.

Shahrul Anuar Abdul Aziz, the 22-year-old who was caught by security guards for allegedly trying to steal a RM800 phone, before his friends returned and caused RM70,000-worth of public damage, has since claimed trial for theft.

Nobody was swindled. Nobody was sold a fake smartphone. No ethnic Chinese trader was trying to cheat a Malay out of his arguably hard-earned money.

Instead, you have a sad Malay kid charged with theft, being hailed as a “fighter” and a “hero” for the Malay community by his lawyer Mohd Khairul Azam Abdul Aziz. What sordid standards.

But the facts were not at all clear over the weekend, and somehow, the most natural thing for some in the Malay community was to fall back on was pure unadulterated racism. It is as if to blame the Chinese community is our number one excuse.

The incident at Low Yat became a flashpoint for racist sentiments in the country. – Picture by Bernama

It is obvious that some in the Malay community are just raring to start a riot so they can have an excuse to commit violence against the Chinese, and the story that one of them was swindled was enough to give them an excuse to do so.

Following the incident, there were many not-so-veiled threats made online: warning that one should never challenge the patience of the Malays, with Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia’s (Isma) information chief Mohd Hazizi Ab Rahman claiming that running amok is one of the Malays’ famous traits.

Several hardliners, including Hazizi himself, have jumped on the bandwagon to peddle their agenda by saying that the scuffle was just the tip of the iceberg of the Malay wrath, after the Chinese community allegedly kept insulting and mocking Islam, Malay rights, religious authorities, and the monarchy.

Is running amok, violence the only last resort available to the Malays? Is the ability to run berserk with nary a rational thought a trait to be proud of, that it is brought up again when things get tough?

As many have suggested, it is time we confront our racist nature head on. A suggestion from various learned figures to make racism illegal has been most unfortunate; this will do nothing to curb it, it will just drive the attitude underground.

At the core of our problem is the failure to accept our differences, and not to just tolerate it. Instead of pressing for a colour-blind solution where we pretend that everybody is homogenous and race-less, we should instead celebrate a colourful point of view: that we are all of different ethnicities, there is no denying it, but we are all brothers and sisters nonetheless.

And the first step to this is to recognise that every Malaysian citizen is equal, with no ethnic or religious group afforded a special and preferential status in national policies. It will still take a long time to break the silo mentality we have imposed on each other, but it can work if that is really what we want from our politicians.

In the end, we must ask ourselves: why do so many Malays find it much easier to believe that a Chinese has conned a Malay, instead of a Malay trying to steal from a Chinese?

Is it some sort of confirmation bias, that Malays find it hard to believe that one of our own is capable of committing a crime, especially against “The Other” whom we have been taught since kids to be the villain who is out to cheat all the Malays?

Perhaps that is also the reason why many used the incident as an impetus to kickstart their lobbying against Chinese traders whom they claim are dishonest, even when it was a clear-cut case of theft.

Isma-linked online movement Arus Baru was quick to latch onto the incident to launch a boycott against Low Yat. Isma itself had quoted Nadzim Johan, the president of the Muslim Consumers Association of Malaysia (PPIM), who made the baseless accusation that swindling is a part of the ethnic Chinese’s trading culture.

How successful was the boycott? Not at all.

When Low Yat was left empty on Monday, Arus Baru claimed victory, suggesting that Malay consumers have taken up their message for boycott. Truth is, it was the other way round: there was no customer in Low Yat because most shops decided to close for fear of further rioting. By Tuesday, business had mostly returned to normal.

This was nothing more than a show of bravado by some Malays who delude themselves into thinking that they have the purchasing power to “punish” businesses along racial lines.

Because deep down inside, they are aware that the working class, or even middle-class Malays have no such power to shut down businesses.

Indeed, no ethnicity or race has a monopoly on purchasing power, not even the Chinese.

The truth is, only the rich and elite have such immense economic power, and Malay supremacists would do well to realise that the real struggle is not between the races, but between the haves and have-nots.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.