Tajuddin Rasdi, a professor at UCSI, alleged that there were still Malays, including those who were highly educated, who were overawed by personalities claiming to have sound religious knowledge. They would blindly accept pronouncements these personalities make even on subjects in which they were not competent, he added.
Speaking of the parochial mindset, he lamented that some Malays could still not accept people of other races as equal citizens even decades after the country became independent.
“There are some privileges given to Bumiputeras, but that does not mean we can flaunt these before others,” he said.
As for youths, he urged them to take “full responsibility” of their role in ensuring that the country is well governed, “not just once every four or five years during elections”.
He said they should organise forums for themselves and these forums should feature speakers with opposing views. This would help them open up their minds, he added.
He said university students could organise talks outside their campuses if university authorities were not cooperative.
He urged Malay students to increase their contact with students of other races. “Networking with all races is crucial,” he said. “That’s how people get jobs.”
Tajuddin also had an advice for university lecturers. He said they should see themselves as shapers of future leaders and not just teachers of the subjects they were qualified to teach.
“If you teach your students only mathematics, that is the only thing they will take with them. Lecturers can change their mindsets so that they will become leaders that the country can benefit from.”
He said one of the ways of doing this was to throw hard-hitting questions at students.
As a teacher of Islamic architecture, he said, he once asked his students how a mosque would affect a non-Muslim or what a non-Muslim would think if a mosque was built in a non-Muslim country.
Most of them were dumbfounded by such questions, he said, but he added that it was crucial to the nation’s progress to encourage students to open their minds.