Defending UITM

Its good people are not hard up to get into UITM. I am surprised that out of the thousands of ITM grads none has come forward to defend the institution that has nurtured them. How come?

You leave it to one public relations officer to tell why UITM should not be opened to non Malays. Yet you are brazen enough to say that UITM is the august institution that you are forever indebted to. You generations of students who have come out and become successful, yet, we can’t find one decent chap out of you thousand fellows , courageous enough to defend your alma matter. What gives?

You know, we Malays are also tired of hearing the line of defence that any Tom Dick and Harry can muster- you know all those razzmatazz about UITM being the last bastion of Malay rights. When even that fails, you ask thousands of fresh faced hormone raging undergraduates to march under the burning sun, to declare UITM is our right? Heck, they are out there to impress the UITM chicks!

As I have said before- rights are not something that are conferred on you by other people or by some other artificial device such as a legal edict. Rights are something you have fought for and earned. Therefore, please come out with some more decent answers. Boleh?

Imagine a Buddhist temple. Would Buddhists allow Muslim clerics to come there and preach? In the name of interfaith tolerance?

The answer must be in the negative. Not because Buddhists hate Muslims or are not tolerant. They will not allow Muslim clerics to preach inside Buddhist temples for the simple reason it violates the idea of Buddhist purity. It has nothing to do about being anti Islam. It protects its own purity. The two are mutually exclusive.

Similarly, imagine a mosque. Will the Muslims allow Buddhist monks to come and pray or do their meditations in the mosque even though Islam recognises men of differing faiths?

The answer is never. Because just as it’s not possible for a Muslim cleric to preach in a Buddhist temple, the same reasoning applies to Buddhists in mosques. The Muslims protect the idea of its own purity.

Each faith and religion defends its own sanctity and purity by instituting sanctions which cannot be violated. If they are violated, then what is injured is its own purity and sanctity. Each religion has an Idea of its purity. It must protect this idea to preserve faith.

That’s how I look at UITM. UITM must retain its exclusiveness to preserve something sacred as the purity in religion- the idea envisioned by the Malay for the Malay. It has nothing to do with being racist or advocating racial supremacy. We can reject all the gobbledygook about intolerance and all that negative stuff using other avenues. Heck- sharing alcoholic beverages(for drinkers) and sharing your expensive cigars among friends of different races can also be uplifting.

Lest people think that UITM is a basket case- just look at the level of entry requirements needed to enter the areas of study in UITM. They are highly demanding and very competitive. A diploma in Accounting requires the minimum requirements of 5A’s at the SPM level and to enter its unique ASASI program require all A’s in the subjects taken. So if people want to throw UITM degrees or qualifications into the dustbin, that wont fluster us an iota.

By the way- I did not study at UITM but I appreciate the commitment of the people resolute in preserving a sacred idea. It’s the idea, that here stands a monument created by the Malays for themselves. Will anyone deny us our pride? Take away that pride, what remains of us?