Assalamualaikum everybody. How are you guys? Today, I’m going to write about Sabah. As we all know, three week ago about 200 hundred Philippine who are members of Sultan Sulu’s army has landed on lahad datu in claiming that Sabah is theirs. Following that, 6 local policemen has died, said to be ambushed by the intruder, while more than 10 from the Sultan’s army also died. Then, Malaysian government has decided to end this by attacking the village where the sultan’s army reside. No known number of casualty has been reported until now. In another news, about 10000 militant supporter has been said to attempt to enter Sabah to aide the Sultan Sulu’s Army who is right now being attacked by the Malaysian force.
If you are a supporter for sultan sulu, you will probably say that the one who are intruding is not the Sultan, but Malaysian. As the sultan indeed has a legal binding saying that the Sabah is theirs although the document is almost 200 hundred years ago. My question is, does it matter?
If you say that it does not matter, that there is no point of me explaining this to you. But if you insist on saying that Sabah is the Sultan’s and the one who is living in Sabah is foreigner, let me at least, try to consult you on this. First of all, by foreigner do you mean they do not originate from Sabah? Unlike the Chinese and Indian who obviously migrate here by the British, the Sabah people are still Sabah people. They are the indigenous people of Sabah. In fact, if you say that their ancestor are the people of Sultan Sulu, I won’t denies that. They probably are. But again, does it matter?
After World War 2, communist has been a threat in Southeast Asia, so the British has decided that to make it easier to eradicate them and also to make it easier to give independence to Sarawak and Sabah, if they would merge with Malaya. As you already know, Singapore exclude itself from Malaya, Brunei said they do not want to do so and the merging of the remaining Malaya, Sarawak and Sabah is now called Malaysia. This is roughly 50 years ago. Now of course at that time, Philippine said that Sabah is theirs because it was owned by Sultan Sulu, similar to the Sultan’s claim today. Indonesia also claim Sarawak as their. The situation become even more intense when Indonesia decided to enter Malaysia forcefully. So to resolve the dispute, UN send some commissioner to do a vote among the people of Sabah and Sarawak to see whether they want to merge with Malaya or with Indonesia or Philippine. A very large majority of the people voted that they agree to merge with Malaysia with the condition that they can control their border ( or something like that, I don’t exactly remember ).
So as you can see, Sabah and Sarawak choose to merge with Malaya and form Malaysia. The malayan people do not, just…. migrate to Sabah and repopulate quickly in order to gain dominance. I would guess that malayan simply… do not have the time or simply do not want to do so. I mean, what will they gain? Logs? What? The Chinese seems monopolized the economy there? Even in peninsular Malaysia the Malay do not gain control of the economy. The Chinese does. And if I’m not mistaken, the situation is much better in Sabah and Sarawak then in the peninsular. Is it the Chinese fault? They were here on the British age to operate shops. So its not something strange to see that they dominate the economic sector. And it is obviously not something that we will sacrifice peace in order to overcome. The Chinese and Indian are obviously not originated from the peninsular but still, they are here for more than 50 years. They are people too. What do you aspect us to do? Kill them like the Myanmar did at Rohinga? We are Muslim, we don’t do that.
What does the Sultan Sulu aspect to gain from this? Sabah? Even if they gain authority at Sabah, will the people cooperate? It is no longer the Sultan Sulu’s land. It is the land of Sabah people and they had already said that they want to stay. They do not migrate to sabah. They were born there and raised there. In Malaysia the land are not governed by the central government, It is governed by the State Government. In this case, the sabah people govern their own land. Sultan Sulu may say that the land is his, but what other claim can he give other that with the fact that his father or his grandfather owned the land but then lend it to the British. The people of Sabah has work their way to raise the state up to it current state. They have their own life. Do Sultan Sulu help? Just recently, a militant from the sultan sulu’s army was killed by 20 villager. If the villager support the sultan, why was the militant killed?
While I do agree that the Sultan’s Army should not enter Malaysia just like that, I also do not agree in the way Malaysian Force handle the manner. Just go bomb it? Now 10 000 more are coming. Are you going to bomb them to? People are still people. Regardless Philippine or Malaysian, we both do not want people to die. The current government will most probably not going to win an the election coming in a month of two because of this. The people need to think, where is their allegiance, at Sultan Sulu, Malaysian Goverment or God. If you are a member of the 10 000 people coming to Sabah, I beg you, do not use the name of Islam for your cause. You are not fighting for Islam, you are fighting for Sultan Sulu. And if you value Islam more than the Sultan, you will know in this case Islam loss the most. We loss people Muslim who were said to syahid, but in reality try to kill another Muslim who defend himself and his land regardless which side you are it does not matter, It happen because you came here. Because of this, the name of Islam had once again become associated with extremism, terrorism and irrational behavior. If the 10 000 people win, then the world will say they found another country build from tyranny associated with Islam, because obviously its a monarch and conquered forcefully. And if the 10 000 people died, the world will see again, the Muslim kill each other claiming “in the name of Islam”.
This whole thing will not solve a thing and will create more problem. Please open your mind. Sabah people has their own life. They were born there after sultan sulu’s reign, after the world war 2. If the sultan is indead a righteous and peace loving person, he would not came here with armed force in the first place. Regardless of his claim, It doesn’t matter anymore.