COMMENT When you define your political and social aspirations through a racial lens or worse conflate them with religious preoccupations, the only way forward is backward and post-2008 GE, Umno has overtly attempted to define the changing political landscape as that of a racial or religious conflict with the fate of the ‘ummah' in peril at the hands of a non-Muslim/Malay-influenced political alliance - Pakatan Rakyat.