25 September 2006

Wednesday September 20, 2006


It’s only polite

Musings: By MARINA MAHATHIR

WHEN I was about five years old, my dad spanked me for sticking my tongue out at our gardener, Pak Hashim. In our house, along with telling lies, this was a major sin. My nanny used to tell me that God would cut my tongue if I stuck it out, especially to older people.

Respect for older people was the credo of our family. We children were not allowed to be rude to anyone older, no matter who they were. This was why Pak Hashim, whom in fact we adored because he told us endless Sang Kancil stories, had the right to complain to my parents whenever we treated him with disrespect. And my parents took his complaints seriously and punished us accordingly.

Unsurprisingly, good manners became a major lesson of my childhood. I am notorious for constantly reminding my children to say “please” and “thank you”. None of them are allowed to call older people by their first names; they had to be “Kakak”, “Abang”, “Uncle” or “Auntie”.

It seems that I am old-fashioned in thinking this way. Good manners, which is the way we treat other people with consideration and respect, seems to be something that has flown out the window. We pride ourselves on Asian courtesy and hospitality but every day we see examples of rudeness and lack of consideration for others, whether on the roads or in the service industries.

Like everything else, courtesy depends on example. Children who are brought up by well-mannered parents learn these social rules early in life. What they don’t learn from their parents, they learn from observing the customs of wherever they live.

When I went to boarding school away from my home state and met schoolmates from other states, I observed they had different customs and I learnt to adapt. Living overseas also means having to adapt to different social rules; doing so is only polite.

The reverse can also be true. If we constantly see bad manners and behaviour, we think that is the norm and adapt accordingly. Impressionable children are particularly vulnerable to this. Thus we cannot completely blame them for bad behaviour without looking at the examples that are being set by adults around them every day.

We cannot expect children to learn good manners when they see leaders of our country behaving in impolite, crude and uncouth ways. These days almost anything goes when it comes to name-calling. Some public figures have no qualms at all about badmouthing people much older and wiser than them, just because they disagree with them. Instead of the old adage that the higher you go in life, the more humble you should be, arrogance seems to be the norm.

That Readers’ Digest report that gave us such poor marks for courtesy only surveyed the behaviour of ordinary people; imagine what they would have given us had they surveyed politicians!

Perhaps some people think that courtesy and politeness is too restrictive, even undemocratic. One should be able to say what one wanted about another person, regardless of how malicious and unkind your words might be, especially if you don’t like the other person.

Maligning the other person’s character seems to be a right but only for people in high positions where they feel they are untouchable, or those who hide under the cover of anonymity. Try to be rude about someone higher up the social pecking order than you (and be silly enough to do it under your own name) and see what happens! You get accused of being un-Malaysian!

I think nothing reveals people more than when they talk about other people. Name-calling and other forms of arrogant behaviour only reflect back on the name-caller. You have to wonder about their own upbringing; what did they learn in their childhood that makes them mouth off in this way? What are they so afraid of that, instead of reasoned argument, they take the easy route of maligning others? What is arrogance but a cover for some inadequacy? Sometimes you can even feel pity for them.

My worry is that with these examples, we will be bringing up a whole generation of people who lack the basic good manners that would allow them to live with one another, in our diverse society, in peace and harmony.

If everybody feels that it’s okay to constantly take and give offense, then we’ll spend our time constantly fighting. That’s not to say that we should not complain if someone is rude to us. But then why have reason to complain in the first place?

Sometimes I think we need to protect our children from witnessing such behaviour on the part of public figures. Rudeness is bad enough but how do we shield our children from hypocrisy?

11 September 2006

Wednesday September 6, 2006


Restrictions on women

Musings by MARINA MAHATHIR

IN 1993, I had one of the most profound experiences of my life. I went on the umrah (lesser pilgrimage) to Mecca and Medinah, Islam’s holiest cities, an experience that left me with two distinct impressions.

Firstly, there was no difference in what was required of men and women to perform the umrah. And secondly, that some of the rituals, particularly the sa’y, which commemorates Hajar’s search in the desert for water for her baby son Ismail (later to become a Prophet), were tributes to women, womanhood and motherhood.

I completed my umrah feeling newly enlightened and affirmed in my belief that Islam does not discriminate between men and women.

The saying goes that “man proposes and God disposes” but sometimes people act as if God only makes recommendations that we can chose to accept or ignore. This past week, according to news reports, Saudi clerics have proposed imposing restrictions on women’s access to the holiest site in Islam, the Kaaba. “The area is very small and so crowded. So we decided to get women out of the ‘sahn’ (Kaaba area) to a better place where they can see the Kaaba and have more space,” they said.

There are several problems with this explanation. Firstly, it is not so much a question of being able to see the Kaaba as being able to be near the Kaaba. If all Muslim men and women merely wanted to see the Kaaba, we can look at it on TV. But we know that touching al-hajar al-aswad (the black stone) at its south-western corner is the ideal way of initiating the tawaf ritual (circumambulation), and we love to caress the Kaaba’s walls and clutch the kiswa (the black cloth draping the Kaaba). Being shunted off to some remote corner of the Masjid-il-Haram effectively denies women access to this.

Secondly, and even more importantly, this is the first time in 1,400 years that anyone has proposed this. The Masjid-il-Haram or Forbidden Mosque (that is, forbidden to non-Muslims) is the only place in the Muslim world where men and women are not separated in worship. This has been ongoing for almost 15 centuries, linking us through a continuous chain of historic tradition that binds us to the Prophet in a deeply profound manner. All of a sudden, somebody decides that chain needs to be broken.

In Surah 66 of the Quran, titled Al-Tahrim or Banning, God asks Prophet Mohamad: “O Prophet! Why bannest thou that which Allah hath made lawful for thee?” While the context was specific to a particular situation, nevertheless the theme of these divine words is clear: what God says is halal, humankind cannot turn into haram (and vice versa). It stands therefore that for 1,400 years, God has had no problem with women praying at the Kaaba. Why change now?

Sure, there is a crowd problem at the Masjid-il-Haram especially during the Haj season when over two million pilgrims descend on the Holy Cities. But why solve this through gender discrimination? When the numbers of all-male pilgrims start to be overwhelming, would ethnic discrimination be the next way to solve that problem?

In Surah Al-Ahzab, God responded to complaints by women through the Prophet that there is no mention of them in the Quran and therefore some people had interpreted this as meaning that women do not matter. “Lo! men who surrender unto Allah, and women who surrender, and men who believe and women who believe, and men who obey and women who obey, and men who speak the truth and women who speak the truth, and men who persevere (in righteousness) and women who persevere, and men who are humble and women who are humble, and men who give alms and women who give alms, and men who fast and women who fast, and men who guard their modesty and women who guard (their modesty), and men who remember Allah much and women who remember – Allah hath prepared for them forgiveness and a vast reward.” (33:35).

The message of this ayat is that God viewed both men and women as His creations and therefore both had access to His attention if they believed in Him. In other words, God does not discriminate between the sexes. Why, therefore, should we?

I read about this new restriction on women with dismay. My experience in Mecca had affirmed my belief that my religion, Islam, is one that upholds equality and justice. I had faced no restrictions during the umrah and it remains in my memory a most moving and humbling experience. I stood by “God’s House” where, for centuries, millions of men and women had come to do their duty to God and had felt equally God’s mercy and beneficence. In imposing these new restrictions, does that mean that women are now undeserving?