Year that was for the protester

The silly season is already on us and no doubt will be a fractious and prolonged one going into 2012.

IT’S the end of the year and, like everyone else, I’m going to try and summarise what made it an interesting year indeed.

Time magazine named The Protester as its Person of the Year in 2011.

I couldn’t agree more, because really few people have made an impact on society than protesters this year.

From the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Syria to the Occupy Wall Street protesters and its many offshoots, these largely peaceful protests have forced things to change in their societies.

In the Middle East, corrupt and authoritarian leaders have been forced to step down. In some, it’s still an ongoing battle.

Of course, these steps towards democracy are not perfect. Nor are the results.

But that’s democracy for you.

Just because people don’t know what they want is no reason to dismiss democracy.

It is the fact that they finally have choices is the triumph, after so many years of not having any.

For those who insist on equating the London riots with the Arab Spring, do get your facts right.

The former was not about changing an authoritarian government for a more democratic one, nor was it meant to be peaceful.

The latter was a peaceful demand for change; the violence came from the government response.

If you want to equate the London riots with the Syrian government’s response, perhaps it would be more accurate.

Time magazine has mostly recognised the Arab, Spanish and American protesters in their essay.

But perhaps they should have also looked eastwards.

I think the Bersih rally goers, protesting peacefully for clean and fair elections, are also deserving of the award.

For the first time, ordinary Malaysians went out to demand what should be their right, to be able to vote fairly.

Young and old of all races and religions, Malaysians marched to protect this basic human right. And were demonised because of it.

While the Government responded to the Bersih demands by establishing the Parliamentary Special Committee on electoral reforms, at the same time the so-called Peaceful Assembly Act – aimed at curbing any other rallies like Bersih – was passed.

In any case, it is delusional to think that curbing protests will curb rebellious thoughts. These will continue to thrive in 2012, that’s for sure.

Perhaps 2011 was also the year of the Strong Woman.

On the international scene, not one but three women won the Nobel Peace Prize this year: President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Leymah Gbowee, also of Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, the youngest-ever recipient.

It’s interesting that all of these women are rebellious women, who refused to accept the established, and patriarchal, way of doing things.

Instead, they found their own way, and worked for peace in their countries.

Malaysia, too, has its share of strong women. Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan is the prime example of someone who has had to withstand personal attacks from all quarters like no other person has had to in our country, yet still carries on with her strong principles.

Let it never be said that she lacks courage.

For women to get ahead, it really is imperative that they have the sort of integrity and display the sort of ethical behaviour that we often find lacking in men.

This year is, of course, also the year of the Obedient Wives Club, hardly a great leap forward for womankind.

Nevertheless, the OWC knew exactly how to get publicity for their causes.

And, I suspect, despite the sniggers over their sex manual, there are many who actually agree with their basic premise, that a good wife is one who blindly obeys her husband even when she doesn’t feel like it.

Finally, this year has been a bad year for justice and equality.

Children born less than six months after their parents married are considered illegitimate, thus forcing them to bear the sins of their parents.

Even if legitimate, children can be married off at even 10 years old, surely a blight on our society if we are to consider ourselves progressive.

Muslim women still don’t have the same rights as their non-Muslim sisters when it comes to marriage, property and inheritance.

And people of different sexual orientations are not regarded as full citizens.

I’d like to be optimistic about 2012 but that does not look likely.

The silly season is already on us and no doubt will be a fractious and prolonged one.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, folks!

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Gimme, seems to be the easiest word

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday December 7, 2011
Gimme, seems to be the easiest word
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR


In a land of opportunity for all, people should remember John F. Kennedy’s famous words: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

THIS is going to be one long sigh of exasperation, folks. I get like this when I think of my country sometimes and despair at the sheer shallowness of how we talk about her.

How, amid protestations of how much we love her, we insist on treating her with such disdain and thoughtlessness that in fact we are ruining her every day.

Once upon a time we used to talk about our country and what we could do for it. We used to think that what John F. Kennedy said – “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” – was so admirable.

We wanted to make our country so good that we could hold our heads up high anywhere in the world. Instead, all we hear these days is what can I get from this country, how can I get rich off this country.

While this should be a country of opportunity for all, why is there this attitude that this country owes us a living? Indeed, some of us think that we are entitled to be cosseted and pampered to the nth degree for as long as we live.

When I was little, my aunt gave us children a book that taught us about how to be good people. Basically, it meant expelling from our vocabulary two phrases: “Give Me”, and “I Couldn’t Care Less”.

People who used these phrases often were selfish people who were not considerate of others; indeed, thought the whole world was only about them. We learnt that it was better to give to others than to take, and to always care about other people.

So my jaw has to drop to the floor when I read the papers these days, and almost all that anyone says is “Give Me” and “I Couldn’t Care Less”.

“Give me,” they say, even though they have done nothing to earn it and even though it will bring ruin to the country. When asked to consider the feelings of others, basically they show a finger and say that they could not care two hoots.

Obviously nobody gave them the same book.

It’s hard enough to teach values to our children these days without adults showing every day in our papers and on TV that they have none at all.

How do I teach my children that nothing comes without hard work and discipline, and that consideration for others is not just a value but a duty as a human being?

As a little girl, I was taught one of the biggest sins was telling lies. Nothing made God angrier, it was drilled into me, than telling untruths, especially about other people. To this day, I cannot fib much, not even about my age or weight.

But nowadays people tell such blatant lies. You can always tell when a person is lying; they always feel the need to shout it out, as if sheer volume makes it truthful.

I’ve never known people with clear consciences to ever be anything but calm. So you watch this lying and you have to wonder how come their parents didn’t scare them to death about God as mine did?

Of course you only tell lies because you think that people will actually believe them. Which means that you think that such people are fools.

And indeed they often live up to the label. The astounding thing is, why are there so many of them? Are there absolutely no smart people around?

People who see through all this, and say something about it, are somehow made to feel as if they are unpatriotic.

Just because we don’t buy into the improbable stories, we are not playing by the rules. Of course, nobody wonders if the rules are good in the first place.

Actually, rules have been broken a great deal in these past few years. The rules of simple civility, for one, are long gone. I used to think of my people as the gentlest, most polite people on earth.

Until I saw a video of a meeting with much shouting and screaming, and someone pulling a chair from under an old man. We don’t censure behaviour like this, but we tut-tut at people kissing. Go figure.

I struggle to teach my children to be kind to others, to mind their manners, to never emulate those who are doing things that are wrong.

I tell them that whether it’s five ringgit or five million ringgit, if they take what’s not theirs, it’s called stealing. And if they make up stories that can cause harm to others, they must own up and apologise.

But when adults are the ones doing these things, what do I tell them?

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Vying for dubious achievements

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday November 23, 2011
Vying for dubious achievements
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR


We are great at railing against idiotic politicians at mamak stalls and on social websites, but when it actually comes to doing something, we make excuses; and with that, we disempower ourselves.

IN 2000, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called The Tipping Point, defining it as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point”.

It’s that pivotal moment when people decide that enough is enough and actually do something to make a change.

In 2011, we’ve seen lots of tipping points.

It happened at the end of December in Tunisia when fruitseller Mohamad Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest against the confiscation of his stall.

That act of defiance against in­­justice became the tipping point for Tunisians fed up with the sys­­-tem and their rebellion led to the downfall of their president and set off a chain of events in neighbouring countries known as the Arab Spring.

Sooner or later, people reach a tipping point where they will no longer tolerate repression and corruption, pushing them to do something about it, even if it means that lives had to be sacrificed.

I really have to wonder when we Malaysians will reach our tipping point.

Every day, we read so much blatant nonsense from our leaders that the newspapers have truly stopped being readable.

News reports treat us all as people of low intelligence because only imbeciles would believe some of the outrageous claims made by our leaders.

When elections are in the offing, there is no doubt that our politicians immediately start jockeying for positions by trying to outdo one another.

It would be wonderful if they were racing to think up the best policies to manage the country, the economy, social issues, etc.

Instead, they are racing to find the silliest ways to strike fear into our souls and find more ways to oppress people.

I mean, solar-powered talking Bibles, really?

There is a foreign magazine that gives out Dubious Achievements Awards every year.

These are a bit like the Ig Noble awards, the opposite of the Nobel prizes, where people are cited for doing the silliest things.

Malaysia, especially our politicians, seems to be in the running for a lot of dubious achievements this year.

Maybe we should just accept that those are the only achievements we will ever have.

Meanwhile, we the people have to live with these shenanigans.

We find out every year from the Auditor-General’s Report that millions have been wasted on ridi­­-culous items which any fool would know should not cost that much.

The report highlights a “mess” in a government-related company and an unexplained stupendously expensive apartment purchase.

There are also ministers who claim that none of it has anything to do with the Government.

Gee, the Auditor-General must have so little to do that he needs to audit private companies as well.

And wow, they must really think we are dumb.

And while the world is facing an economic recession that will be more severe than anything ever seen, fodder for revolutions everywhere, what do our politicians care about?

Whether people of different sexual orientation should be allowed any space at all to talk about their problems?

Like natural disasters, the last thing economic catastrophes care about is whom you’re attracted to.

And given that most people are heterosexual, the chances are that the people who will be most affected by a recession are the heterosexual and poor.

Shouldn’t politicians vying for votes be concentrating on them?

Perhaps our politicians, unlike voters, don’t read.

They seem not to have noticed that there are protests going all round the world against inequality, especially the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

Even some business people are saying that things must change or else there will be a global revolution, particularly against exploitative and uncaring corporations.

But as always, our politicians are one step behind the rest of the world.

They’re still dreaming of joining the fat cat 1% and forgetting that the 99% have a lot more votes.

Why do we put up with all this?

Are our tolerance levels for stupidity that high?

Is it because we don’t know any better?

Or are we just lazy and complacent?

We are great about railing against idiotic politicians at mamak stalls and on social websites, but when it actually comes to doing something, we make excuses.

We shrug our shoulders and say we can’t make a difference, only some people can.

And with that, we disempower ourselves, much to the delight of our leaders.

But every now and then, we do rise to the occasion.

I think last July we reached a tipping point of sorts, where lots of ordinary people simply got fed up and decided to make it known, albeit peacefully.

But have our leaders learnt anything from it?

Not much, going by the constant demonising ever since.

So how long will we put up with imbeciles leading us?

How long will we tolerate unbridled greed and hate?

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Irrational fear abounds

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday November 9, 2011
Irrational fear abounds
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Prejudice and discrimination, both rooted in fear of the unknown, can always be dispelled with better knowledge, at least in those willing to learn.

TEN years ago the world turned a decidedly nastier place for Muslims. Although Islamo­phobia already existed before Sept 11, the events that day ratcheted it up several notches. Suddenly Muslims in the United States and all over the world found themselves under intense scrutiny, much of it hostile.

Stereotypes abounded. Although Islam is a religion of peace, all Muslims were branded terrorists, undemocratic, violent, oppressors of women.

The only images seen in the media were of angry bearded men wielding weapons and shouting threats to the West. Only Muslim women covered head to toe in dour black, were seen. It did not help that some Muslims themselves provided fodder for these images.

Tales of aggression against Mus­lims abounded. Headscarves were pulled off, insults hurled and, at airports, anyone with the slightest tinge of an Arabic name was pulled out for special inspection. Some people suffered even more violence, resulting in injury and even death.

New perspective: One of the biggest boosts to the image of Islam and Muslims has been the Arab Spring where young Muslims, including women, were seen at the forefront of the revolution. – Reuters

Sometimes entirely wrong people became victims of the prejudice. A Sikh man got shot because he wore a turban, a bunch of Orthodox Jewish rabbis were pulled off a plane because they were praying in a language other passengers didn’t understand.

Fear ruled and with it came prejudice and discrimination, much of it fuelled by the media. Most of it stemmed from ignorance about the world of Islam, which is not only large but also diverse.

A Muslim in the Middle East is culturally different from a Muslim in Asia, but that was not appreciated in much of the West. Indeed Middle Eastern Muslims comprise only 15% of the entire Muslim world. Further­more there are many Western Muslims who look and act no different from their fellow citizens.

Meanwhile, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq only angered Muslims, who then reacted in ways that ingrained the stereotypes about them.

The early post-Sept 11 Islamo­phobic madness only lessened when much better information and knowledge about Islam and Muslims became available. This took two forms.

One, many Muslims took it upon themselves to educate non-Muslims about Islam, and in particular reached out to other faith communities to talk about their commonalities, rather than differences.

And two, thousands of students flocked to universities to learn more about Islam. Both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of Islam did much to teach students about the real religion, rather than the one perpetuated by the media.

Ten years later, although it cannot be said that Islamophobia has disappeared, Western perspectives on Islam have become more measured and based on better knowledge. One of the biggest boosts to the image of Islam and Muslims has been the Arab Spring.

Suddenly the images of Muslims were young, modern, and protesting not about the West but about their own corrupt leaders. Although they did not explicitly talk about religion, in 2011 the Middle East became associated with the yearning for freedom and democracy, one not too different from what developed countries enjoyed.

Women were seen at the forefront of the revolution, both head-scarved and not, and changed the image of the oppressed Muslim woman.

It just goes to show that prejudice and discrimination, both rooted in fear of the unknown, can always be dispelled with better knowledge, at least in those willing to learn. There are of course many who simply refuse to open their hearts and minds to such enlightenment, but progress has been made in incremental steps.

It is also clear that very often those who steadfastly refuse to eliminate their prejudices do so because they think it is politically profitable to them. The loudest Islamophobes always seem to be politicians trying to win the populist vote. And the only way they maintain those votes is by keeping people ignorant. Hence, their refusal to engage at all with Muslims.

Every phobia about groups of people who are different from us works in the same way. They rely on stereotypes and on the fear that allowing these minority people the same basic rights as others would mean that they would demand more.

Thus, although no Muslim ever asked for it, some people in the US insist that there are plans to impose syariah law there. The media stokes the hysteria and stigmatisation. Unjust accusations and calls for depriving them of citizenship becomes the norm.

Although those baying for blood are small in number, they still make innocent people suffer. People who have never harmed anyone else suffer distrust and hostility from their former neighbours. Violence against them is justified, sometimes with religious backing. The entire atmosphere is poisoned by hate.

This past week, where some people seem to be proudly picking on the powerless, has reminded me of that Islamophobic hysteria. I fear for our country and where we are heading

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Enough of ‘softie’ bashing

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday October 12, 2011
Enough of ‘softie’ bashing
Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR


If you are to believe certain TV commentaries, lots and lots of Malaysian women are losing their husbands to transsexuals who are prettier and sexier than them.

THERE can’t be very many things more amusing, at least for a short while, than people willing to go on TV to make fools of themselves. That’s why reality shows make good TV.

For many people, just being famous, no matter for what, is all they care about. They become celebrities for the infamous Warholian 15 minutes.

Which is the only explanation I can give for the women and men who went on TV last week to discuss the “threat” that transgendered people pose to women these days.

Apparently, if you believe these people, lots and lots of Malaysian women are losing their husbands to transsexuals who are more beautiful and sexier than them.

The alarm bells have to be sounded now before society deteriorates even further.

I think when we have shows like these passed off as intelligent TV, our society has already deteriorated beyond redemption.

With absolutely no evidence to support their thesis, these women and men mouthed off the most hateful prejudiced warnings about the scourge that apparently is threatening marriages these days.

Not for a moment did any of them pause to consider whether their argument was logical at all. Are they saying that all those second and third wives are transsexuals? If so, by what miracle are they producing all those babies?

And as always, women blame the other party for everything, quite forgetting that there is the man in between who is more than a willing partner to such shenanigans. How come nobody blames him?

The subtext (if you can call such unsubtlety sub anything) is that no man can resist a pretty and sexy woman who’s out to entice him. This is baffling. Are the complaining women thus saying that they themselves are therefore not pretty and not sexy?

And that the Lord of the Manor, who they serve hand and foot and swear to obey no matter what, becomes a total weakling when faced with an alluring look and the toss of some well-blown locks?

Shouldn’t they just throw such a spineless creature out of the house?

The blame should also go to the TV producers who put on a show like this. I am trying to imagine the preparatory meetings beforehand. “What shall we put on next week?” asks the head of programming.

“Oh I heard somewhere that women are losing their husbands to transsexuals,” pipes up the producer of the show.

“Oh! Hey, great topic. Go for it,” says the boss.

And there you have a programme, based on some rumour that the producer heard “somewhere”. Is it any wonder that TV is called the idiot box?

More seriously, however, is the unashamed attempt by the media to fan prejudice and discrimination against a part of our society – transgendered people – for no good reason other than to hide their own shortcomings.

This is only the latest in a long series of both TV programmes and articles in tabloids that have consistently been shrieking the most vile accusations against transgendered people, all in the belief that they have religion to protect them.

The result of this constant stream of disgusting news has been that transgendered people and lelaki lembut have been subjected to so much harassment and injustice that, for some, it has become unbearable.

Tragic incident

Not too long ago, a transsexual whose application to change her name on her identity card was refused by the courts died out of dejection and despair. And no doubt, the self-righteous patted themselves on the back for a job well done.

We are facing a world these days with so many challenges. There are people out there who are hungry or have no roof over their heads.

In our glittering capital city, there are people taking their showers in the Dataran Merdeka fountain because they have no bathrooms to call their own.

So many others are finding it harder and harder to get by on what they earn as prices rise.

And yet what does certain media care about? Whether our men are being enticed away, not by the sort of sexy young things that the same certain media like to showcase every day but by transsexuals!

Or whether we should do something about the “epidemic” of soft men who generally have done nothing to harm anyone. Soft men are not known, for instance, to become Mat Rempits or to snatch anyone’s bags.

Is it too much to ask that certain media not insult our intelligence? Can we demand a stop to the sort of prejudiced nonsense that they pass off as smart commentary?

When the annals of our history are read 50 years from now, would certain media like to be recorded as having contributed to the dumbing down of our people?

Apparently they do.

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A holistic look at laws needed

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday September 28, 2011
A holistic look at laws needed
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR
newsdesk@thestar.com.my


Legislation can be interpreted in many ways, and the innocent may end up being wrongly accused just because they look different.

I’VE often heard it said, in discussions on our more repressive laws, that if you never do anything wrong, you would have no need to worry about them.

This reasoning always sounds appealing and if you are not one to think too hard, then there doesn’t seem to be a good counter-argument against it.

But what we often forget is that while laws often seem well-intentioned, the people carrying them out may not be.

A good example is the Patriot Act in the United States. Ostensibly, this is meant to catch any would-be terrorist bent on repeating what had transpired on Sept 11, 2001.

It is meant to keep Americans safe from those who mean harm.

But what has really happened is that the lives of one group of Americans, all Muslims, have been severely disrupted and disturbed by the Act.

Innocent people have been accused of collusion with terrorists, have lost their jobs and, in their daily lives, have to endure insults and humiliation from their fellow citizens.

Even some non-Muslims, such as turbaned Sikhs, have to suffer various slurs just because they look different.

So it may be that you are totally innocent and doing nothing to break the law but once a law is in place, you can suffer from wrongful accusations, and worse if someone merely suspects that you might be up to something.

Donating to a particular charitable organisation, or even buying certain books, can be deemed as proof of guilt.

The good thing about the US is that there are people in the American Civil Liberties Union who are always vigilant about these abuses of the law and will take action to defend the rights of those wrongly accused.

Thus never intending to break a law is not safe enough protection from a repressive one.

There are other laws that some people want to introduce, which they insist will not affect anyone outside its purview, or anyone who isn’t intending to break the law.

The first issue is whether you even know there’s a law you might break.

Secondly, even when you don’t think you’re breaking the law, there is someone else who is sure you have and makes your life miserable for it.

For example, there have been several married couples who have been caught for khalwat, even one non-Muslim couple on holiday here.

Do they get any apology or compensation for the humiliation and embarrassment from the overzealous agencies responsible?

Such laws are not exempt from the test of justice. Just because a particular law is in place doesn’t make it just. That is the worry.

Even if you know you will never break that law, you still have to worry whether the enforcers have any sense of justice at all.

How sure can we be that all the safeguards that we need against being wrongly accused are also in place?

As many American Muslims can tell us, just being of the “wrong” faith is all it takes to make life take a distinctly miserable turn.

It’s also only a certain set of people who are most confident that these laws will not affect them.

Invariably they are elite and have the sort of money that can buy them the best defence.

Again, we need only look at the majority of people caught for khalwat, usually young and poor, to see that laws are not applied fairly across the board.

If you can afford a posh hotel or apartment, you can get away with it.

Similarly, some people have been musing about having laws that punish people for stealing by cutting their hands off.

Other laws purport to punish adultery by stoning those found guilty.

Again, will this mean that those who are poor and caught for stealing petty sums will have to face this, while those who steal millions can get away with it?

Celebrities who get caught for khalwat only need to have a grand wedding, complete with designer gowns, and all is forgiven and forgotten.

If such laws cannot be enforced in the fairest way, then why have them?

This is why we should not have any of these laws at all.

There may be some need for security laws but the intentions and safeguards must be clear and made known to all. They cannot be made redundant by provisions lurking in some other law.

It’s not enough to repeal selective laws. A more holistic look at all laws in the interest of justice and equality is what is needed.

I welcome the recent announcements of repeals of these laws. But like everything else affecting our lives, the proof is in the pudding. Right now it hasn’t even started cooking yet

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Fallout from Sept 11 still being felt

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday September 14, 2011
Fallout from Sept 11 still being felt
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


There are efforts by ordinary citizens all over the world to heal the wounds left by the Sept 11 tragedy. Many people have been reaching out to one another with respect, humility and trust.

UNLESS you’ve been on Mars this past week, you would have realised that it was the 10th anniversary of Sept 11 a few days ago. There had been so much news and stories about it everywhere.

Nobody doubts that the events of Sept 11 10 years ago were a horrific tragedy, and all sympathy should go to the families who lost loved ones that day. But it should also be remembered that the aftermath of Sept 11 has been equally tragic, and is still ongoing.

According to the costs-of-war project at Brown University, a “very conservative” estimate is that about 137,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and that the wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees in these countries.

The Brown project puts the wars’ ultimate cost, including interest payments and veterans’ care, to the United States at up to US$4tril – equivalent to the country’s cumulative budget deficits for the six years from 2005 to 2010. Think of how many people that money could feed and school.


Still in tears: Family members of the Sept 11 tragedy victims attending the memorial service in New York in remembrance of their loved ones.
What have all these gained? Even Americans have been affected by it. Today, they live in an environment so fearful of another attack that they have to suffer the indignity of all manner of surveillance and security inconveniences. One recent op-ed in the New York Times suggested that on balance the infringements on civil liberties that Americans have had to suffer are relatively minor.

It failed to mention that for its American Muslim citizens, these have been major. The blame, the humiliation and the abuses that they have had to endure are not yet over.

But despite all these, and its global impacts, there are efforts by ordinary citizens to heal these wounds. In the United States and several other Western countries, the issues that arose from Sept 11 were not glossed over but discussed and debated as a way to rebuild the broken bridges. Civil society, rather than governments or politicians, have been at the forefront of these.

I was just in Western Australia where I was asked to speak at a conference on Rebuilding Harmony in the post-Sept 11 world. It was heartening to see so many people interested in the subject, and so disappointed by the ongoing violence that has accompanied the event by all sides.

Many Australians had been opposed to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, correctly seeing that this was no way to have peace.

They emphasised that people of different backgrounds, cultures and faiths need to know one another in order to avoid war, and that politicians should be held accountable for their part in the violence.

In the evening after the conference, we attended a special service at the main cathedral in Perth to commemorate the anniversary of Sept 11. It was attended by all the state dignitaries as well as people from all faiths. The entire service was beautiful and solemn as befitted the occasion.

But what moved me most was something I did not expect nor had ever experienced. An imam from a local mosque got up and recited the Al Fatihah and two other verses from the Quran dealing with compassion to humanity.

To hear the first surah of the Quran recited in Arabic in a cathedral while everyone listened so respectfully was a profoundly emotional experience for me. Never had its meaning been more beautiful.

It led me to think about how elsewhere in the world so many people have been reaching out to one another with respect, with humility and trust. When I heard the Al Fatihah in that church, it made me love my religion more.

The translation was in the programme, along with the words of all the other prayers and hymns that day, Christian and Jewish.

And what struck me most was how the sentiments expressed, while coming from different holy books, were in fact similar. My religion is as compassionate and generous as any other, not just to our own people but to all of humanity.

It made me wonder why this does not happen at home, why there is so much mistrust that nobody steps into a house of worship that is not their own.

Surely to be able to know one another is a good thing. After all, God says in surah Al-Hujarat, verse 13: O men! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another.

By constantly isolating ourselves from each other, are we not rejecting what our Creator intended?

As Malaysia Day approaches, perhaps we should think about how we can reconcile with one another. Or at the very least, refuse and reject the many deliberate attempts to divide us.

Selamat Hari Malaysia!

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A wish list of freedoms

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday August 31, 2011
A wish list of freedoms
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR
newsdesk@thestar.com.my


We still need the fundamental freedoms that every human being desires, especially freedom of speech and expression. Our foreparents understood 54 years ago that we had a fundamental right to freedom and self-determination.

FIRST of all, let me wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Also, as the days happen to almost coincide this year, Selamat Hari Merdeka. In many ways, this is very significant.

Raya is the day we free ourselves from a month of abstinence and restraint. Ramadan is a time for reflection on what good we have, or have not, done over the past year. It is a time to ask for forgiveness for our past sins and mistakes, and hurt we may have caused others.

Sadly, this Ramadan has hardly been an exemplary one. With insults galore, shouting and screaming, burning and threats, it has hardly been one of restraint and reflection, at least on the part of public figures. Nor was there any sense of shame at these violations of the good and holy month.

Since Raya coincides with Merdeka this year, I thought I would write a list of freedoms we should give ourselves in these coming months, besides the freedom to now eat.

First, let us have Freedom from Imagined Slights. I am sick and tired of the people who have nothing better to do than scour the media for all sorts of insults, while at the same time feeling entitled to slight others.

Some people’s skin is stretched so thinly over their rounded bulks it’s a wonder it hasn’t ripped. Every little imagined offence calls for protests and demos, almost always outside mosques after Friday prayers. One wonders if God feels slighted at this trespassing on His property, which should be oases of calm and tranquility.

As a corollary to that, let us also have Freedom from One-Sided Prosecutions. For example, some people seem to insist on having the monopoly on being sensitive. Everyone else is assumed to have thick skin, so much so that it is now apparently OK to insult people to their faces.

Thus, action is taken only when they have been offended, but never when they offend others. One has to wonder what is so great about displaying such thin skin? Won’t you wither under the sun?

Let us also demand Freedom from the Forgetful Politician, that is, those who forgot who voted them in. First off are those who insist that we should be grateful that they are there to lead us. Talk about a circular argument!

Then there are those who, although usually insisting that Malaysians are a unique species of people, totally different from everyone else in the world, are then quick to equate those same Malaysians with the worst of foreigners, those who riot, loot and destroy property.

Makes you wonder how that gels with our tourism campaigns. Are we supposed to be nice hospitable people or rioters?

One great freedom that I really wish we would give ourselves is Freedom from Snoopers, especially those intent on sticking their noses into our private lives. If one wants to create a moral society, then let’s widen that definition to include ethics instead of just keeping it totally focused on our sex lives.

A moral society is not just one where everyone behaves well sexually, if such a thing even exists, but also where people feel a strong civic duty to uphold the law, not be corrupt, treat the poorest and most vulnerable well, and protect and preserve the environment.

Instead, we have increasing official “busybodiness” coupled with the encouragement of society to be bu­sybodies. Thus our young feel that they are constantly under suspicion of doing something bad, even when they are not. Does this stop all sorts of social ills? Of course not.

Indeed we should also demand Freedom from the Ostrich, the stick-their-heads-in-the-sand attitude that insists that some things just don’t exist in our country. On the one hand there are people who see a conspiracy under every pebble and on the other there are those who just refuse to connect the dots.

For example, young people don’t have to become pregnant outside marriage if we educate them and provide the services they need to make the best choices. Instead, we refuse to educate them and then blame them for having babies out of wedlock. Some even insist that the solution is to marry them off early.

That’s where we need Freedom from the Short-sighted, those who only think in terms of short-term solutions and not the harm that will come many years down the line.

At heart, however, we still need the fundamental freedoms that every human being desires, especially freedom of speech and expression. Without these, the Snoopers, Ostriches, Short-sighted and all these others will continue to thrive and make our lives miserable.

Our foreparents understood that we had a fundamental right to freedom and self-determination 54 years ago. Let’s not forget that the next time we vote.

Merdeka!

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We are always an ‘exception’

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday August 17, 2011
We are always an ‘exception’
Musings
By Marina Mahathir


Malaysian policies often state that we are different and therefore cannot be compared with others. Yet those who join peaceful marches are likened to British rioters. Suddenly we are the same?

ARE we getting progressively schizophrenic? Judging by current responses to events around the world, it would be easy to conclude that we are.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses and to behave normally in social situations.

If you read up on Malaysian policies and statements on various issues, the one striking factor is our insistence on exceptionalism. That is, we are different and therefore cannot be compared with any other country.


Fiery aftermath: The violent riots in London left many properties in ruin. — AFP
In the early years of the AIDS pandemic, we thought we were protected because we were different. If non-Muslims in other Muslim countries use the word “Allah” for God with no fuss, ours can’t because we are different. We are apparently unique and incomparable to anyone else in the world.

Which is why it puzzles me that all of a sudden our citizens, or at least the ones who want to voice their opinions with peaceful assemblies and marches, are being compared to British rioters and looters.

If we are always different, how come suddenly we are the same?

Going by the statements of our leaders, basically we are nothing more than savages who would rob, rape, loot and pillage given half the chance. Therefore, we need all sorts of laws to keep us in check and not venture in groups of more than five outside our homes.

Now, this is why that schizophrenic inability to think logically comes into play. Despite evidence that none of the 30,000 or so peaceful marchers last July robbed, raped, looted or pillaged, our leaders insist that we would have. They must be looking at mirrors.

Just a few days ago the fellow who demonstrated how inconvenient a protest is by inconveniencing everyone in Penang declared that he would burn down two online news portals whose reports he disagreed with. Now if that’s not London rioter behaviour, I don’t know what is.

More disturbingly, after already having insulted all the good citizens who exercised their right to peaceful assembly, our leaders go on to insult them some more.

Instead of being proud that we did not have the type of violence that the UK experienced, instead of talking about how so much more civilised our people are, our leaders liken us to rioters who have vandalised, stolen and killed.

Talk about the inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

A certain amount of hypocrisy also rears its ugly head. What if Mark Duggan, the man who was shot by police in London and whose family’s peaceful protest became the original rallying cry for the rioters, was Mohamad Duggan?

Between 1987 and 1993 and 2000 and 2005, the Palestinian people went through two uprisings against the Israeli government, known as the First and Second Intifadas, respectively. Both Intifadas involved demonstrations, protests and, yes, a certain amount of violent rioting.

They were met with an even more violent response from the Israelis that resulted in many deaths and the eventual blockade of Gaza, still in force today.

Our government supported the Intifadas then. Does that mean that our government supports the right of Palestinians to demonstrate, protest and riot, but refuses its own people’s right to do much less, that is to just march peacefully?

Or is the logic that when governments are democratically elected, its people then lose the right to protest against them?

Conveniently ignored, too, is the fact that in the UK, protests and demonstrations are held all the time without the type of violence we saw recently.

One of the biggest was in 2003 when hundreds of thousands of people marched against the Iraq war. At the time we looked benignly at this because we had the same stand. Did we tell the Brits and others round the world that they should not demonstrate against the war?

So what is the message here? We may be trusted to peacefully protest as long as the subject of our protest is in sync with the Government’s. Otherwise, if we should protest for free and fair elections, against corruption or anything else that the Constitution gives us the right to, we are labelled as unpatriotic thugs out to disturb the peace and destroy the economy and image of our country.

Looking at the UK riots, are we even talking about the same thing? What cause was the UK rioters espousing?

Some wide reading instead of political posturing might be more beneficial here. The UK rioters did not loot bookshops, and some have suggested it’s because they don’t like to read.

Perhaps they are not unlike some of our politicians.

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The polarised world of politics

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday July 20, 2011
The polarised world of politics
Musings
By Marina Mahathir


Politicians of every stripe have two bad habits. Firstly, they think that those who don’t belong to any political party are incapable of having a single political thought. Secondly, when non-politicians think of a good populist idea, politicians of all stripes rush to hijack it.

George W. Bush, that giant of intellectuals, famously said after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks that “Either you’re with us, or you’re against us.”

Those words unleashed a world polarised by politics with no hope for peace, which necessarily requires a coming to the table of all sides to discuss common issues.

This “Us versus Them” mentality is an affliction that has befallen not only American politicians but many others around the world, including in our own country.

It creates an illness known as hyperpartisanship, which can be defined simply as “if you’re not on my side, you must be wrong.”

It’s the only explanation I can give for the consistently delusional statements that tend to come out from our politicians’ mouths.

To their minds, nobody can be right unless they’re on the same side.

Additionally, if you don’t agree with them, then you must surely be on the “other” side.

Politicians can’t seem to fathom anything but a bipolar world.

They can’t seem to get it into their heads that firstly, there may yet be a third (or fourth, fifth) way of looking at things, and secondly, that the ones with these different perspectives could conceivably be civilians.

Politicians of every stripe have two bad habits.

Firstly, they think those who don’t belong to any political party are incapable of having a single political thought.

They forget that every five years or so, it is they who insist that we think of politics when we go and vote.

Secondly, when non-politicians think of a good populist idea, politicians of all stripes rush to hijack it.

Non-politicians, otherwise known as civil society, then have to fight them off tooth and nail.

How many times have we had politicians turning up at big events organised by non-politicians and trying and making it sound as if it’s a big endorsement of themselves?

Some politicians are certainly more delusional than others.

Since Bersih 2.0 shocked them, they have been working overtime to demonise it.

It is one thing to badmouth the rally in the days before it happened but it’s quite shocking to see the pathetic attempts to paint it as a riot when it was clearly not.

From calling the teargassing “mild” to denying that the police had fired teargas into the Tung Shin Hospital, to trying to check the motives and bank accounts of those who went for the rally, our dear leaders insult us every day.

Yet all they have to do is, instead of surrounding themselves with sycophants who will only tell them what they want to hear, read all the heartrending and heartwarming personal accounts written by the many ordinary people who went to the Bersih 2.0 rally.

These were housewives, retirees and young people, all fearful of what violence they might encounter, but who steeled themselves to go and exercise their right to voice their opinions.

These were people who had probably never done anything more confrontational than argue with a salesperson in their entire lives, who faced teargas and water cannons fired at them by a government they probably voted in.

How much courage does it take to insult your own people from an airconditioned room compared to facing the FRU?

If our leaders think teargas is something mild, they should ask the FRU to try it on them.

I was lucky that day because I chose a route where the police decided not to deploy their gas and water cannons on us.

But many of my friends and colleagues were not so lucky. I feel ashamed that I suffered no more than tiredness, compared with what they so courageously went through.

And all our hapless leaders can do is call them names.

The people who went to Bersih 2.0 are Malaysians who will forever feel united and bound to each other because of that experience. Some may have been politicians and NGOs but so many more were just people of every race, religion, age and creed.

So many have said they never felt more Malaysian than they did that day.

At a time when everyone has been lamenting how divided we are, we came together. What more could we have wished for?

Perhaps we should take another leaf from Sept 11. In the wake of the death and destruction wreaked by the US government to avenge the World Trade Centre deaths, some of the families of those who died, horrified by such violent vengeance, started an NGO called Not In Our Name.

Perhaps those many decent Malaysians, the “silent majority” our leaders like to claim as their own, can come out and say that, even if they disagree with Bersih 2.0, they will not stand by and let their fellow citizens be insulted and abused in this way.

At least, not in their name

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Projecting the preferred image

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday July 6, 2011
Projecting the preferred image
Musings by MARINA MAHATHIR


Deliberately causing problems to solve a problem is an entirely ingenious idea, like blocking the Penang Bridge just to show how inconvenient a demonstration can be.

SINCE the subject has come up so often recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about our country’s image.

In the first place, why do we even think anyone else spends much time thinking about us? And secondly, when they do, why do we even care?

Obviously we do care since we seem obsessed with it.

And the main reason seems to be that if we did not have a good image in the eyes of foreigners, they won’t invest in us or visit us and therefore we’ll become poor.

Our standard of living, therefore, depends on what people think of us.

It rather reminds me of those days, when some people said we should not have any public campaigns on HIV/AIDS in case foreigners think we DO have the epidemic here and therefore won’t come.

We never thought that maybe foreigners might think better of us if we admitted we might have a problem but we are doing something about it, rather than be yet another country which prefers to sweep things under the carpet.

When it comes to the image of a country, it really depends on who you talk to.

Of course, we should be proud that we are almost a developed country with almost first-world facilities: great airport, great roads, good shopping malls.

We also have fantastic food and fairly hospitable people, especially to foreigners with money.

We may not be very nice to those without money, such as migrant workers and refugees, but we don’t care about them.

Unless, of course, their governments decide to stop sending domestic workers and we face the grim prospect of having to clean our own toilets.

On the other hand, we seem pretty unconcerned when our image gets a battering all round the globe for attempting to whip women for drinking in public, actually whipping them for having babies out of wedlock, forming clubs for obedient wives and sexually harassing women for allegedly breaking immigration laws. Or declaring poco-poco haram in one state out of 13.

I guess we don’t mind people laughing at us, as long as they still spend their money here.

So image, just like justice in this country, is a moving target.

It’s whatever we make it out to be.

While we complain about men who ride their motorbikes dangerously on the streets when nothing is happening, when we need them we simply put red T-shirts on them and call them patriots.

We should really send them to international conventions overseas as patriotic examples of Malaysian citizens. They must surely do wonders for our image.

We should also send those fine people who blocked the Penang Bridge the other day just to show how inconvenient a demonstration is, to conferences on innovative ways to solve problems.

Surely, deliberately causing problems to solve a problem is an entirely ingenious idea!

Yes, Malaysia’s people, especially its leaders, really do wonders for our image overseas.

Apparently as a moderate Mus­lim country, we have absolutely no qualms about behaving just like the less-than-moderate ones, the ones who are quite happy to turn thugs and tanks onto their own people.

We jeer at Western hypocrisy that supports tyrants and dictators when it suits them, but we don’t seem to be much different ourselves.

Our image of ourselves must sometimes mirror the image of those we want to attract.

We want to attract the deep-pocketed tourists from the Middle East and China, governments who also don’t look kindly on demonstrations.

Therefore, not tolerating demonstrations here is just part of our marketing strategy, just like providing airport announcements in their languages, encouraging little Arab villages in the middle of the city and other amenities to make them feel at home.

Perhaps we should mention it in our travel ads: “Come and shop in Malaysia.

“We shall ensure nothing will block your route to the malls”.

Our leaders are such intellectual giants that the concept of freedom and human rights has been distorted and diminished to only mean freedom and the right to shop and make money.

I love it when certain leaders defend their right to shop in places they have not stepped into for decades.

The sudden concern for the petty traders, mostly foreigners, who have not benefited from their wallets all this time, is so touching.

So it depends whose image we want to emulate.

In developed countries, millions can march peacefully and nothing happens to the economy.

In fact, their economies have been devastated more by smart-suited bankers than any street demo against the ensuing austerity drives.

Perhaps, in defining patriots and traitors, we should look at suits rather than T-shirts

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Struggling with ambiguity

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday June 22, 2011
Struggling with ambiguity
Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Not everybody assumes the best in other people. Some people say that if you let people demonstrate their wish for clean and fair elections, they will surely riot.

I HAD always assumed that as I become older, things would become much clearer. The whys and wherefores of life’s big questions become obvious, I will have more “Aha!” than “What?!” moments, and I will stop struggling with ambiguity and confusion.

Unfortunately, thanks to a short, fat little man with permed hair and straightened teeth, this is not happening.

I grew up thinking that fairness was a good value to have. Not fair skin, but being fair to one and all. Children have a natural sense of justice; they know when they are being unfairly treated. It’s only when they see people benefiting from injustice that their natural values start to adapt.


Civic-conscious citizens: It’s amazing that one million and more fiery hot-blooded Egyptians could turn up in Tahrir Square to protest against their government peacefully, even in the face of government tanks. Then after they succeeded in ousting their President, they turned up the next day to clean up the square. — EPA
Maybe something happened to that little man in his childhood. Did something happen somewhere in his murky history where he had to resort to underhanded means to get something?

Because it puzzles me enormously why anyone should be opposed to fair and clean elections. Has the world changed so much that dirty and unfair elections are more prized?

Say, if my child wanted to stand for election at school, should I tell her that she should do everything she can to win, including undermining her opponent? Is this the lesson I should be teaching her?

This year, I told her she could have a nice holiday if she did well in school. Lo and behold, she did. So, now, I have to fulfil my promise. This is fair, as my old values tell me. But under these new-fangled values vaunted by some loud people, I should not do this. I should instead find some excuse to not uphold my side of the deal.

Although upholding my promise will be expensive for me, I still win because it confirmed my faith in my daughter, that she can do well in school with a little push. I can’t imagine assuming that she would fail no matter what.

But not everybody assumes the best in other people.

Another thing that befuddles me is how some people say that if you let people demonstrate their wish for clean and fair elections, they will surely riot.

In the first place, I would have assumed that those who want dirty elections are more likely to go crazy in public places. Mostly because the rest of us won’t be able to help laughing at their banners that say “Dirty is good!” or “Who wants to fight fair?”

On the other hand, who would show anything but respect for people who may be shouting “Let us restore our dignity: keep our elections clean”. After all, dirty elections are more associated with very much less-developed countries, which, surely, we are not.

It’s such a Boy Scout thing, wanting fair elections. Have you ever known Boy Scouts to riot? Only thugs who have never sworn to do their best do that.

It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that those simply wanting something good like clean elections are likely to be doing things like throwing stones, overturning cars and maybe looting shops.

There is nothing that drives good things away more than fear-mongering, is there?

So, therefore, to stop this, the forces of, I don’t know, Anti-Clean want to go down there and ensure security. Sounds like the George Bush School of Pre-Emptive Strikes to me. Let’s bomb them before they bomb us.

Equally disingenuous is to say that wanting clean elections is playing politics. But, isn’t everyone playing politics these days? And is politics confined only to politicians?

So, if I wanted to have a big demo to say that “No child should go hungry”, is that or is that not a political act? And therefore, will there be a counter-demo that says “Who cares if some children are undernourished”, just because my demo might cause traffic jams? That’s how crazy the thinking has become.

I find it amazing that in mild-mannered conflict-avoiding Malay­sia, we assume that any gathering of more than five people will naturally turn into a riot.

Yet one million and more fiery hot-blooded Egyptians could turn up in Tahrir Square to protest against their government peacefully, even in the face of government tanks. Then after they succeeded in ousting their President, they turned up the next day to clean up the square!

So why not just make a deal with Bersih 2.0 to bersihkan the street the next day?

The confusion these days arises from the fact that thugs are given lots of leeway while perfectly normal people are made to feel like criminals, even before they do anything.

If that’s the norm these days, can someone make it official that justice and fairness are no longer values we uphold?

Then I’ll know what to teach my child.

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Signing off for the niceties

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday June 8, 2011
Signing off for the niceties
Musings
By Marina Mahathir


Civil servants, when writing to others, sign off with the phrase declaring themselves as servants of the people, their real masters in theory.

THE penny dropped for me the other night. It suddenly dawned on me that the ubiquitous sign-off “Saya yang menurut perintah” on government letters was in fact a translation of that quaint colonial bit of politesse, “Your obedient servant”.

While the latter may not have been meant at all sincerely (Humphrey the smarmy Chief Secretary in Yes Prime Minister comes to mind), still I find it fascinating that while we have studiously imitated all the administrative niceties of our former colonial masters, we have managed to go our own way on this little courtesy.

You see, “Saya yang menurut perintah” literally means, “I who obey orders”. This is not quite the same as “Your obedient servant” that should be translated as “Pembantu setia anda” or perhaps, more accurately, given the way we treat our helpers these days, “Hamba abdi setia anda”.

Not only are the words lost in translation, so is the sentiment behind them.

The English version, used by civil servants when writing to others, is meant to convey that they are servants of the people.

As I said, this may not be meant sincerely at all but, as the Brits would have it, correct form is everything.

Our version however begs the question: whose orders are you obedient to? Ostensibly, these should be orders by the government of the day and by extension, the people who voted them in.

We also pay the taxes that make the salaries of civil servants possible. And at over one million of them, that’s a lot of taxes.

But we all know that obeying their real masters, that is, us, is not really our civil service’s calling. So whose orders are they obeying?

It’s a valid question when you see so many cases where the people’s concerns seem to be dismissed in favour of, well, who knows?

For example, why are the residents of Gebeng’s worries about the Lynas rare earth plant hardly entertained? How is it, when we are supposed to become ever more developed, we are expected to hold ourselves to lower safety standards than Austra­lians?

When civil servants make life difficult for the people, what is that obedience for?

I read a sad story about someone who, finally, after years of trying, gave up staying in this country, where he was born and bred, because the family could not get their utilities fixed.

It might seem small but these are public amenities our taxes pay for, and we should not have to beg for them to be fixed. Why don’t we simply call ourselves a Third World country so that our expectations are not too high?

The other day I met someone who was so tired of trying to jump through the bureaucratic hoops trying to get his proposal approved that he went overseas to try and sell it. And did so with far less aggravation.

I can’t say whether his project has any merit, but I can understand his agitation at not being able to discuss facts and figures, merits and demerits without being passed from one clueless person to another.

So perhaps our bureaucracy ought to have a far more honest sign-off from now on. How about “Saya yang akan melambatkan (I who will slow things down)”?

Talking about obedience, every paper’s been abuzz about this obedient wives’ club this week. Talk about anachronistic; nobody has pushed this type of archaic concept since at least the 50s.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry to read of women degrading themselves like this, blaming everything on their own sex’s supposed inability to keep their men.

Life’s miseries are attributed to women smelling less than fragrant! Wow, who would have thought of that!

Not long ago, a male politician said the best Muslim wife is the one who would drop everything, undoubtedly even feeding the baby, every time hubby wants some nooky. He should be the patron saint of the OWC.

It does strike me as interesting that the guys who like to say these things are rarely the sort women would generally drop everything for. Do you think George Clooney ever has to even think about this?

I actually propose another club we women should join. It’s the Good Husband and Father Fan Club. Like any fan club, members will extol the virtues of the good husbands and fathers they know.

Hubbies who help at home and who do homework with their kids, for example, would qualify. If they are clean and smell nice, they would get lots of bonus points.

Each month there could be a Hubby and Father of the Month, and they would all compete for Hubby and Father of the Year.

And yes, their prowess in bed would also be a consideration

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Lending credence to stories

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday May 25, 2011
Lending credence to stories
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR
newsdesk@thestar.com.my


THE Americans have a term for when you’ve been fooled or had the wool pulled over your eyes. They say “you’ve been had”.

It’s not a nice term and it means that you weren’t smart enough to spot the trick.

I look at the recent kerfuffle over assumed religious attempts to take over the Government and am bewildered by the number of people who were had.

Some totally unreliable bloggers said on the Internet that a religious coup was about to take place; and like a pack of cards, any number of people fell for it.

First, it was a newspaper, which once refused to talk about any stories which appeared online first, on the basis that they cannot be true.

Then lo and behold, it fell hook, line and sinker for an Internet fabrication by these bloggers who are not known to have any objectivity at all.

So we believe the Internet when it suits us, do we?

Especially when they sensationalise stories that don’t make sense?

Whatever happened to the days when broadsheets were credited with journalistic integrity, I wonder.

I suppose it’s true that if you read rubbish, you will spew rubbish.

Hence, it was that our dear leaders, instead of being more cautious about repeating incredible stories, actually lent credence to them by saying they ought to be investigated.

I suppose engaging one’s brain before opening one’s mouth is not standard operating procedure for our politicians these days.

How wonderful to know that those we elected truly have no grey matter or even the good sense to know that to repeat dangerous nonsense is as good as endorsing them!

Only one sensible person sat down to do the numbers and proved that, even if anyone had any such intention, they could not possibly make it happen.

It simply does not add up.

In one of the most just concepts in Islam, God does nothing if one thinks of something bad, only when one actually does it.

On the other hand, one gets instant credit for thinking of something good, even without putting it into action.

Imagine how much pahala all these people could have gotten simply by thinking:

“Naah, they can’t possibly be thinking of anything so outrageous!”

I have a theory that everyone imposes on other people their own values, whether the others subscribe to them or not.

In other words, many people assume that everyone will act exactly like them if given the chance in any situation.

Therefore, one assumes that others will behave in a good or bad way because if put in the same situation, that’s exactly what one would do.

So what does it say about a person who assumes that if people of different faiths from them get together, they must surely be plotting something bad?

It means that if this person were in the same position, that is in a minority position facing much harassment from ruling authorities over one thing or another, then he would certainly be plotting to take over the country.

I suppose that’s why the American government worries about its Muslim citizens so much.

Surely, they reason, if we harass them all the time, they must be conspiring to do something bad, such as blow up a building, because that’s what we would do.

So, if half-witted so-called writers who, only by dint of their race are getting any attention at all here, were to be put in the middle of the US where they would be in the minority of minorities, then the first thing they would do is plot to overthrow the US government.

Ever heard of Don Quixote, anyone? Why, I have to ask myself, does our Government waste so much time on nonsense such as this, causing even more grief among much of its people, when there are much more important things to do?

Or is it more important to divide people with artificial issues, then to bring them together to face larger problems?

Don’t we have enough economic and social woes to keep us occupied already?

There are people who sniffed at the Middle East revolutions because we are apparently not miserable enough to revolt.

Carry on this way, and by default, life will become desperate enough to warrant rebellion.

I doubt if I’m the only one who is not interested in any government or leaders with religious-political overlays.

Rather, I would prefer leaders who have some sort of ethics in the way they handle things.

Whether the ethics come from religious beliefs doesn’t matter, so long as there are ethical underpinnings to what they do.

Is it so difficult to just be fair these days?

Is justice a moving target?

More importantly, why do we put our trust in people who think like this?

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Inured to violence and death

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday May 11, 2011
Inured to violence and death
Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Living in an environment where killing is flashed every day in the media, one can become numb to what it really means.

IN Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine, about the Columbine High School boys who gunned down their schoolmates and teachers, he postulated that one of the possible reasons they did this was that they lived in an environment that had become so used to death and killing that young people had become unable to think of these as real.

He pointed out that in the nearby area there was a factory that built cruise missiles meant to kill people thousands of miles away, death machines for distant lands and peoples.

It is perhaps true that when you live in an environment where death and destruction are beamed to you every day in the media, you become immune to what these really mean.


Tragic day: Rescuers attending to the wounded near Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, during a shooting rampage by two students in 1999. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives. — AP
Recently, an American Red Cross study among teenagers in the US found that more than 60% of them supported torture as a valid way of obtaining information from prisoners of war.

This was a far cry from the attitude of their parents and grandparents who, after World War Two, supported the 1949 Geneva Conventions that made illegal the use of torture on such prisoners.

But yet unsurprising when you consider the amount of propaganda American teenagers are subject to every day about how the information being obtained from those held in Guantanamo is what is keeping them safe from terrorists, and supposedly led to the killing of the so-called Chief Terrorist.

No wonder then that there was much champagne-pouring and patriotic jubilation when the news got out that the Chief Terrorist had been killed.

Although some were appalled at this unseemly celebration, especially at the site of the World Trade Centre, others gloated because this was exactly what some Muslims had also done when more than 3,000 people – mostly Americans, but some Muslims too – died on Sept 11, 2001.

Apparently in revenge for those earlier celebrations, one should also party now.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

But what has become of this world where we have accepted that violence and death are simply what should happen to people we don’t like, especially if they are distant and foreign? How have we managed to numb ourselves to it all?

In the aftermath of last Sunday’s events in Pakistan, a quote attributed to Dr Martin Luther King Jr travelled via social media all round the world.

“I mourn the death of thousands,” he was reported to have said, “but I do not rejoice in the death of one, even an enemy.”

It turned out that Dr King never said any such thing, or at least not in those exact words. But it is not a bad sentiment, and the fact that it went round the world so quickly does show that there are many who believe it.

I had the opportunity to visit the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Centre in Atlanta recently.

Reading the history of his life and looking at the photographs, especially of the marches against segregation, it seems incredible that only 40 years or so ago, African-Americans had to suffer the indignity of discrimination just because of the colour of their skin.

More incredible still was the violence that various state authorities used to enforce this discrimination, not to mention vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Yet Dr King and his supporters fought patiently and relentlessly against all this, without using violence. And today an African-American is President of the United States.

I wonder what Dr King would have thought of the state of affairs the world finds itself in today, where violence, death and destruction are commonplace, even as state policy.

What would he have thought of the two hours it takes to get out of his hometown’s airport if you arrive from an international destination ... because your bags have to be X-rayed three times and every single arriving passenger is treated as if he or she is potentially a suicide bomber?

Or that, the day after the Chief Terrorist died, there was a global security alert, which now seems ridiculously unfounded.

I think he would have preferred to look at what is happening in the Middle East and applaud the tenacity of Arabs, especially the young, in pushing for the freedom and democracy that African-Americans too wanted in the 60s.

Especially the fact that they are doing it peacefully, in the face of much state violence, willing to die – and indeed dying, just like Dr King – for their cause.

He would have pointed out that the so-called Chief Terrorist, because he was not interested in freedom and democracy either, was in fact more akin to unpopular dictators.

We are yet to experience any of the violence others have undergone or are going through. But let’s not underestimate the power of violent words to set the tone of the environment we live in.

Note: No reproduction of this article is allowed without the author's consent.

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No knee-jerk policies, please

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday April 27, 2011
No knee-jerk policies, please
Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Unnecessary negative publicity and ridicule can be avoided if wider consultations are held before the implementation of any plan.

I DON’T know what is more annoying, a government that doesn’t think things through or one that doesn’t and then expects us not to notice.

This past week there have been two unforgivably annoying announ­cements that are clear examples of a government or its officials who live in a world so isolated that they are incapable of anticipating anything but praise for their ideas.

The first was the bizarre idea that everyone should have the same e-mail address.


Taking it in their stride: Participants at the boot camp in Besut, Terengganu, doing a march. The purpose of the camp has drawn flak from many quarters.
Either whoever okayed this idea has no clue about what the Internet is all about or they were genuinely naïve enough to think that people would actually fall for this scheme.

When privacy issues are hot talking points among everyone who uses the Internet, how could the instigators of this scheme not have thought that people would immediately become suspicious about its intentions?

Would we all be suddenly subjected to government-issued spam, including those that tell us who to vote for? Worse still, would our e-mail be spied on?

All these concerns are perfectly natural if you operated like normal people and if you took the trouble to think them through.

But from the immediate backtracking that occurred, it became clear that someone had either the wool pulled over their eyes or been so dazzled by the idea that Malaysians, babies and old people included, would be inescapably connected to the government — as if with our identity cards we weren’t already trapped into the system enough.

I won’t say anything about the company that had been given the contract to do this scheme, except that they must be revising their business plan downwards every single day ever since the news broke.

There may still be people who think this is a nice idea but I doubt it’ll turn anyone into a billionaire. No, we don’t yet have a Malaysian Zuckerberg.

The next half-baked scheme was of course the “boot camp” for effeminate boys in Terengganu which has managed to offend just about anyone who read about it.

Firstly, there were questions about how and why schoolboys should be singled out just for showing outwardly “feminine” traits and sent off to camp to have these ironed out of them.

Then some confused psychology lecturer managed to anger mothers by blaming them for supposedly turning their sons soft by making them do housework.

It’s interesting that nobody blames fathers for not being there to teach their progeny to use drills and chainsaws.

Soon the back-pedalling began in earnest.

First they claimed that the camps were in fact to instil patriotism, not change the limp-wristed into tougher souls.

It begs the question of why the gentler ones should be seen as less patriotic. But given the types of politicians we have these days, I suppose extreme machismo is equated to greater patriotism.

Then it was not about patriotism but about instilling confidence. It seems that our gentler sons have less confidence than the more hard-boiled ones, perhaps because they are less inclined to try and break their heads on Friday nights screaming down city streets on their motorbikes.

I would, however, argue that it takes great confidence to pluck one’s eyebrows and take an interest in fashion in a boys’ school, so these boys hardly seem in need of confidence topping-up.

Still, they came out of it gushing over what fun the camp was. Which I’m sure it was.

The latest news contained that standard line about the media having totally misquoted the original announcement about the boot camps. How amazing that a reporter would have plucked the word “effeminate” out of thin air!

Where do they get silly ideas like that? And how is it that the denial about the sexuality selection should take a whole week to come out?

Meanwhile, of course, the news has gone round the world and once again other earthlings are laughing at us.

We did get some kudos because one minister had the temerity to condemn the entire scheme as violating the Child Act.

But generally the rest of the world thinks rightly that we’re a bunch of idiots, thanks to some state bureaucrat who forgot that news like this doesn’t stay under the coconut shell, nor that people are likely to passively nod their heads and applaud its brilliance.

Is it too much to ask that we have no knee-jerk policies but more carefully considered ones? Wouldn’t all this unnecessary negative publicity be avoided if only wider consultations had been held?

If I had been consulted, I might have laughed hysterically at first but eventually I would have given wise counsel: save the money and just encourage our kids, all of them, to be who they are. They’ll love us in return.

Note: No reproduction of this article is allowed without the author's consent.

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In defence of women’s rights

================================
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday April 13, 2011
In defence of women’s rights
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR
newsdesk@thestar.com.my


We have long been told that human rights has no place in religion, especially Islam, so it was an incredibly profound experience to listen to imams saying that it is crucial to defend human rights, especially women’s rights.

WHEN things are really miserable, what we need most is hope. Sometimes that comes by meeting people who behave in unexpected ways.

I have just returned from a meeting of human rights defenders organised by the Carter Centre and Emory University in Atlanta, USA. The theme this year was Of Heaven and Earth: Religion, Belief and Women’s Rights.

To say that it was an extraordinary meeting is to put it mildly.

The participants, from all over the world, were people who fight all sorts of human rights violations, especially of women’s rights.

There was a woman journalist from Jordan who had led a campaign against honour killings (the killing of women for allegedly dishonouring their family names, sometimes just by looking at a male stranger). The campaign was so successful that today, people can be jailed for a minimum of 10 years for it.

There were those fighting for justice for the women rape victims of soldiers during the war in the “Democratic” Republic of Congo and those who successfully made more than 40,000 villages in Senegal pledge to end the horrific custom of female genital cutting (FGC).

The most astonishing aspect of the conference for me was that so many of these human rights defenders were religious leaders, both Muslims and Christians.

When for so long we have been told that human rights has no place in religion, especially Islam, it was an incredibly profound experience to listen to imams saying that it is crucial to defend human rights, especially women’s rights because the violations are in fact un-Islamic.

I listened open-mouthed as Tostan, an NGO in Senegal, a mostly Muslim country, described how for many years they had worked to educate religious leaders, tribal chiefs and “cutters” themselves that FGC is not an Islamic practice, and that there is nowhere in the Quran that says it should be performed.

Village by village they went educating people but without judging their long-held beliefs and customs.

Tostan understood that people had been doing FGC for years simply because it was tradition.

They brought together chiefs from different villages, all Muslims, where some practised FGC and some did not, thereby disproving that it was Islamic.

I listened as Imam Cherif Diop described how human rights is not incompatible at all with Islam.

A custom like FGC only brings misery, ill-health and even death to young girls. Therefore it cannot be Islamic.

Oureye, a former cutter, an immensely dignified old lady, described how she had followed her grandmother’s and mother’s roles as cutters in the village.

“Although I did not go to school, I was always keen to learn,” she said.

So when she heard that Tostan was conducting programmes to educate people on health and human rights, she joined.

What she learned from the programme led her not only to abandon FGC, even though it meant a substantial loss of income but to also become one of the best educators against FGC.

When I listened to these wonderful people, I wondered which country was really more developed.

Senegal, where there was change for the better led by religious leaders, or Malaysia, where religious leaders have no interest in bettering our lives on earth, only supposedly for the afterlife.

Indeed, recently, despite there being no Quranic or health evidence for it, our National Fatwa Council passed a fatwa that made female circumcision a must for Muslim women.

In Malaysia, although it can be done in very sterile conditions, it remains an unnecessary procedure and meant to supposedly control female sexuality.

The chair of the conference was former US President Jimmy Carter who, with his wife, have made it their mission to defend human rights everywhere.

They have programmes, for instance, in Liberia that provide access to justice to victims of the recent civil war, especially women who have suffered rape, and children born of those rapes.

The couple are profoundly religious people in the Southern Baptist Christian tradition but see defending human rights as part of their duty as Christians.

A few years ago, they left the church they had attended all their lives because it had issued a statement that wives must always submit to their husbands.

To the Carters, this was a gross violation of women’s rights.

As the former president put it: “I support human rights because I am a Christian; I am a Christian because I support human rights.”

Similarly, Professor Abdullahi An-Naim, an Islamic scholar teaching at Emory University, who had once been a political prisoner in Sudan, stressed that “I support human rights because I am a Muslim; I am a Muslim because I support human rights”.

By that he meant universal human rights, not some special Muslim version of it.

When I read of what was happening at home, where both religious leaders and politicians treat women with such disdain, I wonder if perhaps I should move to Senegal instead.

At least there I can see change for the better.

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