A pall over New Year joy

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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 January 7, 2009
A pall over New Year joy
MUSINGS BY MARINA MAHATHIR


The Palestinian problem is one of injustice, not about religion. And injustice cannot be overcome by more violence.

THE end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 probably ranks as among the worst ever. Just when we thought we could take a break from the turmoil and turbulence of the past year, we got no respite.

Perhaps most people will not care, but the invasion of Gaza by the Israelis cast a huge pall over the festivities for me.

Our reliance on international media agencies to get news on Gaza means that we get information that are either totally biased on the Israeli side or subtly biased.

Either way, the news tends to lay the blame on Hamas, which was democratically elected to rule the Palestinians, for “starting it all”. That limits people’s memory of things.

What started it all was a decision to send European Jews to Palestine to start a new country. The fact that there were already people there seemed to concern no one, not even to this day.

If you were living quietly in your home and someone just moved in and took over your home, I would think you have a right to get mad.

And if you’re then forced to live in refugee camps in your own land and starved of every basic amenity, forced to go through military checkpoints every day just to get to work, then you would be forgiven for getting frustrated and upset. It’s simply unjust.

As many leaders around the world have pointed out, the Palestinian problem is one of injustice, not about religion. After all, Palesti­nians are both Muslim and Christian.

Israel violates international law every day with no punishment, all the while blaming the Palestinians for “starting it all”.

How do home-made rockets compare with American-made missiles, F-16 warplanes, heli­copter gunships and tanks?

And while rockets may be terrifying, they are nowhere near as deadly as missiles. Since this invasion started, four Israelis have died compared with at least 500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the first nine days of Operation Cast Led.

Even Israeli columnists in Haaretz, the leading newspaper there, are questioning this incredibly disproportionate response.

Yet, without major supporters, Israeli could not possibly ignore international opinion. The US has unequivocally stated its support for Israel, calling it the US’ “greatest ally”.

What benefits to the US this alliance brings is a mystery. Even prominent American Jews like George Soros are asking why the US is so supportive of Israel when it gets nothing but grief in return.

What’s more, there are also charges that the United Nations is also complicit in this massacre by constantly emphasising that “25% of those murdered are civilians” and that “women and children” are being killed.

This implies that 75% of those killed are militants and not civilians, and that all men in Gaza can be described as militants, instead of teachers, doctors, workers and unemployed.

Amnesty International has also condemned the disproportionate attacks on largely defenceless peoples, listing out all the children killed by Israeli missiles.

On the other hand, the rest of us must also react in a reasonable way, no matter how angry it makes us. Injustice cannot be overcome by more violence.

Just as the Israeli missiles are not going to stop the Hamas rockets, neither is more violence, including suicide bombings, going to stop more artillery raining down on the long-suffering Palestinians.

But it behooves the more powerful side to stop first, because the less powerful has the right to defend itself against such attacks. But thus far, despite international calls for a ceasefire, Israel is ignoring them.

There are some of us who say that this is none of our business. That it’s so far away and, besides, all sides are unreasonable. But such thinking ignores the impact this conflict has on everyone around the globe.

This festering wound known as the Palesti­nian conflict is why so many people see the US as not living up to its democratic and human rights ideals.

Which is what makes life unsafe for Ameri­cans, because some people get angry enough to do crazy things. Which in turn makes life miserable for Muslims everywhere because they are then branded as “terrorists”.

Whereas Israel, which starves people and deprives them of the very basic necessities and forces 1.5 million people to live in what is essentially a concentration camp, gets away smelling sweet. Is that justice?

The world is all interlinked now; anything that happens anywhere in the world will sooner or later have an impact on everyone else. The economic crisis in the US is also far away but it still affects us.

If we ignore what is blatantly an injustice just because it is far away, does that mean that our concept of justice is selective?

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Let’s focus on what we can do

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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 17, 2008
Let’s focus on what we can do
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


IT’S been a long time since I’ve made my lists, so in keeping with recent issues I thought I would make a list of fatwas (edicts) I’d like to see.

Now, some people think that I have something against fatwas. Actually, I think fatwas can be helpful in providing guidance to Muslims on how to conduct their lives. But I do have issues with fatwas that deal only with petty things while ignoring much more important things in life.

What’s more, most fatwas seem to be only about what you cannot do, rather than what you can do.

Having seen how the National Fatwa Council will respond to individual complaints and suggestions for fatwas, I thought I would come up with a list of “Can Do” fatwas they should consider issuing.

None of them will attract punishment if not adhered to, at least not in this world. But I think they would go a long way towards making Muslims, and even non-Muslims, better people. So here goes.

We should have fatwas that:

1. Tell people that the only way to make money is to work hard.

No get-rich-quick schemes that promise you can earn thousands in a week, no pyramid plans, no going to bomohs, no cosying up to the influential, and certainly no bribery and corruption.

2. Say that women can be leaders in any field or workplace, as long as they treat those they lead with equality and fairness.

And those men who have problems with women being leaders are forgetting that the Prophet Muham- mad used to work for his wife Khatijah; and that everyone considered Aishah, the youngest of his wives, a respected leader in her community.

3. Emphasise that the best men are those who never neglect their wives and children, even when they are no longer married to the wo- men.

Therefore, men who abscond from their duties are not to be excused or celebrated in any way.

4. Say that the best parents are those who stay home and read with their children and help them with their homework every school night.

5. Emphasise that the best Mus- lims are those who read the Quran and work to understand it.

6. Say that discriminatory attitudes towards people different from ourselves are not allowed in Islam.

7. Outline ways in which we should show consideration for one another, such as by keeping public toilets clean, not throwing rubbish everywhere and not parking indiscriminately so that other people are inconvenienced.

8. Point out that envy and jealousy are the worst traits anyone could have, especially when other people are successful.

The good Muslim should be happy for others when they are successful and not begrudge them or cast aspersions on their abilities.

9. Encourage charity to be active and not passive.

Charity means actually devoting time and effort to doing something to help others and not merely writing cheques. Charity also means helping those truly in need and not just to get attention.

10. Underscore that a good Muslim is one that is polite and well-mannered, and should never curse, swear and act in an offensive manner to others, especially women, the disabled and people from other communities.

This is not least because such bad manners reflect poorly on one’s upbringing and is therefore disrespectful to one’s own parents.

11. Take to task judges in any court who are biased towards anyone based on sex, race, religion or creed.

12. Declare fatwas and laws that are unjust as null and void.

13. Encourage people to be happy by doing what makes them happy, such as by making music, creating art or engaging in sport, as long as they don’t harm anyone else.

And if these things offend anyone, they have to say clearly why they are offended so that they do not spoil everyone else’s fun.

14. Remind people that nature is a gift from God and should not be taken for granted, nor disrespected and exploited.

Disasters are not to be blamed on God when there are perfectly human explanations for them. Keeping our rivers, forests and air clean is the duty of each of us, not someone else’s.

15. Emphasise that learning and being knowledgeable is also a duty because it helps us to be better people and citizens.

Furthermore, we should learn from far and wide and especially learn science and technology.

16. Encourage people to deal with real-life problems with contemporary solutions and not pretend they don’t exist, or deal with them through unjust solutions or hocus pocus.

17. Assures people that life is not a booby trap where you spend all your time trying to avoid small mistakes out of fear of major retribution.

God is Ever Merciful and Com- passionate and understands that you’re only human.

That’s my fatwa wish list for 2009. May at least some come true!

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Bogged down by negativity

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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 3, 2008
Bogged down by negativity
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


We need to change our culture from a disabling one to an enabling one. But, first, we need to change those in charge of reform.

When you have children growing up, part of the challenges of parenthood is to ensure that they make their way safely in the world without being so protected that they can never be independent.

While we warn them of the many dangers out there, we also want them to be curious and creative so that they may learn to be innovative.

Incurious people or those unwilling to take risks never made great scientific discoveries or found solutions to the world’s problems.

To do that, they must have the freedom to think and to explore the world around them. They must live in an environment that nurtures that curiosity rather than suppresses it, that allows expressions of ideas rather than beats them down.

When I look around our current environment, I wonder how we are ever going to produce that kind of citizen. Every day, we are told about the great many things we cannot do, rather than what we can do.

Our emphasis is to take the same old course in life, to keep our heads down and ask no question. We think of those who see things differently, who ask awkward questions and will not take no for an answer, as aberrations, rebels or sometimes even apostates.

When Barack Obama made his victory speech, his simple message of “Yes We Can” struck a chord even with non-Americans. It was a message that was positive and full of hope. Yet some leaders are not trying to fill us with that optimism, that while times are hard we can still overcome it if we work together.

Instead, we see petty issues being made gargantuan and a constant negativism being touted. The good and the upright are the ones who sit obediently and demand nothing while the evil and the lost are those who demand answers to life’s problems and reject simplistic ones. Everything is a big no-no; life feels like a giant minefield we have to navigate, lest one wrong move results in us being blown to pieces.

How do we innovate if we constantly have to think of whether our souls can survive? What new things can we discover if we’re constantly told to take no risk?

How do we solve the big problems of the world when we are constantly being distracted by minutiae?

The polio vaccine would never have been found if Dr Jonas Salk had not discovered that injecting someone with dead poliomyelitis viruses would cause the body to produce antibodies against it.

The result of this discovery is that thousands of people all over the world were saved from this crippling disease. A few years later Dr Albert Sabin discovered the non-invasive form of immunisation by giving children polio drops.

These types of discoveries would not have happened if these two people had not used their brains to find creative solutions. But imagine if someone had told them that they needed to get dispensation from some religious authority first or they lived in an environment where thinking of new ways to solve a problem was discouraged?

Despite 50 years of efficacy, as late as 2003, some Nigerian Muslim authorities saw it fit to make unfounded claims about the polio drops, resulting in this easily eradicable disease spreading to 12 new countries within 18 months.

How do we expect our children to find the next big thing, perhaps a cure for AIDS, when they live in such an un-nurturing environment? When the mainstays of policy are not sound and rational research but personal whims and fancies which brook no dissent from anyone else?

Perhaps that is the real reason behind our inertia regarding reforming our education system. Why should we change it to one that makes our children think, because then they will ask even more awkward questions.

Perhaps we realise that in order to reform our education system, we have to first reform those of us who are in charge of that reformation.

And those people are notoriously unwilling to do so because once that is done, it will be like opening Pandora’s Box.

Imagine, suddenly lots and lots of young people will be asking endless questions! And we might not be able to answer them, or worse, tell them they should not be asking such questions at all.

Yet, among a thousand annoying questions, there might be one really brilliant one that lets us think in a new way. By not allowing the many, we may never find that one that can change our lives for the better. What a loss that would be!

We need to change our culture from a disabling one to an enabling one. But it won’t happen if we allow the negativists to rule.

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Open the minds of the young

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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 19, 2008
Open the minds of the young
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


For there to be an intellectual renaissance at university level, we must have students whose minds have been primed from young to be open to new ideas.

YEARS ago when my daughter was getting her UPSR results, I waited at home chewing my nails. She had refused to let me accompany her to school for the results so I had to wait, hardly able to breathe, at home.

Luckily she had a happy score to give me and we all celebrated afterwards.

As I scanned photos of anxious parents waiting, I recall that time and sympathise. No matter what anyone says about how standards are slipping, you still worry for your children and want them to successfully get over this hurdle.

It is only when you do not have children going through this process, that you begin to look at our exam-oriented education system with a more dispassionate eye.

We groan and moan about how our kids are only learning to pass exams and nothing else, yet every year we exult in the numbers of As our kids get.

Each exam cycle, we reinforce the importance of As even while we complain about how our children are automatons who are unable to think creatively or apply whatever they learnt.

The other week our Deputy Prime Minister called for “an intellectual renaissance to open up and liberate the minds of students”, stating that this should start in universities.

While I agree that we should certainly have such a renaissance, surely starting at university level is just way too late.

How do you undo twelve years of robotic learning and the total suppression of curiosity and enquiry?

For there to be an intellectual renaissance at university level, you must have students whose minds have been primed from young to be open to new ideas.

Yet in both primary and secondary school, children are generally not encouraged to ask too many questions or to use their own initiative to find answers that they need.

The sole purpose of school is to get through the syllabus and to be ready for exams. How do you have an intellectual renaissance (which means “rebirth”) when you have not given birth to it, nor nurtured it in the first place?

We complain about the quality of graduates that our universities are producing and how unemployable they are. But did this unemployability start in university or even sooner?

If you come to university without the necessary skills to cope with whatever “intellectual” acumen you are supposed to pick up there, can three years bring you up to speed?

Last August, I had the opportunity to visit a wonderful project called the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Set up to provide tertiary education to young women from poor families around Asia, the AUW aims to produce women leaders who will go back and become assets to their own countries.

New students do not go straight to university courses. Instead they begin at the Access Academy where they are taught four subjects; English, Mathematics, Computer skills and Critical Thinking.

When I met them, the first batch of students had been there only four months. But they spoke excellent English and were able to give highly sophisticated presentations using computer and video­making skills.

They could articulate what they wanted for their own futures. The Cambodian girls, for instance, were envisioning what they themselves might do for their country were they to take over the helms of government.

These girls came from even less-advantaged backgrounds than many of our own back home. Yet their confidence was impressive.

One student even wrote to me to correct something I had written afterwards. You just know that these girls are going to become something one day.

So why can’t we do the same thing? Why can’t we spend time and money to prepare our students for that intellectual “renaissance” by teaching them what they really need? Critical thinking particularly is something they could all use.

Of course for them to be able to use their skills effectively at university, you need university environments that are open, liberated and conducive to debate and discussion. Otherwise university is simply an extension of school. And we’ve seen what that produces.

As the AUW has shown, English is an important skill that every potential leader needs. I am heartened to see that most UPSR students answered their Maths and Science papers in English. Hopefully, that would discourage any move to reverse the policy.

Indeed it should be reason to extend the policy to include other subjects or at least to have innovative programmes to improve English proficiency.

All parents want their children to have a good education. I doubt any parent would be selfish enough to seriously disadvantage their child for merely political reasons.

If that happens, I fear the day when students graduating from a new university in Bangladesh would be more employable than any from ours.

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Energised and empowered

==================================
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 5, 2008
Energised and empowered
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Even if we don’t have all the religious knowledge, we still have a conscience. And it tells what is right and what is wrong.

EARLIER this year I attended a workshop by two female Indonesian Islamic scholars. It is rare that I would leave such a workshop feeling good but this one left me feeling energised and empowered.

These two women undoubtedly had all the religious educational credentials. They knew their Quran and hadiths thoroughly.

But what was different was that they were able to apply their knowledge to real-life situations and were able to see how misinterpretations can lead to injustices, the very opposite of what Islam intends.

In the course of the workshop, they were asked about the frequent criticism thrown at people like me who are critical of religious scholars who pronounce unjust edicts. Apparently, I am not allowed to criticize because I never studied at a religious institution, am female and don’t cover my head.

The two women scholars had a very simple answer to that: even if we don’t have all the knowledge, we still have a conscience. So if something feels wrong, it probably is.

We are all given a conscience which acts like an internal compass, which tells us what is right and what is wrong. Regardless of what religion we profess, our conscience tells us the same things. This is why nobody can say that killing is ever right, for instance.

Thus, when certain people claim that women hold a lesser position in the eyes of God, you know in your heart that that cannot be right.

Similarly, with other claims that just don’t sit right in your conscience, the ones that ensure that certain people are discriminated against, or are just unfair; you know that they cannot possibly be right in a religion that places justice and equality front and centre.

Of late, there have been several religious issues that have been greeted with howls of protest by people of conscience. Yet there are others who say that such pronouncements must never be questioned because ‘highly intelligent and expert’ people make them.

How one knows this is questionable, since the process of passing fatwas is hardly transparent.

When questioned why there are no fatwas on corruption and other contemporary blights on society, the response is that these things are in the Quran and ‘everyone’ already knows they are haram. If that were so, then why is it that corruption is so rampant?

I accept that fatwas are to clarify things that are unclear. But that unclear nature means that it is open to interpretation that, in turn, is subject to human fallibility.

Contemporary issues that did not exist in the time of Prophet Mohamed are not mentioned in the Quran. Therefore, modern religious scholars have to transpose Quranic guidance onto these issues, a process that is fraught with danger, not least because contemporary issues are often complicated and require sophisticated research.

You have to wonder about priorities, however. What endangers a society more; corrupt citizens and leaders or yoga practitioners and females who dress in a masculine fashion?

Yet there are so many of us who are unwilling to trust our own conscience and would prefer to trust the robed and the turbaned to make rulings on things which we should be able to judge on our own.

We do have choices, and we make our choices by listening to our conscience. Yet there are so many who say that we should not question any such rulings, even when our conscience tells us that they cannot be just.

We never seem to wonder why is it there are no positive fatwas at all, those that tell us that we can do something rather than forbidding us. It does not take much thought to simply forbid every contemporary challenge; it takes much more intelligence to encourage people to move forward and face them by themselves.

Sometimes it seems that we believe ourselves to be babies who constantly need our hands to be held so that we don’t fall. Yet it is when we fall that we learn how to stabilise ourselves and learn to walk properly.

At the moment, we can hardly breathe for fear of finding ourselves on the path to hell. What a great atmosphere to grow in.

If we need fatwas to clarify, then perhaps we should have the National Fatwa Council make a ruling on the following: And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess. Thus it is more likely that ye will not do injustice. (Surah An-Nisa 4:3)

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