No knee-jerk policies, please

================================
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.
==================================

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.

Read More

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.
==================================




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.

Read More

It’s not all about the politicians

================================
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.
==================================





Wednesday March 30, 2011
It’s not all about the politicians
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


People are supposed to get into politics to do something for us, the people who voted them in. It’s not at all about them and what they can get out of it.

I HAVE just returned from a holiday in the pristine Scottish countryside where my head and my lungs imbibed very clean air. Unfortunately, as soon as I got home and read a local newspaper, I felt polluted again.

How do we get away with printing these lurid stuff all over the front pages? Aren’t we concerned our children might read them?

I know we’ve been through this several times before, all of it more disgusting than the last, but I keep hoping that one day our newspapers might rise above the gutter. But what am I thinking? They never do!

What is worse for me this time is that there are three personalities trying to make themselves seem like paragons of morality. At the very least, the fact of revealing this horrible video taints them with the most muddied brush there is.

I make no judgments about the contents of the video or whoever is in it. But I do question the judgment of people, politicians or not, who feel they can get away with behaviour they’d happily pass laws against as long as it affects someone else.

I’m still waiting for a politician who will state, as part of his election campaign platform, that his party will get rid of all moral policing laws, for all communities.

If we put private behaviour where it belongs, behind closed doors, there will be no opportunity to try and blackmail anyone.

But then politics is all about hypocrisy, isn’t it? It’s not about making people’s lives better by passing laws and policies that actually benefit people.

Instead it has become all about proving that someone else is dirtier than you, and therefore, relatively speaking, you come out smelling slightly rosier. At least that’s what you hope.

The truth is, there isn’t much to differentiate between one and the other; all sides smell like excrement.

Is it any wonder that when I talk to young people, I find they are so turned off by politics? They have no role models in politics anymore because almost every single one is tainted in some way. Or if not tainted, so despicably boorish and hateful that they are just as unappealing.

I don’t recall fan pages being set up for people who make insulting remarks about women in Parliament, for example. Is there a single politician on the national stage that gives any young person hope at all?

I really wonder how some people want to be remembered in history. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be remembered for having elevated your own people, whether economically or intellectually, rather than for having dragged them straight into the gutter?

Wouldn’t it be better to get accolades for taking young people to a higher plane and exploiting their potential, than making them read pornography in the papers every day?

What is the point of constantly trying to censor the Internet, supposedly to protect our children, when they can read filth in every paper?

Have we forgotten that elsewhere in the world people are dying either from natural disasters or being shot at by their own rulers, and that there is an impending nuclear disaster hovering over us?

Who cares who’s sleeping with whom when we’re all going to be glowing from radioactive fallout.

Is it too much to hope for some civility to return to our political life, where people may disagree with one another but still respect each other, where private matters stay private because ultimately we all have to go before the one Judge in the end?

I may not personally like a public figure who betrays his wife with someone else, but when it comes to politics, it’s not about him, it’s about the rest of us (though of course I would doubt his ability to make women-friendly policies).

I think that’s what’s been forgotten. That people are supposed to get into politics to do something for us, the people who voted them in. That it’s not at all about them and what they can get out of it, but what we can get out of them.

Every five years or so, we march off to the polls to make an investment in our future, not theirs. Of course, if they do well for our future, theirs is assured, too. If not, then they should be booted out.

Right now, I wish all our politicians would realise that they are all found wanting in one way or another. I can’t really think of a single one I would be thrilled to sit next to at dinner and have a scintillating conversation with.

And if they bring up sex scandals, I swear I would just get up and leave. That’s all they deserve.

Read More

Salute to heroes – and heroines

================================

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. ==================================

Wednesday March 16, 2011

Salute to heroes – and heroines Musings

By MARINA MAHATHIR

To the many men and women I have known over the years – some world-famous, some not – thanks for showing me the true value of life and how to cherish it.

I AM a week late for International Women’s Day, but since it is the 100th anniversary of this special day, I don’t think it matters.

I thought I would do a list of people who’ve done a lot for women over the years, who still are making an impact, and who really deserve to be recognised.

This is in no particular order and covers only those I’ve known personally. Some are world-famous, while others are not. But they all deserve mention.

1. My first dedication is actually to three women who are no longer here – Basariah, Lim and Suzana. All three were HIV-positive and died eventually of complications from AIDS-related diseases. But in their lifetimes, they taught many of us about the true value of life and how to cherish it.

2. Prof Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh who, through his microcredit programmes, has raised the incomes of so many poor women and empowered many of them to take charge of their lives. Many Grameen women have stood for local council elections and won. I hope this inspiring man will overcome his recent troubles soon.

3. Kamal Ahmad, the founder of the Asian University of Women (AUW), also in Bangladesh. The AUW is dedicated to providing tertiary education to young women from all over Asia, especially if they would never have access to such education otherwise. AUW students now come from 12 countries, including Afghanistan and Palestine, and if the recent symposium I attended in Dhaka is any indication, these girls will definitely be leaders in their countries one day.

4. My local heroines Zainah Anwar, Ivy Josiah and Datuk Ambiga Sreenivasan who have done so much for women in Malaysia, trying to protect them from violence and unjust laws. They are my mentors.

5. Nafis Sadik and Thoraya Obaid, the two immediate past heads of UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund). Both Muslim, both formidable, both great role models to younger women everywhere.

6. Mona Eltahawy, my favourite current affairs commentator, especially on the Middle East goings-on. So smart, so sharp, so passionate. An antidote to all the dull ones we have at home.

7. My late grandpa Mohd Ali Taib, who wouldn’t let his daughter, my mum, get married until she finished her studies. She started her medical studies late and finished even later after having had to repeat two years. No supporter of early marriage, he.

8. My dad, who thought I was bad at Maths because I was too lazy to think, not because I was a girl. Actually it was because I was yet to meet a good Maths teacher, which I finally did in Form 1 and have had no trouble with numbers since.

9. The boys who did A-levels with me in Britain, for finally convincing me that you’re not smart just because you’re a boy.

10. My first bosses Ayesha and Jeanette, who convinced me that women do not necessarily block other women once they have positions of power. Thanks for the early encouragement!

11. My 3R co-producer Lina Tan for helping me make an idea come true 10 years ago. We never knew how big a gap our TV programme was going to fill.

12. My 3R “girls” – Azah, Yuen, Rafidah, Tini and Celina – who now have gone on to bigger and better things, including babies, but are still dedicated to raising the awareness of young Malaysian women of what they can truly be.

13. My late friend Dalilah, who bounced through her cancer experience so cheerily that it seemed impossible that it would catch her some day. To her and all other women with cancer, whether they survived or not, I place my heart on my hand to you.

14. The female Islamic scholars I have had the privilege to learn from, including Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Amina Wadud and more recently the amazing Musdah Mulia, who have been breaking new ground for justice and equality for Muslim women so fearlessly. There are few people more courageous than women demanding justice.

15. ... and that includes Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani woman who fought back after being savagely raped and then founded a school because she knew that women’s empowerment depended on education.

16. The many young Malaysian women I know who are so sparklingly bright, energetic and enthusiastic that they give me hope in this country. Now, if only none of that energy is dampened by the unchanging attitudes in this country, they can actually make a difference.

17. The young women in Tahrir Square, Cairo, who changed the face of young Muslim women everywhere by challenging everyone’s idea of what Arab women are, and look like.

18. My mum, who achieved many firsts long before most women, but who continues to want to learn new things, including the Internet. I still have to learn how to be as gracious as she is, to smile at the many impertinences I have to put up with rather than rail at them and to just laugh at the self-serving antics of wannabes everywhere.

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

Read More

Ignorance giving rise to discrimination

================================
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.
==================================

Wednesday March 2, 2011
Ignorance giving rise to discrimination
Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Much of the tension that we experience today is because of the mistrust we have for one another and also because those who have more cannot find it in their hearts to be fair to those who do not have as much.

IN THE women’s rights work that I do, the foundation of my colleagues’ and my belief regarding our rights is that there can be no justice without equality.

Where that applies to women, it’s called feminism, but it can equally apply to any oppressed group we know of.

Basically, we cannot be just to anyone if we don’t think of them as our equals.

If we don’t think some people are equal because of their sex, class, race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, ability or age, then it would be very hard to be truly just to them.

We find it hard to compare them to ourselves, and, therefore, as deserving as ourselves of whatever rights and opportunities there are.

This is sometimes why we are in awe when people “cross barriers” to help someone outside their usual circles, like when Princess Diana visited people with HIV. It was just so unusual, that it proved the rule.

Hence, we are neglectful of people who are different from us, or worse, discriminatory. Often this comes from ignorance.

There are some of us who grow up simply unable to fathom lives different from ours. But it can also be willful and deliberate.

Much of the tension that we are experiencing today is because of the mistrust we have for one another, because those of us who have more cannot find it in our hearts to be fair and just to those who do not have as much.

Worse still, we find ways to justify why we have to behave that way.

We have come to a point in our nation’s life where we really have to think about where we are headed.

Are we going to perpetually think of ourselves as so exceptional and different from everyone else that we don’t have to meet normal human standards?

Do we have to be so defensive that we only see what we want and are blind to any other point of view?

Today, I read about some people who objected when a non-Muslim began his speech with the traditional Muslim greeting of peace.

Apparently, this was considered offensive because it was sensitive.

Honestly, this is the sort of thing that makes me want to give up on this country, that there are idiots who have the temerity to call themselves leaders at all.

As any child knows, assalamualaikum means “peace be with you”.

It is the most benign and civil of greetings, welcoming and warm.

If meant sincerely, it means that you have come in peace and wish to conduct yourself in a peaceful way.

In the Arab world, everybody uses this greeting. They certainly never, as Malaysians did at one time, differentiate between who they could say it to, and whom they couldn’t.

It is not a greeting patented by Muslims or owned by God.

So, intelligent right-thinking Mus­lims should be very welcoming when a non-Muslim uses it because it means they have come in peace. And you can hold them to that.

So why make war out of it? How come when President Barack Obama used the same greeting when he went to Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, nobody objected?

Why, if he went to Penang and did the same thing, no doubt there would be appreciative applause and pleased shuffling, too.

I don’t know what world we live in that we think we are so special that nobody can hold a candle to us.

We look in distaste when Arabs protest, but when we see that it’s peaceful, we say that they must be mature people, unlike we here who are so incapable of protesting peacefully that we need to be censured before we even step out of our homes.

Students and young people around the Arab region are liberating their countries from tyranny and oppression, and ours are deemed too untrustworthy to even talk about politics.

The image we seemingly want to present to the world is one of gross intolerance of anything that doesn’t fit into the small narrow hole we call Malaysian.

At the same time, we seem to be proud of our immaturity. Do we actually tell foreigners that our students are too immature to be trusted to discuss politics? And we’re proud of it?

How do we explain to puzzled foreigners, including Arabs who actually speak the language, that we think some of their words are exclusive to us only?

Right now, the coolest nationality to be is Egyptian. It means young, democratic, inclusive and free.

In Wisconsin, where people are protesting against a state government that is taking away their union rights, there are signs that say “Fight like an Egyptian”. Imagine that.

When will the rest of the world want to be Malaysian?

Read More