Know that God is watching

I GREW up with perhaps a heightened awareness of God. As a child I was told that if I ever told a lie, God would cut off my tongue.

If I ever fancied myself as well off, I was admonished that there was absolutely no one on earth richer than God.

If I tried to hide from my elders after doing something naughty, I should rest assured that even if they couldn’t see me, God always could.

Small wonder that I was mostly an obedient little girl, terrified of both my parents’ and God’s wrath. It took me many years to understand that God was not as terrifying as all that, that He will forgive you if you’re really really sorry and that the worst thing is to hurt someone by telling lies. But I never got over the belief that everything I do can be seen and judged by an Omnipotent Being who will one day ask me to account for it all.

Apparently not everyone believes this. Not counting atheists, there are people who claim to believe in God but seem to have no awareness of constantly being watched. They think that as long as other humans don’t see what they do, they’re okay. Until they get caught, of course.

It’s astounding to read that a ­government official recently got caught for siphoning off RM100mil to buy first class tickets and expensive handbags for his family. How come nobody noticed any of this for so long?

Or rather, and perhaps this is what this fellow counted on, people noticed but decided to mind their own business. There’s something to be said for respecting people’s privacy of course. But did they forget who else is watching?

In fact, sometimes people don’t even bother to hide anymore. It’s all out there for everyone to see, unabashedly. We all lap it up, buying magazines to read and gawk over all those diamonds and cars. But we rarely ask where they come from, or at most we might snigger a bit and then turn the page.

This turning-the-page attitude of ours is what allows all these things to happen. We look, we wonder and then we move on. Which is exactly what the corrupt want us to do. So we are really complicit in their crimes.

Why should we be surprised therefore that when we finally say something, they turn round and unleash all sorts of charges against us, including for disobedience? We had obediently turned our heads away all these years, how dare we look harder now! And the more we look, the tougher the backlash is.

Last week we were told that disobedience to our leader is akin to disobedience to God. Oh my, my! But isn’t our first duty to be ­obedient to the All-Seeing God?

In Chapter 4, verse 135 of the Holy Quran, God says to us: “O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk. Whether the person concerned be rich or poor, God’s claim takes precedence over [the claims of] either of them.  Do not, then, follow your own desires, lest you swerve from justice: for if you distort [the truth], behold, God is indeed aware of all that you do!”

Sounds very clear to me that ­obedience to our leaders is conditional on whether they are being just to us or not. Justice and upholding equity is meant to be our leaders’ main concern, as it is with all of us. So when we see them doing wrong, especially by treating us like naughty children, why should we not say something?

God repeats this in Chapter 5, Verse 8: “O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in your devotion to God, bearing witness to the truth in all equity; and never let hatred of anyone lead you into the sin of deviating from justice. Be just: this is closest to being God-conscious. And remain conscious of God: verily, God is aware of all that you do.”

My holy Book also repeatedly reminds us to never ascribe divinity to anyone other than God. This is the greatest sin in my understanding because it undermines the core belief in One God.

Yet there are people who keep equating their own human qualities and foibles to the Divine. We must never criticise them because that would be like criticising God, they say. Surely this must be the height of hubris.

But they get away with it because we are silent and look away. Who then do we fear more, them or the Almighty?

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Contemplating the nature of the human mind

SOMETIMES you need to be confronted with ugly reality in order to make you pause and think. This happened to me when I visited the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre just outside Phnom Penh recently.

Also known as the “Killing Fields”, Choeung Ek was, before 1975, a two-hectare orchard filled with longan trees and watermelon, although part of it was also a cemetery for the Chinese community nearby. Between 1975 and 1978 however, this tiny plot of land became the execution ground for 20,000 Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge for no other reason than that they were educated city folk and not peasants.

It is a surreal experience visiting Choeung Ek. For one thing, it is a silent place. In order to be respectful of the dead, visitors walk around with an audio guide and headphones that tells you the history of the place.

It even includes the voices of survivors. It is hard to imagine the horror that took place in this quiet place but some of the exhibits bring the point home.

I remember seeing a piece of red rag, part of someone’s clothing, on the ground and being caught between the urge to pick it up and the realisation that this was what some poor soul wore before he or she met his or her brutal end.

Or it may have been a child’s shirt. One of the most unnerving sights at Choeung Ek was the “killing tree”.

It is a tree on which are hung hundreds of cloth wristbands in remembrance of the children and infants who died there. They died in a way so cruel, it brings shudders to the spine. They were simply held by their legs and bashed against the tree until they died, often while their mothers were forced to watch.

Visiting Choeung Ek gives you pause to reflect on the nature of the human mind. How was it that an otherwise gentle people could succumb to such collective madness that they were willing to kill so many of their friends, neighbours and even parents? Three million people out of a population of only eight million died from starvation, torture or outright murder. Anyone above 50 years old today would know someone who died in those hellish years.

Of course this was not the only example of collective murderous brutality. It has happened in Germany, in Rwanda and Bosnia.

When you look at the types of torture and murder, including by beheading, practised by the Khmer Rouge, you can’t help but think of the Islamic State today in Syria and elsewhere.

Human beings have a propensity to do this over and over again it seems.

None of this happens overnight, although it can go from mild craziness to outright insanity in a very short while. If you go to the exhibition on the site in Berlin of the former headquarters of the SS, the paramilitary organisation that was eventually found guilty of crimes against humanity for its role in the Holocaust, you will find some unnerving information.

They implemented Nazi policies including the burning of books by authors labelled “un-German”, marginalising those labelled political opponents or enemies of the state and using newspapers to spread Nazi propaganda.

“All men are not equal” was the slogan the Nazi leadership used to justify the exclusion and extermination of anyone who was not of Aryan stock, people they called sub-human. Just as the Khmer Rouge defined anyone not a peasant as somehow a traitor to the “egalitarian” vision of society that they had.

As a society, we in Malaysia are not anywhere near these sorts of brutalities. But it is easy to slip into a subtler version of the mindset without noticing.

Sometimes, the demonising of groups of people because they are different, due to nationality, religion, creed and class trips off our tongues subconsciously. The use of the media to propagate discriminatory stories and untruths about people is becoming the norm.

The demand to prove our patriotism, loyalty and faithfulness or to be deemed traitors to nation and religion is a constant needling noise. The banning of anything that might make people think differently and question things is becoming a regular occurrence.

All these terrible events in history finally ended because there were people who retained their humanity and decided to risk their lives and do something about it. In the end, it will always be the people who wake up from their stupor and take action who will save their country.

It is easy to either deny any such thing would ever happen to us, or to complain endlessly but ultimately do nothing. Or worse, criticise those who are trying to do something at great risk to themselves.

Or is the Malaysian credo “As long as my nasi lemak is still there every day, I don’t care what happens”?

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Victims of food anxiety

Some of us have become rather obsessive about the religious pristineness of our food and are perpetually on the lookout for whoever may next cause offence.

ONE of the fascinating things about India is the food. While there is a wide variety of all sorts of cuisine from all over the large country, one thing that you will always see in every restaurant menu are two categories: vegetarian and non-vegetarian.

A large number of people in India are vegetarians, that is, they eat no meat at all. Then there is another lot of people who are non-vegetarians, that is, they do eat meat. Of the meat-eaters, there are those who don’t eat beef because of their religion, and those who don’t eat pork, also because of their religion.

There is then potentially all sorts of confusion to be caused by all these different food preferences. There is the possibility of non-veg people being offended by restaurants that only offer veg food, or the other way round. Meat-eaters are at great risk of being offended if they happen to walk into a restaurant that serves meat that they are forbidden to eat.

The odd thing is that rarely is there any confusion at all among Indians regarding which restaurants to go to. Virtually every restaurant serves the food that anyone can eat, whether they are vegetarian or non-vegetarian, non-beef or non-pork eaters. People sit side by side and order whatever they want. There is no need to practise culinary apartheid.

Recently there was a case where some villagers in India beat a Muslim man to death because they thought he was eating beef. It has to be noted that all this is occurring in a scenario where a rightwing political party has gained power.

After his death, tests of the meat in his fridge showed that, poor as he was, he may have been eating mutton and not the more expensive beef. It just goes to show that anyone can kick up a fuss about food, if provoked enough, even to fatal consequences.

Malaysians are not dissimilar. We love our food. And some of us are rather obsessive about the religious pristineness of our food. Which is not the same as being obsessive about hygiene, I might add.

So if someone should suggest that the 1000-calorie-a-bite bar of chocolate should have the slightest hint of porcine DNA, without so much as demanding to see the lab test reports, our people will go hysterical.

Ever-alert that someone wants to taint their pristine bodies, the same bodies that consume more sugar than any other South-East Asian country, their antennae are perpetually tuned to whoever may next cause offence, intentionally or otherwise.

Now unlike India where people speak English and understand that ‘no’ means ‘no’, in Malaysia, ‘no’ can mean ‘maybe got something else which someone insidiously put in because they want to taint us’.

Thus a sign that says ‘no pork’ doesn’t just mean that. It also means ‘we won’t know if there is anything else we shouldn’t be eating.’ It is a wonder how Muslims in Malaysia haven’t starved to death from food anxiety every day. What on earth do they do when they travel?

Of late I’ve noticed restaurants with names that make it so clear exactly what they serve that nobody with half a modicum of brain could fail to realise what food of the non-vegetarian kind it is. But even then there is room for confusion.

If people are so protected from the sight of little fat pink creatures with curly tails to the point that even the movie Babe was once banned (funny, I never knew movies were free in Malaysia!), then they may not recognise the icons used in the restaurant’s graphics. When we start seeing people exiting restaurants in a panic all of a sudden, we’ll know what happened.

At that point, I’m sure our ever-righteous leaders will step in with a law to ban restaurants from serving pork in order to save fragile Muslim souls from ever being offended, regardless of whether they ever go into those restaurants or not. Never mind that there is a much higher likelihood of Muslims dying of diabetes from too much nasi lemak and fast food than from inhaling the smell of non-halal food.

All of these are of the utmost importance these days. Our bodies must be presented on Judgment Day in pure form, never mind if they are flabby and overweight from unhealthy halal eating habits and lack of exercise.

Never mind also that the brains these bodies are attached to are atrophying from lack of use. Never mind also that the hands attached to these bodies sometimes handle money that may not be righteously earned.

These are all irrelevant. What matters is that we must be perpetually on guard against all manner of insults and intent to injure.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is passing us by.

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Humour will get us through

FIRST of all, let me wish everybody Gong Xi Fa Cai! May the Year of the Monkey be one of prosperity and happiness, despite the depressing circumstances facing us now.

What depressing circumstances? Well, the economy is hardly what anyone would call dynamic. I know many retailers and businesses are saying that things have really slowed down, even during the festive seasons.

Things are simply more expensive to import, what with our ringgit in the doldrums. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) hasn’t helped, of course. And virtually nobody was fooled by the 3% reduction in Employees Provident Fund contributions.

What is the point of having that little bit more money now when it is going to be GST’d every time you spend it? Better to save it for old age and earn some interest on it.

Then, there is just the state of things. We’re now facing a Government which literally thinks that, one, it can do what it wants with impunity and, two, that we are all fools who will believe anything it says.

If you say something it doesn’t like, here’s what will happen to you: if you’re not a well-connected person, they’ll charge you with all sorts of crazy things, including for saying things within your professional capacity, drawing cartoons or dropping balloons. (You have to wonder about a government that is scared of cartoons and balloons.)

If you’re a well-connected person, your way out may be well lubricated with lots of monetary inducements. Proof of this is that the first act of the new leader is to ask his boss for money, which he gets instantly. (You also have to wonder about people who think they can always buy support.)

Then, you get the endless stream of untruths about a supposed very big gift. I decided to read up on Arab gift-giving customs and learnt a few things. It’s a very delicate issue.

For one thing, if you’re a subordinate, you simply do not give gifts to someone ranked higher than you. Royalty is presumably ranked way above any commoners regardless of whatever position they may have at home.

Subordinates may of course be given gifts but the value of the gift has to be carefully calibrated: not too expensive and not too cheap either. One interesting fact: if you’re a man, you should never give gifts to an Arab man’s wife or even ask about her. I wonder if it works the other way round.

But what does cross many cultures, especially Middle Eastern and Asian ones, is that you should never return a gift. It would be considered grossly insulting. If it is inappropriate, then the recipient should return it immediately with a polite note explaining why.

You certainly don’t wait for a while before returning it, and that too while retaining some of it. I can’t think of a single culture where this would be considered polite. Perhaps some cultural anthropologists can enlighten us.

Perhaps this is why there has been some consternation among the alleged gift-givers about the return of this gift. They must be wondering: “Does he mean to insult us?”

They seem pretty sure it cannot have been a gift but rather an investment because it would make more sense. I think there is a book to be written called Saving Face for Dummies.

Meanwhile back home, someone has the awful job of having to explain all this and is truly making a hash of it.

“I know but I can’t tell you” is thundered in the same breath as “I don’t know why they gave it. It’s personal!”. All the while, papers are waved which should have been under lock and key.

And as all sorts of international authorities are piping up about the inappropriateness of all this, some bright spark tries to lecture them about not interfering in our internal affairs while forgetting that if we put money into overseas accounts, it is no longer internal. (Some people should really get out more.)

And then there are people who think the world is as gullible as us when they can blithely say that they received gigantic commissions for doing “a job”, yet feel the need to reinvent themselves as a scholar. Isn’t the very concept of gigantic commissions problematic?

How do we keep our sanity amidst all this monkey business? Why, with our unique Malaysian sense of humour, of course!

It’s so easy to know who’s on the right side of things: it’s those people who draw and write the wittiest responses to all the nonsense. There is virtually no way to humorously defend corruption, after all.

Oh, I forgot: it’s “let’s move on”.

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Educating our young ones

If we keep treating our children as infants throughout their school life, we should not be surprised at the consequences.

I HAD another of those moments when my mouth simply gaped recently. A friend told me the text that was used in his daughter’s school for her SPM English Literature paper was the Grimm fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin.

I was shocked. For one thing, the Brothers Grimm were German, not English. For another, Rumpelstiltskin is a story for little children, not 17-year-olds and definitely not worthy of an exam.

In comparison, the equivalent British school exams in English Literature look at authors like Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, George Eliot and, of course, William Shakespeare. How does anyone study English Literature without studying Shakespeare who was so influential in the English language? Do our students even know of the many common phrases we use daily which originated from Shakespeare?

Some might say that English Literature is not important to us since English is not our native language. But a look through the Bahasa Malaysia literature texts doesn’t impress either. I haven’t done Malay Literature since my own school days so I might not know who are the great Malay writers these days. But surely it cannot be someone who writes about the adventures of a girl during her school holidays?

Our school literature syllabus seems to suggest that our students cannot handle any form of sophisticated writing at all. I looked through an exam tips website on Rumpelstiltskin and the values our students are supposed to derive from the story are absurdly childish – don’t boast, don’t tell lies, don’t be greedy. There is no nuance or ambiguity to any of it. Students are simply told what to think about these stories with no room for opinions of their own.

Is this the state of our education today, one that treats our children as infants throughout their school life? How are they meant to handle the complex world we live in?

I was in London not so long ago when I went to view an exhibition of the works of Ai Wei Wei, the Chinese artist known for having been kept in solitary confinement for eight months and then banned from travelling because of his critical views on what was happening in China. His works are beautiful, thought-provoking and often moving. There were reconstructed trees, marble grass and straightened steel rods made from wreckage of buildings destroyed in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. The stories behind these works tell about censorship, groupthink and cover-ups of the true costs of natural and manmade disasters.

People form long queues to view this exhibition. But what I really found astounding were the groups of schoolchildren being taken around the exhibition by their teachers. Surely this was too sophisticated for them? But apparently it was not.

Children can surely learn about art and beauty from a young age, as well as what messages artists want to convey through their work. What child doesn’t understand unfairness, or not being able to give an opinion? Which child would not be moved by the long lists of names of the schoolchildren lost in the earthquake, killed by the shoddy workmanship of their schools?

If we keep treating our children as infants throughout their school life, why should we be surprised at the consequences? We see adults with embarrassingly shallow capacity for analysing the information they get, who are easily provoked to react to gossip and false stories, who constantly harp on the least important points of any piece of news and who refuse to read anything in-depth because it contains too many long words and therefore is too difficult. And who will vilify anyone with more knowledge and maturity than them and call them names as a way of distracting from their own ignorance?

The infantilising of our people doesn’t only occur in schools but all the way to the top where we’re often expected to accept the most ludicrous explanations for all sorts of things, from missing funds to polluted waters to what constitutes terrorism. To be sure, there are many of us who do not accept these explanations but the very audacity of the people offering them is what is insulting and unacceptable. (Maybe when we get rid of them some day, we can just say it’s because they smell bad and they cannot complain about that.)

I listened to Turkish author Mustafa Akyol recently who said that the intelligent response to Islamophobia is not to ban people or books but rather by countering it intellectually. While I agree with that idea, it does presume that Muslims in our country have the intellectual capacity to do that.

But how do people still reading Rumpelstiltskin at age 17 counter the views of much more intellectually sophisticated people like Richard Dawkins and the like?

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