And so the silliness continues

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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 February 3, 2010
And so the silliness continues
Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR


The suggestion that young ladies forgo wearing underpants to celebrate Valentine’s Day have got religious authorities hot under the collar, while much more important events go unremarked on.

OUR religious authorities have announced that on this Valen-tine’s Day, they will be checking on romancing couples, especially those having candlelight dinners because this “will lead to sex in budget hotels”.

Their sternest attention will be focused on the young ladies who will be allegedly proving their love for their beaux by not wearing underpants that day.

Now, in almost any other country in the world, most people would laugh this off and not take it seriously. And most people would realise that the whole story about the panty-less Valentines is somebody’s idea of a joke.

And the very thought that sex after dinner would only occur in budget hotels should bring howls of laughter from any sane person.

But, no, this is Malaysia where we take all things silly very seriously indeed. And where the pious have plenty of time to speculate about women’s underwear.

Meanwhile, much more important events go unremarked on. Churches get burnt, gurdwaras get stoned and mosques get boars’ heads thrown into their compounds. Not to mention photographs getting stomped on, at mosques no less.

Do we hear a word from the guardians of our morals?

Surah Al-Hajj Verse 40 of the Quran says: “(They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right, (for no cause) except that they say, ‘our Lord is Allah’.

“Did not Allah check one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of Allah is commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid those who aid His (cause); for verily Allah is full of Strength, Exalted in Might, (able to enforce His Will).”

It is very clear from the Quran, which Muslims think of as the Word of God, that houses of worship from all faiths are to be protected.

Some people (such as Islamic scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, who translated the Quran into English) interpret this verse to also mean that the freedom of religion is to be protected. Whatever it is, it is clear that the desecration of any place of worship is a major no-no.

But do we hear anything from our religious authorities? The non-Muslim religious authorities, in a statement released very quickly after the boars’ heads were thrown into the mosque compounds, had unequivocally stated that the desecration of any house of worship was a sin of the highest order.

Surely this is as great a sin in Islam. When our religious authorities are so keen to go after those who are doing nothing more harmful than holding hands over dinner, they seem reluctant to bring their righteous wrath down on pyromaniacs who have a thing about places where God’s name is extolled.

No doubt they’ll reason that nobody has been found guilty yet and, indeed, we should always uphold that old adage “innocent until found guilty”. But surely a warning about the dire consequences of being found guilty, such as a less than smooth pass to heaven and those luscious virgins, would not go amiss.

Or even a more earthly punishment for going against the word of God, such as a jail term, a fine and several strokes of the cane, would surely be the bare minimum that our righteous ones can extol.

Instead, they are licking their lips over whipping a single mother who had the temerity to have a glass of beer.

One has to wonder about our authorities’ sense of proportionality when God Himself says, in Surah Al-Baqarah Verse 286, that He “does not burden any human being with more than he is well able to bear: in his favour shall be whatever good he does, and against him whatever evil he does”.

Indeed, should these people who have been apprehended and accused of throwing incendiary devices into the Metro Tabernacle Church be found guilty, I wonder what our religious authorities will do?

Or will it be a wash-their-hands-of the problem sort of response, since they were not tried in the Syariah Court? Or will they be sent off to rehabilitation centres for not just a criminal act but being poor examples of Muslims?

For that matter, how come our religious authorities have so little to say about Mat Rempits, bag snatchers and corrupt officials? Someone said that these are such obvious sins that there is no need to remark on them, much less issue fatwas.

But it must not be obvious to the increasing number of Mat Rempits, bag snatchers and the corrupt. So a reminder may be both necessary and timely.

Meanwhile, on this Valentine’s, perhaps someone can sponsor candlelit dinners in five-star hotels for young couples so that they can avoid budget hotels which would surely entice them into sex.

By the way, are married women allowed to go pantyless for their husbands?

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Thank goodness for the cool heads

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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 20, 2010
Thank goodness for the cool heads
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Following the ‘Allah’ court ruling, many ordinary folks reached out to each other in peace despite differences in opinion.

ANDRE Malraux, the French writer and statesman, once said that “the first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved, without courting love. To be loved without ‘playing up’ to anyone, even to himself ”.

My interpretation is that a good leader is one who doesn’t sit around trying to find ways for people to love him or her but does the right thing for his country and people and hope they will see the justification for it, and eventually love him or her.

That may not take place in his or her lifetime. But, as they say, history will be the judge.

In the last two weeks or so, what we have seen is a leadership that has only been interested in courting love and playing up to people.

Nothing could have been so blatant in catering to an unruly crowd than the permission to hold demos against a court decision.

What sort of justice system do we have if anyone can disrespect court decisions by holding demos against them? There are legal avenues to pursue: why do we not educate people to do just that?

Some of the explanations are just disingenuous.

To say that a ban is necessary as a “pre-emptive move to prevent violence” shows that either politicians think their people are natural hooligans or they know already that violence may be planned.

Indeed, not much violence apart from shouting and screaming happened. But even so, we hear no comment from our leaders on this type of behaviour.

After 52 years, is this considered acceptable?

These demos also occurred after the first church was attacked. Not only did our leaders take more than 24 hours to visit the site of the attack but they also issued no call to cancel demos for propriety’s sake.

Indeed, one demonstrator even went so far as to call for churches to be burnt! Not a word was heard about that from our leaders.

It was the public itself who were more sensible. Not only did they refuse to participate in the demos, even if they may have been unhappy about the ruling, but at one mosque, they actively tried to dissuade anyone from joining any call to demonstrate.

Individuals went on their own to console church leaders and reassured them that they or their premises would not be harmed.

Islamic NGOs offered to guard the churches, although it’s hard to forget that they are also the ones, who had raised the temperature around the issue.

Thus far, no government leader has straightforwardly said that not only is the burning of any house of worship against the law, but it is also un-Islamic.

Some people have said that this would mean accusing Muslims of conducting the attacks when nobody is sure yet who they are.

In which case, there can be no greater priority for the police than to catch the perpetrators, if only to clear the names of the race and religion.

It has been the ordinary people again who have reached out in peace towards each other, determined that despite differences of opinion, they want to see our country remain peaceful and stable.

Thus young people connected via social media organised, within a very short space of time, a peace offering project to tell people that “everything’s gonna be alright”, discrediting a government minister’s warning that social media does very little good.

Others wrote peace messages on ribbons. One young singer was moved to write and record a beautiful song because she was so distressed by what was happening.

The peace-builders are ordinary citizens who are refusing to be taken in by political games.

Sadly, it is clear that there are too few of our leaders engaged in building peace among our people, but they are in fact more interested in keeping us divided.

Even such peace offerings seem more divisive, giving rights to some and not to others. There can never be peace without equality. Just ask the Palestinians.

Ultimately, it is a question of education. This whole sad episode only highlights the many gaps in our knowledge.

Not only do we know so little about the world, we don’t even know much about our fellow citizens across the sea in east Malaysia. Neither do we know much about each other’s religions.

The reason we have had relatively little violence is because the non-Muslim community has leadership that insisted that they turn the other cheek and pray instead.

Can we trust in the Muslim leadership to do the same if the shoe was on the other foot?

Or are we like Adolf Hitler who said, “What luck for rulers that men do not think?.”

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Mysterious people in need of rules

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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 6, 2010
Mysterious people in need of rules
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR


There will be those who will be confused, others who will act without restraint, rampaging freely and causing havoc ... they are faceless strangers we have yet to meet.

RECENTLY I conducted a workshop with some university students in which I asked them for ideas on how to protect young women from violence and HIV.

One idea that came up was to fence and guard women’s hostels on campuses to prevent men from entering. I then asked the young man who suggested this if, without fences, he would not be able to restrain himself from entering the women’s hostels.

“I didn’t mean me,” he replied, “but other people…”

I often hear that we need laws, rules and regulations because there are people who are bound to need them. Without these, such mysterious people are bound to act without restraint, rampaging freely and causing havoc in society.

Yet when I ask anyone whom do they mean by these others, they don’t mean anybody they know. They are inevitably some strangers with weak constitutions that they have yet to meet.

The same is true of that insidious thing called self-censorship. We are constantly afraid that “someone” will get offended, so we make sure that everything we write, say, or do is so devoid of any possibility of offence that it becomes bland and dull.

The trouble with this thinking is two-fold: one is that there is only one group of people we think will be offended, and two, we know that there are some people within that group who will make it their business to seek offence and insults wherever they can.

Are people’s lives so empty that it can only be filled with imagining other people are out to hurt them? And why are they so easily wounded at all?

I find it especially puzzling when people are constantly finding their faith, which should be so personal, attacked at every juncture. Yet presumably, between Dec 31 and Jan 1, their beliefs have not changed because of what happened in court.

But it’s not about them, they say, it’s about all those poor ignorant souls, including children, who will become confused. One wag wondered how to explain why his child has to fast and pray five times a day when their friends call God by the same name but don’t have to.

Well, if parents cannot explain the basic tenets of their religion to their own child, then it’s not anyone else’s fault that the child gets confused.

Similarly, if there are sections of any faith community that have muddled ideas about which is their religion and which is others’, then surely that is the fault of their own community rather than others.

I don’t understand what is so edifying about claiming that we are always weak and easily confused. How do we on the one hand claim a superior position for our faith when at the same time we admit that we can be so easily influenced? Are the fortifications that we built for ourselves in our hearts and consciences so fragile?

Oh, but I forget, it’s not us we are talking about, it’s those people, that mysterious group of weaklings and ignoramuses that we have to stand up for. Funny, doesn’t it say in the Quran that we all have to answer for ourselves eventually?

If we constantly tell people that their faith is weak, it will become exactly that. If we say that every little thing, including language, the sound of church bells, or where temples are located, can challenge our faith, then they will feel challenged.

If we keep telling them that confusion will reign, they will believe that. Not for themselves but for some imaginary members of their faith community.

Yet, if we polled every single person to ask if they felt confused, they would deny it. Thus, on whose behalf do we bust our guts for in these issues?

Could it be that in fact it’s impossible to know what anyone’s true faith is, because only God can read anyone’s heart? That it is redundant for anyone to try and legislate faith because it is simply not the province of human beings? All we can do is try and make people behave in an orderly fashion.

There are surely more important things to occupy our minds than whether any of our brethren may misread something.

In other countries, our so-called religious kinfolk are killing each other by the dozens, no doubt invoking God’s name as they do so. Others are illiterate, starving or dying from preventable diseases.

Demonstrating over a court decision about a word is the privilege of the healthy and prosperous.

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The good, the bad and the new year

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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 23, 2009
The good, the bad and the new year
Musings by MARINA MAHATHIR


Despite the nasty and horrid things that the year witnessed, there is hope yet for us yet as the people become more aware of their rights and are willing to stand up for them.

SINCE this is my last column for the year, I thought I’d do my usual list exercise. It has been a very eventful year to say the least so I thought I would list out what I’ve been happy about and what I haven’t been happy about this year.

Let’s start off with Things I Wasn’t Happy About:

1. The way some people behave so badly with such impunity, as if they know they can do anything and get away with it. Top of the list are those “cow-head protestors” as well as their brethren who declared Malays “first-class citizens” and all others, “second-class citizens”. No throwing the book of sedition at them, not even a sharp rap on the knuckles?

2. The shrinking of public space for debate and discussion especially on matters of religion and race. If anyone tries to give alternative viewpoints, they are immediately shouted down or a police report is made charging them with everything from insulting God, religion, the Sultan and whoever has the thinnest skin. And we call ourselves a modern nation?

3. The refusal to get out from under the cloak of denial on all social problems. If there is a problem among our people, the answer is always more religion, particularly the form that refuses to entertain any discussion on the subject. Somehow we expect the matter to disappear just like that. Unfortunately, they fester and will ooze slime endlessly whether we like it or not. This would include issues like drug use, Mat Rempit and incest.


On hold: It is clear now that nobody really wants to whip Kartika. But unless someone comes out and clearly states that she’s been pardoned, her life will remain in suspension.

4. Related to that is the apparent wish that the Kartika problem will just go away. It is clear now that nobody really wants to whip her. But unless someone comes out and clearly states that she’s been pardoned, her life will remain in suspension. There is nothing just and fair about leaving her in abeyance like that. Some closure for her is needed.

5. In conjunction with that is the apparent belief that the only good Muslim is the one that wants to be punished while those who question injustice are painted as disbelievers. At the same time, those who are disobeying the courts, such as the men who are refusing to pay court-ordered maintenance for their children, are never painted as bad irresponsible Muslims. Are we naming and shaming the wrong people?

6. The complete lack of common sense on the part of some of our leaders is a cause for concern. If there are two groups at odds with one another, you don’t sit down with just one and then declare their grievances are justified. Nor do you express sympathy for someone who’s been responsible for many violent deaths and say that you could have rehabilitated them. Even sillier, you don’t try to equate the “pain” a chair might feel upon being whipped with what a human being might feel.

7. While some leaders talk about eliminating corruption, most remain blind to obvious questions, such as, how come a public official can afford a RM25mil mansion? No wonder cynicism reigns!

8. The increasing racist tone by which we refer to foreigners within our midst, especially those who are from countries less developed than ours. Racist monikers may not be okay for our own people but apparently okay for others. Also despicable are the sweeping generalisations about foreigners as criminals, conmen and prostitutes.

9. The constant politicisation of everything. Really, neither politics nor politicians are the most important things in the world.

Things I Have Been Happy About

1. The increase in the number of people who have become more aware of the issues surrounding them and are keen to express their opinion on it, mostly online.

2. The many young people who are not only increasingly aware of issues around them but will also take action to effect some change. The most impressive is the MyConstitution campaign to educate the public about our ‘Document of Destiny’ but also other smaller projects such as Fast for the Nation which does more for unity than any government project could.

3. The effectiveness of social media especially Facebook and Twitter in connecting like-minded people together so that they can share experiences, learn from one another and get organised. As always young people are way ahead of adults, especially those in government.

4. The fact that we can talk about human rights without the ground opening up and swallowing us.

5. The continued belief in this country, despite all the nastiness, and the willingness to stay and fight gives hope.

There’s probably more I could be happy about if I thought hard enough but the horrid things somehow come quicker to mind.

Whatever comes along, things must get better in 2010. Wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Muslim and Gregorian New Year!

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Oh, the shame of it all

================================
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 9, 2009
Oh, the shame of it all
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR


Malaysians have brought much embarrassment to the country in what they say and do while abroad, but the reaction to Fatine’s predicament must surely top it all.

I PONDERED this week on the meaning of “shame”. A statement by an Immigration official, who said that Fatine, a transsexual facing deportation from Britain, had brought “shame” to Malaysia, prompted my mind to ponder on this word.

By definition, shame is “a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness or disgrace”.

In this case, it seems an overwhelming emotion in response to what is basically someone else’s misfortune. After all, nobody knew this poor person until this happened. To then feel shame seems a bit of an overreaction.

This is even more puzzling when shame is never the response expressed over other misdeeds done by Malaysians whether at home or abroad.

Our citizens have been known to violate immigration laws overseas a great deal. In fact overstaying their visas is almost a Malaysian disease since it is estimated that there are some 30,000 Malaysian over-stayers in Britain.

When Britain threatened to stop visa-free entries for Malaysians going there recently because of these over-stayers, our authorities organised workshops to help those lawbreakers to come home, assuring them that they would not be arrested and put in prison. How very sweet!

How come we didn’t condemn all those people for bringing shame to the country then? Why single out poor Fatine?

Indeed, how come we have never expressed shame at our people who happily break laws in other countries by smuggling drugs and people, cheating, stealing, even murdering?

How come Immigration or any other officials don’t hang their heads in embarrassment that our people have the temerity to break laws in foreign lands?

How is it that we feel no sense of disgrace when people overseas think we’re barbaric for wanting to whip a mother of two for possibly doing herself, and nobody else, personal damage by having an alcoholic drink?

I must say that there have been moments when I have felt great shame at the antics of Malaysians abroad.

I feel it at conferences where our officials are obviously missing, only to show up later laden down with bags of shopping. Or when people have taken a lot of trouble to arrange a last minute visit to a project, and then they don’t show up because “traffic jam lah”.

I felt it when at the conclusion of a short course, which was very expensive, and paid for by sponsors, one semi-government participant got an award for “biggest contribution to tourism”, a caustic reference to his frequent absence from class.

I have this tendency to cringe when at conferences overseas, some of our delegates have nothing to say whatsoever, mostly because they don’t know the subject, but it was their “turn” to go.

I remember once that the NGO delegation basically wrote the Government statement by default, simply because we knew the subject well and were willing to sit down and work on it.

My face has turned red when I have had to sit through press conferences where Government officials have patently stated untrue things because they sounded good and expounded theories for which there have been no empirical basis.

There are few things more frustrating than having to squirm through those situations where you are unable to say anything without showing up the officials concerned and, yes, shaming them.

Yet it is people like those in NGOs who know their stuff who get told off for being disloyal, unpatriotic and supposedly out to embarrass the Government.

Heck, you may disagree with what we say but at least try and argue as articulately as we do. Then we can hold our heads up and say that our government officials may get things the wrong way round but, boy, they can make a convincing argument for it.

So what is this shame that this official felt? And in fact what has it to do with him at all? Is Immigration in charge of filing charges against our citizens for embarrassing us overseas?

Is there anywhere in their regulations that people who “shame” us overseas will not be allowed to have passports? In that case, there are probably more cases than they can handle.

Our smart official also probably did not think that his words have already travelled the world over and caused many blushes among Malaysians already.

What’s more, if he carries out his threat, and indeed if anything punitive were to be dished out to Fatine if she returns home, then we would be faced with queries from all over the world, with some awkward questions about how we treat the more marginalised sectors of our society.

At a time when we already have more to be ashamed, than to be proud, of, we really don’t need another fiasco, thank you.

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