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The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

Posted: 23 Jun 2011 05:14 PM PDT

JUNE 24 — In all the furore surrounding the Bersih 2.0 rally, I couldn't help noticing that all the things and events used to scare us are being dragged out yet again, presumably so that we would all be scared of history repeating itself and therefore stick to the status quo.

First up is of course the spectre of May 13. Time and again self-serving politicians bring this up to remind us to toe the line. You know what? I was born after 1969. I didn't live through those events, and all I know about May 13 I learnt through my own endeavours.

If May 13 is so important to us, and if we're always exhorted to remember it, then why, if we so much as try to discuss what happened then, are we told NOT to do so because it may be detrimental to our racial sensibilities?

I mean, come on. How can we be expected to remember something that we don't fully know about, and that nobody seems to want to discuss objectively? It's as if we rakyat are little children told by our adult politicians not to open a cupboard because monsters hide in there. What rubbish.

Don't get me wrong. I love my country, and I have no wish to see it descend into Arab Spring-like chaos, but I think our politicians should give us a bit of credit too. Most of us are actually mature adults capable of holding rational discussions.

Yes, the events of May 13 were horrendous, and I fervently wish that it would not happen again, but I also think that we need to bust the myth of May 13 by discussing it openly so that we can learn from it — the lessons learnt in its aftermath might need reviewing after more than 40 years.

Then there's the other favourite bogeyman — the Jews. For a country that doesn't even have a Jewish population, politicians of a certain type in our country are obsessed by the Jews. Anyone accused of blackening the country's name is denounced as an "agent of the Jews."

Have any of these people even met a Jewish person? Funnily enough, they're just like you and I (contrary to what an ustaz told me years ago, they don't have hooked noses either!) and quite frankly, I think most Jewish people have other things to think about than worrying about our country!

I don't quite get this obsession with the Jews actually. Is it because of Israel, and its treatment of the Palestinians? Is it because we want to show solidarity with the Arab world? Is it just because they're Jews?

Well, at the risk of sounding callous, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is no better and no worse than the treatment of the Talibans towards their fellow Muslims when they were in power in Afghanistan (where were the demonstrations and agitations against the Taliban then, eh? And what about those Saudis and their penchant for beheading maids who have the temerity to strike back against employers who abuse them?). There are bad people everywhere. Should we demonise an entire race just because one country oppresses some of its people?

Yes, I too feel anger when I see the demolition of houses in the West Bank; when I see the shelling in Gaza. I too feel anguished when I read about men and women forced to abandon their ancestral lands simply because a wall has arbitrarily split their land into two. I too feel loathing when I read about the attitudes some of the Israeli settlers have towards the Palestinians.

But you know what? If I was an Israeli I would probably feel a lot of hatred towards the Palestinians too, because Hamas and its ilk have made life unpalatable. All I'm saying is, there are two sides to every story. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are whiter than white and I find it extremely tiresome when a Malaysian politician peddles the Jewish line to score some points because it just comes across as being ill-informed and plain nasty.

In fact, what I find even more seriously disturbing is our prime minister inviting the likes of Robert Mugabe and Omar al-Bashir to our country to attend the recent Langkawi International Dialogue conference. I know why they were invited, but really, the excuse that we need to have dialogue with these types of people is nonsense.

Mugabe has personally bankrupted his country and presided over the death of many, many Zimbabweans. The many accounts of life in Zimbabwe, especially during election campaigns, are absolutely shocking and I am sickened at the thought of that man pontificating about how evil the West is, on our soil.

Yet still our PM invites this man to our country? It's like saying we'll invite someone like Hitler to our country so that we can engage him in dialogue. Why bother? With some tyrannical, despotic leaders it's just not worth the effort.

Then there's the explanation given by our PM on why it was all right to invite al-Bashir to our country — we're not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), so we don't have to comply with their rulings.

Goodness, how far our ethical standards have fallen! In the 1980s we boycotted South Africa because of apartheid. Now, it seems that we are more than happy to play with the leaders of tyrannical states rather than abide by the ways of the civilised world.

Actually, if I were a politician, I wouldn't need to go too far to find something to scare Malaysians with. Forget May 13 or the Jews. A government that sees nothing amiss with playing host to murderous tyrants, and giving them a platform to air their views ... let's just hope our politicians aren't thinking of learning from them, especially during the Bersih 2.0 rally!

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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Blind faith has no place in religion

Posted: 23 Jun 2011 05:05 PM PDT

JUNE 24 — What happens when you apply reason and logic to the Islamic religion? You would be eternally damned to hell. Or so many would want you to believe.

And why would they want you to believe that? It makes it easier for them to control how you practise Islam.

And so they would have you believe that religion requires blind faith and involves no logic whatsoever. Or what many would like to call a "leap of faith."

I can't accept that because it basically means that if you were to believe in Islam, it meant that you had to just accept things as is for no reason but because God says so.

I truly believe that Islam is a religion that promotes and encourages reason as the Quran has stated in Surah Al Jathiyah.

"And in the succession of night and day, and in the means of subsistence which God sends down from the skies, giving life thereby to the earth after it had been lifeless, and in the change of the winds: in all this there are messages for people who use their reason."

Although mankind is moving forward in terms of technology, health and whatever else, it seems that everything is the opposite when it comes to religious progress.

It is as if Muslims are trying to be overly religious, probably overcompensating for a lack of something in the practise of their belief.

So much so that everything about the religion is taken literally and no debate is ever allowed because everything becomes too sacred, hence the killing of logic and reason.

In the 8th century, a group of Muslims known as the Mutazilites emerged, and they promoted the concept of reason in the understanding of the religion.

The movement believed that God's orders should be understood using rational thought and inquiry and that knowledge should be obtained using reason.

Mutazilites believed in the need for interaction between intellectual reasoning and the divine revelations of God.

Some of the more famous Mutazilites who have played a major role in the development of Islam as a way of life include Ibnu Sina, Ibnu Rushd and Al Farabi.

When I believe in something, I need it to have a definite answer and reason rather than just have blind faith and throw myself into it hoping for a positive outcome.

It's like gambling on which religion to believe in and hoping that at the end of the day, the dice you threw lands at the right slot.

It is a danger when people feel that to have faith means to believe without reason and to have trust in that faith without knowing if it is true or not.

The Quran states in Surah Al Araf;

"And we have created hell for many. They have hearts with which they do not use for comprehension, they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear. Those are like livestock; rather, they are more astray. It is they who are the heedless."

So if someone who has a nice sounding religious title (i.e. Mufti, Imam, Ustaz, Ulama, Syeikh, Syed, Tun, Tan Sri, Datuk, etc) tells you something, think before accepting it.

How logical is it to declare the harmless poco-poco dance haram just because the movements are similar to a dance by Jamaicans who were Christians a long time ago?

What kind of rational thought is being used when yoga, as a form of exercise, is pronounced as haram because it has its roots in Hindu culture?

If that's the case, let's just declare the Malay language haram since it was spoken by Malays, who were Hindus, way before Islam came to the Malay archipelago.

Unfortunately, the Mutazilite movement died out in the 15th century due to strong objection from many quarters who probably felt that it was a threat to their positions.

Maybe I'm just fighting a lost cause. Or maybe I should just have some blind faith that everything might turn out all right.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Jumaat, 24 Jun 2011

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

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