I DON’T know whether to laugh or cry at the endless antics of so many grown men feeling threatened by everything that is disagreeable to them.
How else could Dyana Sofya, a political novice, be instantly elevated to number one threat to Umno dominance. Instead of being embraced by the very Malays who should be proud of her intelligence and independence, she is demonised as a traitor to race and religion, dismissed as mere “eye-candy”, and reduced to nothing but a puppet of the DAP to hoodwink Malays.
And then the hysterics over porcine DNA found in two kinds of Cadbury chocolates. And making it out that the accidental consumption of some food tainted with pork DNA is going to send one to hell and prevent God from accepting one’s prayers and one’s pilgrimage because of tainted blood in one’s body.
The Malay phobia on consuming pork is real, even among those who readily violate Islamic prohibitions on alcohol and sex. But this is not about eating pork. It is about accidentally consuming a chocolate with DNA traces of pork.
The Quran is explicit that what is prohibited is eating the “flesh of swine”. It is pork meat that is forbidden, and jurists extend that to derivatives such as ham and bacon. Even then, accidental consumption or consuming it because of necessity is not a sin.
So why the hysterics over the media? Burn down the Cadbury factory? Ritual cleansing of the mouth, stomach and intestines? Blood transfusion to ensure their blood is 100% halal?
How will they ensure the blood they need for transfusion will be 100% from pious untainted Muslims? How about those other Muslims whose blood transfusion came from pork-eating, alcohol consuming infidels? Are they tainted, too? Would God reject their prayers as well? Should all these Muslims take DNA tests to see if haram DNA is flowing through their bodies?
For a change, how about getting hysterical over those men who raped a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Ketereh, Kelantan? They include a father and his two sons! Isn’t their behaviour a threat to race and religion, a failure of family, society and state to bring up responsible, respectful men, able to treat women as fellow human beings of equal worth and dignity? How about holding a press conference to demand gender sensitisation training to start in primary school? How about a campaign to end discrimination against women?
That I know is too much to ask of these breast-beating, self-righteous men. It is they who are getting to be an embarassment to race and religion.
Even the conservative Islamist group, Abim, felt the need to issue a statement, calling the reaction of these NGOs over the porcine DNA as emotional and irrational, showing only their ignorance of Islamic teachings and in the process, presenting a negative image of Islam.
What is the game plan here? To continue to manufacture as many fears and threats as possible, hopefully some will stick and the Malays will realise the error of their ways?
Last week, the student president of Kelab Umno US East Coast felt the need to address the continuing bigotry of the likes of Abdullah Zaik from Isma and his buddy Ridhuan Tee Abdullah – that they might be suffering from “high neuroticism” leading to dangerous response to perceived threats and what they need to do is to learn how to be Malaysian.
What will it take for these men to realise that manufacturing fears and threats and spewing hate language against other races and religions don’t win votes? Their performance has passed the sell-by date.
The latest Transparency International Corruption Barometer survey is telling – Malaysians perceive political parties as the most corrupt institution in the country, even more than the police. And that more Malaysians feel the Government’s anti-corruption action is ineffective.
So, is the resort to using race and religion to incite hatred and manufacture fears and hysterics a tactic to keep us from discussing what really matters to move this country forward? We all know we have serious problems with corruption, cronyism, sub-standard education system, brain drain, crime, low pay, urban poverty, drug addiction, underemployment and unemployed graduates.
Is it any wonder then that some politicians and their minions want to keep us pre-occupied and twisted into knots over hudud law, pork-laced chocolates, Malays who are traitors to the race, Chinese who are greedy and ungrateful trespassers, Christians who are out to convert Muslims?
Can we please take a break and focus on real issues that will contribute to the well-being and prosperity of all citizens, instead of making enemies of every Malaysian who thinks differently? Let’s put a stop to the shameless public display of bigotry and ignorance.
We all love our race and our religion, but we all also love our country. So we want to live together, get along and embrace our diversities.
The Iranian academic, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, wrote that Islamic feminism is the unwanted child of political Islam. As men in robes dusted out the classical fiqh books to enact laws that make no sense to the realities of women’s lives today, women turned to the Quran and the fiqh books as well and used the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.
It is too early to say yet. But dare I hope that as more and more of these racist, bigoted, ignorant, chauvinistic extremists brazenly display their ugliness, more and more rational, fair-minded Malays will be propelled to speak out and take principled positions in the public space.
We are seeing this trend in social media already, with many young bloggers, men and women, reading the Quran and academic articles on various contested issues in Islam, educating themselves on the Constitution and laws of the country, asserting their identity as Malaysian first, speaking out and writing to challenge the bigots in their midst.
Could the inevitable outcome of the ugliness of Isma and Perkasa and their ilk be more liberal Malays, liberal Islam, and a liberal Malaysia that they so fear and hate?
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