Month: August 2010

53 years on I don’t think we have gotten anywhere far. We still see each other according to the colour of skin, religious extremism now regularly rears its ugly head (and raghead), and there is still that need to rid the country of ALL politicians.

I wonder where will we be 5 years down the line…

And yet another scare tactic has been prescribed for infanticide and baby-dumping. If the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry has its way, the cases would be classified as murder and attempted murder respectively. This comes in light of yet another baby discovered dead floating inside a sewage tank in Jeli, Kelantan. While I am for sterner actions against those who dump and allow their baby to die, I still think this has to be a multi-pronged approach.

Condemning these young ladies to death, in my opinion, is not the answer. It is true that what they do is horrendous and unthinkable, but why are we stereotyping them as if what they do is purely out of fun with little regard for values? Meting out such punishments may pose as a deterrent for would-be reluctant mothers, but to blame them alone, having them to face the music for something that is the result of a shared communal responsibility.

If you drive around late at night, you will see that the roads are being roamed mostly by the underaged. At mamak shops, you see school-aged children happily puffing away on cigarettes or its unfiltered equivalent – the Shisha (Hookah to some) and this goes on until the wee hours of the morning. You see boys and girls riding motorbikes in housing estates at these hours without helmets and so on. My question is, where are the parents? Parents often leave their children to wander around at night aimlessly thinking “If I don’t see them do anything bad in front of me, then they must be well-behaved” only to cry foul when their kids get arrested or shot dead in the middle of the night. Then they’ll go, “I know my child well! They are not criminals!” If you know them well, why didn’t you know that they’ve been loitering around at night when they should be at home sleeping or studying?

The lack of supervision and guidance at home is one of the reasons children grow up experimenting things they should not. And in this case, only the parents have themselves to blame.

Many young mothers also come from government housing scheme flats – two-bedroomed flats that could hardly fit in more than 4 people at any one time, to cater for a family of at least six. There is little privacy at home and there are no facilities for the youths built anywhere near. The most they would usually have is a playground that is strewn with rubbish, broken slides, swings and see-saws; but nothing else for those above the age of 12. So, where do they go for entertainment? Hang around with kids their age, and soon one will bring a packet of cigarettes to be shared amongst them. This bad habit will soon progress into something else with gangsterism and drug-addiction at the apex of this evil pyramid. Being naturally anti-establishment, these youths will soon have their own territory and the girls, wanting to be part of the gang, become the gang’s ‘assets.’ You think this is a far-fetched theory? Back in 1991 I personally had to help a friend who was also my subordinate to look for his missing 14-year old daughter, who joined one of these gangs at one of the Bandar Tun Razak flats. He was stationed with me in Penang while his wife worked night-shifts in Balakong to supplement the family’s income. With the help of other members of my squadron, we rescued her from a budget hotel along Jalan Alor in Bukit Bintang after four months of tracking her down. Was she thankful? No. She went missing again a month later.

A screwed-up approach in religion is also another culprit to be blamed. We are so bent on punishing people for the bad things they do that we tell them that God does the same, too. How often do we hear warnings such as, “God will cut off your hands if you steal” or “Cut off your tongue if you lie” or “He will hang you by your hair and burn you in hell for not wearing the tudung”? God is always portrayed as being God the Merciless. Whatever happened to God the Merciful? Can’t they instead say that God loves those who abide by His books and live the way of life that has been prescribed? Heaven and Hell are intangible. No one gives a damn about Heaven and Hell because they cannot see it. Before telling them about God’s love, show them love and guidance instead. We never show love to youngsters, that when they get pregnant, we shun them. If they get out of jail we shun them. We are more sensitive about what people would say about our family than placing importance on keeping the family unit together as one. Where are these people to go if they are not allowed to return to their own home?

How many of their children actually roam around stateless? It is so difficult to get a birth certificate because these children were being born out of wedlock and would be even more difficult for them to be registered in clinics, hospitals and schools. Why can’t the government think about this? A birth is a birth be it illegitimate or otherwise. Everyone is entitled to his/her birth certificate to show that they exist on this earth.

I cannot imagine when one of these mothers who have been living life unguided and is confused, is being condemned to death. I don’t think the first thing they wanted to do was to kill their child, but what other choices do they have other than to abandon them or kill them to stifle their cries? Have we ever given them a way out?

For every dead or abandoned baby that is discovered, for every young reluctant mothers we condemn, we destroy ourselves bit by bit.

I sit here in my room, my mind numb as it suffers from having to read a plethora of stupid political issues day in, day out. The ignominy fence-sitters like I have to experience, reading about immature power-crazy politicians, and the comments made by their equally imbecile supporters on online social networks crying foul over every single thing the government of the day does. Every single excruciating whimsical cry pierces through my sanity that I wish I could just bitch slap each and every one of them on a daily basis for tormenting my soul.

Then there’s Ramadhan…

Then somehow virtually everyone becomes religious, starts talking about religious stuff; previous profile pics of clubbing scenes were immediately replaced by pics of the blond hair being fully-covered. I guess we love that – being seasonally-religious.

I guess it’s human to want to hope for something, up to the point of sucking up to other people’s ass and so on, as long as we can get some form of reward. And given a choice between two beneficial deeds, we would perform the one that benefits us most. Virtually every Muslim I know planned on what nights to attend the Tarawih prayers simply because there is a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) that lines up every single night’s reward for performing the prayer, even when it has been proven that the mentioned Hadith is false (Maudhu’).

A couple of weeks ago, Facebook status from users glorified the night of the middle of Syaaban (Lailatun Nisf min Shaaban). Everyone started fasting and suddenly everyone turned religious on that one day only, prayed as if that was THE night to pray and so on. Then they would quote Hadiths stating how special that day and night is, and that the revelation of the Quran was on that night; but when asked what is Nuz al-Quran if it’s not the night the Quran was revealed, the most they could answer was, “Oh, you are not a learned. Therefore, you should not ask these things.”

I may not be a learned but I know that God gave me a set of brain so I could weigh pros and cons, good and bad, logic and stupidity. Why the hell would God want you to pray five times a day when praying on a certain day equals to 10,000 prayers? All I need to do is pray on eight of this Syaaban day, year after year for eight years and I would have prayed the equivalent to my current lifetime! It’s a shortcut! And it is only human to love shortcuts! So, is that logical that there ought to be one special day to do a lifetime’s prayers? You have your brain, so use it. I am not going to answer that for you.

The Quran is there for you. But you should not just read it at face value. I do not see the point in memorizing the whole Book of God in its original language when I know jack what every verse is about, what the history behind the revelation of that verse was. For that reason too, I do not know why is Arabic made compulsory in schools for Malay/Muslims when I would rather have my children learn Mandarin and Tamil so they can grow up to learn about their Chinese and Indian brothers. What is this talk about being a Hafiz? About creating schools to churn out Huffaz? (Hafiz means ‘Guardian’ and Huffaz is its plural form). I doubt that every single Hafiz could memorize each word by how it was spelt in Arabic. But wouldn’t I be a Hafiz too, if I PDF the Quran onto a DVD and make thousands of copies? Children need to grow up as children; you can’t have them go to school in the morning, then have them attend religious studies in the afternoon, only to have them to be able to study and do their homework after all that! Even we adults feel exhausted after a day at the office. We are only better off because we do not have homeworks and exams like they do. After all, they already have religious studies class in school.

The problem with us is that all of us think we are better than God. When I was 16, I used to go out of my dormitory at night, especially on Thursday nights, hunting for house lizards, just because there was this tale that a lizard’s sound almost gave Muhammad away to the Quraisy who were after him. So, there I was with my friends all geared up for war against one of God’s supposed most-hated animal. The problem with that was, I once told myself,

“Wait! If God hates this creature so much, why is He being such a wimp, asking mortals like me to wipe out the world’s lizard population when He can wipe out the whole existence of what He created faster than I can blink?”

See, I have a brain to think with, to rationalize. Unlike some stupid cow-shit-for-brain Soldiers of God who went around petrol-bombing churches, decapitate non-Muslims, blow up innocent people be they Jews, Buddhists, Christians or fellow Muslims alike – ALL in the name of God, because to them God is such a penis-less being that cannot take care of His own divinity. These are people who say they are the learned ones but learnt nothing of the Quran.

So, that’s it. My first posting for this month of Ramadhan that until now has yet to have a title. Therefore, whatever title I decide to give it may or may not reflect the content of this posting at all.

To all Muslims, fast as you are told to, not because you seek divine rewards, but because you love to fast and not because you were told to, or because if you don’t then the person in the cubicle next to you is going to tell everyone at the office including the tea lady that you don’t fast.

You have a brain, use it.