It must be nice to be Christian

My people, we are full of angst. We are full of fear. We are insecure. We feel we are under siege.

Why my people? We rule this land. We are the majority. We rule the government. We have benefits the envy of our fellow Malaysians. It is our King who sits on his thrown.

Our religion is supreme. Mosques dot every housing estate and kampong. Early morning and very evening, the commandments of our God and teachings of our prophet, aspects of our religion are showcased on TV or broadcast from our radio stations.

But we have issues, serious issues. We are always on the defensive. We are always suspicious and the more we use religion to stress our ‘dominance’, or seemingly to be better Muslims, the more we feel we come under threat.

Christians don’t talk about Christianity. Hindus don’t talk about Hinduism. Buddhists don’t talk about Buddhism. THEY JUST PRACTICE IT.

But here we are, Muslims. Talking and talking and talking about Islam. It’s in our faces everyday, every minute.

Yet we seem to practice only the superficial – ‘bila saya ambik wudhu’ saya terlupa kalau saya dah basuh tangan saya tiga kali atau lebih…kalau lebih, haram ke?’

…and the next minute, we slap our wives for disobedience.

We go through the motions. We do our postures and say our prayers, like robots. We seem not to have the spiritual link to it. We’ve reduced our prayers to the Rukun Negara.

Our girls wear the tudung, but sleeves above their elbows, tight-fitting T-shirts and jeans, and walk hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm with their boyfriends in the parks and shopping centres of KL.

For me, no big deal, but lets take the tudung off?

Our boys seldom miss their Friday prayers or their daily prayers for that matter, but wouldn’t hesitate to drop their pants for a good romp with their ‘tudunged’ girlfriends in a Chow Kit hotel or the back seat of a Kancil or Saga. They wait in anticipation in front of factory gates for the girlfriends’ shift to end.

It’s too much to be Muslim. Too much pressure to do things we can’t understand because we pray in a language different from ours.

We understand the Shahadah, our affirmation of God and his prophet. Give us the Al-fatihah and most of us are lost. We recite it well enough, paying attention to the makhraj, but we can’t quite remember the meaning of each verse. Forget about knowing the meanings to the hundreds of verses in the Quran.

We’re lost, totally lost. And we can’t pray or recite the Quran in any other language but the language it is written in. We hope that when we are interrogated in death in a language we don’t understand, our spirits will know the answers – at least that’s what our ustaz tell us, but could this not be a cop out?

I don’t know. I certainly don’t know what Islam is all about. I ask Allah for forgiveness in a language I understand but go through the motions of prayer reciting verses in a language unknown to me.

There seems to be contradictions in what is taught and what is practiced. We are told that idolatry is haram, but we revere our prophet no differently from the way Christians revere Jesus, Hindus, Lord Murugan and Buddhists, Buddha. We have idolized our prophet.

God Almighty! What’s happening to the world of Islam?!

We’re in turmoil. Shia and Muslims are killing each other in Iraq. We’re butchering and being butchered in Nigeria and in Kalimantan.

How about we just chuck all the legal issues in the Moorthy case (and all other cases of apostasy) and focus on the human and religious issues?

For one thing, I, as a Muslim am not convinced that the late Mr Moorthy converted to Islam and remained a Muslim till he died. In my mind there is a possibility that he may have reverted to Hinduism. Did anyone hear him recite his ‘Shahadah’ before he lapsed into a coma (or helped him recited it)?

If Mr Moorthy really died as a Muslim, and had been cremated as a Hindu, what does it really matter? If he was a Muslim, regardless of how the body was treated at death, Allah swt would ‘deal’ with his soul as only He knows. Don’t you trust Allah swt implicitly and explicitly?

I think it awful for Mr Moorthy to have been buried by strangers, save for his brother. A person should be buried or cremated by his family members – a last farewell.

Also, I don’t understand the difficulty for converts to revert. If a person wants to leave Islam after conversion and reverts to his/her religion, or indeed if a born Muslim were to embrace another religion, what’s the problem?

The Quran says: Let there be no compulsion in the religion: Surely the Right Path is clearly distinct from the crooked path.(2: 256)

So let them (the apostates) answer to Him.

Allah swt did not mention in His Quran any punishment for apostates, so why are we relying on man-made Hadiths? Isn’t there a rule that where the Quran and Hadiths contradict, the Quran shall remain supreme? And in this case, there is a contradiction.

Even the Hadith in this respect is contentious with medieval and modern day Islamic scholars disagreeing on the penalty for apostasy.

The detractors to the death penalty were (and are) of the view that when the Prophet Muhammad said that apostates must be killed, it was in time of war. His fighters had asked him how apostates should be treated (for they were once Muslims) and his reply was that they should be treated the same as the enemy.

Those who believe that apostates should be put to the death quote from a Hadith:
“The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims." (Bukhari Vol. 9, book 83, number 17, narrated via Abdullah)

In my view, the death advocates must go back to basics – there is no compulsion in Islam and they should know that in times of war measures are different from times of peace.

It is also my view that although the word of Allah swt in the Quran is for all eternity, the interpretations of the Hadiths were man-made and should be taken in the context they were first written.

The recent cases on apostasy have shed a poor light on Islam. Now those who have intention to convert for fulfillment and belief, might just hesitate and Islam would have lost a ‘saudara baru’.

I wouldn’t recommend conversion for marriage though. Well, maybe a word of advice for those intending to convert for the ephemeral reason of ‘love’ – convert and get married elsewhere and don’t bother changing your identity card incase the ‘love’ turns sour later on and you crave for pork again.
For me the question is; what are we to follow, Allah or Imam Bukhari?

What do they teach in college?

Over the last one week, I’ve been going through candidates for the position of Consultants, PR Executives and Mandarin Specialists.

I can’t comment on the candidates for the Mandarin Specialist position, but going by what my colleagues who reviewed the written and translation tests tell me, their command of the language is only so-so. None could translate very well either.

Of the candidates who applied for the Consultant and PR executive positions, I am surprised that they were not able to articulate what PR is all about and many were Communications graduates. I wonder what they teach in college.

When asked the reason for them studying and wanting to get into PR, most mumble that they ‘like to meet people and organize events’. Well isn’t that shocking!

What’s surprising is that their command of English is absolutely poor – not even passable – even one who had graduated from Monash here. Those who had come out from TAR College or UTAR – well, absolutely appalling command of the English language.

(Not that my English is any good and I can’t tell between an adjective and an adverb and sometimes it’s as screwy as a pig’s tail, but I make the effort not to be a pig’s tail)

But there is hope! One lady, well she is 35 years old, was very good. English, very good. Verbal skills, very good too. But she dressed a little too casually for an interview. She comes from a production house and writes scripts. The probability is, she may not last very long in our environment. We’re very business-like, though there are periods of screaming and swearing. Dress code is work attire and a blazer is always worn for meetings with client or at events. Shoes must be spick and span and for the guys, a tie is a must.

So for those coming from the creative environment of advertising and production who are more comfortable being seriously casual, may find it difficult to fit in.

Another applicant I’ve only just interviewed today for the PR executive position surprised me a little. She’s a design graduate from MMU, but is working in the corporate communications department of a listed company. She started as a graphics designer and doesn’t do much writing, but she handled the ‘press release’ test admirably. I’ve spotted only one grammatical error, but I leave that to nervousness and time rather than anything else. I would recommend her for sure.

March 24, 2006

I just rejected business from Microsoft Malaysia. But it was a long wait. They first discussed the testimonial production September last year and it’s only today that they called to confirm the shoot.

But I have to be responsible to Zaman and Tham who gave me a job at Alpha (albeit on contract) which has helped save my butt.

My financial problems are not yet over by a long shot, but this regular income eases the problems of meeting monthly expenses a great deal. If I were to take on the production, it will surely encroach on my time at work and this wouldn’t be fair.

March 22, 2006

The other night – about 5 nights ago the ‘Jin’ disturbed Raziq again.

Raziq had taken his new found ‘girlfriend’ on a tour of the garden and the back area is a ‘no-go’ zone for him especially in the evenings, but well, once he’s made up his mind, he’s oblivious to everything.

That night at about 2.15am he started crying and complaining that his legs hurt and he was kicking them in the air. I put some traditional ointment that we have, but it didn’t work – he screamed more and when I switched on the light he cried out that he doesn’t want the light because it was hurting his eyes – but then, he had his eyes tightly shut throughout, so couldn't it be hurting them.

The more we read the ayat khursi, the more he screamed and cried, so Ton remembered the advice of a lady we had taken him to see last year, Makngah. She advised to crush some red onions, soak those in water and to massage his legs with the water.

It worked, as it had done before. He almost immediately stopped crying, opened his eyes as though surprised that we were over him, and then went back to sleep.

I believe this Jin has been responsible for a lot of the mishaps of the past and the creator of tensions within the family. Even Mum & Dad don’t come here anymore. They haven’t slept over since the last Raya. Mum hasn’t been and Dad comes to drop off letters. And the only time he's been into the house was just a few days ago when his half-brother came over to look at the leaks to the roof. It was the first time he’s entered the house itself and had coffee since Raya.

When first moved in, Raziq broke an arm and Ton injured her shoulder from falls. I slipped getting off the long bath and lucky for me the door broke my fall or I could have been injured. And a year before that, Raziq caught some weird inflammation around his hip and for over 3 weeks he could not walk and he was at an age when he just learned to walk too -- wobbling a long. The doctor couldn’t understand what it was. All test came up OK but the X-ray showed inflammation around the hips.

Also both Ton and I have seen or experienced ‘things’. But could just be our imagination, though I very much doubt it.