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Sunday, November 9, 2014

How low can bigots go?

Why be petty when there are endless possibilities for raising hell if one is truly against breaches of religious values?
COMMENT
By Ravinder Singh
botol_halal_300All hell broke loose recently when someone found that the label of a certain brand of mineral water had a picture of the statue of a Hindu deity with a halal logo close to it.
There was another logo with the word “Malaysia” on it. On the left of this logo was the word “visit” and on its right “2014”. Reading them together, the message was “Visit Malaysia 2014”. The water bottler probably meant well and was only doing his part to promote tourism, an important money earner for Malaysia.
According to the hell raisers, they were anxious to prevent “confusion” among Muslims.
If it was so wrong to place the logo close to the photo of the statue, one wonders what the so-called guardians of Islam will say when they find out the following:
  • There is no way of removing non-halal impurities from the air breathed out by people who eat non-halal food.
  • There is no system in place to ensure that coins and ringgit notes handled in the non-halal section of a market do not end up in the halal section.
  • Hospitals do not label donated blood “halal” and “non-halal”.
  • Laundry services in hotels do not separate towels and linen used by Muslims and non-Muslims.
  • There is no special washing to remove non-halal impurities from tableware used in restaurants.
Readers can continue adding to the list.
In the good old days, Muslim children used to sit next to their non-Muslim friends when they ate in school canteens. There were no complaints although pork dishes were sold in some English medium schools. None of the Muslim students were tempted by the non-halal food or “confused” over what their non-Muslim friends were eating.
In the mission schools, the day started with Christian prayers. Muslim students would stand silently and respectfully. Their faith in Islam was not shattered. Not one of them converted.
Reflecting on the past and comparing it with the present, it’s hard to understand how placing the halal logo near a photo of a tourist attraction can either desecrate the logo or make the water in the bottle haram.
The Minister of Tourism has rightly said that people should not be going insane over matters that are non-issues.
There are many real issues for people to get mad about: corruption, wastage, the high cost of living, the lack of discipline in our schools, the stupidity of civil servants who pay exorbitant prices for procurement of goods and services, junkets disguised as study tours, and so on.
Just pick up the Auditor General’s reports and one can find endless possibilities for raising hell if one is seriously against breaches of religious values, let alone other breaches.
Islamicity study
Last June, The Telegraph reported on a study on Islamicity under the headline “The Koran’s teachings are better represented in Western societies than in Islamic countries.”
It said: “A study of 208 countries and territories has found that the top countries in both economic achievement and social values are Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg and New Zealand. Britain also ranks in the top ten.”
The Christian missionaries who taught in Malaysia were mostly from Ireland. Muslim children taught by them were strong in the Muslim faith. Was this a co-incidence?
How then could Muslim children taught by local teachers and attending religious classes or schools be so weak in the faith that the mere sight of water bottles, houses of prayer of other faiths, etcetera, can make them utterly confused and result in chaos, as some groups would have us believe?
These people should learn from what medical science teaches us, i.e. that children who grow up playing in the dirt and rain have stronger body immunity than those who are not allowed to dirty their hands in the mud.
Maybe that is why the faith of the Malay/Muslim children who went to Christian schools is so strong that they are not confused by anything unIslamic. They had Christianity all around them during their most impressionable years, yet were true to their own religion. Could the self appointed defenders of the faith explain this phenomenon? Did any of them go to a missionary school?
We are entitled to ask: how low can the bigots go to create smoke where there are no fires? Why are they hellbent on driving wedges between Muslims and non-Muslims who have lived in peace in this country for ages? Should we bring back the Irish missionaries to teach our children again?
The Telegraph article quoted Hoessein Askari, a leading academic at George Washington University, as saying, “Islamic countries … have failed to embrace the values of their own faith in politics, business, law and society.”
Askari said he found from his study that Muslim countries used religion as an instrument of state control.
He said: “We must emphasise that many countries that profess Islam and are called Islamic are unjust, corrupt, and underdeveloped and are in fact not Islamic by any stretch of the imagination.
“Looking at an index of Economic Islamicity, or how closely the policies and achievements of countries reflect Islamic economic teachings, Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, Finland, Norway, and Belgium round up the first 10.
“If a country, society, or community displays characteristics such as unelected, corrupt, oppressive, and unjust rulers, inequality before the law, unequal opportunities for human development, absence of freedom of choice (including that of religion), opulence alongside poverty, force and aggression as the instruments of conflict resolution as opposed to dialogue and reconciliation, and, above all, the prevalence of injustice of any kind, it is prima facie evidence that it is not an Islamic community.”
The Telegraph said an Overall Islamicity Index analysing social rules and human rights measures found that similar rankings were generated in 2010.
Askari reportedly said: “Islam is, and has been for centuries, the articulation of the universal love of Allah for His creation and for its unity, and all that this implies for all-encompassing human and economic development.”
Ravinder Singh is an FMT reader.

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