Unmasking Religious Hypocrisy

The lesson from Quran 2:159:- Those who concealed the truth will be cursed by Allah and by those entitled to curse. Those entitled to curse include the pious and the righteous and the oppressed. 

The oppressed are those that must endure expensive cost of living; some people in Baling Kedah who are forced to buy some rice , measured in milk tins each time to eat lunch or dinner. Or some people in Sik Kedah, who resort to stealing packets of nasi lemak when no one is looking. Why are these things happening in Malaysia? Because many of us have listened to the lies told by leaders like Najib and the so called men of God, people of the book etc.

These people are entitled to swear and curse at those men of God who do not speak of these things but talk non stop about the rewards in the hereafter. Men of God get to enjoy heaven on earth, the poor and the voiceless endure hellish way of life on earth.

Haji hadi and his like minded friends may enjoy their moment of infamy. Sowing discord and divisiveness makes a person infamous. Religious persons are not beneath lying. Some of them said 300,000 people attended. The truer figure is around 30-50,000.

But people are cursing him and his friends. Many know most of them are hypocrites; extolling people to live humbly but they surround themselves with luxury. Urging people to live a life of sexual abstinence but they themselves are sexually voracious.

Many more people did not attend his call to convene on Padang Merbok.Because they know these men of God are doing this gathering to conceal and hide their own shortcomings and failures.

They know he and his friends, are making a political statement. This is not a question of whether we are rejecting God’s divine laws or being anti religion. Haji Hadi thinks the legalistic way is the only way of making Islam great again. We think other ways of making Islam great ought to be given priority. It is a question of adopting a more strategic way or ways of making Islam great. It’s an issue of exercising our right to differ.

People have a right to decide which way is suitable and good for them. Freedom means being able to minimise the coercion of others on ourselves.

This is a question of purposely ignoring the realities engulfing Muslims all over the year. No one wants to give more powers to the Islamic courts which do not deserve empowering and which serves to give form to some people’s lust to implement divine laws using them to submit others to the wishes of a select group of mullahs.

People are not stupid nowadays. They know the message of the Quran in 2:177. Not to be slaves to regimentation, enforced uniformity and to conventional thinking. They know they do not have to follow established practices and refuse to let others define how to conduct themselves. They understand virtue consists of meeting the obligations of faith and God, obligations to society, obligations to oneself. It is they who define themselves how lead a virtuous life.

They know the message in Quran 3:69. They know some ustazs and  religious teachers are out there to confuse people and sow dissension. They know the ustazs are making a fool of themselves and going astray themselves. People know, the ustazs are specifically instructed not to conceal the truth with falsehoods. Yet they are doing just that.

Some of them use obscure sayings of the prophet to justify their personal conduct. When questioned on the usage of luxury cars, some of these ustazs answer the Holy Prophet commanded Muslims to project themselves in style. Ordinary people use ordinary horses, leaders must use black stallions. Ordinary people use protons, they can use Q7, Porsches, Range Rovers and other luxury makes.

People know some of thee ustazs are never to be trusted. People understand the message of 3:75. Some of these ustazs when entrusted with a single silver coin will never return it to us but justify their refusal by saying they are not accountable to stupid people. Only some when entrusted with a hoard of gold, will return them to us.

These modern day preachers think people are stupid and therefore, they don’t have to account themselves to stupid people. It is time for people to reject these charlatans and hypocrites.  

We have to look deeper and closer. What was the hidden agenda behind the H355 Rally? Is it to unite the Malays using religion and race supremacy? I think there are valid grounds to think it is.

Some people seem to think that Malays will unite if it can be shown to them that their religion and their existence as a Malay nation are endangered. By Malay nation, we mean Malays who think in terms of the race, religion and king. Any imagined threats to these must be responded with the threat of force and aggression.  UMNO has gone around the length and breadth of the country, telling Malays, their nation is in danger.

PAS has acted the same by telling Malays, their religion is under siege. Unfortunately, this claim has not been corroborated with facts. The religion of Islam is under the absolute control of Malay rulers and the state governments. These entities must have been compromised to make the claim stands.

If Muslims continue to commit all the crimes that require harsher punishments, then that could mean, the Malays are superficially Muslims. 
If Islam is threatened and endangered, it means, there is  no group that stands in opposition to urge people to do good and reject the bad. It can only mean, the absence of a section of the community that refuses to stand up to the evil carried out by another section of the community. It can only mean that PAS has made promises but produced dismal results.

Posted by Ariff Sabri (with permission)