MALAYSIA GOES CUCKOO! Of rising Muslim fundamentalism & high-speed STUPIDITY!

Here’s a light-bulb joke:

Q: How many religious fundamentalists does it take to change a light-bulb?

A: Why are you asking me this? Are you trying to insult me?! Is there darkness in your life, caused by worms in your brain? And it’s clear what may come next – sex orgies!

The “I Want To Touch A Dog” event, held recently at Bandar Utama in Malaysia was (yet) another lightning-rod for high-speed stupidity. Another relatively fun and harmless episode which, predictablyenough, morphed into all out paranoia, condemnation and religious hot-air-puffing. Ditto JAIS, MAIS, PAS – and some seriously sicko online trolls who see the event as so clear and present a danger they needto threaten Syed Azmi Alhabshi’s life. Like night follows day, all these folks get soooo worked up, it’s as if the 1-Utama-rians were promoting “I Want To Get Ebola.”

Malaysia totally Boleh, man.

We’ve got floods, we’ve got exam-paper leaks, we’ve got a national sports doping scandal but YIPPEE-DOO-DAH these funny-mentalists want to persecute an animal-lover. We’ve got ISIS tearing up the Middle-East. We’ve got Ebola causing havoc in Africa (very sad) and panic in America (a bit funny). We’ve got that national headache called the G.S.T, but – ladies and gents – thebest-and-brightest minds in FT PAS cannot help but equate a weekend educational event with clandestine sex orgies. Needless to say, the theological virtuosoes at Perkasa can’t resist equating Klang Valleytornadoes with Muslims patting Alsatians. And, saddest of sad cases, PAS beloved spiritual leader has to suggest that the event-organisers need a lobotomy given the maggots in their minds.

A billion sperm-cells and these folks reached the finish line first.

Here’s a question I’ve asked before but, because I’m living in truly Asia-Malaysia, I will keep asking: could it be that fundamentalist Muslims require a constant element of fear as an integral part of thatwhich constitutes its own faith?

Not unlike Pembela and Perkasa who (previously, and even now) can feel threatened by 5,000 copies ofthe Alkitab coming in to the country, are JAIS, MAIS and PAS doing nothing more than producing what they have to believe i.e. that liberals, non-Muslims and generally anyone else who are not them, are up tono good?

In other word, are threats to fundamentalist faith something which such faith needs to include into itself?

There’s a wonderful quote about dogs which I found online:

“God said I need somebody strong enough to pull sleds and find bombs, yet gentle enough to love babies and lead the blind. Somebody who will spend all day on a couch with a resting head and supportive eyes to lift the spirits of a broken heart. So God made a dog.”

I don’t know who wrote the quote. Probably not the F.T. PAS Youth Committee.

For those guys? Even if they fully believed this, they would find a reason to be suspicious of dogs. For JAIS and MAIS, quotes like this – instead of inspiring affection and gratitude – must be scrutinizedfor booby-traps. For MAIS, spiritual inspiration is one and the same with clamming down on those oh-so-evil liberals out to destroy the Muslim world.

The point is, the fear of apostasy is part and parcel of what it means to be a fundamentalist, a fearwhich ‘makes up’ the faith as they know it, a fear which drives them to even greater efforts at religious policing and outward ‘righteousness’.

Like the gay-hating father (played by Chris Cooper) in "American Beauty", the more he hates homosexuals, the more his homosexual tendencies manifest themselves. In fact, his hate for homosexuals was theultimate EXPRESSION of his need for homosexual affection.

All of which highlights the vulnerable and less than fully authentic nature of the kind of faith fundamentalists have.

True belief, it has been said, casts out fear. A pure faith also rejects an obsessive concern with policing other faiths and in fact longs to see the good in the different. Love, in other words, is present in the genuine.

In contrast, hate and prejudice usually reign in the minds of those who are afraid that their personal and spiritual insecurities will come into the public light. Yet paradoxically, like Oedipus, the more they wantto run away from their own fears (by accusing others of being the source of these fears), the more they actualize what they fear because the fundamentalist’s greatest fear is having nothing to fear.

Now that’s what I call having maggots in one’s mind. –TMI