No need for ‘sensitivity’ towards crosses

Jakim should start a jihad of its own to desensitise those suffering from an aversion to crosses so that they do not put Islam in a bad light.

COMMENT

By Ravinder Singh

The official Facebook page ‘Friends of BN – Barisan Nasional’ while condemning the Petaling Jaya “CROSS” demonstration on Sunday at the same time tried to justify it saying: “It is generally accepted that Malays, who are Muslim, are sensitive towards the cross sign.”

How is it the Malays (some, not all) have become sensitive to the cross when hundreds of thousands of Malay children in decades past went to Christian missionary schools and were literally surrounded by crosses, yet were not sensitive to them?

How many of the country’s Malay top leaders in government and the private sector since Merdeka were educated by Christian missionaries without any of them converting to Christianity?

Children are not born “sensitive” to this or that. They become sensitive to this and that as a result of learning from the people around them – their families, teachers, leaders.

The learning may be direct (teaching – or, in a stronger term, indoctrination), or indirect (by imitation) from hearing and seeing things being said and done by those around them or in their society.

I made myself paranoid about crosses for a few minutes and the following is a list of the crosses that I saw or visualised:
1. The human body standing with outstretched arms is a cross.
2. The keris standing on its tip is a cross
3. The main part of a plane (fuselage and wings) is a cross.
4. The computer keyboard has three crosses staring at me (letter t and symbols + and x)
5. I can see crosses in the door and window frames.
6. Looking at the floor, I see it full of crosses where floor tiles meet
7. Holding up a collared shirt, it looks like a cross
8. Window and door grilles make a lot of crosses
9. Street-light poles with lights on either side are huge crosses
10. Cross roads are crosses.

A few hundred thousand Malay-Muslim children are actually making the sign of the cross every day whenever they write or do maths. So, stop them writing the rumi script or doing maths, or invent new letters to replace t and X and a new symbol for +.

Don’t fly in planes – use some other means of transport. By the way, as they fly, their “cross” shadow falls on holy places too.

Don’t drive on roads that have “crosses” for junctions.

Don’t wear shirts with collars as they resemble crosses.

Then, what about the human body standing with outstretched arms, the body that belongs to Muslims and the kafirs alike? How can one remove oneself from being caught in a cross-shaped body?

What a drama is being made of “sensitivities” to not only the cross but to other things of the minority groups! The so-called “sensitivities” are feigned sandiwaras.

The Director-General of Jakim Othman Mustapha was right to say that “without a good religious foundation, no matter how successful they become in life, it will be futile as their contribution to society will only bring more harm than good”.

So what is Jakim going to do about those who are so “sensitive” to even the sight of anything that does not belong to the Islamic faith and launch a jihad of their own to remove the cause of their “sensitivity attack”?

Jakim should start a jihad of its own to desensitise those suffering from the “sensitivity syndrome” so that they do not put Islam in a bad light. They badly need a good religious foundation to understand that the Prophet did not command his followers to disrespect or disparage persons of other faiths or to desecrate their places of worship, but to treat them with respect and live in harmony with them.

For a start, Jakim should make a stand on the action of this group who went on a jihad of their own to get the cross removed from the church building. Was their action strictly in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet? If not, get the same group to put back the cross where it was, even if the church is not in an approved building, for it is not for them to take the law into their hands. If the church is illegal, the appropriate authority should act, not a mob on a jihad of their own.

Ravinder Singh is an FMT reader.