"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Monty Python's Flying Circus
On Saturday, I cycled 24 kilometres to a waterfall near a village outside of the city of Kuching and on my return journey, the left pedal of my bicycle came completely off - making it impossible for me to cycle back home. I was stranded in the middle of nowhere fun, about 20 kilometres displaced from my apartment.
As fortune would have it, a Bidayuh man in a pick-up gave me and my broken-ass bicycle a ride. Due to my accent, he identified me as a mainlander and not a native of Sarawak. Through no fault of mine, the conversation turned to how I feel about my adopted home and I told him about how I enjoy the blurring of racial lines here in Borneo.
"The Malays, Chinese, Bidayuh and Iban all intermarry freely. Race mixing is a far bigger deal back in the Peninsula," I said.
"Yeah," he agreed absentmindedly. "There's no reason why not. I'd let my children marry any race - so long as they don't marry a Malay."
Whoops. That turned racist pretty quickly.
"Anyone who wants to marry one of them has to convert to what they believe in, but they aren't expected to do the same. They expect others to give up their beliefs, their heritage and their cultural roots, as if those are less important compared to what is Malay and Muslim," he continued. "Is that fair?"
"I suppose not."
"Imagine the family reunions," he said, unsmiling. "If my Muslim son-in-law or daughter-in-law visits, we have to trip over ourselves just to make sure that their every dietary restriction is met. Remember how much fuss they kicked up recently over a little pig DNA in a chocolate bar? Marrying Muslims divides families. It causes inconvenience and unhappiness."
That racist man made a really good point, I admitted to myself. And he did also rescue me from a 20 kilometre trudge back to Kuching under the merciless afternoon sun, so I didn't argue with him.
Earlier this year, JAIS (Selangor Islamic Religious Department) raided the Bible Society of Malaysia and confiscated hundreds of volumes of Bibles translated to the Malay language because they think that the only reason why Christians want Malay Bibles is to use them to proselytise to the Malay Muslims in this country. There was also that story about JAIPP (Penang Islamic Religious Department) arresting a Indonesian Catholic woman who they mistook for being Muslim because of her Arabic-sounding name (for the crime of being unchaperoned in the company of men), and more than two years later, she is still battling the Syariah Court which by right, should have absolutely zero jurisdiction over her.
Now, in the span of just the recent eight days, the Islamic inquisition of Malaysia unexpectedly gatecrashed both a wedding AND a funeral. This must be like some kind of record for them.
On June 1, JAIS barged their way into a Hindu marriage ceremony held in a Hindu temple in Petaling Jaya to halt it, because what probably happened was that one of the invited guests, noticing that the bride has a Muslim name decided to blow the whistle and tip JAIS off about it. The bride had a Muslim name because her deadbeat father converted their entire family to Islam - something that his illiterate wife did not realise until it was too late. After the bride's dad ran away, the mother raised the entire family in accordance to the Hindu faith. Zarinah Abdul Majid (the bride) have been a practising Hindu all her life and have spent RM20,000 in legal fees alone trying - to no avail - to change her official name and religion. The wedding that JAIS ruined cost RM30,000 and Zarinah's 400 wedding guests could only watch as JAIS officers hauled her away, sari and all, for questioning.
Also, what kind of soulless excuse for a human being you have to be to alert JAIS to this joyous event that you have been invited to partake and share in?
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| Zarinah being hauled away for questioning on her wedding day. |
Then today, on June 9, JAIPP enforcers stopped a Chinese funereal procession and - you won't fucking believe this - dragged the coffin with the deceased's corpse in it away using a van. Apparently, the departed (a 38-year-old waitress called Teoh Cheng Cheng who had a Muslim boyfriend) had converted to Islam but neglected to let her family know about her switching teams before she fell to her death from her apartment. Now, as the funeral was yesterday and she died on Saturday (that's two days apart), one wonders why the JAIPP goons did not break the news earlier to an already distraught family? Why bring even more pain and sorrow to the Teohs? CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT THE FUCK IS BEING GAINED HERE AT THIS JUNCTURE? Is Teoh Cheng Cheng alias Nora Teoh Abdullah less likely to receive a favourable judgment from Mighty Allah because she was unknowingly buried without the proper magical Islamic rituals?
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| JAIPP making off with Teoh Cheng Cheng's totally Muslim corpse. |
The fact is, as loudly and blood-curdlingly Muslims in Malaysia bark at the rest of us to respect their faith and culture, they have proven time and time again that they have exactly zero respect for anyone who does not believe in the same Arabic god they do. That's why they can so righteously and shamelessly walk right into the middle of a Hindu wedding and nab the bride away. That's why they can so confidently halt a Chinese funeral and heave-hoed a dead woman in her coffin onto their body-snatching hearse, while being deaf to the confused pleas and tears of the deceased's mother.
These are zealots that have no sense of sympathy or decency in them at all because they have grafted the immovable weight of blind faith onto the stump where their empathy used to be. My fellow Muslim Malaysians, look at them. These are the men that you have empowered to represent and defend your religion, to police over you and all those who share your faith. At the end of one of the five daily prayers you offer to your Allah, ask yourself if what they did were the actions of good, decent, compassionate men. Is this the face of Islam that you want to show the rest of the kuffar in Malaysia? Do you think that this will inspire others to learn more about or even embrace your religion?
My son is about 9 months of age now and when he's old enough to ask me what Muslims stand for, I am going tell him that half of them believe it's alright to do what they did to others in that wedding and that funeral, while the other half did nothing to stop them.
Afraid of Muslims,
k0k s3n w4i
5 comments:
I'm a Malay, a fairly agnostic one. I keep up appearances (praying, fasting, avoiding pork) to jaga hati my parents.
Then I got into a relationship with a Catholic girl. It was supposed to be a fling of sorts. But it went on for 2 and a half years because we sort of felt very comfortable around each other.
That's when the questions started. When was I going to marry her? Would she convert? Would she?
I loved her very much, and I was sure she felt the same. But I didn't want her to abandon her family who were quite strict Catholics as well. So we ended it.
I think she found a nice Catholic man. I don't know.
Us agnostic Malays have the downsides too. What are we supposed to do? Defy parents? Family members?
The law is fucked up here.
["Yeah," he agreed absentmindedly. "There's no reason why not. I'd let my children marry any race - so long as they don't marry a Malay."
Whoops. That turned racist pretty quickly.]
I will say that that the nice Bidayuh uncle did not mean to be a racist but that marrying a Malay if you are not a 'muslim' is going to be a very one-sided affair, one that I do not think is a good start to any marriage.
The non-muslim has to convert into a religion that he/she does not freely chooses. That, right there is the gist of the whole big stinkin' problem. Another problem is that the Malay peeps like the agnostic Malay commenter above have to put up appearances when it's clear that he does not want to, for the sake of family.
For me, coming from a non-religious family helps a lot as I get to just be mt complete atheistic self but that is not enough isn't it? On bloody papers, I still am a registered believer (I make it sound like I'm a registered sex offender, ha ha!)
How genuine is a 'belief' in god if it's all play-pretend and force-feeding. How is it that these body-snatchers feel that they have the right to do what they do on a funeral day of someone who was a dear family member and not feel like it's all serious bullshit.
"That's when the questions started. When was I going to marry her? Would she convert? Would she?
I loved her very much, and I was sure she felt the same. But I didn't want her to abandon her family who were quite strict Catholics as well. So we ended it.
I think she found a nice Catholic man. I don't know."
You loved her but you hope/expected her to convert for your sake?
you loved her but the only possible end you see is her leaving her family and her heritage for your sake?
and you think you not letting her do it is what? a great and honourable thing that you did?
that's love to you?
"Us agnostic Malays have the downsides too. What are we supposed to do? Defy parents? Family members? "
yeah, give us the sob story of how bad you have it. tell it to the bride and the heart-wrecked mother.
This reminds me of Abu Ghraib 2003 where Iraqi prisoners were abused physically, psychologically even raped/sodomised by US military police personnel.
On investigation, it was found they were not regular military police but from the US Army Reserve. In other words, part-time soldiers holding full-time jobs in civilian life. Their jobs - fast food joints, meat packing plants, gas stations etc ... menial work for the white underbelly of US society. And when these people were posted to Abu Ghraib and given raw power over the captives, it was like payback time.
The Islamic religious police, as I call them, I bet most of them are just barely educated, held menial jobs in the past , and when they become what they see themselves as undisputed enforcers of the country's one and official religion, and of the master race as well, such high-handed acts happened. So far, no violence on their part, but if the aggrieved party were to hit out, and these religious police strike back, what is religious could become ethnic conflict.
It is all about knowing a person's character by giving him power. And I am sure some of these people break the holy laws in private what they zealously uphold in front of a captive audience.
Anonymous: I understand that liberal Malays, murtadeen and munafiqeen are fearful of the Islamic police, perhaps even more so than us kuffar - but that is where our problem lies. I am sorry for your loss. Now you'll never know.
shanaz@RS: I can't understand how those people can reconcile what they do with their conscience either, but I suppose that is what religion is good at. It anaesthetises our sense of empathy. When you think you are on the side of good, why bother examining your actions?
phang: You loved her but you hope/expected her to convert for your sake?
you loved her but the only possible end you see is her leaving her family and her heritage for your sake?
Calm down, man. He was saying the OPPOSITE of what you are accusing him of. He said that they ended their relationship because he didn't want her to abandon her family. I think you owe him an apology.
Darshan: Religious and ethnic issues in this country seems to be inseparable - mostly due to the fact that belonging to the Malay race meant that one has to be Muslim. It didn't help that the positions they abuse hold no attraction for anyone intelligent.
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