Twisted Fate – Reverse Roles

Twisted Fate – Reverse Roles

Twisted Fate – Reverse Roles

Posted: 07 Jan 2010 01:56 AM PST

 Can humans ban a sacred word?

In an unplanned and unprepared manner, a religious controversy has slowly made its way into the fabric of our societal existence.

The current Home Minister must be cursing while saying it: "My idiot former colleague must have gotten Alzheimer when he brought on the ban with regards to the use of the word Allah in East Malaysian scriptural writings and publications"

How could an over-zealous former Home Minister decided unilaterally against the use of the word Allah when it has never pose a problem in East Malaysian society for the last 60 years. People have been singing praises and hymns to their beloved God by calling the almighty "Allah" but it has now degraded to letting a human decide who can call whom what!

And the current Home Minister must also be cursing in his mind … 9 months worth of smooth sailing and good image building (lets forget about the whole episode on the Keris-thing) since becoming the new Home Minister and now I should be the one to have to say to the NGOs that – you can protest, you can demonstrate, I have no objection! I'll be damned if I don't allow them and I'll be damned also if I allow them. But in the interest of 'votes', I'll just allow them to 'walk', no harm right? Wrong.

And in an unprecedented move by the Opposition Leader, Anwar has decided to say the thing which is most foreign to his lips, "Thou shall not protest tomorrow" – in an effort to stop his followers and symphatisers from joining the gathering of Muslim protesters in starting a march of protest from Kg Baru onwards after Friday prayers.

And to top up with the fun, PM today says he cannot do anything if the NGOs decide to protest against the High Court ruling by Justice Lau Bee Lan to allow the Herald to continue using the word Allah in their publication.

What will the rakyat out there think? First of, NO FACE to Lau Bee Lan. Its as good as giving her a slap on the face and saying, you don't mess with us! Might (numbers) is Right. Next off, by using the Home Ministry in applying for a stay-of-execution, this does not augur well with the already poor perception of how our Govt uses high-handedness when it is in their favour to do so.

And then what happened to 1Malaysia, Unity, Rakyat Didahulukan? Suddenly, it just vanished from our radar screen. 9mmonths of doing all the feel good thingy, and spending or 'going' to spend 1 billion a year to form the 'best F1′ team just does not explain how intolerant our society is!

Does this mean that the 'R'akyat in peninsular matter more than the 'r'akyat in Sabah and Sarawak. Are our Christian brothers and sisters over there any 'less'? Why does this have to be seen as a one-sided decision when the crux of the matter is: it does not even involve us, as no usage of the word Allah (in Christian publications) was ever involved here in peninsular Malaysia.

If I were you, stay away from Kg Baru again tomorrow. My heart goes out to the hawkers/penjaja (whom are predominantly low-income Malay folks) who makes a living along the roads of Kg Baru. If there is a walk of protest tomorrow, they will be the ones who will be most economically affected … and whom will they blame?

We must learn to move away from myopic ways of thinking and learn how to deal with problems wholistically. This "idiosyncracy" did not appear one fine day, and neither can we treat it as such. A true WIN-WIN way of dealing with it must be thought out to appease all angles now.

I don't think the Arabs agree that it was Nabi Mohamad pbuh that woke up one day and created the word Allah. It was all along there and were used interchangeably by the Arabs for centuries. If Nabi Mohamad did not 'trade mark' the word Allah, who are we to do so! Peace be upon us …
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