Friends ,
Emeritus Prof Khoo Kay Kim had this to say in Fikrah recently on national Solidarity :
"Sistem pendidekan pada 1956 ada Penyata Razak ada menyatakan objektif utama sistem pendidekan negara ini adalah untuk perpaduan negara .Sejak itu ,sila tunjukkan kepada saya sekolah manakah yang berjaya membentuk perpaduan dalam negara .Tiada bukan ?"
The good professor could just sincerely give the answer himself why such situation arise : From an early tender age Malaysians were streamed into vernacular schools of the parents' choice .40 years back most would join the National System which was mainly English medium of instruction ,some Malay medium ,and a few Chinese and Indian schools .Now the Chinese mainly go to Chinese Primary ,rural Indians to Indian schools ,Malays majority ,some Chinese and Indians to Sekolah Menengah dan Rendah Jenis Kebangsaan .[ My Indian colleagues told me Tamil is not even the national language in India and they would not get their offsprings even 2 kilometres near any Tamil school. They are doctors though, not a rubber tappers who are more important vote wise to Samy Velloo ]
Try introduccing Sekolah Wawasan ,and we nearly have a riot !Whose fault is this my dear prof ? Where can there be hope for National Solidarity ??
Let us look at one sixth former's view of the status quo some 40 years back in an essay on National Solidarity to The New Straits Time .Put yourselves 40 years ago in the time frame of Post May 13th Malaysia ,when King Ghaz ,the 'intellectual munition' of Tun Razak's very powerful National Operation Council [ ..and to remind those not yet born at that time ,Pak Lah was the Sec to the Council .He has been around quite a while but things did not 'collect' and percolate in the right away in those deep recesses of his grey mater perhaps ! ] ,came out with the 5 point Rukun Negara which all students ,primary or secondary ,commit to memory .
This young lower sixth former wrote :
"Within a brief period of 14 years of its inception ,Malaysia has had the taste of many a success particularly in various aspects of nation building .
However ,she has also felt the stinging pain of failure ,the failure to integrate her plural population into one harmonious unit .Past events have made us conscious of the fact that integration should no longer be considered a luxury in a multi racial society such as ours ;instead it is an essential element without which the very foundation of the nation is on shaky ground .
Ours is a land divided .Not only do we differ in cultures ,beliefs and traditional concept in economic values but there also exists a polarisation of economic groups along communal lines .
Naturally this vast differences breed mutual fear ,discontentment and antagonism ,the fear that one racial group might submerge the others either politically or economically ;discontentment that arises from alleged bigotry and the antagonism that exists from being so separated and alien to each other .
Now we have a definite path to follow .We have defined our aims and plotted our route .The Rukunegara lays down the guiding principles to our end - a united ,democratic ,just ,liberal and progressive Malaysia .
Our leaders talked of bridging the actual economic gap ,of the great need for goodwill ,and of many other remedial measures as our most probable line of attack to achieve our objective .Granted that we are successful in all these we would still be a land divided .
Our mistake in the past was in assuming that we were well on our way towards a united Malaysia just because we were able to live peacefully in what was purely ' pseudo harmony '.We lived on tolerance then .But there are two kinds of tolerance .
The one that we have subjected ourselves to in the past has been one that stemmed not from the understanding of one another's feelings and background but from fear of hurting the feeling of others ;fear of breaking that icy bondage linking us together .
We went on living side by side ,each and everyone trying earnestly to cause as little umbrage as possible .
Little did we realise that by such an attitude we were slowly drifting apart until a small sparkof friction could set alight mutual fear and distrust into a violent tempest of human passions as illustrated by the May 13th tragedy .
A nation could subsist on this kind of tolerance but must we live with the grim assurance of possible future conflicts more devastating and tempestuous in nature ?
The other kind of tolerance is one that grows from real understanding of one another's feelings and background .This latter kind of tolerance is difficult but by virtue of its inherent wisdom ,it is bound to last .
At the same time we must concede that for a man to be able to accept another man from an alien race for all he is ,he comes face to face with two conditioned forces - racial distrust and prejudices .The older he is,the more deeply entrenched these forces would be in his subconscious .
Therefore what we need is a mental revolution on a grand scale - one that would change the prevailing biased attitudes of the old and young .
Since the youth of today is going to inherit our Malaysia of tomorrow it is imperative that the authority channel all its resources towards a more enlightened re-orientation of notions regarding race ."
I got the biggest pay cheque ever in my life for writing "sweet nothing" ,250 ringgit in all ,and had to hitch hike all the way from sleepy hallow Kuala Kangsar to big time Kuala Lumpur just to shake hand with the great man ,King Ghaz .At that time 250 ringgit was too big for me ,I lend the whole sum to my elder brother as a down payment for a brand new Italian Vespa .
Till now I am not quite sure whether he had actually repaid that 'hutang ' .Must remember to ask him tonight !
Dr Nik Howk
PS :
Well my friends ,40 years on ,we have actually missed the 'boat'.Or rather Pak Jab at that time with 100 % power could have established a "single stream education" system without much problem then while still under NOC ,and perhaps when Pak Jab Junior takes over next year ,things would have been significantly different . Now ,we are still a house divided .
The last time I caught a glimpse of King Ghaz was along the corridor of Sime Darby Medical Centre ,Subang Jaya .Must be in his 90's ,a decrepit old man on a wheel chair ,a pale shadow of the Home Minister who would not even hesitate to send the much junior Mahathir under ISA if that was required at that time .Can always do it under the pretext of ultra radicalism ,communist infiltrate or whatever as what King Ghaz did to my very distant cousin ,Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad and the other 2 Abdul's. King Ghaz ,colourful man with colorful tastes who piloted his own Cessna into oblivion in the jungle of Pahang and survived !The actual pilot and ? a caucasian lady did not .That was how colorful Ghaz was !
That is Qadar which all of us mere mortals cannot run away from .We peak ,we grow old ,we are forgotten , then we die !
Just looking back at the corridor scene in my mind's eye ,make me wonder in this stillness of early morning whether present day Malaysia would be better served by opinioted and strong and interesting characters like King Ghaz as Cabinet Ministers or by colourless ,insipid ,poodles surrounding an equally weak and ineffectual future PM whose only claim to fame was his allege inability to control 'his small man' and the 'Mrs' .Just a National perception now ,the actual thing on the ground may not be true .A National perception only !
All just there to ' cari makan ' as much and as fast and as sleek as the the 'law' allows . Just wondering aloud my anxieties .
King Ghaz and his friends all belong to the dinousaur age .Now anything less than a half billion RM kickback in National projects is not worth mulling over .
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Pearls & Gem : Qadar ,Qada' and Lailatulqadr
Friends ,
If one take an early morning or late evening strool in any park in Malaysia and count the number of Muslim men or women exercising their bodies for good health I can bet my bottom ringgit that the number would be less than 5 % ,on any given day .Muslims do not generally exercise ,a common fact .
In the hospital ,we are on the whole very much less than the perfect patients ,and that is a summary of 30 years of experience and observation .My typical Muslim patients are generally 'more laid back' ,oftentimes lack insight ,and have a higher propensity to look for unknown ,irrational and most often crucially time losing ,at most time idiotic ,occasionally bordering on the khurafah , simple ' miracle ' alternatives .
[...Doc ! Ozone therapy surely must work !And it is expensive ,therefore it must work . How come even the PM uses it ??!! That ,precisely my friend ,is why we currently are having all sort of problems with the country ! .You can go to Shah Alam and have a 'brain' and 'heart' transplant for a couple of thousand ringgit .It may also work judging by the number of Mercs and Jaguars queeing up .I am not sure the joint is still there ,must have shifted to Selayang or somewhere my friend .]
In 2008 this can be very frustrating for the ' care givers '.And to add insult to injury ,these folks are not so called ' simple people '.They have masters degree ,sometime even holders of PHD's .
At the market place ,our contractors generally do not deliver well ,our workers take short cuts ,our business people ,politicians and administrators on the whole do not think out their problems and potential solutions ,pitfalls and ' traps ' from A to Z .As a result we get for examples white ' elephant ' projects' everywhere 'littering' the place from 'mis thought' ,off the cuff Ministry of Education's plan playing havoc with our children's well being and future ,to the latest financial debacle ,the 500 million RM Maybank deal and /or Eurocopter 'miss deal' .[ The latter may be more complex than just a problem of lack of due diligence , more a problem of lack of iman , I would have thought ,just may be ,Allahualam ! ]
Even in prayers we are quick to expect miracles .Half baked ,half educated politicians go to Umrah ,whenever any problem of significance seem to affect them ,pray behind the Kaabah and presto expect everything to happen to them .We as a nation , are very quick to 'Sembahyang hajat' but slow and lazy at the proper planning ,thinking and implementation phase .We are slipshod thinkers at best .Sorry bruder !Statistics so far speaks louder than words !
The common denominator here is the excessive ,misguided and misplaced reliance on Fate and the undercurrent belief that Fate is beyond human Free Will ."Rezeki secupak tak akan jadi segantang" is not just a proverb applicable in only the Malay millieu but extend elsewhere within the Muslim ummah .We ,as an ummah may not officially subscribe to the Aljabariyah 'fatalistic' ideology but in practice we are almost there !
Is our Fate really already fixed by Allah !Is there really no free play for Man . There is as if Man's Free Will is non existent anymore the moment he is born as what some misguided Sufis and most of us misinformed ,ignorant practitioners of the faith hold as sacrosanct.
It is almost heretical to believe otherwise .This was certainly not so during the Prophet's time and the simple but succinct story of the Bedouin and his camel immediately came to light :
On being asked by the Prophet whether he had secured their camels well before they turn in for the night the bedoiun answered that there was nothing for the Prophet and his entourage to worry about because he had already read a few Quranic verses and read the Doa and thus safe to leave them in the hand of Allah .The Prophet retorted that he need to tie the camels securely 1st with proper ropes,then Doa and leave to Allah .
The slide towards this misinterpretation of Qadar and Qada' occured much later after the khalifah Al Rashidin's period to the extent that the great Imam Hanafi [ or was it ,Imam Hambali ? ,either one , I am not sure ]was called to the court of Khalifah Marwan to give his personal explanation of the alledged 'heresy' he had been preaching regarding "Free Will ".By that time , for many years lesser 'ulamaks of the istanas ' had for years already moved with the 'wind' to appease their rulers and interpreted hadith and the Quran according to the ' flavour 'and political expediency of the day .Qadar ,Qada' and Lailatul-qadr became only for the brave philosophers to discuss and tread on .In present day Malaysia ,an ISA-eable subject !
If I am not mistaken and I certainly stand corrected ,Imam Hanafi was one of the earliest big time real ulamak to be sent under 'ISA ' for spreading heresys and heretical thoughts !Almost akin to the present day dismissal of Lord President Tun Salleh Abbas by a bunch of junior clowns and court jesters !
To put it succinctly ,Qadar means Allah 's Decree or Law .There are Allah's Natural Law and Allah's Spiritual Law .If you throw a ball up it will fall down due to gravity and Isaac Newton as early as the 18th century already was able to compute the force of gravity as being inversely proportional to the square of the distance from planet earth and directly proportional to the mass of the ball .The Russians with knowledge in space physics and rocketry were able to send the 1st man ,Colonel Yuri Gagarin into outer space.One example of understanding Allah's physical and chemical elements which all follow Allah's natural law .
Albert Einstein later came out with the now famous formullae E=MCSquared ,meaning energy released from a matter is equal to the weight of matter time by the square of a constant which is actually the speed of light [180,000 miles per second] times by itself .That is considerable amount of energy from a very small mass .A few years later Enrico Fermi and his associates were able to produce the 1st atomic bomb working secretly under a stadium somewhere in USA .Of course there were the 'yellow bastards'in Japan for them to try on and see its effect on humans !
Several generations after the last kalifah Ar rashidin ,we Muslims began to get engrossed into the esoteric and exoteric arguments around Free Wills ,philosophical discourse and hidden meaning of each Ayat and hadith ,twigs and branches of the Faith ,and missed the 'main trunk ' of Islam ie Allah 's Din to guide Man to live life at the fullest ,to be His viceeroy on this planet earth ,to led those 'lost sheep ' to Allah's light and enlightenment .After the fall of Islamic renaissance in Cordoba and it's shift to Florence ,the Judeo-Christian world has not looked back .For some centuries now and more years to come if we do not change our ' hearts and souls ' we will be lead !
[...They have studied Allah's Qadar ,at least the 1st arm of it ,The Natural laws ,and control nature and the world !After the fall of the Ottoman Empire the entire subjugation of the Muslims was complete .Now if you are a too regular prayer at the London Regent's Mosque you may find yourself be' digitised ' in one of their super computers as a potential ' health hazard ' .This is too far fetch you may think , and it has not happened yet but it may .Obama is a health hazard to some Americans and he happened to have only a Muslim middle name ,not even a Muslim ]
At the atomic level ,the cellular level and the macro cellular level [ the human organism ],Qadar or natural law operates and there is limited Will .You throw a ball upward it falls .You fly an aeroplane upward against gravity ,it will go up but once the gasoline finish ,it will fall down to the ground like a rock following Allah's law of Gravity .The 'going up' followed Allah's natural law of propulsive combustion ,the 'going down ' ,His law of gravitation .
You mix hydrogen with oxygen atoms ,you get water and a lot of heat .You smash an atom you get so much of energy .At the super macro level ,ie the organism level ,A crazy human who thinks he is invincible walk in front of a 20 ton tanker would be crushed like a pancake .He tries to walk on water he will sink .His equally stupid son experiment with trying not to study at the U ,he flunk his year end examination .At other time he practice free sex with his classmates ,5 times out 10 he would get those equally stupid girls pregnant .
Likewise this same son of the chap who tested his 'immortality' by crashing into the tanker ,the 1st year college drop out ,has all the freedom in the world to choose a life of emotional and spiritual excellence or mediocrity ,or even outright depravity ,all on his own free will .An average family man with a stable job ,both feet planted to the ground ,doing the average thing that good stable Muslim youth of his age would do .Or he may continue to choose a life of continued self destruct ,stray into wrong company and end up as a drug addict etc etc .There is freedom of Will .But is he 100 % free ?
Not totally ,because the sum total of his decisions so far were skewed towards a downward spiral . .Unless Allah opens his 'heart and soul' to a higher calling in his mid life after the general drift southward .His not so clever father in the 1st place already serve as the wrong primary role model .His wrong lifestlye in the U push him further down the scale .His existing talent ,the friends and company he keeps ,his milieu , determine the direction he go .If he on starting work as a general clerk with say ,Nestle in Shah Alam , meets the right group of friends who could pull him back to the 'straight path ' he certainly could join the thousand others 'halal 'hard working workforce and an average good Muslim family man .
Of course Qadar in his case means even in 4 lifetimes he would not be say the President of The united States or even PM of Malaysia !
But on the other hand with no good role model ,' bad' friends and surrounding there is also the likelihood of him to continue his downward spiral,he can even sink to the bottom in no time !That in fact would be a more probable happening than say meeting a 'Ruuusma' at his work place and ending up as potential ' PM ' one fine day .
Emotional and spiritual balance ,and I am not hinting even at the upper echelon excellence ,is a lot of work .That leeway nonetheless is there .Our future is not iron clad ,as there are Free Will ,as well as Doa , and Prayer !It is easy to spiral downward and a lot of hardward just to remain sane and average let alone soar upward towards the Perfect Man idealism . The one million dollar question is ,do we use these avenues to the max ?
On the spiritual side ,Allah Spiritual Moral Code determines the boundaries and expectation of man in relation to his fellow men ,women and his families .It also determine his relation with his Maker .You live a lustful ,corrupt and careless life ,your souls degenerate further and further from the scale of the Perfect Man as exemplified by Prophet Muhammad .If you live within the constraint of the Spiritual Moral Code ,your souls move upwards to coalesce with the essence of your true Spirits and move nearer towards the embodiment of The Prophet .
[ Allah's Spiritual Moral Code is the ' movable ' aspect of Qadar unlike Allah's Natural Law .One has the Free Will to follow it a 100 % to the brim and in the process enriches one's soul to the point to put in 'sufic' expression able enjoy the spirituality of this life as if one is being given to sip Allah's fine 'wine' from His own cup . For this very elitist few,life's trials and tribulations no longer affect them as their ' naf ' are already emasculated and they are able to ' see ' and ' taste ' life figuratively through God's eye .On the one hand can just be an average practitioner or just above average ,ambling along like millions others .One can also easily be lulled into a continuous downward spiral of hideous self destruct behaviour through and through .Even Allah's Natural Law is relatively ' movable ' to some extent . A ball when thrown up will fall down under gravity ,but a rocket with chemical propulsive action can move up ,until there is no more solid fuel to push it forward ,then it follows the natural law of gravitation ].
For example when you give alms ,or keep your obligatory or superregatory prayers ,or just being a good father to your children ,you are not helping Allah an iota :you are educating your soul and moving your soul north ward towards the scale of the Perfect Man ,and ensuring it has at least a chance of keeping on the ' straight path ' and if veering away ,sometime ,may still have a tangible chance of coming back .
The reverse happen if you continuously veer away from Allah's Spiritual Moral Code .At the National level on the other hand when a corrupted soul can not only cause depravity to himself but also influence other lives around him and cause depravity in others as well ,would be the archtypal 'corrupt politician-statesman' ,a man of considerable influence .A politician may generally starts well but without proper religious education and background [ many consider not politically correct nowadays to even think about giving proper religious education to offsprings ] and nawaitu may initially consider a 5 million 'kick back' from a State's deal as being good enough and his ' birth right ',then 50 ,then even 200 million 'masih belum cukup '.His life will no longer revolve around Allah but around his political and personal expediency .""Power ,sex ,money" are the common denominators of so called ' successful leaders ' who lack religious background and the right aqidah .Goal post s can be change to look good .His soul veer further and further away from the 'straight path ' and unlike the Mat Rempit discussed earlier ,this chap affect or at least retard millions of other souls as well .His policy affect the Nation ,retards proper Islamic growth etc etc .[ see my blog on who wants to be PM !Friday Khutbah : Sept 12th ].His soul not only carries his excess baggage but the baggage of the rest of mankind his 'office' influence .Allahualam !
When there is a Will ,there is a way .Another simpler example than the above is to look at the ordinary folks ,say just a simple average student struggling at school .You can choose between being a straight A student or last in class of course within the partial constraint provided by your genetic and environmental and behavioral template provided by your parents .If you are born with an IQ of 80 ,you would not be a space scientist even in a 100 years !But if you have good supportive parents with good schooling provided by a welfare state you may end up as a reasonably independent individual .Without parental support and special schooling , you may even have difficulty working as a 'jaga kereta' boy .An example of some free play of Wills here and limitations set by the 'Natural Law ' aspect of Qadar ie the genetic ,parental ,and environmental component .
[ Looking this way that is why PARENTING remain an important issue in Islam .Good parenting can obviate some of the limitations set about by the relatively 'immovable ' negative aspect of genetics and environmental factors .And part of good parenting may in some cases mean mothers do stay at home to look after and bring up and educate their children rather than be fighter pilots or firemen etc etc ]....just a digression
To give further a sense of hope to His abdals ,the CEO of The Universe throw in 2 almost similar looking 'spanners' into the proverbial 'engine' : Doa and Prayer [ which are one of the same ], and the possibility that your Taubat [ repentance is also a form of Doa in a sense ] can be accepted or rejected downright .Everyone can Taubat but if one's soul is so low down the scale ,there is the real danger of the possibility of your soul not even thinking of Taubat in the 1st place ,let alone the Taubat being accepted by Allah .
That is half of the ballgame so far !Now the other half :Qada'.
Qada' is Allah's Judgement or System of Judgement .All embodied in the Quran and Sunnah .You lived a careless life ,drunk most time ,free sex ,devoid of spirituality ,not only corrupt in behaviour but corrupting to society [' bukan saja sesat ,tapi menyesatkan '] ,there is only one place for you .On the opposite scale you are a light to your family ,your society ,lived purely by the Syariah , not for show ,but for the celebration of Allah ,there is another place for you .In between this black and white ,the various shades of grey ,will be judged accordingly and fairly ,according to the Al Mizan , the Scale .
Again to throw the spanner in the engine ,some will be judged and judgement will be meted out rightaway ,Cash!
If you are almost 95 % Muslim but choose Pancasila or other system to live your collective lives ,you get more frequent 'Bala' than the fair share that other people get .If you as a people definitely is 100 % secular ,encourage futures trading ,debt trading ,and every thing under the Sun as if the is no Allah to answer to , and insist the rest of the world to follow suit in your way of life ,Allah will throw some hurricanes here and there ,some tornadoes and wild forest fires ,and occasionally a global financial crises here and there .To lull you further of course ,all of them appear man made and difficult to actually perceive that this is Allah's judgement ,right away ,CASH ,on earth !
So to speak within the constraints of Qadar and Qada', the post modern Man does have a lot of leeway to move around .It is just a question of Will ,whether he choose to soar and fly ,or be at the lowest of low .
On the Night Of Decree or The Night of Power ,yearly during the last 10 days of Ramadan the 'People of The Higher Plane' descent on planet earth to help assess ,tabulate , audit and recommend to the Final Arbiter ,The Most High ,on how we are to be judged for the closing statement for that particular year :
"In the name of Allah ,Most gracious ,Most Merciful .
We have indeed revealed This Message In The Night of Power .
And what will explain to thee what the Night Of Power is ?
The Night Of Power is better than a thousand Months .
Therein come down the angels and the Spirit by Allah's permission ,
On every errand :
Peace !.....This
Until the rise of Morn !"
Abdullah Yusuf Ali chose not to interpret ''better than a thousand months' leaving it as a mystical expression .I would rather concur with Sayyid Qutb's interpretation :Allah 's grace and rahmat befalling on his Abdal praying and beholden to Him on the instance of the Night Of Power ,though may be a few insignificant moment will be worth more than a thousand months for that Abdal for that particular year.If he is called to his Lord that year ,he has got it made !If not ,that rahamat and grace hopefully would put him in good stead for years to come with a proviso :Life between the highs and lows is an active flux .Iman and Ihsan has to be earned .There is no miracle in the LailatulQadr . We have to earn it and continue to earn it on a yearly basis . Fullstop !NO MIRACLE .
Man's piety and his highs and lows are a continuous struggle on a daily basis .It does not follow an All or None law .It waxes and wane like the tide .But lo and behold !Yearly on The Night Of Power ,to commemorate the 1st Night Of Power some 1450 years ago ,when The Perfect Man had his Visitor of On High ,we his followers and the rest of mankind are being Judged !
Allah 's ultimate knowledge of when and how we die ,what we do with our life ,which zenith we reach ,does not preclude His allowance to His abdals the choice of Free Will .Within the constraints of circumstances ,our genetic makeup our emotional and spiritual endurance and our environment ,we can still choose whether we want to SOAR UPWARD ,or just fly ,or swim with the current ,or sink to the bottom .
And lest you get depressed by your lack of performance so far ,do not feel despondent .After Qadar ,Qada' and the annual Judgement ,Allah being Ya Rahman And Ya Rahim has His very own KPI . Does not matter whether in 'realtime' life you end up as the Agong ,one of the Sultans ,PM ,CEO ,ordinary chaps on the street or an ordinary road sweeper ,His Key performance indicator is simple :Taqwa or God Conciousness in whatever you do .[ refer to my earlier blog on this :Surah Al Asr ,Allah's Key Performance Indicators ,Sunday 22nd , June ].And He does not judge you by the results but only by your good honest intention !
We come back one whole circle in this ballgame call LIFE :Qadar ,Qada' ,LailatulQadr ,and at the time of Mahsyar ,after the Al Mizan and all when even an 'atom's weight of good deed and bad deed were carefully measured ,Allah take away all the minute details of "warts ,boils and human failings" , and in order to make man pass the acid test easily , look just at man from the helicopter viewpoint :Taqwa .
Does this chap [ Agong ,President ,Sultan ,CEO ,Lawyer ,or just ordinary road sweeper ] do his all with God Conciousness in mind or because of other " gods " real or imagined .Man's failings ,unequal stature ,wealth ,innate talents or lack of it ,trappings of high office or 'no office' ,ALL LEFT behind .Only TAQWA .That is Allah , Ya Rahman , Ya Rahim !Mashaallah !
[......to the avid golfers ,Dr Nik Isahak sounds unbelievably simple like golf ! With all the handicap system and all .But why not ?Man are not born equal in talent shape ,circumstances etc etc ,how else do One judge Man who come in various sizes ,colour ,ideology and shape apart from a very fair Key Performance Indicator .Remember ,that chap with the IQ of 80 . He did not ask to be born with that kind of handicap ,neither did the man who was destined to be King with all the inherrent silver spoons !Man is given a FREE WILL but come with all kinds of handicap .At the end of the day he and only he is accountable to his God for all his deeds on this planet earth .And mind you ,Allah did not ask for much ,except that in all that you do on this planet earth ,you do with Him in view .The Right Intention suffice [ nawaitu ],leave the results to Him . ]
Ya Fattah ,Ya Razak ,Ya Wahab ,Ya Ghoni ,Ya Mugh'ni ,Ya Khadim ,Ya Daim ,Ya Ahad ,Ya Wahid ,Ya Samad ,Ya Rahman Ya Rahim ,Ya Hayyu ,Ya Qayyum ,Ya Rabb ,Ya Zaljala Liwalikram ,give us peace in this world and the next and remove us from the torments of the grave and the Hereafter !
Allahualam !
Dr Nik Howk
If one take an early morning or late evening strool in any park in Malaysia and count the number of Muslim men or women exercising their bodies for good health I can bet my bottom ringgit that the number would be less than 5 % ,on any given day .Muslims do not generally exercise ,a common fact .
In the hospital ,we are on the whole very much less than the perfect patients ,and that is a summary of 30 years of experience and observation .My typical Muslim patients are generally 'more laid back' ,oftentimes lack insight ,and have a higher propensity to look for unknown ,irrational and most often crucially time losing ,at most time idiotic ,occasionally bordering on the khurafah , simple ' miracle ' alternatives .
[...Doc ! Ozone therapy surely must work !And it is expensive ,therefore it must work . How come even the PM uses it ??!! That ,precisely my friend ,is why we currently are having all sort of problems with the country ! .You can go to Shah Alam and have a 'brain' and 'heart' transplant for a couple of thousand ringgit .It may also work judging by the number of Mercs and Jaguars queeing up .I am not sure the joint is still there ,must have shifted to Selayang or somewhere my friend .]
In 2008 this can be very frustrating for the ' care givers '.And to add insult to injury ,these folks are not so called ' simple people '.They have masters degree ,sometime even holders of PHD's .
At the market place ,our contractors generally do not deliver well ,our workers take short cuts ,our business people ,politicians and administrators on the whole do not think out their problems and potential solutions ,pitfalls and ' traps ' from A to Z .As a result we get for examples white ' elephant ' projects' everywhere 'littering' the place from 'mis thought' ,off the cuff Ministry of Education's plan playing havoc with our children's well being and future ,to the latest financial debacle ,the 500 million RM Maybank deal and /or Eurocopter 'miss deal' .[ The latter may be more complex than just a problem of lack of due diligence , more a problem of lack of iman , I would have thought ,just may be ,Allahualam ! ]
Even in prayers we are quick to expect miracles .Half baked ,half educated politicians go to Umrah ,whenever any problem of significance seem to affect them ,pray behind the Kaabah and presto expect everything to happen to them .We as a nation , are very quick to 'Sembahyang hajat' but slow and lazy at the proper planning ,thinking and implementation phase .We are slipshod thinkers at best .Sorry bruder !Statistics so far speaks louder than words !
The common denominator here is the excessive ,misguided and misplaced reliance on Fate and the undercurrent belief that Fate is beyond human Free Will ."Rezeki secupak tak akan jadi segantang" is not just a proverb applicable in only the Malay millieu but extend elsewhere within the Muslim ummah .We ,as an ummah may not officially subscribe to the Aljabariyah 'fatalistic' ideology but in practice we are almost there !
Is our Fate really already fixed by Allah !Is there really no free play for Man . There is as if Man's Free Will is non existent anymore the moment he is born as what some misguided Sufis and most of us misinformed ,ignorant practitioners of the faith hold as sacrosanct.
It is almost heretical to believe otherwise .This was certainly not so during the Prophet's time and the simple but succinct story of the Bedouin and his camel immediately came to light :
On being asked by the Prophet whether he had secured their camels well before they turn in for the night the bedoiun answered that there was nothing for the Prophet and his entourage to worry about because he had already read a few Quranic verses and read the Doa and thus safe to leave them in the hand of Allah .The Prophet retorted that he need to tie the camels securely 1st with proper ropes,then Doa and leave to Allah .
The slide towards this misinterpretation of Qadar and Qada' occured much later after the khalifah Al Rashidin's period to the extent that the great Imam Hanafi [ or was it ,Imam Hambali ? ,either one , I am not sure ]was called to the court of Khalifah Marwan to give his personal explanation of the alledged 'heresy' he had been preaching regarding "Free Will ".By that time , for many years lesser 'ulamaks of the istanas ' had for years already moved with the 'wind' to appease their rulers and interpreted hadith and the Quran according to the ' flavour 'and political expediency of the day .Qadar ,Qada' and Lailatul-qadr became only for the brave philosophers to discuss and tread on .In present day Malaysia ,an ISA-eable subject !
If I am not mistaken and I certainly stand corrected ,Imam Hanafi was one of the earliest big time real ulamak to be sent under 'ISA ' for spreading heresys and heretical thoughts !Almost akin to the present day dismissal of Lord President Tun Salleh Abbas by a bunch of junior clowns and court jesters !
To put it succinctly ,Qadar means Allah 's Decree or Law .There are Allah's Natural Law and Allah's Spiritual Law .If you throw a ball up it will fall down due to gravity and Isaac Newton as early as the 18th century already was able to compute the force of gravity as being inversely proportional to the square of the distance from planet earth and directly proportional to the mass of the ball .The Russians with knowledge in space physics and rocketry were able to send the 1st man ,Colonel Yuri Gagarin into outer space.One example of understanding Allah's physical and chemical elements which all follow Allah's natural law .
Albert Einstein later came out with the now famous formullae E=MCSquared ,meaning energy released from a matter is equal to the weight of matter time by the square of a constant which is actually the speed of light [180,000 miles per second] times by itself .That is considerable amount of energy from a very small mass .A few years later Enrico Fermi and his associates were able to produce the 1st atomic bomb working secretly under a stadium somewhere in USA .Of course there were the 'yellow bastards'in Japan for them to try on and see its effect on humans !
Several generations after the last kalifah Ar rashidin ,we Muslims began to get engrossed into the esoteric and exoteric arguments around Free Wills ,philosophical discourse and hidden meaning of each Ayat and hadith ,twigs and branches of the Faith ,and missed the 'main trunk ' of Islam ie Allah 's Din to guide Man to live life at the fullest ,to be His viceeroy on this planet earth ,to led those 'lost sheep ' to Allah's light and enlightenment .After the fall of Islamic renaissance in Cordoba and it's shift to Florence ,the Judeo-Christian world has not looked back .For some centuries now and more years to come if we do not change our ' hearts and souls ' we will be lead !
[...They have studied Allah's Qadar ,at least the 1st arm of it ,The Natural laws ,and control nature and the world !After the fall of the Ottoman Empire the entire subjugation of the Muslims was complete .Now if you are a too regular prayer at the London Regent's Mosque you may find yourself be' digitised ' in one of their super computers as a potential ' health hazard ' .This is too far fetch you may think , and it has not happened yet but it may .Obama is a health hazard to some Americans and he happened to have only a Muslim middle name ,not even a Muslim ]
At the atomic level ,the cellular level and the macro cellular level [ the human organism ],Qadar or natural law operates and there is limited Will .You throw a ball upward it falls .You fly an aeroplane upward against gravity ,it will go up but once the gasoline finish ,it will fall down to the ground like a rock following Allah's law of Gravity .The 'going up' followed Allah's natural law of propulsive combustion ,the 'going down ' ,His law of gravitation .
You mix hydrogen with oxygen atoms ,you get water and a lot of heat .You smash an atom you get so much of energy .At the super macro level ,ie the organism level ,A crazy human who thinks he is invincible walk in front of a 20 ton tanker would be crushed like a pancake .He tries to walk on water he will sink .His equally stupid son experiment with trying not to study at the U ,he flunk his year end examination .At other time he practice free sex with his classmates ,5 times out 10 he would get those equally stupid girls pregnant .
Likewise this same son of the chap who tested his 'immortality' by crashing into the tanker ,the 1st year college drop out ,has all the freedom in the world to choose a life of emotional and spiritual excellence or mediocrity ,or even outright depravity ,all on his own free will .An average family man with a stable job ,both feet planted to the ground ,doing the average thing that good stable Muslim youth of his age would do .Or he may continue to choose a life of continued self destruct ,stray into wrong company and end up as a drug addict etc etc .There is freedom of Will .But is he 100 % free ?
Not totally ,because the sum total of his decisions so far were skewed towards a downward spiral . .Unless Allah opens his 'heart and soul' to a higher calling in his mid life after the general drift southward .His not so clever father in the 1st place already serve as the wrong primary role model .His wrong lifestlye in the U push him further down the scale .His existing talent ,the friends and company he keeps ,his milieu , determine the direction he go .If he on starting work as a general clerk with say ,Nestle in Shah Alam , meets the right group of friends who could pull him back to the 'straight path ' he certainly could join the thousand others 'halal 'hard working workforce and an average good Muslim family man .
Of course Qadar in his case means even in 4 lifetimes he would not be say the President of The united States or even PM of Malaysia !
But on the other hand with no good role model ,' bad' friends and surrounding there is also the likelihood of him to continue his downward spiral,he can even sink to the bottom in no time !That in fact would be a more probable happening than say meeting a 'Ruuusma' at his work place and ending up as potential ' PM ' one fine day .
Emotional and spiritual balance ,and I am not hinting even at the upper echelon excellence ,is a lot of work .That leeway nonetheless is there .Our future is not iron clad ,as there are Free Will ,as well as Doa , and Prayer !It is easy to spiral downward and a lot of hardward just to remain sane and average let alone soar upward towards the Perfect Man idealism . The one million dollar question is ,do we use these avenues to the max ?
On the spiritual side ,Allah Spiritual Moral Code determines the boundaries and expectation of man in relation to his fellow men ,women and his families .It also determine his relation with his Maker .You live a lustful ,corrupt and careless life ,your souls degenerate further and further from the scale of the Perfect Man as exemplified by Prophet Muhammad .If you live within the constraint of the Spiritual Moral Code ,your souls move upwards to coalesce with the essence of your true Spirits and move nearer towards the embodiment of The Prophet .
[ Allah's Spiritual Moral Code is the ' movable ' aspect of Qadar unlike Allah's Natural Law .One has the Free Will to follow it a 100 % to the brim and in the process enriches one's soul to the point to put in 'sufic' expression able enjoy the spirituality of this life as if one is being given to sip Allah's fine 'wine' from His own cup . For this very elitist few,life's trials and tribulations no longer affect them as their ' naf ' are already emasculated and they are able to ' see ' and ' taste ' life figuratively through God's eye .On the one hand can just be an average practitioner or just above average ,ambling along like millions others .One can also easily be lulled into a continuous downward spiral of hideous self destruct behaviour through and through .Even Allah's Natural Law is relatively ' movable ' to some extent . A ball when thrown up will fall down under gravity ,but a rocket with chemical propulsive action can move up ,until there is no more solid fuel to push it forward ,then it follows the natural law of gravitation ].
For example when you give alms ,or keep your obligatory or superregatory prayers ,or just being a good father to your children ,you are not helping Allah an iota :you are educating your soul and moving your soul north ward towards the scale of the Perfect Man ,and ensuring it has at least a chance of keeping on the ' straight path ' and if veering away ,sometime ,may still have a tangible chance of coming back .
The reverse happen if you continuously veer away from Allah's Spiritual Moral Code .At the National level on the other hand when a corrupted soul can not only cause depravity to himself but also influence other lives around him and cause depravity in others as well ,would be the archtypal 'corrupt politician-statesman' ,a man of considerable influence .A politician may generally starts well but without proper religious education and background [ many consider not politically correct nowadays to even think about giving proper religious education to offsprings ] and nawaitu may initially consider a 5 million 'kick back' from a State's deal as being good enough and his ' birth right ',then 50 ,then even 200 million 'masih belum cukup '.His life will no longer revolve around Allah but around his political and personal expediency .""Power ,sex ,money" are the common denominators of so called ' successful leaders ' who lack religious background and the right aqidah .Goal post s can be change to look good .His soul veer further and further away from the 'straight path ' and unlike the Mat Rempit discussed earlier ,this chap affect or at least retard millions of other souls as well .His policy affect the Nation ,retards proper Islamic growth etc etc .[ see my blog on who wants to be PM !Friday Khutbah : Sept 12th ].His soul not only carries his excess baggage but the baggage of the rest of mankind his 'office' influence .Allahualam !
When there is a Will ,there is a way .Another simpler example than the above is to look at the ordinary folks ,say just a simple average student struggling at school .You can choose between being a straight A student or last in class of course within the partial constraint provided by your genetic and environmental and behavioral template provided by your parents .If you are born with an IQ of 80 ,you would not be a space scientist even in a 100 years !But if you have good supportive parents with good schooling provided by a welfare state you may end up as a reasonably independent individual .Without parental support and special schooling , you may even have difficulty working as a 'jaga kereta' boy .An example of some free play of Wills here and limitations set by the 'Natural Law ' aspect of Qadar ie the genetic ,parental ,and environmental component .
[ Looking this way that is why PARENTING remain an important issue in Islam .Good parenting can obviate some of the limitations set about by the relatively 'immovable ' negative aspect of genetics and environmental factors .And part of good parenting may in some cases mean mothers do stay at home to look after and bring up and educate their children rather than be fighter pilots or firemen etc etc ]....just a digression
To give further a sense of hope to His abdals ,the CEO of The Universe throw in 2 almost similar looking 'spanners' into the proverbial 'engine' : Doa and Prayer [ which are one of the same ], and the possibility that your Taubat [ repentance is also a form of Doa in a sense ] can be accepted or rejected downright .Everyone can Taubat but if one's soul is so low down the scale ,there is the real danger of the possibility of your soul not even thinking of Taubat in the 1st place ,let alone the Taubat being accepted by Allah .
That is half of the ballgame so far !Now the other half :Qada'.
Qada' is Allah's Judgement or System of Judgement .All embodied in the Quran and Sunnah .You lived a careless life ,drunk most time ,free sex ,devoid of spirituality ,not only corrupt in behaviour but corrupting to society [' bukan saja sesat ,tapi menyesatkan '] ,there is only one place for you .On the opposite scale you are a light to your family ,your society ,lived purely by the Syariah , not for show ,but for the celebration of Allah ,there is another place for you .In between this black and white ,the various shades of grey ,will be judged accordingly and fairly ,according to the Al Mizan , the Scale .
Again to throw the spanner in the engine ,some will be judged and judgement will be meted out rightaway ,Cash!
If you are almost 95 % Muslim but choose Pancasila or other system to live your collective lives ,you get more frequent 'Bala' than the fair share that other people get .If you as a people definitely is 100 % secular ,encourage futures trading ,debt trading ,and every thing under the Sun as if the is no Allah to answer to , and insist the rest of the world to follow suit in your way of life ,Allah will throw some hurricanes here and there ,some tornadoes and wild forest fires ,and occasionally a global financial crises here and there .To lull you further of course ,all of them appear man made and difficult to actually perceive that this is Allah's judgement ,right away ,CASH ,on earth !
So to speak within the constraints of Qadar and Qada', the post modern Man does have a lot of leeway to move around .It is just a question of Will ,whether he choose to soar and fly ,or be at the lowest of low .
On the Night Of Decree or The Night of Power ,yearly during the last 10 days of Ramadan the 'People of The Higher Plane' descent on planet earth to help assess ,tabulate , audit and recommend to the Final Arbiter ,The Most High ,on how we are to be judged for the closing statement for that particular year :
"In the name of Allah ,Most gracious ,Most Merciful .
We have indeed revealed This Message In The Night of Power .
And what will explain to thee what the Night Of Power is ?
The Night Of Power is better than a thousand Months .
Therein come down the angels and the Spirit by Allah's permission ,
On every errand :
Peace !.....This
Until the rise of Morn !"
Abdullah Yusuf Ali chose not to interpret ''better than a thousand months' leaving it as a mystical expression .I would rather concur with Sayyid Qutb's interpretation :Allah 's grace and rahmat befalling on his Abdal praying and beholden to Him on the instance of the Night Of Power ,though may be a few insignificant moment will be worth more than a thousand months for that Abdal for that particular year.If he is called to his Lord that year ,he has got it made !If not ,that rahamat and grace hopefully would put him in good stead for years to come with a proviso :Life between the highs and lows is an active flux .Iman and Ihsan has to be earned .There is no miracle in the LailatulQadr . We have to earn it and continue to earn it on a yearly basis . Fullstop !NO MIRACLE .
Man's piety and his highs and lows are a continuous struggle on a daily basis .It does not follow an All or None law .It waxes and wane like the tide .But lo and behold !Yearly on The Night Of Power ,to commemorate the 1st Night Of Power some 1450 years ago ,when The Perfect Man had his Visitor of On High ,we his followers and the rest of mankind are being Judged !
Allah 's ultimate knowledge of when and how we die ,what we do with our life ,which zenith we reach ,does not preclude His allowance to His abdals the choice of Free Will .Within the constraints of circumstances ,our genetic makeup our emotional and spiritual endurance and our environment ,we can still choose whether we want to SOAR UPWARD ,or just fly ,or swim with the current ,or sink to the bottom .
And lest you get depressed by your lack of performance so far ,do not feel despondent .After Qadar ,Qada' and the annual Judgement ,Allah being Ya Rahman And Ya Rahim has His very own KPI . Does not matter whether in 'realtime' life you end up as the Agong ,one of the Sultans ,PM ,CEO ,ordinary chaps on the street or an ordinary road sweeper ,His Key performance indicator is simple :Taqwa or God Conciousness in whatever you do .[ refer to my earlier blog on this :Surah Al Asr ,Allah's Key Performance Indicators ,Sunday 22nd , June ].And He does not judge you by the results but only by your good honest intention !
We come back one whole circle in this ballgame call LIFE :Qadar ,Qada' ,LailatulQadr ,and at the time of Mahsyar ,after the Al Mizan and all when even an 'atom's weight of good deed and bad deed were carefully measured ,Allah take away all the minute details of "warts ,boils and human failings" , and in order to make man pass the acid test easily , look just at man from the helicopter viewpoint :Taqwa .
Does this chap [ Agong ,President ,Sultan ,CEO ,Lawyer ,or just ordinary road sweeper ] do his all with God Conciousness in mind or because of other " gods " real or imagined .Man's failings ,unequal stature ,wealth ,innate talents or lack of it ,trappings of high office or 'no office' ,ALL LEFT behind .Only TAQWA .That is Allah , Ya Rahman , Ya Rahim !Mashaallah !
[......to the avid golfers ,Dr Nik Isahak sounds unbelievably simple like golf ! With all the handicap system and all .But why not ?Man are not born equal in talent shape ,circumstances etc etc ,how else do One judge Man who come in various sizes ,colour ,ideology and shape apart from a very fair Key Performance Indicator .Remember ,that chap with the IQ of 80 . He did not ask to be born with that kind of handicap ,neither did the man who was destined to be King with all the inherrent silver spoons !Man is given a FREE WILL but come with all kinds of handicap .At the end of the day he and only he is accountable to his God for all his deeds on this planet earth .And mind you ,Allah did not ask for much ,except that in all that you do on this planet earth ,you do with Him in view .The Right Intention suffice [ nawaitu ],leave the results to Him . ]
Ya Fattah ,Ya Razak ,Ya Wahab ,Ya Ghoni ,Ya Mugh'ni ,Ya Khadim ,Ya Daim ,Ya Ahad ,Ya Wahid ,Ya Samad ,Ya Rahman Ya Rahim ,Ya Hayyu ,Ya Qayyum ,Ya Rabb ,Ya Zaljala Liwalikram ,give us peace in this world and the next and remove us from the torments of the grave and the Hereafter !
Allahualam !
Dr Nik Howk
Friday, September 26, 2008
Lest We Forget........
An Excerpt from New Straits Time 1969 Edition :
MCA President , Tun Tan Siew Sin, had this to say on the issue of special position of the Malays ,on April 30th ,1969 :
""The Malays, through UMNO, were generous enough to relax the citizenship
laws of this country to such extent that within 12 months of
independence, 90 percent were still non-citizens after nearly 100 years
of colonial rule in the Malay States. In return for this major
concession. the MCA and the MIC agreed to continue the policy of
preserving the special position of the Malays while at the same time
upholding the legitimate interest of other communities. ""
MIC President Tun Sambanthan on 1st June 1965 ,said the following in Parliament :
""Now, in 1955 we won the elections with a great majority. Then we
obtained freedom in two years time. During this period, we had to
discuss citizenship and various other things. Now what did the Malays do
- since we are speaking on racial lines - what did the Malay leadership
do? They had 88 percent of the electorate still with them.
What did they do with citizenship?
If we look around in Asia and East Asia, particularly, you will find
that my race the indian race, is not welcomed in Ceylon, is not welcomed
in Burma. Look at my brother Chinnese race, it is not welcomed in
Thailand , in Vietnam , in Cambodia , in all the other areas.What help do
they get for citizenship in all these territories? In Burma , as we know,
Indian have been send packing, in Ceylont hey refused them citizenship
and in Burma it is likewise. I know it, you know it. And yet in Malaya
what happened? Here we found that the Malay leadership said, 'We shall
take them unto ourselves as brothers, we shall give them full
opportunity to live in this country, we shall give them every
opportunity to become citizens.'
And so, in 1957, for the whole year, we waived language qualifications,
and tens of thousand of Indians, Chinese, Ceylonese and others became
citizens...
As I said, it has been my great good fortune to have born in this
country. Where else can you find a more charitable, a more polite, a
more decent race than Malay race? Where else can you get such
politically decent treatment for any immigrant race? Where else in the
history of the world? I ask you. These are the facts. Who are you to
safeguards us? I am 10 percent minority race here. But I am happy here.""
Winstedt some 80 years earlier wrote '..the Malays are peculiar .They are nature's gentlemen ...they would let their guest sleep in their bedroom while they sleep outside ...'
What follow suit was an on-line conversation between Doctor Rosli Yaacub ,an economist ,Prof Wan ,former Deputy DG of ISTAC and myself :
Friends ,
Lest we forget , in our rush to be fair minded and adhere to political correctness , let us be reminded by what two bygone senior Malaysian Statesmen had to say on the Malay special position some 40 years back . I could also still recall Tun Dr Ismail 's remark on the same issue about the same time to the effect that ' the time and place when the Malays should rescind their special position as enschrined in the Federal Constitution will be at the priveledge for they themselve to choose and decide ,and not others ' .
Will it be right or politically correct to extend it forever ? I am no politician but on something that has been enshrined in our Constitution why give up something so easily when 'other fellow Malaysians' of probably equal loyalty to King and Country [ some may say dubious on the basis of their reluctance] refuse to budge even an inch on what we would regard as proactive and cohesive measure as petty and inconsequential as the aborted introduction of 'Sekolah Wawasan' .Not yet addressing the real issue of why 51 years on vernacular schools still should exist !
If I recall correctly the government of the day that time lost some mileage in the election or was it a by election as a 'tempias' or communal backlash on the 'Sekolah Wawasan' issue .A definitive measure by Dr M to improve cohesiveness among our young but perceived differently by our 'guests' . Or is the word 'guests' also not a politically correct term to use here !
We are not even touching on the issue of educational divergence and divisiveness among our young Malaysians due to the presence and continued existence of a parallel education system yet [ vis a vis vernacular schools] ,50 years on since Merdeka .
There is a term called 'horse trading' and perhaps Mr Anwar Ibrahim in his haste to be in 'Putrajaya' has totally forgotten this term . Yes ! That is what we should be doing before we decide to move from the 'veranda' to the 'cowshed' to allow our 'guests' more room in the 'house' ! Just my very humble opinion .
Dr Nik Howk .
Reply from Doc Rosli:
Assalamulaikum Yang Berbahagia Dr. Isahak.
Here is a piece of my thought on the malaise of the Malays.
The Malay Merdeka Leaders had make a big mistake and many say to the detrimental of the Malays. At that time, their thinking perhaps, focused on achieving Merdeka and not so much on what will happen to the future of the Malays with the kind of the Merdeka deal they had worked out.
How the mistake can be reversed? Perhaps, no way. As far the Merdeka deal is concerned, it is gone with the wind for the Malays. It is a done deal. Had they opposed to the deal then, there was no Merdeka.
Remember, those Malay leaders who were steadfast in thinking that "Tanah Melayu untuk Orang Melayu" were not even invited to the negotiation table, not a chance. Many of them were rounded under the ISA and imprisoned ang perished.
By hindsight, the Merdeka Malay Leaders were nothing more than the stooges of the British colonial power. They were trained in London and trained to be liberals. Yes, they were Malay nationlists but to qualify as inheritors of the soon-to-be freed Malaya, they must think like the British. They must be secular in their thinking. If traces of Islamic inclination were detected in their blood, they were disqualified, that is for sure.
When the British left, they were entrusted with the task to continue with the British law and system of government. They did not have even an iota of thnking to establish Islamic state and rule the country the Shariah way.
Under their leadersahip, Genting, a gambling center was established and liqor factories set up to give jobs to the Muslims. Can you imagine a gambling center and liqor factories in a Muslim country? Can you see how liberal those leaders were?
UMNO leaders, despite the NEP, continue to "sell" the Malays. Can't you see that the Malays are minority in almost all modern housing estates in the country. Look at what happened to Subang Jaya is enough. It is developed by Sime Darby but is is a non-Malay majority township. Look at the town and industrial centers throughout the country. Tell me of the rows and rows of shophouses, shopping complexes and industrial buildings, how many are owned by Malays? Close to zero. Isn't it?
I think the Malays should stop crying wolf about the commission of mistakes by our past leaders and by our current leaders.
The Malays can only regain its past glory if we are prepared to rerturn to Islam and live the Quran and Sunnah way. We don't need corrupt Malay leaders anymore. They were the ones who sold and pawned away the rights and dignity of the Malays.
Since Merdeka and as a matter of fact, long before that - it goes back to the last 600 years - the Malays were discriminated against and marginalized by their colonial masters, first the Portuguese, then the Dutch and the British and currently the the corrupt Malay leaders.
Under the British rule, the then immigrants were treated with alot of previleges and were given all the support to thrive in business to enhance the colonial economic power. The then immigrants dominated the business and economic sector. The same economic landscape has not changed much after 50 years of independence. Of course now all are citizens and they continue to contribute immensely to the gowing nation's prosperity. They are the economic power house of the country.
Remember the pantun: "Buai laju-laju sampai pokok sena, bila nak beli baju baru, beli kedai Cina." This turned the Malays into a slumber party.
To be standing with dignity with other races, the Malay must return to Islam and in the economic sphere Islam teaches us that "90 per cent of our sustenanance (rezki) is in busienss." If we Muslims adhere to this reaching we can easily become an economic power house.
Wassalam ,
Dr Rosli.
My reply to Doc Rosli :
Doc Rosli ,
I have to agree with you 100 % .We are 'accidents' of HISTORY .But 'history' is no accident .The powers of that time had already 'pre-decided' ISLAM was a no no !Put yourself as Head of State of Superpowers of Russia ,Britain ,France and the US .In the wake of the breakdown and final dismantling and dismemberment of the Great Ottoman Empire ,any new State thinking of Syariah as their constitution would be nipped in the bud .How Saudi Arabia escaped was beyond my rather scant knowledge of world history !
Nonetheless we cannot continue to blame others for our continued failure to be Islamic .{Of course my good friend Prof Wan Mohd formerly from ISTAC may take exception to my comment here because from his viewpoint ,we are already Islamic enough ,given our circumstances of our plurality } .We take that view because we assume majority of us Malays are Muslims by birth and by intention .But is that so ?
50 years on and the only Islamic party in the country have yet to make inroads into Malay hinterland states like Johor [thank God ,Perak show some progress ] ,Pahang and Selangor begs my question above to be answered .Are we Muslims or just 'Muslim Separuh separuh' ?Of course some people may find excuses and conveniently blame you guys from PAS for not 'selling' PAS the right way .Again the blame game .I would rather ask myself the question : Are we Malays really majority Muslims ?No .At best many of us are 'separuh ,separuh ' ,at worse some are munafik .Sorry ,brother !
Was reading Mawdudi's seminal work translated by the late Murad Khoram and re titled 'Let Us Be Muslims' .A very short work .Easy reading all the way but when I reach the last chapter ,I get cold sweat :Yes , are we really truly Muslims as we profess to be ?
In my position now , I cannot answer that question for myself satisfactorily .
That to me is the reason for our current 'malaise and backwardness' .JMHO
Dr Nik Howk
Prof Wan ,join in the fray :
Dear Dr Nik,
Since you had kindly cited my opinion in yout latest email '{Of course my good friend Prof Wan Mohd formerly from ISTAC may take exception to my comment here because from his viewpoint ,we are already Islamic enough ,given our circumstances of our plurality }, I feel a slight need to explain. 'Others' i.e. non Muslim leaders, scholars and media people etc who were/are truly responsible for 'forcing' unpalatable policies on our liberal Muslim leaders cannot be absolved of their misdeeds, whether or not the world recognize them as such. The points which I was making in my public writings and letters to you involved more of our own shared responsiblity which are definitely wanting on all crucial fronts.
I did not use the phrase 'Islamc enough' in the sense that it is enough, hence no further improvements are needed. On the contrary, I said that we are islamic (writing in English, in Malay it is just Islam, which is clearer, eg Orang islam, Negara Islam) as a minimal point of departure from the stage of islam-->Iman-->ihsan. Many people have politicized the issue of negara islam vs negara sekuler, which in our context would negate the positive socio-religious achievements and opened doors (whic are now becoming almost un-closable!) for others to questions even the basic historical and religious foundations of this nation. Objectively speaking, for I am not belonging to any political party, prior to 1998, we had achieved a rather enviable status among complex multiplural nations coming out of 5 centuries of colonization. Maududi's writings that you mentioned were no doubt inspirational but they had also contributed to some of the excessive politicization of our religion, beyond its traditional historical parameters.
In an interveiw with al-Islam magazine of Sept 2008 issue on the issue of why malay middle class does not seem to be pro-government, I said it is because most of them feel they have been treated like fools (rasa diperbodohkan). There i cautioned that after 51 years, our nation, like a huge shady tree has benefited a lot a people, but it is now infested with rodents, many branches and roots are rotten, and the gardener has been lazy. Chase away the rodents, trim the dead branches, fertilize the roots, and even get a new gardener, but dont cut down the tree...
Sorry for a rather lenghty note!
Wassalam ,
wan mohd nor
My Reply to Dr Rosli and Prof Wan :
Prof Wan Mohammad Nor and Doc Rosli ,
This polemic is getting to be more interesting ,perhaps because it is not easy to get Prof Wan 'excited' enough to join in the fray .Let me rephrase my anxiety and inner doubt vis a vis as a commited Muslim within the society with respect to whether 'I am already doing enough'as a Muslim ,in a fardu kifayah sense, to spread the universal message of Islam ?
My contention is generally most of us ,at least that is what I feel ,is hiding behind the guise of that contentious concept of 'plurality' as an excuse to not be doing more for Islam ,collectively as well as at the individual level.The 'Din ' is just not for the Muslims .It encompass the universe .
Since our society is 'plural ,this is where we stop ,since we are 'plural' it s just okay and politically correct to just limit ourselves .Since the society is 'plural' we may allow dissenting views even from within ,like say from Islamic academic 'eunuch' like Dr Farish Nor [ to me though on some issues he behaved more like an 'academic prostitute ,prostituting himself to the 'secular' gallery ], who seem to know all about Islam , to go round and round in circles and confused others on liberal Islam .Likewise we let people who know little about Islam like the SIS group who has a tendency to again 'play to the gallery ' to capture the public imagination and play the cenre role as if they represent progressive and true Islam . .Unfortunately these clowns are media savvy and have friends within the media that share the same aspiration to beguile and confuse!
Our basic premise of 'plurality' is rather blurred and give us a sense of overwhelming odds to doing more .
To my mind to understand and appreciate the basis of 'plurality' we actually need to put ourselves in the position our prophet Mohammad faced 1450 years ago .When he got the Message ,he was faced with 'corporate' Arabia in Mecca ,who were mainly successful small and big time traders of his own tribe who were in the main idol worshipers .In Medina the envelope of 'plurality' somewhat enlarged a wee bit to include the People of the Books ,Jews of Bani Nadhir and the Trinitarian polytheistic Christians who had since departed from the original teaching of Prophet Isa ,bearing in mind the concept of Trinity was only introduced by Paul some 200 years after Prophet Isa ..That in essense was 'plurality' during Prophet's time .
Now ,some 14 centuries passed ,the nature of our 'plurality' has not changed very much if we care to separate the leaves and twig from the main trunk .To put it simply ,taking away a whole gamut of the race equation ,we are just facing only two groups of people :mereka mereka yang 'sesat' dan mereka yang di murkai Allah .Yang di murkai Allah hanya 15 juta bertaburan di Bumi Allah dan yang sesat memang ramai lah mereka .
Looking that way ,make the issue of 'plurality' as a rationale for our collective inaction less tenable .That ,Prof Wan ,is the dagger that prick my conscience now day and night as to whether I have done enough ,even though from our conversation a year back I did get some consolation from you .That is also why I envy people like Tok Guru Nik Aziz ,Musa Husam ,Doc Rosli et al .
Di Padang Mahsyar nanti do you want to be judged as a Monarch , PM , or doctor troubled by his conscience ,a Prof of Theology ,or just an inconsequential slime in the rock !!!??? The organic ,soul-less slime would be better in such circumstances !
Dr Nik Howk
Prof Wan’s Reply :
Dr Nik,
I agree with you on plurality as indicated in all my works on the subject.
Our aqidah--the Maturidiah and Ash'ariah-- says clearly that we should not consider our works as adequate enough for salvation--that is tantamount to taking God for granted---but rather we may be saved because of His gracious mercy and generosity: we are commanded to have faith and hope in His forgiving attribute while constantly improving our intentions and actions, personal and collective, untill He calls us unto Himself.
Wassalam,
Wan
My Reply to Prof Wan :
Prof Wan ,
There is a big group I missed ,and this is probably the reason for the 'blurring' of the concept of plurality .The munafiks !Mereka2 yang sesat dan mereka2 yang di murkai Allah are two well dictinct group but the third group dilutes and blurs the issue.It is probably a taboo subject here !
Your answer was understandably short and political .My gut feeling is it is the 3rd group that really retards the institution of syariah in our country .No wonder as in Surah Al Munafikun ,Allah guarantee them a very special place ,more special than untuk 'mereka2 yang sesat dan mereka2 yang di murkai ' .
Dr Nik Howk
Reply from Dr Rosli
Yang Berbahagia Dr. Nik Isahak
On the issue that pluralistic Malaysia cannot possibly become an Islam State, this is a piece of my view.
Can't we all see that Western socieities are already rotten to the core? Nothing that is forbidden by Allah SWT that is not transgressed by them. When come to committing sins - of course our reference is sins as defined in the Quran - they are extremists of no comparison. They are modern day firauns, 'ads, thamuds and luth and these peoples, because of their extremism in defiying Allah's law, Allah made them to vanish from the face of the earth and permanent citizens of hell. Without doubt, the same faith shall befall the modern day jahiliyyah societies.
The Western societies of today are the Jahiliyyah socieites at the time of our Prophet, 1400 years ago. They are the modern day jahiliyyah, if you will. As then, Islam is the only solution to all kinds of ignorance and it is now coming the way.
Don't you know that, despite all the malignance and negative publicities labelled against it, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today? Islam is the fastest growing religion in America, Europe, Russia, Africa, Latin America and Australia. This is a living proof that Islam is on its way to greatness again. Allah says it: Islam is the solution to the problems of mandkind.
At our own level, in our society and country, the duty of every Muslims is to spread Islam. The pluralistic society that we are all in should not be an excuse for us not to talk about Islamic state but rather it should be a fertile ground for us to spread Islam. That Malaysia is a pluralistic society comes from Allah and taken in a positive light, Allah wants us Malaysian Muslims to propagate Islam to our neighbors and fellow citizens. Islam is for all.
If there is someone out there says that there is a limit to Islam in Malaysia because of our pluralistic nature, I want to take exception to that view. If Karpal Singh cannot accept Islam, nobody can say for sure he will remain that way tomorrow or his next and next generations will not accept Islam. History is replete with stories that many of the best Muslims were the worst of persons in their jahilyyah days.
When Islamic state will become a reality in Malaysia? When Islam will rule the world? These are questions not for us to answer. Our duty is to work for Islam and to work with those who are working for the revival of Islam. In the day of judgement, Allah will only ask us what we did for Islam not the results of what we did.
If I am asked, can Malaysia, a plural society, become an Islamic State, I will answer with 100 per cent confidence that one day it will be.
When the non-Muslims appreciate, see, feel and enjoy the justice of Islam, they will choose to come under the banner of Islam like what happened during the time of our Prophet and the rule of the four guided Caliphs and also during the time of Omar Abdul Aziz, the Fifth Caliph. During the reign of Sallahuddin Al Ayubi, so many Christians pleaded to become his subjects as he was a just leader - to the Muslims and non-Muslims.
I choose to be in the bandwagon of Islamic revivial and I believe this the only bandwagon that is taking us to the straight path.
Wassalam.
Doc Rosli.
PS :Can you see that Islam is again on its way to greatness?
Doc Rosli ,
Islam in Malaysia has got a perception problem .Take any Malaysian Chinese and ask him ,'Islam is a great religion that once illuminate the world ,it is synonamous with your world view of progress and excellence ,in fact much much better ' and his response would be "saya tak mahu masuk Melayu " .That is how we sell Islam to the non Malays in Malaysia .Melayu = Islam .
Whether we like it or not kita Melayu banyak penyakit .Karat2 jahiliyah berinci-inci tebal nya .Ilmu akhirat kurang .Ilmu dunia lagi kurang .Sembahyang tanpa ilmu dan tanpa ihsan ,tunggang tunggek .Quran jadi hiasan dan tangkal .'Yang tu pi mai pi mai dok tang tu jugak kita ' . Kalau bagi bank kat Melayu ,kalau silap hari , habis wang lesap ,bagi listed company kat Melayu ,kerusi meja pun kalau bolih dijual dijual , ,wang ehsan untuk orang2 miskin habis dikebas dek menteri !Bagi Negara ,negara pun bolih semua tergadai .Too many examples recent and past
Sadly Islam has not empowered us to be God's ambassadors on earth .Just reexamine and do a proper audit of the previous Administration and the current one .Corruption ,nepotism and cronyism tanpa malu dan segan !
Ini belum lagi di ambil kira Islam at the world stage perspective .Of course the biased Yahudi controlled media is not a 'great ' help either .
We have a perception problem .Namun ,we are on a roll and I agree with you only we can change ourselves .The change is not physical ,it has to be from the 'heart and the soul'.We are not "mereka2 yang sesat dan mereka2 yang di murkai " .Neither are we the munafikuns .We are Muslims .
There is only one standard expected of being a Muslim :Excellence in intent and behaviour .The type expounded and shown by the Perfect Man :Muhammad ibnu Abdullah .
Insyaallah ,insyaallah ,Insyaallah !
Dr Nik Howk
MCA President , Tun Tan Siew Sin, had this to say on the issue of special position of the Malays ,on April 30th ,1969 :
""The Malays, through UMNO, were generous enough to relax the citizenship
laws of this country to such extent that within 12 months of
independence, 90 percent were still non-citizens after nearly 100 years
of colonial rule in the Malay States. In return for this major
concession. the MCA and the MIC agreed to continue the policy of
preserving the special position of the Malays while at the same time
upholding the legitimate interest of other communities. ""
MIC President Tun Sambanthan on 1st June 1965 ,said the following in Parliament :
""Now, in 1955 we won the elections with a great majority. Then we
obtained freedom in two years time. During this period, we had to
discuss citizenship and various other things. Now what did the Malays do
- since we are speaking on racial lines - what did the Malay leadership
do? They had 88 percent of the electorate still with them.
What did they do with citizenship?
If we look around in Asia and East Asia, particularly, you will find
that my race the indian race, is not welcomed in Ceylon, is not welcomed
in Burma. Look at my brother Chinnese race, it is not welcomed in
Thailand , in Vietnam , in Cambodia , in all the other areas.What help do
they get for citizenship in all these territories? In Burma , as we know,
Indian have been send packing, in Ceylont hey refused them citizenship
and in Burma it is likewise. I know it, you know it. And yet in Malaya
what happened? Here we found that the Malay leadership said, 'We shall
take them unto ourselves as brothers, we shall give them full
opportunity to live in this country, we shall give them every
opportunity to become citizens.'
And so, in 1957, for the whole year, we waived language qualifications,
and tens of thousand of Indians, Chinese, Ceylonese and others became
citizens...
As I said, it has been my great good fortune to have born in this
country. Where else can you find a more charitable, a more polite, a
more decent race than Malay race? Where else can you get such
politically decent treatment for any immigrant race? Where else in the
history of the world? I ask you. These are the facts. Who are you to
safeguards us? I am 10 percent minority race here. But I am happy here.""
Winstedt some 80 years earlier wrote '..the Malays are peculiar .They are nature's gentlemen ...they would let their guest sleep in their bedroom while they sleep outside ...'
What follow suit was an on-line conversation between Doctor Rosli Yaacub ,an economist ,Prof Wan ,former Deputy DG of ISTAC and myself :
Friends ,
Lest we forget , in our rush to be fair minded and adhere to political correctness , let us be reminded by what two bygone senior Malaysian Statesmen had to say on the Malay special position some 40 years back . I could also still recall Tun Dr Ismail 's remark on the same issue about the same time to the effect that ' the time and place when the Malays should rescind their special position as enschrined in the Federal Constitution will be at the priveledge for they themselve to choose and decide ,and not others ' .
Will it be right or politically correct to extend it forever ? I am no politician but on something that has been enshrined in our Constitution why give up something so easily when 'other fellow Malaysians' of probably equal loyalty to King and Country [ some may say dubious on the basis of their reluctance] refuse to budge even an inch on what we would regard as proactive and cohesive measure as petty and inconsequential as the aborted introduction of 'Sekolah Wawasan' .Not yet addressing the real issue of why 51 years on vernacular schools still should exist !
If I recall correctly the government of the day that time lost some mileage in the election or was it a by election as a 'tempias' or communal backlash on the 'Sekolah Wawasan' issue .A definitive measure by Dr M to improve cohesiveness among our young but perceived differently by our 'guests' . Or is the word 'guests' also not a politically correct term to use here !
We are not even touching on the issue of educational divergence and divisiveness among our young Malaysians due to the presence and continued existence of a parallel education system yet [ vis a vis vernacular schools] ,50 years on since Merdeka .
There is a term called 'horse trading' and perhaps Mr Anwar Ibrahim in his haste to be in 'Putrajaya' has totally forgotten this term . Yes ! That is what we should be doing before we decide to move from the 'veranda' to the 'cowshed' to allow our 'guests' more room in the 'house' ! Just my very humble opinion .
Dr Nik Howk .
Reply from Doc Rosli:
Assalamulaikum Yang Berbahagia Dr. Isahak.
Here is a piece of my thought on the malaise of the Malays.
The Malay Merdeka Leaders had make a big mistake and many say to the detrimental of the Malays. At that time, their thinking perhaps, focused on achieving Merdeka and not so much on what will happen to the future of the Malays with the kind of the Merdeka deal they had worked out.
How the mistake can be reversed? Perhaps, no way. As far the Merdeka deal is concerned, it is gone with the wind for the Malays. It is a done deal. Had they opposed to the deal then, there was no Merdeka.
Remember, those Malay leaders who were steadfast in thinking that "Tanah Melayu untuk Orang Melayu" were not even invited to the negotiation table, not a chance. Many of them were rounded under the ISA and imprisoned ang perished.
By hindsight, the Merdeka Malay Leaders were nothing more than the stooges of the British colonial power. They were trained in London and trained to be liberals. Yes, they were Malay nationlists but to qualify as inheritors of the soon-to-be freed Malaya, they must think like the British. They must be secular in their thinking. If traces of Islamic inclination were detected in their blood, they were disqualified, that is for sure.
When the British left, they were entrusted with the task to continue with the British law and system of government. They did not have even an iota of thnking to establish Islamic state and rule the country the Shariah way.
Under their leadersahip, Genting, a gambling center was established and liqor factories set up to give jobs to the Muslims. Can you imagine a gambling center and liqor factories in a Muslim country? Can you see how liberal those leaders were?
UMNO leaders, despite the NEP, continue to "sell" the Malays. Can't you see that the Malays are minority in almost all modern housing estates in the country. Look at what happened to Subang Jaya is enough. It is developed by Sime Darby but is is a non-Malay majority township. Look at the town and industrial centers throughout the country. Tell me of the rows and rows of shophouses, shopping complexes and industrial buildings, how many are owned by Malays? Close to zero. Isn't it?
I think the Malays should stop crying wolf about the commission of mistakes by our past leaders and by our current leaders.
The Malays can only regain its past glory if we are prepared to rerturn to Islam and live the Quran and Sunnah way. We don't need corrupt Malay leaders anymore. They were the ones who sold and pawned away the rights and dignity of the Malays.
Since Merdeka and as a matter of fact, long before that - it goes back to the last 600 years - the Malays were discriminated against and marginalized by their colonial masters, first the Portuguese, then the Dutch and the British and currently the the corrupt Malay leaders.
Under the British rule, the then immigrants were treated with alot of previleges and were given all the support to thrive in business to enhance the colonial economic power. The then immigrants dominated the business and economic sector. The same economic landscape has not changed much after 50 years of independence. Of course now all are citizens and they continue to contribute immensely to the gowing nation's prosperity. They are the economic power house of the country.
Remember the pantun: "Buai laju-laju sampai pokok sena, bila nak beli baju baru, beli kedai Cina." This turned the Malays into a slumber party.
To be standing with dignity with other races, the Malay must return to Islam and in the economic sphere Islam teaches us that "90 per cent of our sustenanance (rezki) is in busienss." If we Muslims adhere to this reaching we can easily become an economic power house.
Wassalam ,
Dr Rosli.
My reply to Doc Rosli :
Doc Rosli ,
I have to agree with you 100 % .We are 'accidents' of HISTORY .But 'history' is no accident .The powers of that time had already 'pre-decided' ISLAM was a no no !Put yourself as Head of State of Superpowers of Russia ,Britain ,France and the US .In the wake of the breakdown and final dismantling and dismemberment of the Great Ottoman Empire ,any new State thinking of Syariah as their constitution would be nipped in the bud .How Saudi Arabia escaped was beyond my rather scant knowledge of world history !
Nonetheless we cannot continue to blame others for our continued failure to be Islamic .{Of course my good friend Prof Wan Mohd formerly from ISTAC may take exception to my comment here because from his viewpoint ,we are already Islamic enough ,given our circumstances of our plurality } .We take that view because we assume majority of us Malays are Muslims by birth and by intention .But is that so ?
50 years on and the only Islamic party in the country have yet to make inroads into Malay hinterland states like Johor [thank God ,Perak show some progress ] ,Pahang and Selangor begs my question above to be answered .Are we Muslims or just 'Muslim Separuh separuh' ?Of course some people may find excuses and conveniently blame you guys from PAS for not 'selling' PAS the right way .Again the blame game .I would rather ask myself the question : Are we Malays really majority Muslims ?No .At best many of us are 'separuh ,separuh ' ,at worse some are munafik .Sorry ,brother !
Was reading Mawdudi's seminal work translated by the late Murad Khoram and re titled 'Let Us Be Muslims' .A very short work .Easy reading all the way but when I reach the last chapter ,I get cold sweat :Yes , are we really truly Muslims as we profess to be ?
In my position now , I cannot answer that question for myself satisfactorily .
That to me is the reason for our current 'malaise and backwardness' .JMHO
Dr Nik Howk
Prof Wan ,join in the fray :
Dear Dr Nik,
Since you had kindly cited my opinion in yout latest email '{Of course my good friend Prof Wan Mohd formerly from ISTAC may take exception to my comment here because from his viewpoint ,we are already Islamic enough ,given our circumstances of our plurality }, I feel a slight need to explain. 'Others' i.e. non Muslim leaders, scholars and media people etc who were/are truly responsible for 'forcing' unpalatable policies on our liberal Muslim leaders cannot be absolved of their misdeeds, whether or not the world recognize them as such. The points which I was making in my public writings and letters to you involved more of our own shared responsiblity which are definitely wanting on all crucial fronts.
I did not use the phrase 'Islamc enough' in the sense that it is enough, hence no further improvements are needed. On the contrary, I said that we are islamic (writing in English, in Malay it is just Islam, which is clearer, eg Orang islam, Negara Islam) as a minimal point of departure from the stage of islam-->Iman-->ihsan. Many people have politicized the issue of negara islam vs negara sekuler, which in our context would negate the positive socio-religious achievements and opened doors (whic are now becoming almost un-closable!) for others to questions even the basic historical and religious foundations of this nation. Objectively speaking, for I am not belonging to any political party, prior to 1998, we had achieved a rather enviable status among complex multiplural nations coming out of 5 centuries of colonization. Maududi's writings that you mentioned were no doubt inspirational but they had also contributed to some of the excessive politicization of our religion, beyond its traditional historical parameters.
In an interveiw with al-Islam magazine of Sept 2008 issue on the issue of why malay middle class does not seem to be pro-government, I said it is because most of them feel they have been treated like fools (rasa diperbodohkan). There i cautioned that after 51 years, our nation, like a huge shady tree has benefited a lot a people, but it is now infested with rodents, many branches and roots are rotten, and the gardener has been lazy. Chase away the rodents, trim the dead branches, fertilize the roots, and even get a new gardener, but dont cut down the tree...
Sorry for a rather lenghty note!
Wassalam ,
wan mohd nor
My Reply to Dr Rosli and Prof Wan :
Prof Wan Mohammad Nor and Doc Rosli ,
This polemic is getting to be more interesting ,perhaps because it is not easy to get Prof Wan 'excited' enough to join in the fray .Let me rephrase my anxiety and inner doubt vis a vis as a commited Muslim within the society with respect to whether 'I am already doing enough'as a Muslim ,in a fardu kifayah sense, to spread the universal message of Islam ?
My contention is generally most of us ,at least that is what I feel ,is hiding behind the guise of that contentious concept of 'plurality' as an excuse to not be doing more for Islam ,collectively as well as at the individual level.The 'Din ' is just not for the Muslims .It encompass the universe .
Since our society is 'plural ,this is where we stop ,since we are 'plural' it s just okay and politically correct to just limit ourselves .Since the society is 'plural' we may allow dissenting views even from within ,like say from Islamic academic 'eunuch' like Dr Farish Nor [ to me though on some issues he behaved more like an 'academic prostitute ,prostituting himself to the 'secular' gallery ], who seem to know all about Islam , to go round and round in circles and confused others on liberal Islam .Likewise we let people who know little about Islam like the SIS group who has a tendency to again 'play to the gallery ' to capture the public imagination and play the cenre role as if they represent progressive and true Islam . .Unfortunately these clowns are media savvy and have friends within the media that share the same aspiration to beguile and confuse!
Our basic premise of 'plurality' is rather blurred and give us a sense of overwhelming odds to doing more .
To my mind to understand and appreciate the basis of 'plurality' we actually need to put ourselves in the position our prophet Mohammad faced 1450 years ago .When he got the Message ,he was faced with 'corporate' Arabia in Mecca ,who were mainly successful small and big time traders of his own tribe who were in the main idol worshipers .In Medina the envelope of 'plurality' somewhat enlarged a wee bit to include the People of the Books ,Jews of Bani Nadhir and the Trinitarian polytheistic Christians who had since departed from the original teaching of Prophet Isa ,bearing in mind the concept of Trinity was only introduced by Paul some 200 years after Prophet Isa ..That in essense was 'plurality' during Prophet's time .
Now ,some 14 centuries passed ,the nature of our 'plurality' has not changed very much if we care to separate the leaves and twig from the main trunk .To put it simply ,taking away a whole gamut of the race equation ,we are just facing only two groups of people :mereka mereka yang 'sesat' dan mereka yang di murkai Allah .Yang di murkai Allah hanya 15 juta bertaburan di Bumi Allah dan yang sesat memang ramai lah mereka .
Looking that way ,make the issue of 'plurality' as a rationale for our collective inaction less tenable .That ,Prof Wan ,is the dagger that prick my conscience now day and night as to whether I have done enough ,even though from our conversation a year back I did get some consolation from you .That is also why I envy people like Tok Guru Nik Aziz ,Musa Husam ,Doc Rosli et al .
Di Padang Mahsyar nanti do you want to be judged as a Monarch , PM , or doctor troubled by his conscience ,a Prof of Theology ,or just an inconsequential slime in the rock !!!??? The organic ,soul-less slime would be better in such circumstances !
Dr Nik Howk
Prof Wan’s Reply :
Dr Nik,
I agree with you on plurality as indicated in all my works on the subject.
Our aqidah--the Maturidiah and Ash'ariah-- says clearly that we should not consider our works as adequate enough for salvation--that is tantamount to taking God for granted---but rather we may be saved because of His gracious mercy and generosity: we are commanded to have faith and hope in His forgiving attribute while constantly improving our intentions and actions, personal and collective, untill He calls us unto Himself.
Wassalam,
Wan
My Reply to Prof Wan :
Prof Wan ,
There is a big group I missed ,and this is probably the reason for the 'blurring' of the concept of plurality .The munafiks !Mereka2 yang sesat dan mereka2 yang di murkai Allah are two well dictinct group but the third group dilutes and blurs the issue.It is probably a taboo subject here !
Your answer was understandably short and political .My gut feeling is it is the 3rd group that really retards the institution of syariah in our country .No wonder as in Surah Al Munafikun ,Allah guarantee them a very special place ,more special than untuk 'mereka2 yang sesat dan mereka2 yang di murkai ' .
Dr Nik Howk
Reply from Dr Rosli
Yang Berbahagia Dr. Nik Isahak
On the issue that pluralistic Malaysia cannot possibly become an Islam State, this is a piece of my view.
Can't we all see that Western socieities are already rotten to the core? Nothing that is forbidden by Allah SWT that is not transgressed by them. When come to committing sins - of course our reference is sins as defined in the Quran - they are extremists of no comparison. They are modern day firauns, 'ads, thamuds and luth and these peoples, because of their extremism in defiying Allah's law, Allah made them to vanish from the face of the earth and permanent citizens of hell. Without doubt, the same faith shall befall the modern day jahiliyyah societies.
The Western societies of today are the Jahiliyyah socieites at the time of our Prophet, 1400 years ago. They are the modern day jahiliyyah, if you will. As then, Islam is the only solution to all kinds of ignorance and it is now coming the way.
Don't you know that, despite all the malignance and negative publicities labelled against it, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today? Islam is the fastest growing religion in America, Europe, Russia, Africa, Latin America and Australia. This is a living proof that Islam is on its way to greatness again. Allah says it: Islam is the solution to the problems of mandkind.
At our own level, in our society and country, the duty of every Muslims is to spread Islam. The pluralistic society that we are all in should not be an excuse for us not to talk about Islamic state but rather it should be a fertile ground for us to spread Islam. That Malaysia is a pluralistic society comes from Allah and taken in a positive light, Allah wants us Malaysian Muslims to propagate Islam to our neighbors and fellow citizens. Islam is for all.
If there is someone out there says that there is a limit to Islam in Malaysia because of our pluralistic nature, I want to take exception to that view. If Karpal Singh cannot accept Islam, nobody can say for sure he will remain that way tomorrow or his next and next generations will not accept Islam. History is replete with stories that many of the best Muslims were the worst of persons in their jahilyyah days.
When Islamic state will become a reality in Malaysia? When Islam will rule the world? These are questions not for us to answer. Our duty is to work for Islam and to work with those who are working for the revival of Islam. In the day of judgement, Allah will only ask us what we did for Islam not the results of what we did.
If I am asked, can Malaysia, a plural society, become an Islamic State, I will answer with 100 per cent confidence that one day it will be.
When the non-Muslims appreciate, see, feel and enjoy the justice of Islam, they will choose to come under the banner of Islam like what happened during the time of our Prophet and the rule of the four guided Caliphs and also during the time of Omar Abdul Aziz, the Fifth Caliph. During the reign of Sallahuddin Al Ayubi, so many Christians pleaded to become his subjects as he was a just leader - to the Muslims and non-Muslims.
I choose to be in the bandwagon of Islamic revivial and I believe this the only bandwagon that is taking us to the straight path.
Wassalam.
Doc Rosli.
PS :Can you see that Islam is again on its way to greatness?
Doc Rosli ,
Islam in Malaysia has got a perception problem .Take any Malaysian Chinese and ask him ,'Islam is a great religion that once illuminate the world ,it is synonamous with your world view of progress and excellence ,in fact much much better ' and his response would be "saya tak mahu masuk Melayu " .That is how we sell Islam to the non Malays in Malaysia .Melayu = Islam .
Whether we like it or not kita Melayu banyak penyakit .Karat2 jahiliyah berinci-inci tebal nya .Ilmu akhirat kurang .Ilmu dunia lagi kurang .Sembahyang tanpa ilmu dan tanpa ihsan ,tunggang tunggek .Quran jadi hiasan dan tangkal .'Yang tu pi mai pi mai dok tang tu jugak kita ' . Kalau bagi bank kat Melayu ,kalau silap hari , habis wang lesap ,bagi listed company kat Melayu ,kerusi meja pun kalau bolih dijual dijual , ,wang ehsan untuk orang2 miskin habis dikebas dek menteri !Bagi Negara ,negara pun bolih semua tergadai .Too many examples recent and past
Sadly Islam has not empowered us to be God's ambassadors on earth .Just reexamine and do a proper audit of the previous Administration and the current one .Corruption ,nepotism and cronyism tanpa malu dan segan !
Ini belum lagi di ambil kira Islam at the world stage perspective .Of course the biased Yahudi controlled media is not a 'great ' help either .
We have a perception problem .Namun ,we are on a roll and I agree with you only we can change ourselves .The change is not physical ,it has to be from the 'heart and the soul'.We are not "mereka2 yang sesat dan mereka2 yang di murkai " .Neither are we the munafikuns .We are Muslims .
There is only one standard expected of being a Muslim :Excellence in intent and behaviour .The type expounded and shown by the Perfect Man :Muhammad ibnu Abdullah .
Insyaallah ,insyaallah ,Insyaallah !
Dr Nik Howk
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Pearls & Gem : Surah Al Imran [ 3 : 200 ]
Friends ,
" O ye who believe ! Endure , outdo all others in endurance , be ready , and observe your duty to Allah , in order that ye may succeed ." [ Surah Al Imran , 3 : 200 ]
I wish you guys out there " Selamat Sejahtera and may your Ramadan and mine be a blessed one .Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri ,Maaf Zahir Batin ."
Dr Nik Howk
" O ye who believe ! Endure , outdo all others in endurance , be ready , and observe your duty to Allah , in order that ye may succeed ." [ Surah Al Imran , 3 : 200 ]
I wish you guys out there " Selamat Sejahtera and may your Ramadan and mine be a blessed one .Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri ,Maaf Zahir Batin ."
Dr Nik Howk
Friday, September 19, 2008
Not So Pearl & Gem :Let Us Separate The Leaves And Twigs from The Tree
Friends ,
"Say : Truly , my prayer , my sacrifice , my life and my death are all for Allah , Lord of all the worlds " [Surah Al An'am 6 : 162] .
Very strong definitive words that separate the leaves ,twigs and branches from the tree .I wished when Pak lah met his deputy yesterday he was of clear mind and healthy body to be as definitive as the above Ayat.Let us examine the facts :
1.Malaysia is in turmoil .Of course it is not yet Thailand ,Stupid ! .With due respect to Pak Lah ,currently it seem rudderless ,to be blunt , leaderless !
2.Economic indices are spiralling down .Yes one can blame that as off 2 days ago to Lehman Brothers and Merryl Lynch .But just look at 1 counter alone ,Sime Darby for instance ,our biggest single conglomerate .Since Synergy Drive [ whose brilliant idea is this anyway ? The 4th Floor Boys ?] ,this giant has been spiralling down from 13 plus RM per share to the present miserable 6 plus !This represent 20 billion RM paper loss .60 % of this is hard earned "Bumiputra 'money !!Your ASB 's and my ASN .This is just one counter ,mind you ,not withstanding the meteoric rise in CPO .Let us not examine the other counters lest you get a cardiac arrest .
3.Now we have Pak Lah in Defence and Mr Najib looking at Finance .Some joked that this is OK with a proviso that the Mrs is at least 5 kilometres away from the Ministry of Finance and remain that way .That to me is below the belt ,a rude joke of course !Some even surmised that Pak Lah wanted to look into the 'goings on in Defence ' spending the last couple of years .An even worse joke !C'mon give the old man some credit ! He is doing his level best .The one billion dollar question now though is : Is Pak Lah's very level best good enough for the Nation now .In CCU lingo the 'patient' is in pulmonary oedema ,choking to death with his own body fluid backlogged in the lung , and the doctor in charge is still waiting for the blood test results before giving the IV 's .Pak Lah the man seem to be tottering on all fours and dont seem to know what he is doing now !With all due respect to Mr Najib ,his B A [econs] from Nothingham University years back may not be enough panacea to deal with the current global crisis .He lacks experience when experience and wisdom and a sixth sense are most wanted !Even Dr M and his own banker brother aknowledge this today .
Now more than ever before , responsible and thinking people in UMNO must be hoping for TIME to move very fast .Even December seem very far away .They would now wished that UMNO 'erection' would not be so 'convoluted ' and complex that just to change 'course' you would nearly need to break the PARTY .Whose fault was this in the first place ?
For the rest of the raayats like us ,non card carrying members of any party ,we have to wait with bated breath of what is in store for us all .A tyranny imposed by the elite few on the many !
Will it be the ???consensual 'sodomist' with his diagonally 'fractured' band of people ,or Mr Najib ,tainted , 'pregnant' and weighed down by extra baggage and 'unproven' slander or Ku Li with his band of merry men , to pull all of us out of this self imposed quigmire ?
The feeling on the ground is ,anyone of them ,just anyone of them could be better than the 'autopilot' state we have been in the last couple of years .We do not want to end 'John Denver style' somewhere in the desert sand somewhere when the gas run empty .It seem now December is too , too far away .
"Say : Truly , my prayer , my sacrifice , my life and my death are all for Allah , Lord of all the worlds " [Surah Al An'am 6 : 162] .
Very strong definitive words that separate the leaves ,twigs and branches from the tree .I wished when Pak lah met his deputy yesterday he was of clear mind and healthy body to be as definitive as the above Ayat.Let us examine the facts :
1.Malaysia is in turmoil .Of course it is not yet Thailand ,Stupid ! .With due respect to Pak Lah ,currently it seem rudderless ,to be blunt , leaderless !
2.Economic indices are spiralling down .Yes one can blame that as off 2 days ago to Lehman Brothers and Merryl Lynch .But just look at 1 counter alone ,Sime Darby for instance ,our biggest single conglomerate .Since Synergy Drive [ whose brilliant idea is this anyway ? The 4th Floor Boys ?] ,this giant has been spiralling down from 13 plus RM per share to the present miserable 6 plus !This represent 20 billion RM paper loss .60 % of this is hard earned "Bumiputra 'money !!Your ASB 's and my ASN .This is just one counter ,mind you ,not withstanding the meteoric rise in CPO .Let us not examine the other counters lest you get a cardiac arrest .
3.Now we have Pak Lah in Defence and Mr Najib looking at Finance .Some joked that this is OK with a proviso that the Mrs is at least 5 kilometres away from the Ministry of Finance and remain that way .That to me is below the belt ,a rude joke of course !Some even surmised that Pak Lah wanted to look into the 'goings on in Defence ' spending the last couple of years .An even worse joke !C'mon give the old man some credit ! He is doing his level best .The one billion dollar question now though is : Is Pak Lah's very level best good enough for the Nation now .In CCU lingo the 'patient' is in pulmonary oedema ,choking to death with his own body fluid backlogged in the lung , and the doctor in charge is still waiting for the blood test results before giving the IV 's .Pak Lah the man seem to be tottering on all fours and dont seem to know what he is doing now !With all due respect to Mr Najib ,his B A [econs] from Nothingham University years back may not be enough panacea to deal with the current global crisis .He lacks experience when experience and wisdom and a sixth sense are most wanted !Even Dr M and his own banker brother aknowledge this today .
Now more than ever before , responsible and thinking people in UMNO must be hoping for TIME to move very fast .Even December seem very far away .They would now wished that UMNO 'erection' would not be so 'convoluted ' and complex that just to change 'course' you would nearly need to break the PARTY .Whose fault was this in the first place ?
For the rest of the raayats like us ,non card carrying members of any party ,we have to wait with bated breath of what is in store for us all .A tyranny imposed by the elite few on the many !
Will it be the ???consensual 'sodomist' with his diagonally 'fractured' band of people ,or Mr Najib ,tainted , 'pregnant' and weighed down by extra baggage and 'unproven' slander or Ku Li with his band of merry men , to pull all of us out of this self imposed quigmire ?
The feeling on the ground is ,anyone of them ,just anyone of them could be better than the 'autopilot' state we have been in the last couple of years .We do not want to end 'John Denver style' somewhere in the desert sand somewhere when the gas run empty .It seem now December is too , too far away .
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Not So Pearl & Gem : Anwar Is A Bad Poker Player ...
Friends ,
16 Sept has come and gone !Nothing is moving .Anwar may be showing his true colour .Very high on rhetorics and nothing up there .If before we can blame his advisers ,??KBJ et al for advising to go direct to the jugular too prematurely and underestimating the strengh of his enemy ,now who is his adviser or think tank ?? Nik Nazmi ,that young punk ?Also following in the ways of Pak Lah with his KJ ?
Should have stayed quiet ,work very hard on the current 5 States under Pakatan .Pump in massive amount of Arab fund .Bring in development to Kelantan ,Perak , Selangor ,kedah and Penang and then win the 'Erection' .
If Anwar is a poker player probably he is the type who get hyper excitable early when he has a pack of good cards .Hardly 'great news' for a future PM material .Belum cukup cerdik lagi or 'tak cerdik sokmo' !How to play ball with the US ?
Dr Nik Howk
16 Sept has come and gone !Nothing is moving .Anwar may be showing his true colour .Very high on rhetorics and nothing up there .If before we can blame his advisers ,??KBJ et al for advising to go direct to the jugular too prematurely and underestimating the strengh of his enemy ,now who is his adviser or think tank ?? Nik Nazmi ,that young punk ?Also following in the ways of Pak Lah with his KJ ?
Should have stayed quiet ,work very hard on the current 5 States under Pakatan .Pump in massive amount of Arab fund .Bring in development to Kelantan ,Perak , Selangor ,kedah and Penang and then win the 'Erection' .
If Anwar is a poker player probably he is the type who get hyper excitable early when he has a pack of good cards .Hardly 'great news' for a future PM material .Belum cukup cerdik lagi or 'tak cerdik sokmo' !How to play ball with the US ?
Dr Nik Howk
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Not So Pearl & Gem :Change Is Imminent and Inevitable ....
Tan Sri ,
'Nearly all man can stand adversity ,but if you want to test a man ,give him POWER' .
When I look at the Malay Mail yesterday ,1st staring at you was Pak Lah , pale ,tired ,beaten and confused .Opposite was his nemesis ,young ,vibrant and arrogant .Next page was Zaid Ibrahim's ' I do not agree with the ISA arrest '.Elsewhere in the Sun and Straits Times ,some ministers echoing the same song as Najib's ,'Muhyiddin has overstepped his bound ,but leave it to the UMNO grassroots ' . As if the grassroots can think .What the UMNO grassroots ever think about is 'how and when is the next makan ! 'Democracy in UMNO is very much alive .Leadership :Dead !
As much as I did not like Dr M ,he probably would have handled it differently .From Day 1 ,he would probably called Koh Tsu Koon and throw him a file for him to read in 2 minutes and told him to shut up or he would be thrown to Batu Gajah by evening .He would call Ahmad to immediately make 'some animal' noise' in the form of an indirect apology .One can call a sparrow by any other name ,it is still a sparrow .That was leadership Dr M style ..
To govern Malaysia you must be much better than good ,super tough minded ,wise and 'gedebe' all at the same time.Dr M was .No 2 ways about it otherwise people like Samy Vellu ,Ong Ka Tiig and Tsu Koon forget about their places in the 'scheme of things' and 'naik tonchang' ... ..{We have had too much of that lately} .
A pity towards the end of his tenure he surrounded himself with corporate figures that disappoint him and let down Bumi aspirations { no need to name names ,too many of them ,all Abdul D's boys }, and left UMNO in a huff ,leaderless , with a 2nd in command who is too feeble and too nice to be numero uno.
Now come December what do we have down the line in UMNO ?An overweight ,slow moving Muhyiddin Yasin that look like he need some boost from Tongkat Ali plus some thyroxine to peep up the brain function .Or a well tried Najib Tun Razak up to his nose with scandals ,and carrying an excess baggage in the form of Rusmah .Yes ,Rusmah !All unproven of course .Are we going to have to go another 8 years of slow economic growth and general malaise and lethargy ?These 2 candidates I mean ,both do not look wholesome .Do we have a choice ?
Is Ku Li still up to it after so many years of just being 1st there in line starting the 'suap pulut' semangat at important marriages ? Can he be the bridge ,that important bridge , before younger and more dynamic individuals grow up from the UMNO 's melting pot ?Does he still has the clout and the money .UMNO election is very much about money .
Is people like Rais Yatim ,Shabery Chik etc etc not there yet to takeover the helm ?Is UMNO' pelapis' mechanism so feudalistic ,so immovable and so 'politic wang' that real leaders cannot come up from the crevices and be noticed .Let us look beyond Tan Sri Muhd 'I do not know English' of course .
Above all does UMNO has the time ?Election is in December ,Pak Lah and his cabinet are looking very very shaky by the days .'Lost' is the right word .
This is what Dr M has left us .In his haste to remain the unchallenged numero uno ,he has weeded out all the strong challenge and personalities that could have put UMNO on a stronger foothold ,and introduced mechanism that would make an initial wrong choice in leader difficult to disengage , in short a very feudal system .
Weak leadership in UMNO and an impossible system to weed out the wrong persuasive 'mutants' that survive the initial elections .Dr M is a great man but his legacy he has left behind was not .Malaysia can support a 'weak' sultan or 2 ,since there are 9 of them to choose from ,but not a weak PM :we have to endure him until his 2nd or 3rd bypass !
On the other side of the coin ,we have Anwar of Keadilan .Anwar is Keadilan and Keadilan is Anwar .From the outside it look more 'MIC' which begs the question :Are the Malays ready for Anwar ?The Indians and Chinese are but are the Malays really ready for him ?
The ongoing perception is ,in supporting Keadilan ,the Malays will be paying too high a price .HINDRAF and Chinese support for Anwar come at a hefty price !Just perception .Of course there is PAS in Pakatan but PAS now stand for Islamic universalism and going big on this .Will the Malays ,currently disapointed with the relative immobility of UMNO , to pay too dearly in supporting Keadilan .Karpal Singh and Lim Kit Siang can appear angelic and Malaysian Malaysia can sound and look ideal but we all know who MrLim and Karpal are ,right through to their heart .
Will Malay interest be further diluted ? Put more bluntly ,is Anwar going to sell the Malays just to satisfy his ambition to be PM ?How strong is PAS as a balancing power in Anwar's fractious Pakatan ?
But again let us Malays be not too harsh on Anwar .5 years of solitary confinement under ISA either break a man or make his resolve even stronger .Iman ,ilm and amal .Anwar and his family does not look like one who would perhaps in years to come be likely to 'hoard' millions from the public domain .Unless his daughter or daughters got married to another 'KJ' clone .We hope ,for the sake of survival of our ummah he has come out a better man ,from those years of confinement and self examination ,to usher Malaysia to a new beginning .
Is this going to be the end of UMNOputraism and the beginning of a new Malaysia ?DAP ,despite it's overwhelming Chinese chauvinism knows they cannot go any where in a thousand years near Power in Malaysia .They have to piggy bag on the Malays .Despite the rhetorics ,Karpal Singh and Lim kit Siang know this power dynamics ,and I think they know , otherwise Anwar has to make them both know about this in no uncertain terms !.
"You guys want to piggy back with me ,OK ,but you better know your place and my turf '".PAS will need time to sell the concept that Islam is for everybody ,especially for the non Muslims .They need time to change their parochial image and be seen to be adept to both the next world and the present .
Hail to the new Chief .We are living in interesting time !
Dr Nik Howk
PS :Perhaps on the subject of 'anak and menantus' it would be good to incorporate in our 'new' political culture some mechanism for stronger abhorrence of 'big business' related to the 1st and 2nd political family .We have seen the downfall of 2 previous PM mainly related to this issue .
We are not asking all PM's 'anak and menantus' to be dancers like Ronald Reagan's son or to have to migrate like Mark Thatcher ,but I am sure certain lines can be drawn so that conflict of interest would not recur .If anyone aspires to be PM ,there are certain price his family has to pay for such 'historical' priveledge .Their 'anak menantus' can be great doctors ,bankers ,performing arts ,excellent engineers or 1st class architects but once they dabble into big business and failed at it miserably and get 'daddy ' or daddy influence daddy's colleagues to help ,conflict of interest invariably creeps in .
You cannot have the cake and eat it as well .This is 1st world culture and if we aspire to be 1st world we have to behave like one !
'Nearly all man can stand adversity ,but if you want to test a man ,give him POWER' .
When I look at the Malay Mail yesterday ,1st staring at you was Pak Lah , pale ,tired ,beaten and confused .Opposite was his nemesis ,young ,vibrant and arrogant .Next page was Zaid Ibrahim's ' I do not agree with the ISA arrest '.Elsewhere in the Sun and Straits Times ,some ministers echoing the same song as Najib's ,'Muhyiddin has overstepped his bound ,but leave it to the UMNO grassroots ' . As if the grassroots can think .What the UMNO grassroots ever think about is 'how and when is the next makan ! 'Democracy in UMNO is very much alive .Leadership :Dead !
As much as I did not like Dr M ,he probably would have handled it differently .From Day 1 ,he would probably called Koh Tsu Koon and throw him a file for him to read in 2 minutes and told him to shut up or he would be thrown to Batu Gajah by evening .He would call Ahmad to immediately make 'some animal' noise' in the form of an indirect apology .One can call a sparrow by any other name ,it is still a sparrow .That was leadership Dr M style ..
To govern Malaysia you must be much better than good ,super tough minded ,wise and 'gedebe' all at the same time.Dr M was .No 2 ways about it otherwise people like Samy Vellu ,Ong Ka Tiig and Tsu Koon forget about their places in the 'scheme of things' and 'naik tonchang' ... ..{We have had too much of that lately} .
A pity towards the end of his tenure he surrounded himself with corporate figures that disappoint him and let down Bumi aspirations { no need to name names ,too many of them ,all Abdul D's boys }, and left UMNO in a huff ,leaderless , with a 2nd in command who is too feeble and too nice to be numero uno.
Now come December what do we have down the line in UMNO ?An overweight ,slow moving Muhyiddin Yasin that look like he need some boost from Tongkat Ali plus some thyroxine to peep up the brain function .Or a well tried Najib Tun Razak up to his nose with scandals ,and carrying an excess baggage in the form of Rusmah .Yes ,Rusmah !All unproven of course .Are we going to have to go another 8 years of slow economic growth and general malaise and lethargy ?These 2 candidates I mean ,both do not look wholesome .Do we have a choice ?
Is Ku Li still up to it after so many years of just being 1st there in line starting the 'suap pulut' semangat at important marriages ? Can he be the bridge ,that important bridge , before younger and more dynamic individuals grow up from the UMNO 's melting pot ?Does he still has the clout and the money .UMNO election is very much about money .
Is people like Rais Yatim ,Shabery Chik etc etc not there yet to takeover the helm ?Is UMNO' pelapis' mechanism so feudalistic ,so immovable and so 'politic wang' that real leaders cannot come up from the crevices and be noticed .Let us look beyond Tan Sri Muhd 'I do not know English' of course .
Above all does UMNO has the time ?Election is in December ,Pak Lah and his cabinet are looking very very shaky by the days .'Lost' is the right word .
This is what Dr M has left us .In his haste to remain the unchallenged numero uno ,he has weeded out all the strong challenge and personalities that could have put UMNO on a stronger foothold ,and introduced mechanism that would make an initial wrong choice in leader difficult to disengage , in short a very feudal system .
Weak leadership in UMNO and an impossible system to weed out the wrong persuasive 'mutants' that survive the initial elections .Dr M is a great man but his legacy he has left behind was not .Malaysia can support a 'weak' sultan or 2 ,since there are 9 of them to choose from ,but not a weak PM :we have to endure him until his 2nd or 3rd bypass !
On the other side of the coin ,we have Anwar of Keadilan .Anwar is Keadilan and Keadilan is Anwar .From the outside it look more 'MIC' which begs the question :Are the Malays ready for Anwar ?The Indians and Chinese are but are the Malays really ready for him ?
The ongoing perception is ,in supporting Keadilan ,the Malays will be paying too high a price .HINDRAF and Chinese support for Anwar come at a hefty price !Just perception .Of course there is PAS in Pakatan but PAS now stand for Islamic universalism and going big on this .Will the Malays ,currently disapointed with the relative immobility of UMNO , to pay too dearly in supporting Keadilan .Karpal Singh and Lim Kit Siang can appear angelic and Malaysian Malaysia can sound and look ideal but we all know who MrLim and Karpal are ,right through to their heart .
Will Malay interest be further diluted ? Put more bluntly ,is Anwar going to sell the Malays just to satisfy his ambition to be PM ?How strong is PAS as a balancing power in Anwar's fractious Pakatan ?
But again let us Malays be not too harsh on Anwar .5 years of solitary confinement under ISA either break a man or make his resolve even stronger .Iman ,ilm and amal .Anwar and his family does not look like one who would perhaps in years to come be likely to 'hoard' millions from the public domain .Unless his daughter or daughters got married to another 'KJ' clone .We hope ,for the sake of survival of our ummah he has come out a better man ,from those years of confinement and self examination ,to usher Malaysia to a new beginning .
Is this going to be the end of UMNOputraism and the beginning of a new Malaysia ?DAP ,despite it's overwhelming Chinese chauvinism knows they cannot go any where in a thousand years near Power in Malaysia .They have to piggy bag on the Malays .Despite the rhetorics ,Karpal Singh and Lim kit Siang know this power dynamics ,and I think they know , otherwise Anwar has to make them both know about this in no uncertain terms !.
"You guys want to piggy back with me ,OK ,but you better know your place and my turf '".PAS will need time to sell the concept that Islam is for everybody ,especially for the non Muslims .They need time to change their parochial image and be seen to be adept to both the next world and the present .
Hail to the new Chief .We are living in interesting time !
Dr Nik Howk
PS :Perhaps on the subject of 'anak and menantus' it would be good to incorporate in our 'new' political culture some mechanism for stronger abhorrence of 'big business' related to the 1st and 2nd political family .We have seen the downfall of 2 previous PM mainly related to this issue .
We are not asking all PM's 'anak and menantus' to be dancers like Ronald Reagan's son or to have to migrate like Mark Thatcher ,but I am sure certain lines can be drawn so that conflict of interest would not recur .If anyone aspires to be PM ,there are certain price his family has to pay for such 'historical' priveledge .Their 'anak menantus' can be great doctors ,bankers ,performing arts ,excellent engineers or 1st class architects but once they dabble into big business and failed at it miserably and get 'daddy ' or daddy influence daddy's colleagues to help ,conflict of interest invariably creeps in .
You cannot have the cake and eat it as well .This is 1st world culture and if we aspire to be 1st world we have to behave like one !
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