Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Racing Our Religion: Our Recipe to Doom?


In many Hollywood sci-fi movies, we have been served with great storylines on creation of new technologies. From damnest warfare to grandest ship.From crippling biological weapons to bizzare superheroes. All in the name of ultimate power. No matter what devices men took to stay and getting powerful, these movies normally leave us weepy that evil can do so much destructions yet it is the basic humanity will prevail and bring this world back to where nature intended it to be.

Egypt's promising and inspiring Uprising not only defies Samuel Huntington's 'scary theory' "Clash of Civilisation" because in Tahrir Square, both Muslims and Coptic Christians stayed united for 18 straight days before their dictator - the powerbroker to the western world - succumbed to the biggest humiliation, accompanied with cheery sighs, roars and tears from people around the world.

Weeks before Tunisia and Egypt's Uprising, there were various documents leaked to western media (I read UK's The Guardian and The Independent), in particularly those of Palestinian Paper. From those documents, the world was shocked to know that Israel-Palestine peace talks were merely talks between benefited parties to the continuous rifts between these two countries. It is not surprising at all if you have read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine".

Interestingly, by using Palestinian's Hamas association to the most 'hated' terrorist by the big powers, the world deems we could all leave Palestinians on their own because a extreme-right Zionist ruled Israel, like any other democratic counties, is entitled to protect their beloved homeland, even if the Zionist army continue to cause immense sufferings to the Palestinians. All supports towards the Palestinians would be labelled islamist, when all we want to do is to restore humanity. Any actions by the Palestinians against the Zionist army is merely another evidence to prove Huntington's sacry theory that Arab people would do anything for the sake of fighting. Well Mr. Huntington, you are dead wrong. They too have dignity and they are humane enough to appreciate democracy.

By simply associating islamist group like Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood with Osama Ben Laden, the western world has once again unleashed its 'ancient tools' to regain their faltering support (thus, power), namely race and religion, to bring down their opposition. Scientifically, it is proved that our views on others' race and religion are all hard-wired to certain parts of our brain.

David Cameron's speech at security conference in Munich recently has offended muslims while giving support to English Defence League ("EDL"), a group akin to PERKASA in Malaysia. In his speech, he attacked state multiculturalism, which he thinks has eroded UK's sense of security as his government continues to provide public funds to Muslim groups in UK yet these groups do little to tackle Islamist extremism. On the very same day, EDL supporters marched in Luton, shouting villicious remarks on Islam. Again, Islam has been used to boost up another politician's downfall.

Early this year, 6 people were killed during an attempted assassination of Republican Congresswoman Gabrielle Gibson by an army reject, Jared Lee Loughner. One of those killed was a beautiful and wonderful Christina Green. She was there with her neighbour, who thought the Congresswoman would be a great role model for the young Christina. At the time of her untimely death, Christina was recently elected to her Student Council. While it is still unknown whether the killing was triggered by excessive propaganda by Sarah Palin and her Tea Party Movement (many accused her responsibility in this rampage because she had Crosshair ads, with Giffords' Arizona District on it) - all in the name of running for Presidency in 2013. Somehow, I cannot help but finding myself looking at her and her supporters under the shadow of fascist Klu Klux Klan though Jared Lee Loughner that he is not one of extreme right Palin's supporters. In this world, full of madmen, but Again, I see PERKASA standing hand in hand with US' Tea Party Movement.

Since the induction of new premiership in 2009, Malaysia has seen enough humiliating events that makes our ancestors turning in their graves. We have become more divided by race and religion. We have turned our judiciary and religious bodies into divisive power houses. Such continuous attacks on our vague morality have degraded our humanity to a point that the death of Adik Teoh Beng Hock and Adik Kugan has no importance and, thus, we carry no responsibility to make things right (in Egypt, the brutal murder of Khaled Said moved the nation to topple the dictator). We have shed our Mr/Mrs/Ms Nice guy mask and show our true racism, thinking it's alright to see someone being killed in questionable ways or being subjected to injustice as along as he does not belong to our race or family. It is acceptable to accuse someone a religion extremist just because they observe their faith, different from ours.

While we are busy trying to stay firm that we are first and foremost humans, like everyone else, the premiership and his 'kakis' will continue to 'divide and rule' us, instilling unfounded fears on humanity, making us deaf and blind to our own yearning to be a better person as they peg our survival and dignity to a price of making a living.

We fear that if we resolute to seek for higher purpose in life by simply being a good human, we will be less successful and thus, being labelled a failure.

I wonder if we know what real success is. It is like marrying someone who you thought marrying you because of you and not because of what you have. Indeed, you are succesffuly married to someone but marrying for material gain defeats the purpose of marrying in the first place.

To bake a perfect brownie, I need to have a perfect recipe. But even if I have the perfect recipe, I need to find the perfect ingredients. Even if I managed to get all those ingredients, I must know what to look for in my brownie mixture - a sign of perfect brownie thereafter - because different environment gives different effect. After much trials (and extra pounds on me), I find that substituting half of the room temperature butter with a melted one would give a moist to-die-for brownie.

There are reasons why the Almighty created us differently. Instead of looking at the differences that tear us apart, shouldn't we forge a symbiotic relationship amongst us for the benefit of all? Like jigsaw puzzles, we won't see the big picture, the greater goodness, until we get those little pieces together.

Would we be using our race and religion to our advantage or would we go against each other to show powerful our ego is, while this nation is being run down a band of crooks?


The choice is always ours.

1 comment:

Lee said...

Hi Fi-Sha, well written....
I always believe its those people who call themselves politicians, that cause all the troubles we have today.

Most are a bunch of liars and crooks. Can count on your hand the number of good ones.
I think politicians are like baby's diapers, must be changed often.
They become one to help themselves, their friends, get rich quickly. And lie and cheat.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in the Arctic and being against snow.

And laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color.
Have a nice day.
Lee.