Islam, Patrick Teoh & Me

I am not the most religious person in the world but I am still disturbed about the recent melee involving my religion; Islam. We used to be able to insinuate matters whenever it involves sensitive issues such as religion or race. We know for a fact that a mere mention of a certain word publicly can cause discomfort among certain segments of the society. Racism for instance is a word people thread with so much caution so as not to imply something out of context. In fact we never need to utter certain words as we used to be able to read between the lines.

The recent influx of seemingly lackadaisical attitude towards Islam baffled me to the core. It is as if there are no more taboos in our country and you could just bash almost anything or anyone nowadays. Its a free for all and politicians seems to work this out for their own political mileage. We are taught to be courteous to our neighbours. In Surah An-Nisa' (The Women) Allah says: 

     "Serve God, and join not any partners with Him; and do good -- to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbours who are near, neighbours who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (you meet), and what your right hands posses: for God loves not the arrogant, the vainglorious." [4:36] 

There are also many verses in the Bible that speak about respecting and loving your neighbours.  Neighbours doesn't only mean literally but more towards an all encompassing definition. The Bible says: 

     "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; You shall love your neighbour as yourself" Galatians 5:14 "

What makes social media great also makes it dangerous. Thus, more often than not we see stupidity being broadcast to the whole wide world through social media such as Facebook,Twitter,Blogs, news-portal and so much more. Social media gives people a voice, and with it they can express themselves however they choose albeit to some extent whimsically. The same social media tools were used to help the Middle East rise up against oppression and urban Britain riot. http://goo.gl/XnCyf 

Muslims in the country were dumbfounded when Lembah Pantai M.P answered a simple question in an event organised in a church. She rightly pointed out that Malays do not have the rights to commit apostasy in Malaysia. However she went on to say that freedom of religion must also apply towards Malay/Muslim. If you are not a Muslim, that answer should be an innocent and somewhat liberal in nature. Nevertheless the country bare witness to a huge outcry by majority of Muslims in Malaysia.  I don't want to delve more on the constitutional aspect of this issue. Suffice here to say that when you say something as provocative as that, there bound to be repercussions. 

The trend of insensitivity towards Islam continue to snowball when The Chief Minister of Penang out of nowhere demanded the government to give Christians leeway to use the word ALLAH in their Bible. Its just plain peculiar that arguably the most pertinent word to Muslims can now be freely debated by non muslims. Where are the inter religion respects that our fore fathers proudly preached to us? At this juncture, I am beginning to feel that there are something terribly wrong about our society nowadays. I have a Chinese step mother and I love her dearly. She still keep a close relationship with her family even after she had converted to Islam. There are times earlier on that I struggled to accept her as part of our family but after all the differences we had, we developed a mutual respect and love towards each other. Now I cant get enough of Lotus flavoured moon cake; Halal version of course.

Patrick Teoh recent rants towards Islam clearly envisaged that the thin line of respect and love towards each other can easily be broken. I accepted his apology wholeheartedly but it still leave me with some bad taste. I think I speak for the majority of Muslims in the country no matter how moderate,modern or elitist they are; that we are so incensed by what had transpired. Patrick Teoh swift apology helped calm down the fire burning inside each and every Muslims but this basically teaches us one important thing; That certain matters should and must remain a taboo. 

Patrick, this ain't funny okay! No pun intended.

Computerized Insanity

Insanity. People can get away with anything including murder if you are certified to be mentally unable to think straight. They also gave these people a card which says that they are mentally unsound. As such whenever they ran amok, the police would eventually sets them free because of the card. The get out of jail free card. We seems to have at least one person in our kampung or community matching this discription.

I find it hard to visualize the content of their mind whenever such glitches happens. Do they get jammed screens like smartphones always have and would go about with their business with no recollections whatsoever later on? Some people associate insanity with satanic involvement. Statements such as "Kena sampuk kecil2 dulu" or "amal ilmu hitam sampai memakan diri" seldom associated with the causes of insanity.

Its I guessed part of the Malaysian culture to have this type of mind anomaly. How else can we explain the Malaysian origins of the word "Amok" and rather amusingly "Latah". Do you know that only Malays are known in the whole wide world to "Latah"? Latah is a sudden lost of our motor control and sometimes mind control whenever they get suprised. 

Mind glitches as such to me do occur and it has been an accepted weakness to human being. To err is human, to forgive is divine clearly echoed this statement that human mind makes mistakes. Therefore human being invented the Computer.

Nowadays, each and every facet of our life is determined by the use of some form of computerized mechanism. The precision and accuracy of a computer are depended in life threathing situations in hospitals. Thus computers are entrusted with all the vital tasks which could make or break an organization. 

The recent election fiasco involving a local party make for a very interesting study between mind/mental glitch or computer glitch. No matter how sophisticated a computer is, we still need a human to switch it on. It still need humans to feed it informations so that they can make decisions people dreaded. 

Its somewhat hillarious to digest a reason for all this debacle is "computer glitch". It should be on par with the "the dog ate my homework" lame excuse and exposed that party glaring weakness. In blaming computer glitches rather than human error on their part, it arises a lacuna here. A legal one so to speak. 

Should that party direct their legal team to file for damages against Bill Gates and Microsoft? This computer glitch arises from the use of their products. This is a good opportunity to slay the biggest capitalist dragon of all time. It would be the case of the century. How a microsoft product has effectively turn a simple internal election into a circus. It would create a precedent that will long be used by lawyers to sue..." computer glitches is an acceptable form of defence and as such they would get the full protection of the LAW"

Layman call it "computerized insanity".

@zulazry 

P/S:Waiting for the outcome of ROS investigation against DAP CEC Election Fiasco