JUNE 1 — First and foremost, having a Christian prime minister is not an insult to Islam, nor is allowing a nation to become secular or even Christian.
Take a look at Germany. Their president and chancellor belong to the Christian Democratic Union Party. Yet, Islam is still alive and well in their nation.
If that’s too much for you to imagine, take a look at Netherlands then. Ruled by a monarch and extremely secular, their prime minister is from the VVD and his deputy is from the Christian Democratic Appeal party. Yet still, Islam is there, alive and well enough to be the cause of Theo Van Gogh’s death.
Should Malaysia become a secular or Christian nation, it will not be Islam that is offended. It’s just people who obviously were not granted the brains, patience or even sensitivity to understand that the first basis of the religion itself is to find moderation.
If a Muslim does wrong, he or she is told to repent. If a non-Muslim says something wrong, we are told, through Islamic teaching, to educate them and find a peaceful solution.
What I believe this means is that if we were to understand our religion properly, and if our muftis had any interest in preaching moderation, they would tell people to shut up and mind their own business instead of forwarding text messages of conversions to Christianity like a certain mufti, wreaking havoc and turmoil while fuelling Malay tabloids with enough material to incite hatred.
Islam dictates that we are only to resort to violence when there is clear provocation, not before. And a cartoon by a Norwegian newspaper is not a provocation enough to kill anyone nor is it a justification for a call to jihad and protest with placards written in bad English that just shows how bad your level of education is.
Muhammad (pbuH) and his followers would never have called for a jihad on the basis of a blog stating that there were people in Penang who said that they would make this 60 per cent Muslim nation a Christian one.
You know what he would do? Or what any rational leader would do?
Bring in the journalist and the bloggers, and ask them to produce witnesses to this so-called declaration. If he fails, cane him for the spreading of fitnah.
A leader, in this case, our prime minister, should know better than to just simply shrug the accusation off and explain parliamentary conduct to amend the Constitution. I think this is where Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his home minister of a cousin failed.
The lack of swift action or any action whatsoever against people like those in Perkasa, now that is an insult to Islam because, if anything, Islam cherishes harmony and tells us to act swiftly against rumours.
It also tells us to forgo belief in rumours without witnesses. But somehow, Malay genetics being what they are — a low brain cell count and a high hormone imbalance somewhere down the line — resulted in the Malay male population going out and protesting the dumbest things.
There is no greater insult to Islam than those who selectively preach the religion for personal gain. That goes for any religion. We saw it with George Bush, we saw it with PAS, and now, we’re seeing it with Perkasa.
What we are looking at is a warped version of Drew Carey’s game show, which I personally call Who Is More Delusional Anyway, which stars politician after politician trying to prove they are more Malay, more Indian, more Buddhist, more atheist, more Christian and even more Muslim.
Somehow, this concept was abandoned by our religious scholars and political leaders who think banning condoms would stop pre-marital sex. These are the same bunch of ignoramuses who would rather deal with finding dead babies in dumpsters by excommunicating the child’s parents instead of even talking about contraception of any kind.
It is this same bunch of idiots who think that our religious authorities have every right to invade a person’s privacy; to catch him committing adultery, or let him die trying to escape these theocratic hacks who were tipped off by someone accepting a bribe.
Our people don’t need to defend Islam from the Christians. We’re doing such a bang-up job besmirching our own religion to ruin, by being a bunch of emotional, unruly, uneducated hacks who would use Islam as a tool to win votes and public support.
In fact, with that in mind, I think if Allah can forgive such a large number of hypocrites, he sure as there is a Heaven and Hell can forgive Muslims who are gay.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
