I've been reading a few of interesting Malaysian bloggers for the past few months. One of them is Suresh of SuaraMalaysia. He writes about religions, racism, politics and some issues in Malaysia that some of us are still in denial. His writing sparks some hatefull responses as much as positive feedbacks. I enjoy reading his entries and the comments he gets. Some of the comments are quite funny (not the funny hah...hah...hah......) because these people think Suresh is an Indian, he has no right to write about Islam which is so lame because Malays make negative and offensive comments about other religions all the time. We hate to admit it, but we do. The funny thing is some of Malay gets really offended when a non-Muslim makes a comment on certain issue for eg. marital rape in Islam. One particular blogger kept repeating in Islam there is no marital rape. He like many Muslims confuse between what Islam teaches and what Muslims do.
Many years ago, while I was still working in Penang, I worked for a couple of months with an American woman , Gillian from South Dakota. The headquarter in Minneapolis sent her and two software specialists to Penang facility to work with us on a new product. Since we worked together, it was natural we became close, shared ideas, and she learned a few things about Malaysians. Once during lunch time we she was telling me about her 25 years niece coming wedding. She said her niece and her fiance had been living together for a few years and now they were decided to get married.
On hearing this, Roha from Finance Department who was sitting opposite Gillian, jumped in.
"We Muslims don't do that kind of things here. It's considered a big sin."
Before Lillian could say anything, Uji from Human Resource said, "That's not entirely true. Only loose girls will do that."
Gillian looked back and fro between Roha and Uji. "Loose girls, huh?"
She turned to look at me, "What do you say, Ana?"
Oohh....shoot here we go again. Aren't these people tired of being hypocrite? Tired of pretending only non-Muslims are capable of commited sins? Pretending that Muslims are perfect? Pretending that we are better than everybody else?
"I only have one to say, what Islam teaches is one thing, and what Muslims do is another thing."
"Hey, thats make sense." Gillian nodded her head.
Ask any Hindu, Buddhist, Muslims, Judaism, Christians and hundreds maybe thousands other faith followers, they will say their religion is the chosen one. But it doesn't give us the right to bash, put down and most of all make fun of it. What are we proud of our religion when we fail to tolerate, include and accept others than us? What are proud of our religion when we arrogantly mock other believers and say they are all will endup burning in hell? Why are so concern where are they going to end up when we are not sure where we are right now on this planet. We don't even know if our prays are listened by the Creator? Who are we kidding?
We like to potray ourselves as obedient and faithful followers. Everything we do according to the teaching in the Quran. And when we see some of us do not do or act they way we think they are supposed to, we start questioning their faith. We exclude them, we give them names: jahil, munafiq,kafir, without a second thought, and some of us have an audacity to say they are not a true Muslim. How is in heaven name do we have so much time in our hands?
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