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 .1. I was stunned when reading an article in Utusan Melayu today (4th may 09) titled "Enam buku hadith diharamkan", a fatwa decreed by the Pahang Fatwa  authority. A statement in the article bluntly accused anybody believing or subscribing to the argument in those book as an outright murtad - a heavy statement indeed! Yes, you are no more muslim if you happen to read and believe some of the arguments posted in those books even if you are staunchly holding to the sacred believe of the  monotheism doctrine, the greatness of Allah almighty and Mohammad SAW is His  messenger.

2. I have the pleasure of reading the 2 books by Dr. Kassim Ahmad and a glimp of the article by Rashad Khalifa- both banned by Majlis Fatwa. While the book/article by Rashad Khalifa is highly mathematical and rather difficult for me as a laymen to swallow, there are part which I find outragous, such as the argument about abrogation between certain ayat in the quran and his insistance on deleting a couple of ayat in the quran just to fit in to his mathematical calculation. The ban on this book by the Majlis Fatwa is highly justified and I totally agree with the Majlis.

3.    Whereas the 2 books by Dr. Kasim Ahmad post a totally diffrent perspective. Dr.Kasim have put the Quran as the most pure form of revelation's  dictation - the words of God Almighty -. The revelations were conveyed to the prophet which were duly dictated orally and instantly written down by the Sahabats. Some sahabat  learned these revelation by heart. These writings were carefully kept and safeguarded and when the compilation of the Quran was done during the reign of Khalifah Othman Affan, every ayat were checked and cross-checked by these sahabat with those who learned it by heart. The checking and cross-checking was so thorough that it completely leave no room for any human error during the compilation process. As suggested by Dr.Kasim, the Quran should be the ultimate criterion - the criterion for living the righteous life as well as the criterion for the authencity of every hadhith. This is the bottom line of the lengthy articles of Dr.Kasim and I find it very hard to find fault with this concept.

4.    I sincerely feel that there should not be such a big fuss over the issue. But when the books were published in the 80s, our orthodox islamic jurist became so over exited that the issue had turn into a full blown public controversy. There were lots of emotional attack, name-calling and the very familiar word 'murtad' were labelled toward Dr.Kasim. Looking back at the polimic surrounding this issue in the 80s, I cant help feeling sad to the point of disgust toward the attitude of some of our supposedly learned religious jurist. After all, the issue is not new, it had been discussed and debated for decades by famous islamic jurists. Dr. kasim's books were written as an academic presentation (sort of an academic hypothesis) which follows the modern academic discipline and it is only proper for those who are not in agreement to discuss and debate their points in a manner which is permitted by the academic discipline, not by emotional name calling or uncivilised labelling.

5    The attitude of those islamic jurists was echoed by the mass which have been trained and 'brainwashed' by the 'one-way street'  system of our religious learning. We were trained to consume all the necessary knowledge handed down to us by our ustazs. Questions must be carefully worded such that it will not cause you to 'accidently slip' into the murtad trap. Discussions and debates are tuned toward the fine-tuning of the practical aspects of your ritual obligations. The philosophical and historical aspect of these knowledge were seldom discussed or debated. You were borned into a Shafie's mazhab under the Ahlilsunnah sect  and you must stick to it and you should die under this mazhab and sect. You are scared even to wonder around into the other 3 mazhab although these mazhab are under the same ahlisunnah sect.

THE MALAYS AND THE ANTICS OF THE MEDICINE PEDDLERS: PART II

    

1.    The 13th may incident had dramatically changed the political and social structure of the Malaysians namely the malays. Tun Razak and his geng have come up with agressive policies to re structure the a new scenario of the Malaysian society. Major town and cities have begun to potray the identities of  malay heritage.Road signs, billboards and business premises have put up signages written in bold, romanised Bahasa Melayu. FLocks of kampung malays have come in trove into the major cities of Malaysia. The identity of chinese dominated citiy like Kuala Lumpur have slowly been transform into a multi ethnic and metropolitan city with Malaysian identity. Even the architechture of some of the famous buildings bears the characteristics of the malay architectural heritage.

2.    The tireless Tun Razak and his collegues introduced MARA,FELDA,FELCRA, Bank Pertanian and some other agencies just to help the economically backward malays to compete in the modern business and commercial enterprises. But the most important policy introduced by this team was The New Economic policy or The DEB which transformed the the poor, less educated, ulu malays into a respected race, willing to try and succeed in various fields which seemed impossible before. Unfortunately, Tun Razak contributions were cut short with his untimely demise in 1975. His premiership was taken over by Tun Hussein Onn- but his reign was a short one due to his poor health and was eventually passed over to Tun Dr. Mahathir - the real medical doctor. It was during this time that PAS was kicked out of the Barisan coalition due to too much internal politicking. As mentioned in Part I, PAS leaders were excellent in politicking but workwise they are worthless. So are their supporters.

3.    Tun Razak had laid the foundation for the betterment of the malay economically, now its up to Dr. Mahathir to make sure it really happened. And this is what Dr.M did. As a medical doctor, steps taken by Dr.M were drastic and sometime painful. First he had to dissect his patient (the malays) to determine the desease that was troubling his patient.Then followed by the curing process. Every medical doctors will agree that a single form of medication sometime will never cure a serious desease especially when it had been deep rooted in every blood stream of the patient. Different kind of medication, with controlled doses, have to be recommended. Sometimes there are elements of trial and error.  Dr.M had been trying to do this for almost all his 21 years of premiership. No matter how hard he tried,he was never fully  successful in his mission. Yes, he did cure some troubling symptoms, but the dreaded desease still lingure and lately the desease that plague the malays had mutated into a very dangerous ailment which threatened it very survival. And the culprit is an ex antibody agent which has mutated into a dangerous virus in the name of Anwar bin Ibrahim.

4.    Anwar Ibrahim is a prolific speaker with little intelligent. A GD graduate in Malay Studies with unsatiable obsession to be Malaysia's No.1. Just like the smooth talking medicine peddlers, he make full use of his god given 'talent' to mesmerise his audience and of course it was the malay majority who falls for his trap. It seemed that the attitude of the malays never changed when it come to the issue of rhetorics. The malays love beautiful,fiery rhetorics and thus the history of 1969 repeated itself. First the 1999 GE- almost 65% of malay votes goes to the oppositions. The chinese were rather sceptical and their votes help BN to achieve victory. It is typical for the chinese to put economy as their utmost consideration in choosing a leader. The ability of Dr.M and his geng to whether the turbulance of 1998 financial crisis and to put our country back on solid ground economically was the deciding factor for the chinese to continue putting their trust on BN. They have seen how the pathetic decisions by Anwar Ibrahim almost brought our nation to our knees. The 20% across the board cut of our budget, the increase in interest rate, the shortening of the NPL payment fiasco and some other IMF medications have choked every veins and arteries of our economy. When his policies failed and finding himself discarded from the recovery team of Dr.M, he started to create stories to discredit Dr.M. Suddenly, the alien terms of cronyism and nepotism have become household's words among the malays.

5.    The antics of the medicine peddlers have again resurfaced. This time around,the miracle pills are sweetly sugar-coated, even the chinese and the indians  have fallen to his ploy. This time around, this virus has completely mutated and becoming cancerous malignant. The weak and indecisive Datuk Abdullah Ahmad Badawai and the unhealthy UMNO provides an excellent breeding ground for the growth of this virus. The departure of Datuk Abdullah this coming April hopefully will mark the beginning of the end of this dreadful virus. Best of luck D.S.Najib.

hotman52. 

THE MALAYS AND THE ANTICS OF THE MEDICINE PEDDLERS:Part I

     I can still remember when I was in the early teen, I used to hang around the famous Pekan Rabu in my home town Alor Setar. Back then, Pekan Rabu was an old dilapated building  with coroded zinc roof but was very popular with the Kedah folks to do their shopping. Of course there were no such thing as supermakets or shopping centers as it is today. So, places like Pekan Rabu, the White Palace and Pasar yaakob were the focal points for the Kedah folks to converge especially if it is a sataurday.

2.    Adjacent to the building, right in front of The Empire Cinema, there was an open space which  I used to hang around after my cheap matineee show at the Royal  Cinema. (cheap matinee show will cost you only 25 cents and as a schoolboy, this is the only show that I can afford). This open space  will provide you with free entertainment in the form of performances by various medicine peddlers.Their performance were sometimes spectacular to say the least. The crowd,sometimes amounting to a few hundreds, will gather around in a big circle, were always mesmerised, me included, with the antiques of these medicine peddlers, especially their fiery rhetorics and comical interludes. It seemed that  their meidcine will solved all your ailments, be it the common cold to the problematic ED. Their pills will cure your ED and will turn you into a sexual tiger. This will normally do the trick and the crowd will be everwilling to part with their hard earn dollar for those miracle pills. One particular fact that I noticed was that the crowd was 99% malay.

3.    Those were the simple life of my townfolks of the early 60s- easily entertained and easily influenced by powerful rhetorics and I still think that this trait remains untill today. You can sell anything to the malays- even lies- if you you are gifted with the oratory talent. You can shove a white lie into their face and they will believe you if you have the oratory talent with a touch of simple comical jokes in between.

4.    1969 was a historical year for Malaysia. I was 17 then. Political testestrone was beginning to infect my bloodstreams. Naive as I was ( due to overexposure to the medicine pedlers's rhetorics),my inclination was, of course, towards the opposition i.e. PAS (the symbols then t was the cresent moon and the star). They have so many fantastic speakers and their rhetorics really fascinated me especially when racial issues were touched.The substances in their speech were not important. It was their presentations that matters. You can Lie, you can condemn, you can asssinate somebody's character and you can falsely accuse anybody, but make sure you say it in the fiery manner which will definately received with agreeable applause from your audience( the takbiiiiir was not yet practiced during those time). The likes of Abu Bakar hamzah, Dato' Asri, Khatijah Sidek were among my favorites. These speakers would attract thousands in their campaign and without proper venue, the audience would gather among bushes, even in the nearby Terusan Wan Mat Saman which happen to dry up due to the drought season.

5.    Yes, those were the days when words and character assasination were essential parts in winning the malay votes. I can still remember how the pictures of T.Sri khir Johari (Minister of education) and his wife wearing the costume of the chinese Emperor and Empress just before general election, can easily swing pro-govt.(Perikatan) supporters to the opposition side. It provide a major boost for PAS and they had a field day labelling all malay cabinet ministers including the PM as pro-chinese.And, yes, PAS manage to secure a lot of state and parliment seats in that GE, including the constituency I live in. So were the other opposition parties- DAP, Gerakan and The Socialist Front. We were rejoicing and I remember my uncle giving a thanksgiving kenduri in his houseto commerate this historic event.

6.    Then the infamous 13th.May incident exploded. It changed a lot of things as far as the Malaysian's political scenario is concern, including my own political perspective. Barisan Nasional was formed. PAS was included in the coalition and some of those prolific speakers/leaders I mentioned were made ministers.

7.    What happened after this historic event baffled me. The leaders from PAS who were elected ministers and holding important portfolios seemed to be lost in the aftermath of their victory. Suddenly they have the power they have been dreaming of for so long- handed to them on silver plates. I was eagerly waiting for them to deliver their promises, so were the  rakyat. Our hope  were high because based on thier fiery speaches, we believed they can flatten Gunung Jerai in a  single day if they want to.  Their promises never come. One of my favourite 'leader' even spent most of  his term touring countries in Central Asia and have the gut to write his travelling experiences in his weekly coloum in Utusan Zaman (jawi version of MIngguan Malaysia), while back home, Tun Razak and his UMNO collegues were cracking their heads formulating policies for the nation. Slowly, I began to realise the hypocracy of these people. They can talk and talk, but when it's time for action, these people will sheepishly fade into oblivion.  Only then we realised that their so called grand ideas mentioned in their campaign simply could not be translated into actions. Like the miracle pills of the medicine peddlers, the cure that we were hoping for never happened. Only then that we realised,it is only real  medical doctors who can and should prescribe medicine for any ailment that we suffer. And our PAS heroes that we looked up so much, were  no different from those  smooth-talking, snivelling medicine peddlers.

                                            End Part I