Not only we should allow the BM Bible, we should encourage it to be read in the National Language. Similarly for Hindu Text, D Dhamma & Quran too. We should also encourage each other's religious teachings be shared in mosques, churches & temples. EG - Will it not be great to get a Buddhist monk to share d logic & beauty of d Buddha in churches, Hindu inclusiveness in mosques or Islam's egalitarian values in temples?
This is a thought provoking brave posting of brother Anas Zubedy on the face book on the 10th March 2011. This article is the fruit of that inspiration. After just reading that thirty five thousand Bible of the Malay version has been confiscated since 2009,and the continued harassment of minority Christian population of East Malaysia; this melancholy and lamentation is not because I am an adherent of the Christian faith. I am a secular humanist and not a follower of any religion, but I do not have any contempt with god or with their myriad of his believers.
My intention is not the despising of religion and religionist, but the mockery in the relentless promulgation of hatred and ethno religious superiority cultism they envisage, it smacks of raw fascism. All the great teachings emphasized in their religious texts are misinterpreted and an enigma of ‘Thy is the best and Thou is worst’ paradigm is unleashed. The government now competes with the religious extremist entities which has regenerated them, into the exponent of religious bigotry and fanaticism sacrificing the nation’s well being in the altar of their political expediency.
I was working in Langkawi in early eighties staying in a remote village, working for a contractor doing some infrastructure work. I will be attending my Malay friends akad nikah, funerals, circumcisions ceremonies and pre Haj pilgrimage kenduris (feast) and etc, they were always welcoming me as one of them, never differentiating the color of skin my language or the religion I follow, and sharing their joy and sorrow with me in their villages. Always showered with friendship and love, as I was just married, we were given beras baru (newly harvested padi) after every harvest from the farmers, and with a lot of ‘ikan talang masin’ (dried fish) from fisherman folks. After six years we left the place and returned to mainland with damp eyes. All this good things changed gradually sank into religious quagmire.
I like relate to a events which happend five years ago when we went to attend lunch in a friend’s house in Alor Star; when we reach his house, my host was waiting outside his for us, his neighbor two young kids who are four five’s old started shouting to the parents in their house,” emak anak hindu pariah mai mak”. Instantly shocking, my host a devout Muslim, a person who has completed his Haj Pilgrimage and man of faith, blush with embarrassment and sadness, feeling hurt that his guest has been insulted. The whole lunch was intercepted by his profound apology for incident not of his making. We left undeterred by the insult of the kids but felt deeply hurt for the melancholy of a good Muslim friend of us.
This is an example how a country which prided itself with its diversity, and now, how it is transformed when hatred is disseminated as a national policy and when racial superiority is envisaged by the government to mislead the people to accept some political fallacy to prolong the rule of their plunder. But with all this happenings there is still a consolation. The revolution which has erupted on the banks of the Great Nile River, the cradle of civilization, which united the masses against the despotic regime, which abused the instrument of religion to segregate and disunite the people, has been dismantled. The fear of the people has been defeated, now the rage continues, likely to reach the Euphrates, the Indus and might sooner or later reach our shores in the Straits of Malacca to bring some positive changes.
All great positive things and miracles have happened, by thoughts of people who dare to think differently: this spark of goodness will ignite to become a conflagration to extinguish the heresy and the evolving of a better tomorrow.
Thank You Brother Zubedy. I still believe in the miracle of the next second.
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