It’s a season of peace, not hate

IT was April Fool’s Day on Monday. But few pranks were being played, few jokes being told. There was no need for that. The whole country was like a big joke.

It was Ramadan and Nuzul Quran with Hari Raya just days away. It was Good Friday and Easter; it was Holi with the Hindu New Year next week – all time for reflection and peace, even eternal love.

However, there has been little of all that. Instead, we seem to be a nation in a rage.

We have become a humourless society, one where everyone is so super sensitive. Even P. Ramlee would have been a failure in this toxic atmosphere. After all, he was known to poke irreverent fun at all races and religions. And we all laughed at his jokes.

However, poking fun is one thing, insulting a religion is another. Take the KK Super Mart socks issue. It was wrong for such socks to be sold, not just here but anywhere in the world.

That is insulting a religion. There can be no excuse.

But it has happened before; in 2018, slippers were sold in the Chow Kit area with pictures of Hindu deities and the Buddha. If there had been an outcry then, maybe people would have been more careful now.

Instead, it was pretty much swept under the carpet with only Tamil newspapers reporting the matter.

A year earlier, a woman had been caught selling slippers with the word Allah on them. Again, there was little reaction. The Home Ministry’s Al-Quran Printing, Control and Licensing Board just asked anyone who had bought them to return the slippers.

If the reaction then had been stronger, maybe we would not be seeing this happen again, with more people alert about such a mistake.

Even the King was annoyed, but now that he has ordered that it should not be repeated, I hope there is some finality to it. It doesn’t seem likely, though.

The boycott of KK Super Mart will, apparently, be continued although its bosses have been taken to court.

I have no problem with a boycott by any individual. It is, after all, a personal right. But when someone organises a boycott that would involve thousands, that’s taking the law into your own hands; it is punishing someone before they are even found guilty.

And these same people cry foul when a man convicted in three courts by nine judges did not get a full pardon!

You want to punish someone who has just been hauled to court but not convicted, yet you want someone convicted and jailed to be set free.

Any collective action that involves people walking into the store that they are boycotting just to damage the goods on sale there or to throw firebombs cannot be allowed. The police have to act.

Worse, there are those who want to boycott all things non- Malay, even listing on social media products by non-Malays that they want boycotted.

That would split the country down the middle with two different economies. Imagine if non-Malays stayed away from Malay businesses and vice-versa. It would be a disaster for Malaysia, not only locally but internationally.

And where is the Unity Ministry in all this? Shouldn’t it be stepping in to stop all this nonsense?

Meanwhile, there’s another quarrel brewing about the word kafir and the sacred shivalinga of the Hindus. Non-Muslims are finding the word kafir offensive while a convert preacher has said some nasty things about the shivalinga, a representation of Shiva, one of Hinduism’s holy trinity.

Frankly, there is nothing wrong with the word kafir in the Islamic context when it means non-believer. But as lawyer Siti Kassim says, it is the intent when using the word that matters.

In Malaysia, it has evolved to become a derogatory word, an infidel, something said with derision – like the “N” word for African-Americans. Check the dictionary; infidel is a derogatory term.

I do not know if Islam meant it to be a derisory label, but it has certainly evolved into one.

The Education Minister says she has asked her family members not to use the word kafir as it would hurt the feelings of others. The Federal Territories mufti says she is right to do so. I respect them for that.

Indonesia’s biggest Islamic group, the Nahdatul Ulama with about 100 million members – three times Malaysia’s total population – has also asked for the word kafir to be banned. Do they know something some of our Malaysian groups or Muslim converts do not?

The convert preacher is now caught in a war of words with several Hindu groups over his rather vulgar description of the shivalinga.

Many have stood up to him, explaining the true meaning behind the symbolism. But one wonders what drives the preacher. Critics say that after he left Hinduism for Islam, he has read more about Hinduism than in his previous iteration. His sermons are supposedly on comparative religion, but more often it seems like open season on his former religion.

Comparative religion, actually, is defined as the study of different doctrines, ethics, metaphysics and the nature and forms of salvation. Studying such material should give the learner a more sophisticated understanding of human beliefs regarding the sacred, spiritual and divine.

That does not seem to be the case here.

I have heard Mufti Ismail ibn Musa Menk, a renowned preacher and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe’s Muslim community, say that he has no time to speak ill of others because he has so much good to say about his own religion. That convert preacher would do well to listen to this mufti.

As we go into a week where we celebrate Hari Raya and the Hindu New Year, the message should be about peace, love and co-existence, not hate.

I wish all Muslims Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri as they prepare to celebrate after a month of fasting, and all Hindus Chithirai Puthandu Nalvazhthugal as they welcome the Krodhi year.

Meanwhile, I will be off to Penang for my annual pilgrimage to the Queen Street Ramadan bazaar. I just love being there, with Muslims selling their fare almost on the doorstep of the famous MahaMariamman Temple.

Now, that’s delicious harmony.