there’s still hope in this neck of the woods, or A Malaysian Tail

 

“Mama dengar bunyi dekat bawah, like someone trying to open the sliding door. balik!” i rushed home after the call from my mother late Wednesday night, worried that someone was trying to break into our home.

 

my family has lived in Shah Alam for 24 years and for the most part, life has been peaceful. we are very close to our neighbours and friendly with folks in the local shops and market. we moved to Shah Alam when there were no McDonald’s and not a single traffic light. the site of the Concorde Hotel was still a plantation and the “Blue Mosque” was under construction.

 

today, we are no longer a town but a city. and apparently, Shah Alam has the country’s largest concentration of affluent middle-class “Bumiputras”. ideally that should mean sophistication and civility. but, the recent anti-temple cow-head protest was inspired and organised by our own folk.

 

we have never before seen such incivility in Shah Alam. who are these people, really? how is it they can exist among us? how did they come to exist at all?

 

these were questions i asked myself as i drove past the Selangor State Secretariat building, after my mother’s distressed call. but my thoughts were interrupted as i turned the corner into our neighbourhood and saw a motorcycle parked by the roadside.

 

a young man was squatting in front of my neighbour’s gate. it was close to 2 a.m. and my suspicious urban mind immediately thought, “ommigod! you a*sehole burglar! kantoi! i got you now!” i pulled up right next to him and wound my window down half way. “awak buat apa tu?!” i barked at him, trying to conceal my own fear.

 

the young man took off his helmet and pointed to something in front of him. “kucing ini kena langgar …” he said in a strong Sabahan accent. i looked at the cat and to my horror it was Orange Boy Cat, the stray that visits us regularly to eat our cats’ food. his face was badly injured and he was breathing very fast. clearly he was in severe pain.

 

someone had hit the cat and left it lying in the middle of the road. the young man was riding home on his motorcycle when he saw the cat lying there. he had rescued the cat from further misfortune by placing him by the roadside. my first instinct was to call my vet friend, Kavita, for advice.

 

i then left the young man, Daryl, and the cat for a few minutes while i went home to check on the house to make sure everything was okay, and got a small cage for the cat to rest in safely. i thought to myself, “Almighty, cucurilah rahmat on Daryl for his compassion! and bagilah balasan yang setimpal padahnya to the cruel monster who ran over the cat and sped away!”

 

there really was nothing Daryl could do at that hour except sit there to accompany the poor animal. it was so heartening to see such compassion for a helpless creature of God, and just 600 metres away from the State Secretariat building where the group of callous bigots paraded with a cow’s head earlier this Ramadhan.

 

Daryl volunteered to nurse the cat at his flat where he lived with his brother, Kenny. the next day, the 3 of us took our whiskered friend to see the vet.

 

today, a week after the accident and on Malaysia Day, i am pleased to report that Orange Boy Cat is recovering well at the clinic. his jaw is broken and his leg is slightly screwed up, but he will be okay. soon he will be moving in with his new Sabahan family, Daryl and Kenny.

 

there are still decent people living in Shah Alam after all. thank you boys for giving us hope.

 

 

The Beautiful Malay [A participant's comment]

 

As published in The People’s Parliament

 

Assalamu’alaikum Encik Haris and readers.

 

i contemplated writing this comment in Malay but i want to be understood properly by your readers so i’ve decided to write this in English.

 

firstly, thank you Encik Haris for documenting the visit which was initiated and attended by private citizens of Malaysia. and might i add, with the exception of my beloved mother and a number of gentlemen, the group was made up of young people. 

 

reading some of the comments here, it sounds as though until this post was published there were no decent “Malays” left in this country. so much so that our visit to the temple comes as such a pleasant surprise to many of your readers here – to the point of tears. imagine if you didn’t publish this post. we would all be left in our bigoted belief that the vast majority of Malays/Muslims in our country are arrogant and intolerant.

 

one of your commentors even said that it is “so rare that Malays come out of their way to lend a hand to non Malays”. perhaps such people should socialise a bit more and not depend on newspapers and blogs for generalised “truths” on how members of other races behave.

 

we would like to think of ourselves as intellectual and [correction: sophisticated] for our ability to carefully identify all the political culprits who are responsible for the sorry state of our perpaduan today. but we, the Rakyat, are ourselves too self-righteous to even admit that WE are the most responsible party in this mess. we let this happen.

 

bless the internet for today we have an avenue to share information and discuss more openly. but at the same time, cyberspace has become a place for thousands of Malaysians to become yea and nay sayers without doing much else.

 

if you really like what you see here, get your own little group together and visit your neighbourhood’s places of worship and offer a hand shake. and yes, that should include your neighbourhood mosque or surau. if you want to bring a buah tangan to these places of worship but you’re not sure what’s appropriate, bring something safe. we brought flowers. and jelly.

 

we don’t always have to move in big groups to make our point. and we certainly cannot afford to wait for another incident to happen before we make our move.

 

Wassalam.

 

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* The beautiful Malay on The People’s Parliament.

 

Business as usual

 

Rejected by newspaper editor

 

The recent Umno general assembly was hard to ignore. Even Pakatan Rakyat die-hards who claimed Umno had passed its glory were tuning in to news reports and blog posts to keep up with the latest. Young people and non-party members too wanted to know what in-coming party president and prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had to say, and they wanted to know who would be the new leaders entrusted to salvage the bruised party from further ruin.

 

What happens in the Umno general assembly affects not only party members but the whole country. By convention, for as long as Barisan Nasional dominates parliament, the Umno president and deputy president will become the country’s prime minister and deputy prime minister respectively. It is also usually the case that members of the supreme council are appointed into cabinet. In this regard (and whether one likes it or not) Umno’s business is everybody’s business.

 

The assembly was particularly important this year because things were not well with the rakyat. We have been in a state of political restlessness for a whole year and are anxious about the impending economic depression.

 

We knew from the onset that the outcome of the general assembly must provide some sense of confidence for the rakyat. More importantly, the assembly and the party elections had to reflect the changes demanded by the general electorate. If not for the party’s own survival, for regular Malaysians to feel assured that their grievances were heard.

 

The Umno delegates knew this, and they knew they had the power to act. They also knew since March 8 last year that women and the young were two caucuses they could not afford to neglect. These are groups that are becoming increasingly informed and demanding. To make things trickier, they exist within the party and without.

 

The delegates knew they had to win, win back and maintain support from these caucuses. And they knew that in their weakened form, they had to take drastic measures.

 

For these important caucuses the Umno delegates voted into the supreme council Datuk Bung Moktar Radin, the Sabahan whose greatest contribution in parliament was to use abusive and sexist language against his colleagues. They also installed Datuk Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim, chief of the ‘failed and forgotten’ Putera Umno.

 

For Malaysia’s mothers, women professionals and activists as well as the women who make up 60 percent of all graduates produced year after year by our local universities, the delegates delivered just one representative to the supreme council: Datuk Dr. Norraesah Mohamad. And in the spirit of reform and renewal, they voted overwhelmingly for Khairy Jamaluddin despite his unpopularity and the stern warning against bribery issued by the party’s disciplinary board just a week before the elections.

         

So, the Umno delegates have exercised their right and power to elect their heroes and role models. Meanwhile, Pakatan Rakyat is poised to continue their offensive against Barisan Nasional in the upcoming tri-elections and the rakyat too will continue to be restless and anxious. Looks like it is business as usual in Malaysia, everyone. What’s for lunch?

 

Young women must claim their space

 

As published in The Sun              

 

UNIVERSITY students are still waiting for the University and University Colleges Act to be abolished, or at least amended to suit the 21st century.

 

The Act has been used to curb student activities, particularly to prevent student involvement in party politics. However, over the years the Act has acquired new jurisdictions to include student participation in organisations and movements with broader interests. The result is a generation of removed and apathetic young Malaysians.

 

Meanwhile, a 23-year-old Egyptian girl finds herself in the thick of action in Malaysia. Hadil El-Khouly is in town to lend a hand at the Musawah meeting in Kuala Lumpur this weekend.

 

Musawah is a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. The meeting will see some 200 Muslim scholars and activists from 49 countries come together to launch the movement and discuss ideas on how to reform Muslim family law.

 

Hadil arrived from Cairo in December to assist the organisers with Arabic translations for their meeting materials as well as to strategise on integrating young women into the movement.

 

“It’s important for young women to have experience in activism, in this case, in the Islamic context. Our experiences and challenges may differ from the older generation, for example on issues relating to identity and acceptance within the Muslim community. A body like Musawah can also promote multi-generational dialogue,” she said.

 

As a student at Cairo University from which she graduated in law, Hadil was active in student organisations promoting equality and justice for women. At 18, she threw herself into the “real world” working with the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance.

 

“Starting work young forced me to manage my time between school and work. But the experience was liberating,” she said.

 

She said the women’s movement in Egypt is, as a whole, a visible and strong one. The student organisation she was involved in promoted equality and justice for women, but was conscious not to exclude men.

 

Their activities would ride on the general human rights platform (where women’s rights are an integral part) which included male students.

 

Women in the Arab world are reluctant to identify with the English term “feminist” even though they have an active women’s rights movement.

 

As writer Tala Al-Ramahi said in the UAE-based publication The National, even progressive Arab women “would be weary of the word, most probably because it carries with it Westernised connotations of what a woman is expected to be.” They would prefer to identify with the kind of activism that is more relevant to their own cultural context. Moreover, another major criticism of “feminist” groups is that they tend to hold dialogues only among themselves.

 

Hadil said that for the cause to succeed, women’s groups cannot afford to isolate men. After all, when it comes to legislation men would have to vote for women’s rights too.

 

That is precisely what Musawah is trying to achieve: reform in legislation. Muslim family law in many countries has not changed from the classical legal framework. This framework does not take into consideration the daily realities of Muslim women today. Malaysia, for example, is a good case study.

 

While Malaysia remains one of the more progressive Muslim countries, its position as a leading nation in providing just Muslim family laws has been surpassed by countries like Morocco, Turkey and Tunisia. We can claim back our position in the Muslim world by supporting Musawah’s international law reform movement to end discrimination against Muslim women across the globe.

 

Hadil sees immense potential for our country to play a major role in the movement. Malaysia’s strength, she said, is in the diversity of her people.

 

She said young Malaysians must have the desire to be part of the decision-making process and young women especially, must integrate and dare to take risks. Most importantly, they must claim their space because no one will give it to them freely.

 

On bribery and extortion

 

Rejected by newspaper editor              

 

Why is it in situations where police officers ask for bribes, we call it corruption or graft?

 

This is usually the case in newspaper reporting and in online discussions. Indeed, these words describe the immoral and illegal act of giving or taking something (usually money) for personal gain. However, these words also have other definitions.

 

Corruption for example, can also be used to describe the debasement of language. For instance, some might disagree with the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and say that bajet (uhuh, as in budget) is a corruption of the Malay language because there is an existing Malay word for it: belanjawan.

 

In botany it seems that graft refers to a shoot of a plant that is inserted in a groove of another plant where it continues to grow. No police officer or bribery is involved here.

 

Shall we call it bribery then when police officers ask for bribes? Well, not quite.

 

Bribery is when we, the Rakyat, offer police officers money in order to get out of trouble. A familiar example is when someone is pulled over for speeding: He offers the police officer money in the hope of avoiding a heftier fine.

 

These are the sampah masyarakat amongst us who prefer to ignore the fat button-badge on officers’ uniforms (and giant stickers on their patrol cars) telling us not to bribe them.

 

That bribery is still rampant in our country only reflects how morally bankrupt we are as a society, and of course, that the fat button-badge is on the whole a fat joke.

 

What do we call it then, when police officers themselves ask for bribe? It’s called extortion.

 

According to Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, extortion is “the act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power”.

 

In legal terms the Dictionary defines it as “the offence committed by an officer who corruptly claims and takes, as his fee, money, or other thing of value, that is not due, or more than is due, or before it is due”.

 

Here is a classic example of extortion: Imagine a scenario in which a patrol car pulls over to talk to a group of say, Bangladeshi workers. They are asked to produce their identity cards and working permits for inspection. Suddenly, one of them is ushered into the patrol car.

 

Five minutes later, the Bangladeshi leaves the car to join his friends and the patrol car drives away. Let’s say you approach the group of Bangladeshis and ask them what happened. They tell you the officers asked for money, which they paid under duress for fear of deportation. This has occurred despite the fact their working permits are in order.

 

According to the Public Affairs Department in Bukit Aman, there is nothing irregular about police officers asking any civilian – citizen or not – to step into the patrol car for questioning.

 

The civilian however, is not obliged to enter the patrol car if he is not comfortable doing it. Uhuh, if you have not done anything wrong, you can say no to the police officers and state that you would rather be questioned out in the open.

 

Unfortunately, in the example above, the Bangladeshi may have felt intimidated and obliged to obey any and all instructions. Should this happen to you, and if you are asked for money, do not allow yourself to be intimidated.

 

You are being extorted. This situation is not simply one of corruption. More precisely, you are being robbed because you are asked to give something up against your will. In such cases, resist the demand. Write down the patrol car number, and if possible the staff number on the police officers’ uniforms.

 

You should then file a report at rmp@rmp.gov.my and perhaps even write to the newspapers about it. If you happen to drive by others who are in a similar situation, find out what’s going on. You are entitled to know what is happening on public roads.

 

This will also send a loud message to errant police officers that the Rakyat is watching and yes, we will pull over and be nosey.

 

Do not under any circumstances offer police officers a bribe simply because you are scared. That would make you sampah masyarakat, the same way you are sampah masyarakat when you see others bribing or extorting but chose to just drive by.