Is Malaysia becoming like Gomorrah?!

Here is part of the passage from Isaiah Chapter 1 verses 10 - 23.

10 Hear the word of the LORD,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the law of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!

11 "The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?" says the LORD.
"I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

12 When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?

13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your evil assemblies.

14 Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts
my soul hates.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even if you offer many prayers,
I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood;

16 wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds
out of my sight!
Stop doing wrong,

17 learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed. ^[a]
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.

18 "Come now, let us reason together,"
says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.

19 If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the best from the land;

20 but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword."
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

21 See how the faithful city
has become a harlot!
She once was full of justice;
righteousness used to dwell in her—
but now murderers!

22 Your silver has become dross,
your choice wine is diluted with water.

23 Your rulers are rebels,
companions of thieves;
they all love bribes
and chase after gifts.
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
the widow's case does not come before them.

Wake up Malaysia, lest our mighty god smite us!

Is the Bible corrupted or is it the Quran and the Hadith corrupted?

Every time I speak with a muslim they are quick to say that the Bible is corrupted; and if anything they are better followers of Jesus' teachings then the Christians.

Somehow, there's something I do not understand. The bible is made up of 66 books written by many different authors over a period of several hundred years in between each revelation; although the New testament had many books in a shorter period of time. All which are inspired by God and written during the lifetime of the prophets and yet there is no contradiction between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Consider the New Testaments which was written by Eyewitnesses during the same lifetime of Jesus Christ and his disciples thereby qualifying the text as biographies and autobiographies versus the oral tradition of the Quran and Hadith which was only put into paper after for more than 100 years later.

I am sure we all have played this social game "whispering" or telephone game. The oral transmission game where the first person makes a statement to another person and this person then repeats the statement to another and so on; we all know that if I said "Jane had a small zit on her forehead" eventually after the message had passed on to more than 20 to 30 people chaining one after another the message I might most likely get back is that "Jane had a serious case of acne all over her head."

Comparing to a passage I read in "The Case For the Real Jesus" by Lee Strobel, The Telephone Game and Snoopy on a particular simulation of reliability of textual criticism whereby students plays the role of a scribe who attempts to reconstruct ancient text from copies of whereby some of the copies have mistakes copied intentionally or unintentionally. Eventually the result of the experiment most of the students is able to reconstruct the messages to get the core meaning, although it may be paraphrase; but the meaning was unchanged.

It is interesting that both the Torah (Old Testament) and New Testament are recognize by Quran that both books are from God yet it gives an interesting contradiction of Angels having no free will; while in the Genesis we read that the Arch Angel, Lucifer, rebelled against God because he wanted to become like God and be worshiped and that he convinced 1/3 of the Angels in heaven to follow him resulting that the rebelling angels were cast down to earth and became demons.

Well, no prizes to guess which text I rather believe and trust in. No matter how good intentions are on oral transmission, I seriously doubt after 100 years it is the very same context that the original was.

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This article extracted from the Wikipedia:

History of Hadith

Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in 632.

Muslim historians say that caliph Uthman (the third caliph, or successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), was the first to urge Muslims to write the Qur'an in a fixed form, and to record the hadith. Uthman's labors were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656.

The Muslim community (ummah) then fell into a prolonged civil war, which Muslim historians call the Fitna. After the fourth caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib was assassinated in 661, the Umayyad dynasty seized control of the Islamic empire. Ummayad rule was interrupted by a second civil war (the Second Fitna), re-established, and ended in 758 when the Abbasid dynasty seized the caliphate, and held it, at least in name, until 1258.

Muslim historians say that hadith collection and evaluation continued during the first Fitna and the Umayyad period. However, much of this activity was presumably oral transmission from early Muslims to later collectors, or from teachers to students. If any of these early scholars committed any of these collections to writing, they have not survived. The histories and hadith collections we have today were written down at the start of the Abbasid period, more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death.

Scholars of the Abbasid period were faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions, some of them flatly contradicting each other. Many of these traditions supported differing views on a variety of controversial matters. Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic and which had been invented for political or theological purposes. To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.

Free The Press!

Its really interesting nowadays with regards to the mass media, especially the newspapers. The mainstream newspaper like The Star, New Straits Times, Malay Mail, to some extent the Sun has lost credibility with the public.

While I don't agree that we should boycott any media, I still subscribe just so that the Newspaper vendor has a job to deliver the Star and the Sun to my home. Today, I read the newspaper to see what kind of lies and propaganda our "great and honorable" government is pushing to us on a daily basis. Whilst it is disgusting to read the lies and obvious propaganda, I need to be informed and be able to discuss with my fellow friends and acquaintances on the "creative" reporting in our papers.

Today, the newspapers has two main agendas. Firstly, to sell newspapers via sensationalizing that would include publishing misleading reports that "sensationalize" or stirs up "racial tensions". Secondly, to serve their political masters. Therefore, it appears that Journalistic Press Freedom is dead in this country. Whatever happened to Journalistic creed to report news in a fair and factual manner? We have editors who conveniently misquote their interviewees just to sell more papers?

We should call to "Free The Press!" this can be achieve if the newspapers are not owned by any political party. We all know which party owns which paper. There should be a legislation barring any political party from owning any presses. Otherwise, they don't qualify to be termed as a Newspaper; they should be called newsletter.

Bring back Press Freedom!

Do we all have a moral compass each?♦

Today an interesting thought came to me, "would the world be much easier to live with if we all wore our moral compass as a badge on our hearts?"

We could all look at each others' and ourselves and to know if our actions are questionable or for the greater good.

Undoubtedly some of our politicians have lost theirs; or have chosen to ignore it. Have you ever wondered why majority of humans have intentions for the greater good? But then there are some who are only for themselves. In general each of us have a compass that points to the true north, just like a real compass (true north in this case is that represents all that is Good, honorable, and faithfulness, truth, selflessness as oppose to the south which represents Falsehood, selfishness, and evil intentions); and east and west represented as Lawful, orderly and structured versus unlawful, unpredictable randomness, and chaos.

For a while I do realize like the a real compass, our directions always changes depending on where we are heading. Sometimes, we have that recklessness that makes us cross the street instead of using the pedestrian overpass but often we be obediently follow the traffic lights and wait for the Green light even when there's no traffic around for the last 5 minutes.

If we spent some time reflecting on ourselves, perhaps we will discover once again our moral compass and follow the direction to true north. I would urge our politicians and leaders to ask of themselves are they following their compass? If they are, is their compass broken considering the amount of injustice and lack of fairplay in the Malaysian Society today.

Double Standards Double Speak

Just take a look at The Sunday Star, 16 March 2008, front page headlines: "MB Mystery" here we have the PM and UMNO pitting against the Perlis Royalty on the who would be appointed as the new Menteri Besar of Perlis.

And then we had Mr. Lim Kit Siang, opposing the appointment of PAS MP as a Menteri Besar of Perak. We have UMNO crying out and politicizing protest that DAP is disrespecting the royalty.

Clearly we have the a situation where the Pot is calling the Kettle black. Is there a difference? So when the opposition objects, they are disrespecting the royalty. And if UMNO objects it is okay?

Come On! This is so "in-your-face" double standard that the BN/UMNO is practicing; frankly we are sick of BN/UMNO double standards.

Malay Special Rights and the NEP

For those who are not clued-in as to what is the NEP, the NEP stands for New Economic Policy that was meant to put in place programs and policies to redistribute wealth so that the majority people which is the Malays will control and own the larger slice of the overall economic pie of Malaysia. Which I would think in a socialist perspective would be noble. However, the NEP has abused and used to oppress (for want of a better word) the non-Malays.

To my mind, as a Chinese Malaysian as I am so classified, the Malay Special Rights is to ensure non-discriminative actions in the legal, and commerce arena - to ensure that the Malay have a right to education, a right to conduct business, and access to public facilities and government representation, a right to worship and practice their religion.

All these are fine, until its used to oppress the rest. The BN government appears to have a ZERO sum thought on this. Take from the non-Malays and keep on taking, to the extent that I ask myself where's my right and my children's right. We are prevented from having Chinese Schools, we cant even use "Allah" in our Malay language bibles, places in local universities where a quota of maybe 5% is given to all non-Malays. No scholarships unless we go to our "Chinese" MP to beg for one.

But then when I look at the Malay Majority, when I go into their kampungs and I look at the standard of living. I can truly understand their hardships. They are poor, and their education level is low.

I can understand that their leaders from UMNO tell them that the non-Malays are taking all their rights and wealth, and they believe; simply because the average non-Malay makes more money then them. Perhaps is to question why?

I can only surmise in the grand scheme of things, the UMNO elites and ultras want the Malays to continue in their present condition and to keep them there. This will ensure that the need for "NEP" will always be there. With the NEP is a license and excuse for UMNO and its cronies to print money.

What I can say and advise our opposition politicians (if only if they care to read my blog) is to desconstruct the NEP and improve it. Why say Abolish the NEP? It has to be improved to ensure the wealth really gets to the Malay middle class and poor, not to the rich and wealthy. The rich dont need more help. We dont need more Zakarias and their palaces. The NEP should be expanded to be more inclusive we should include the non-Malays especially the poor and needy. We should add more transparency in dealings and accountability.

Promote meritocracy among the Malays, show them how to compete. Especially for places in Universities. It counter-productive to the Malays where everything is handed down a silver plater; the result is the local university graduates cannot compete in the real world and they end up working in the public sector, where the government having to create more jobs to absorb them. How long can these go on? In the age of globalization, they need to learn to compete on merit, if not they will be trapped in a 3rd world economy and a low standard of living. Its a catch 22 situation. To break the cycle, meritocracy must be introduced; NEP given transparency to ensure there's no abuse of the system for the rich to get richer.

I would challenge the Malays to think! You can't go on in the zero sum game, in the end the biggest losers will be the Malays. You might make the non-Malays suffer and live in a highly discriminated society. Its apartheid no matter how you picture it. You can't be asking us to leave the country if we don't like it. Just imagine, if the non-Malays really did a major exodus and leave the country. You the Malays will be left to your own devices, do you think the foreign investors will stay on? Do you all have the skill set the MNCs need? It will be a step backward into 3rd world economy for whats left of the country.

The NEP in its current form is a dirty word to the non-Malays, not because we are jealous and envious of the special priviledges. It is because it is used to discriminate the non-Malays and used as a devise to enriched the politically connected. The rich get richer, the poor gets poorer. This has to stop; indeed the Malays need an affirmative program to help them, in fact all middle-class and poor people irregardless of race needs the affirmative program to help them. If there's any discrimination needed, it would be the rich versus the poor. As the rich dont need any help; need I say more?

I rest my case.

Urban Sensibilities versus Rural Perspectives

I had the opportunity to get away for a week in the east cost to the beautiful island of Redang off the coast of Trengganu; after enjoying a lovely 3 days of bliss away from all the politics and talks about politics helped me gain a better insight when I spent 1 full day touring the city of Kuala Trengganu interacting with the locals there.

Going to a Malay heartland, where 95% of the population consist of Malays, and 4% Chinese. It does strike me in a realization that in the eyes of these folks; how important the perceived Malay Special Rights are to them. It also dawn on me that it would be very difficult for an Urban Chinese from the big city of Kuala Lumpur to understand their needs and challenges they are facing. Indeed perhaps to lead them as a Prime Minister or Menteri Besar that you will have to understand their customs and religious needs a little more indepth than at the cursory level.

Speaking to these folks, its easy to understand their confusion on the so called "New Economic Policy" has helped them or rather not helped them. Most of them see the daily survival and economic issues as key priorities. They are concerned about getting jobs, able to conduct business and low inflation. All which as I see it, the NEP does not address these important issues. The people are fed up with the politicians who are playing the race card, and declaring that the Malays need NEP. But really, who really needs and benefit from the NEP. It is the politically connected, and cronies of those in power who help themselves to the benefits to extend of taking the poor peoples land and building for themselves private palaces and fiefdoms.

I had a wonderful time in Kuala Terengganu with an elderly taxi driver named Pak Uda who was so kind to be my tour guide for the day Terengganu who showed me around town and to the various beautiful Mosques such as the Crystal Palace, and the Floating Mosque.

And also I had an interesting chat with the Malay taxi driver who took the travel time to send me home to give me his two cents about how corrupted the BN-UMNO government; and he mentioned that he was happy that the Selangor state government is now led by the opposition and he and a bunch of his Malay friends voted for DAP and that some chinese in areas where PAS was contesting the chinese voted for PAS. Truly, this came from a Malay then time for racial politics is indeed over.