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It is rather difficult to understand how our Muslim friends can be so easily influenced which may result in their straying away from their sacred religion. Any notion that this may be the case insults the intelligence and the very faith of the Muslims.
Any suggestion alluding to this possibility gives the impression that all the daily vigorous religious programmes over radio and television, the numerous courses conducted to explain and strengthen their faith in Islam, the many religious classes and the daily five-time compulsory prayers, the existence of mosques easily accessible to the faithful and the Friday sermons, are a failure. This is absolutely wrong and ridiculous.
I was a product of a mission school – so were my many Malay friends of that period. The Lord’s prayers were part of the weekly school assembly ritual. Even to this day we – Muslims and non-Muslims - remember the Lord’s prayers. In fact some of my Malay friends even say “Amen” at the end of a speech whenever our classmates meet up. This did not in any way indicate that they are not steadfast in their faith. No one has renounced their religion to embrace Christianity.
How is that, the Malays of that period - who did not have all the present intense propagation of the Muslim faith - remained faithful to Islam? How come their faith was so strong and so secure?
It is with this knowledge that I wonder what harm the Holy Bible in the national language can cause to the Muslims. Why is there so much controversy surrounding this issue?
There are so many contradictory reasons extended for the impounding of the Holy Bible. These holy books are languishing in various godowns, some as long as two years. This denial of the holy book to the Christians is indefensible.
A pertinent question is; ‘Aren’t the Christians entitled to their book of faith’? It is this book that gives meaning to their lives, regulates their conduct and determines their purpose in life. It is so essential to their well-being, it is so personal and integeral to their very existence. How can this be denied?
Many Malaysians are not only aware - but they are convinced too - that a vast majority of Muslims are tolerant, peaceful, respectful of the other, and would have no objection to other Malaysians exercising their religious rights as guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. They would have no objection to the releasing of the Holy Bible because they understand the significance of these books and what they mean to the Christians.
It is the ugly politicians, desperate in their attempt to retain their power and position, who have unjustly politicized a simple issue into an unnecessary controversy that threatens our unity as a nation. This minority group is spewing fire and brimstone to agitate and frustrate our unity regardless of the harm they are causing to our multi-ethnic Malaysia.
In succumbing to these despicable political demands of this minority, the Umno leadership has become blind to justice and fairness. It has chosen to give in to this group by refusing to release the Holy Bible with the view to score political points to win over the rural Malays.
But now with the impending Sarawak elections, the Umno leadership realizes the price it has to pay for this foolhardiness. Hard reality has forced it to be somewhat sensible and realistic if it aims to cling on to political power. Without this essential support from Sarawak and Sabah, Umno and its cohorts in the Barisan Nasional will have to bid farewell to Putrajaya.
So Umno has decided to play politics by agreeing to release the Holy Bible without loss of face. That is the reason why it has to impose two ridiculous conditions for the release.
One, the importer of the copies of the holy book will have to stamp, “Reminder: This ‘Al Kitab Berita Baik’ is for the use of the Christians only. By order of the Home Ministry.” The cover of the Alkitab would be stamped with the department’s official seal and dated as well.
Two, the importer has to stamp a serial number on each copy of the Holy Bible, “as if to demarcate copies from the released shipment and to enable the book to be traced back to the port of import”.
The Home Ministry has shown scant respect to these holy books and the Christian community. The ministry’s ruling is perverse and sacrilegious. Its ruling is tantamount to ordering the Christian community to desecrate their holy books. No Christian will agree to observe these absurd conditions.
The inalienable right of a community to practice its religion cannot be compromised – and should not be compromised. This is the birth-right of a community – it cannot be surrendered.
The Prime Minister must recognize this serious problem that threatens to undermine our national unity and must step in as a matter of urgency to avert this issue from exploding into a national catastrophe. He must isolate these trouble-makers and preserve our unity. He owes this to us and the nation. Any failure on his part would imply that unity is not possible without an alternative government.
Let us be reminded by the wise words of Martin Luther King, Jr: “We must learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as fools.”
The two conditions, conveyed by the Home Ministry to the importer of the copies in Kuching, were that each copy should carry a serial number and should be stamped 'For Christians Only'.
“As the bible is the holy book of the Christians, due respect should be given to it by consulting the relevant Christian representative organs before any external text is inserted into the bibles.
Church leaders have stressed that they cannot follow the conditions imposed by the ministry, as it would mean desecrating their own holy book.
A separate shipment of 30,000 Malay bibles worth RM78,000 imported by the Sarawak branch of global Christian group, The Gideons, was also seized at Kuching port.
It is not known if they have been subjected to the same treatment as BSM’s cargo.
The first requires the importers to directly stamp on the cover of each of the 35,000 copies the following words: “Peringatan: ‘Al Kitab Berita Baik’ ini untuk kegunaan penganut agama Kristian sahaja. Dengan perintah Menteri Dalam Negeri.”
[In English: “Reminder: This ‘Al Kitab Berita Baik’ is for the use of Christians only. By order of the Home Minister.”]
The cover of the Alkitab would be stamped with the department’s official seal and dated as well.
The second condition requires the importers to stamp a serial number on each copy, as if to demarcate copies from the released shipment and to enable the book to be traced back to the port of import.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: "We must learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as fools."
Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, addressing the World Evangelical Fellowship on 2001-MAY-04. "Once started, religious strife has a tendency to go on and on, to become permanent feuds. Today we see such intractable inter-religious wars in Northern Ireland, between Jews and Muslims and Christians in Palestine, Hindus and Muslims in South Asia and in many other places. Attempts to bring about peace have failed again and again. Always the extremist elements invoking past injustices, imagined or real, will succeed in torpedoing the peace efforts and bringing about another bout of hostility." 8
Ancient Japanese saying: "There are many paths up the Mountain, but the view of the moon from the top is the same."
God made so many different kinds of people. Why would he allow only one way to serve him? ~Martin Buber
All religions must be tolerated... for... every man must get to heaven his own way. ~Frederick the Great
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. ~George Bernard Shaw
- P Ramakrishnan is the president of Aliran
The unknown, unseen, unsung Mother. The one who transcends space and time, watching, sighing, and lying awake. Without a whimper she withstands our abuse, with stoic reserve she watches. Her temper withstanding, her temperature barely rising, while we bask in her glory and tread carelessly over her comfort zones. And we stamp over her, our feet leaving an impression on her soft body, scarring her forever, scratching her ethereal skin, and peeling it layer by layer. She moans and she groans, but we remain deaf to her anguish. We are blinded by our selfish needs, we lose ourselves to greed and lust, we plunder and we loot her reserves and her affluence. Her wealth should be ours we think, how premature is this thought? Her bounty is hers alone, only when she passes away will it be bequeathed and not to us. So we plan and we plot to murder her.
Slowly and surely, she is dying. But there is a transformation. But, how many are alert to this change? No longer is she suffocating quietly, no longer is she whispering. Her fighting resonance is reverberating through the dark of the night. When her heavy bosom heaves, her defiance moves the tectonic plates beneath her weight, she makes us tremble and she causes destruction of catastrophic proportions. When she cries in agony, her eyes of sea well up, and as the saline waters stream down her cheeks, they crash inland and decimate everything in its path. Her wrathfulness cascades molten lava and when she tries to control her raging inferno, the skies darken and howling gale winds blanket the world tempestuously.
Scathing in the ring of fire, Japan is now at the receiving end of her wrath. Nothing but a curse from her could have caused this staggering form of devastation. A sinister chain of events over the last forty-eight hours has made her children jolt in wretchedness. The tectonic plates beneath the Pacific ocean shifted at a magnitude of 9.1, the oceans swelled, ten metre high tsunami’s crashed inland onto Japan’s Northern territory of Sendai, sweeping everything in it’s path, homes and cars floated like toys, nuclear plants at Fukushima are now exploding and contaminating the already pungent air in the atmosphere. The radioactive explosions are but the harbingers of more bereavement. The country has experienced until now 140 after shocks since Friday and threats of more tsunamis are still imminent, while the death toll continues to rise steadily.
While the world watches the media coverage of the disaster in horror, the chain of events appear surreal and one hopes that this is but a nightmare that Japan can wake up from. We never woke up from the Boxing-day Tsunami that affected our part of the world a few years ago either. The Japanese are determined to rebuild and they have faith in their leadership. And their leadership holds the people together at a time of crisis and organizes rescue and recovery operations systematically. The world watches Japan bleed and extends a helping hand. There are some miracle stories. A sixty-year-old man who was sucked into the open sea nine miles from shore was rescued after floating for two days on the remnants of his home. "I thought today was the last day of my life," Hiromitsu Shinkawa told his rescuers, according to Kyodo News Agency.
The Japanese, most skilled, well mannered and highly enterprising, try hard to get onto the road to recovery. There are no dramatic scenes of chest beating and wailing. They whimper and cry silently, almost hiding behind a veil of bravado. It is time to reflect on retributions. Did Japan stop to listen to the cries of those countless whales they barbarically bled and killed in the same ocean that has now turned its tide ferociously against it? Not just Japan, but every country is immersed in self-gratification of its capitalistic senses. Does man listen to the ominous signs around him as he selfishly goes about his day-to-day business? There is a law of equilibrium that is centrifugal to our existence here, for every action; there is an opposite and equal reaction. If we treat Earth with disdain and disrespect, then hell hath no fury like a Mother’s wrath.
“There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
My wife, Cyndi Lee, landed at Narita Airport near Tokyo at almost the exact time the earthquake hit last Friday. She had come to Japan to lead a yoga teacher training program in Tokyo, and then a public program the following weekend in Osaka.
At the very moment she was handing the customs officer her passport, the entire airport began to shake. The shaking continued and intensified for several long minutes. At that point, all the passengers were quickly ushered out into the parking lot and were asked to stay there for several hours.
Cyndi ended up spending the night sleeping on the floor in the airport, and in the morning, with the help of some new "earthquake friends," she was able to make her way to Tokyo and to her hotel there. In Tokyo there had only been minor damage from the quake, and in some sense life was mostly "normal" for a couple of days.
The first two days of the teacher training program at Tokyo Yoga went reasonably well (with most participants in attendance), but it became increasingly obvious that travel was getting more difficult for the students (due to closed roads, rolling power outages and gas shortages). Aftershocks were making everybody nervous, and the emerging crisis with Japan's nuclear reactors was creating a very unstable environment.
I was scheduled to join Cyndi in Tokyo on Wednesday March 16 to lead the meditation aspect of the training over the following weekend, but after much consideration, Cyndi decided to postpone the program, get herself back to terra firma in New York City as quickly as possible and re-schedule our programs there to continue in September.
Like most of us, I have been glued to HuffPost and CNN to see the latest evolution in this powerful drama that has been unfolding in Japan. People's lives have been transformed within minutes, sometimes even seconds. It seems impossible for us to understand all the forces at work here, and why one person is snatched away by a tsunami in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again, while in the same situation, rescuers can find a baby that has survived on her own for three days in the midst of all that turmoil and devastation.
As I watch these dramas unfold, I am struck once again by the strength and fragility of our human life. If we do not understand the one, we will not truly understand the other. There are such powerful forces that can take away our life at any time.
From the Earth's and ocean's point of view, these recent events are actually small in scale. It's like the shrug of a giant when asleep, slightly shifting position -- a very minor adjustment. Yet for us here in the human world, that shrug, that shift, can mean life or death in an instant, or at least a complete transformation of everything we held to be reliable and solid up until that very moment.
I can't really offer a clever Buddhist analysis to make sense of all these events, but I would like to note that we, as human beings, seem to have so much strength and wisdom to draw on -- even while our situation is so completely ephemeral and hazardous. How is it possible for us to reconcile this strength and fragility within our being and in the world we inhabit?
In the Buddhist view we talk about karma -- the chain of causality. Causes and conditions from the past come together and create the current circumstances we face. We choose our response to these circumstances and create the basis for further causes and conditions moving into the future.
But who can say they comprehend, in this powerfully interdependent world we all share, the deeper meanings of these catastrophic events in the natural world and the profound currents and shifts in human society that are brought about by them?
There is, however, in this vast ocean of uncertainty, one thing I think we all can agree on: In times like these, we do have a powerful choice to make. We can choose fear and panic, or we can choose mindfulness, love and compassion. Such is the power of our human heart and mind.
Our hearts go out to our friends in Japan. They have survived powerful obstacles in the past, and no doubt they will rise to this new challenge. We are connected to them in seen and unseen ways. Their fragility is our fragility. Their strength is our strength. Their suffering is our suffering. Their survival is our survival.
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