MUHYIDDIN YASSIN OTAK OTAK LEMBU “UMNO DOES NOT UNDERSTAND ISLAM ASSUMES THAT MALAY IS ISLAM AND ISLAM IS MALAY

PAS leaders have reacted to UMNO deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin’s venom against Pakatan Rakyat during the UMNO general assembly, saying he had only further exposed UMNO’s lack of knowledge about Islam.

“He is only shaming himself and is showing to the world his real mentality as the deputy prime minister. A person of his rank should not have spoken like that. As the future prime minister, his speech should be about national development plan and not hatred against PR,” said PAS vice president Salahuddin Ayub.

Opening the UMNO general assembly on Tuesday, Muhyiddin lashed out at DAP, PKR and PAS, and accused DAP of trying to form a republic in Malaysia. He also said PAS had abandoned Islam while PKR was beeing too liberal.

Regardless, we say thank you for mentioning PAS in his speech which means that they acknowledge PAS’s stature in national politics,” quipped Salahuddin, the Kubang Kerian member of parliament.

Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad said Muhyiddin’s remarks showed a skewed understanding of Islam by equatting Malay to Islam.

“UMNO does not understand Islam and assumes that Malay is Islam and Islam is Malay. So when people condemn UMNO, they take it as attacking Islam.

“To them, anything against their Malay interest is against Islam, because they have been led to believe that UMNO is struggling for Islam because its struggling is about Malay race,” he explained.

We are not able to reach to conclusions on many issues of importance because our thoughts are incoherent and disorganized. It is like having a road in front of us and the road is broken and has gaps after every few feet. But we assume that the road is smooth and continuous.

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Posted by muslimmalaysia786 on December 2, 2011 · Leave a Comment (Edit) Demands for seats belonging to Umno’s allies in Barisan Nasional again became a topic of a heated debate among delegates attending the party’s AGM today. A delegate from Penang, Musa Sheikh Fadzir, echoed the undercurrent among party hawks that non Umno candidates who lost in the 2008 … Read more

Resultantly, we keep falling in those gaps. We mix up a lot many issues in a flood of confusion.
We will say that Islam is a complete way of life and then divide the affairs of life into ‘secular’ and ‘religious’. Isn’t Islam a religion and it is complete? Then why this division? We will, however, not prepare a list of ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ matters despite being earnestly requested to do so – repeatedly.

I come across people once in a while who say that that they have ‘made’ hijrah from the West. (We made a hijrah in the Indian Subcontinent and should only read the headlines of one newspaper – everyday.) I am wonderstruck at this huge gap. They will believe that Islam is the best way of life and it is for the entire humanity. But practically they will exclude a significant part of the world from the ‘entire’ humanity and the ‘whole’ world. And they will not see the self-contradiction.

When we emphasize on the need for a huge component of rote learning and memorization in our curriculum then we give an impression that “We have actually tried hard with critical and scientific thinking. But it proved to be disastrous, you know. It did not produce the desired results (???). The students are not hard-working anymore, you see. They want it easy. You know how the new generation is. Our times were different. And you know they don’t send bright students to madrasaahs.”

An eminent speaker I met the other day. He started lamenting that the people do not send ‘bright’ children to madrasaahs. (I haven’t seen any students who aren’t bright – in their own way. Just as I haven’t seen any ‘ordinary’ and ‘common’ human beings in my life.) On the other hand, he was complaining that the syllabi of these institutions are extremely old. He did not realize why the people should send their ‘bright’ children to madrasaahs if the syllabi are so outdated.

I could not understand why the ‘bright’ students should be sent to these institutions if the curriculum is not up-to-date. How could or will an up-to-date teacher teach an outdated curriculum is beside the point. As if it was not enough, the respectable speaker started complaining about the graduates of madrasaahs. This wasn’t enough either. He was of the view that the madrasaahs should completely teach the Tafseer of the whole Qur’an and a student must necessarily go over the entire Qur’an – at least in translation.

I could not get a definite answer to my question about what was the real problem; the curriculum, the methodology, the students not being ‘bright’ or the Qur’an not being taught in full. We face a difficulty in staying focused on one subject while communicating with the ‘traditionally’ educated. With much difficulty I drew the attention of the gentleman to the core issue as he frequently stepped into sideways.

The ‘modern’ educated are very much appreciable in this regard. As a people, however, we need to develop a habit of staying with the problems longer. It will require that we stop repeating those sentences which we have heard a thousand times. The situations demand that we start ‘chewing the cud’.

We will talk about the need for more engagement with the fellow countrymen of other Faiths but will establish and perpetuate those educational institutions which are the antithesis of cohesion and engagement. Without noticing the self-contradiction. We will talk about Haqq-O-Baatil and will advise, too, for adhering to the former. We will, however, not call a spade a spade. We will still beat about the bush and stay away from the crux of it.

We read a lot of articles from many writers from all over the world. This is very important. But there is one apprehension. We might think that the journalists from across the globe will provide a solution to the problems. If we do so we may be mistaken. How could those who do not have the whole picture (who aren’t sure where the man has come from, what is he expected to do on earth and where is he going to) provide a solution to the vexed (???) problems of the world? If they still do that, it will be rare and, of course, admirable.

We are extremely concerned about educating every Muslim child but we do not know why we should do that. So we don’t know the reasons of this concern for Muslims which has become a kind of fashion now. It gives an instant impression that “I am in a much better situation, thank God.” No, we are not “in a much better situation”.

We ALL are poor (muflis). But there is something that does not allow us to concede that we are poor. We go about the idea of reform in circles and circles. I wonder if so many among us are trying to make things better – and for so long – then why don’t we see the results? The incoherence and disorganization in our thoughts is the diehard enemy of results.

Please don’t ever get impressed by quotations from Qur’an or Hadeeth or from history etc. It is most likely that the quotations will be out of context – ignoring the broader picture. It is most likely that we belong to a situation like Makkan and the quotation is of a Madeenan context, for example. There is also a slight chance that we may not be belonging to either of the two periods.

There is a possibility that the quotation is from a person who is sure about everything and has never been slightly confused about even a few things. May be the quotation is a result of deep conditioning. May be the sermon is from someone who has never tried to put all the ideas (or pieces of a jigsaw puzzle) in order and organize them. So we shouldn’t take chances.

The incoherence and disorganization in our thoughts (which naturally leads to incoherent and disorganized actions – and there is no force that can stop it from happening) is eating into our vitals. What to do now? We need to be watchful in our conversations. We have to very carefully and critically listen to every speech or read every piece of writing (including this one). We have to be many times more cautious than we have ever been.

We shouldn’t do so only when we are in the gathering of ‘others’. We need to do this even more when we are in ‘our own’ gatherings. If we do not do so, the discourse will not change which is precisely what we need to change. We will not be moving to the second stage which is long overdue. This is the price that we as a people have to pay for a CHANGE which we all are yearning to see.

Islam is as simple as philosophy and as complicated as commonsense.

They say in Persian: Shud pareeshaa(n) khwaab-e man az kasrat-e ta‘beerhaa (my dream got spoilt by so many interpretations), and it sums up the case of Islam very well. Maybe our ta‘beer of Islam is complicated while Islam is in fact quite philosophical i.e. very simple. Islam will be complicated when we will consider “interpretation of Sharee‘ah laws or Hadeeth or Fatwas or Personal laws or matters dealing with madrasas” as “religious” and matters like “Muslim educational institutions, or reservation for Muslims in educational institutions and jobs, or the need to address the community’s socioeconomic and educational uplift, or the political situation of the community, or the civil liberties, or the situation of Muslim women” as “non-religious”. And we will do so with utmost self-confidence and with no room for second-thoughts.

Islam is a ‘way of life’ – very simple. It sounds complicated because it is divorced from life. It gives a direction and greater sense to all that we do. Without it we will not be able to satisfactorily reason any higher purposes of our actions. It gives the complete answer. If I were to meet Charles Darwin I would ask him, “Thanks a lot for taking the pain of explaining to us where we have come from. Kindly tell us more about the origin of species and how the fittest survive. After having done the above, please do one more favour and tell us what are we supposed to do on this earth and what is our ultimate objective and destination – after having successfully evolved from all the named and unnamed species”. If, however, we settle down for an incomplete answer then the simplicity of Islam will elude us.

Islam guides the human beings in every aspect of life with its beautiful principles – without dividing it into the categories of “religious” and “non-religious” or Deeni and Dunyaawi. You divorce it from life and it will become extremely complicated. It will become difficult to understand and explain. Because it will not have a frame reference. It will lose the ground which is where it was supposed to be standing. When you keep it in suspended animation it will not be itself. It will certainly complicate the situation. When we hear a lecture dealing only with what is beneath the earth or above the heavens we are certainly going to say, “Islam is really complicated, my friend”.

Islam does not make the lawful unlawful and the unlawful lawful. It is between fisq (transgression) and rahbaaniyyah (monasticism). Islam is not about speeding when the signal is red. It is not about remaining stationary even when the signal is green. (For an assessment of the current situation we only need to ask a few people about the percentage of Halaal and Haraam in Islam and then analyze the answers.) This is what is meant by the ‘middlemostness’ (wasatiyyah), which is inherent to Islam. As soon as we utter ‘Islam’ it immediately implies wasatiyyah. This is the ‘bi-polarity’ of Islam which combines the East and the West (soul and body) – seamlessly. If, however, we do not combine the two despite believing in Oneness then Islam will certainly be complicated.

Islam and truth are one and the same thing. If instead of walking all the way to the truth we start urging the truth to follow our path it will not remain simple anymore. Because it will not remain truth anymore. An incomplete truth is anything but truth. Ek bhi harf ahtaanay ki nahee(n) gunjaa’ish! Truth has never been complicated. Our perception of Islam has, in fact, been partial and distorted. Truth is not easily recognized due to the conditioning effects of generations after generations. Hence, truth has become extremely “complicated” and highly “philosophical”.

Islam is a religion of common humanity. It is as simple for that humanity as air, light and water within everyone’s reach and satisfying everyone’s need in all walks of life (whether public or private). If it remained like that it was simple. But it has become a private affair. Becoming a private affair and a matter of personal preference, it has immediately become complicated. Now it is so complicated that we don’t know in which aspects of our life we can refer to this manual and in which situations there isn’t any need, in fact! In many a matters of life it is obviously non-applicable!! Being applicable at one time and non-applicable at another and a constant switching between the two is a sure recipe for making it complicated.

For commonsense to become common and for philosophy to become simple we will have to change our discourse. We will have to redefine the terminologies which we frequently use in a borrowed sense. We are not going to use new words for a change in the discourse. We are only going to assign new meanings to the already existing words. Or more correctly, to regain the lost meanings. If we do not do so, Islam will not become as simple as philosophy and as complicated as commonsense.