POSTED BY MUSLIMMALAYSIA786
Deafening silence of most Muslim ‘leaders’ What’s on the agenda?The great contradiction of fundamentalist politics is that it cannot deliver on the basic problem that provoked its rise, economic deprivation…Ordinary Malaysian hunger for more food, not more guns…The bad news is that it takes only 1% to wreak havoc.
Who, or what, is a fundamentalist? The word might even be a tautology, for a believer can only be true to his faith if he believes in its fundamentals. You cannot be very faithful, can you, if you believe only in supplementaries? I fast during Ramadan, one of the five fundamental tenets of Islam: I hope this does not make me a fundamentalist.
The slide begins when one faith begins to encroach upon a separate conviction. The first symptom of fundamentalism is aggression. When this aggression is channelled through an organized section of a community, it becomes communalism. When a state codifies such aggression through statute, or executive authority, it becomes a fundamentalist state.
Is an Islamic state ipso facto fundamentalist? No. The Quran repeatedly commends co-existence: “ Lakum deen-e kum wal ya deen (Your religion for you and my religion for me)” and “La iqra fi al deen (Let there be no compulsion in religion)”. The exemplar of the Islamic state is obviously the period when the Prophet was head of the city-state of Medina in addition to being rasool of the Muslims. Medina was multi-religious and multi-ethnic, with a mixed population including Jews, Christians and non-Muslim Arabs. There is no instance of a church or synagogue being destroyed under his watch. There was instead a Muslim-Jewish covenant on the principle of “Lahum ma lana wa alayhim ma alayna” : Jews and Muslims had the same rights and duties. “The terms of the covenant were primarily based on recognition of diverse affiliations and did not demand conversion,” writes Tariq Ramadan (The Messenger, Penguin).
This hardly means that Muslims today cannot be fundamentalists, but it is illogical to blame Islam for the sins of Muslims.
Chua’s rude remarks on Islam point to UMNO’s failure’
MCA President Chua Soi Lek has challenged Dap’s Lim Guan Eng to debate on Hudud. The Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement has warned MCA president Chua Soi Lek against challenging DAP secretary-general.
MCA’s insistence to hype up the issue of Hudud has indicated that the party has very limited option and political arsenal to use against it’s nemesis. This is not a very positive sign for the party. Under the leadership of Chua, the party has achieved internal stability but the same cannot be said of the party’s political fortune.
By harping on the Hudud issue, MCA risks not only continuous alienation from the Chinese voters but also backlash from Muslim leaders and groups such as Abim, Perkasa and some crucial conservative Muslim-Malay voters. Instead of scaring Chinese voters away from supporting the very dominant Dap, the party might find the double edged sword cutting deep on it’s side.
MCA president Chua Soi Lek how dare you say what is so great about the Prophet Muhammad and Islam
After several years of persecution and little success in preaching the word of God to his own people in the ancient city of Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad decided to take his message and teachings to the people of Ta’if, an agricultural city southeast of Mecca. The Prophet’s Meccan persecutors sent word to their allies in advance of Muhammad’s arrival in order to thwart his mission and turn the people against him. As the Prophet entered the precincts of the city of Ta’if, much to his bewilderment, he was met with sticks and stones as the people tried to drive him out. The Prophet ran for his life, bloodied and bruised like never before, finally finding safety and taking refuge in a vineyard. He turned his face to the heavens, admitting his weakness and asking God for strength to carry on. The Archangel Gabriel appeared with the angels of the surrounding mountains and asked the Prophet if he would allow them to crush the city of Ta’if for the way its inhabitants treated him. The Prophet, instead, asked for the people to be forgiven and prayed that future generations would be rightly guided. After this, God revealed in the Qur’an about the Messenger, “And, We have not sent you except as a mercy to the worlds.”
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