Seriously?

27Apr10

The following is a commentary from Tunku Halim on the 21yr old that died trying to evade a JAKIM raid, taken from here.

Do you sleep easy? Some do. Many don’t.

Imagine being woken by a commotion, heavy footsteps and loud knocks on your door.

You scurry out of bed, heart pounding, your girlfriend opens the door and there stand the stocky grim men, their official IDs pinned to their shirts. Peeping through the bedroom door, you panic. You know you’re guilty, you must not get caught. You slip outside the window to hide, perhaps to make your way along the ledge to the stairwell and flee from there.

But you slip … and fall to your death.

You are only twenty-one, in love and a student in a nearby college.

I read about the incident in The Star.

I wonder if those religious officials have any remorse for the young man’s death?

Was raiding the young couple’s apartment at 1.40am such a good idea?

Can this “community-minded” person who gave the religious authorities the tip off live with him or herself?

Should we continue to allow such raids at the dead of night?

Malaysia, a country that intends to become a developed country in 2020, should find other means of enforcing its Islamic laws of proximity or khalwat.

Counselling couples in the brightness of day rather than scaring them half to death (in this case, literally, to death itself) in the dead of night is a better, less confrontational, less scary way. Isn’t education a more effective route?

Something like this happens and the question of remorse for the young man’s death by the religious officials becomes one’s first thing that comes to mind?

It’s unfortunate how events took a turn for the worse but let’s look at the situation here.

You know you’re guilty and on the verge of getting caught. And you run away from the responsibility of owning up to your actions by going so far an extent as to risk your life, just to escape the consequences. Then you actually die while doing so. If the whole thing weren’t so tragic it would be laughable.

You are only twenty-one, in love and a student in a nearby college.

I don’t get the sentiment that is trying to be expressed in this sentence. How does this make what the young man did any less acceptable? Is it meant to imply that at such an age a person is entitled to indulge in any wordly sin under the pretense of gaining ‘experience’? That love is noble enough a cause to defy religion for? That as a student one has the right to make mistakes without being reprimanded as severely as any other person?

Those religious officials could definitely have devised a better way to approach them, and yes daytime counselling would obviously be an excellent alternative but I doubt their ‘confrontational’ method was a conscious attempt at ‘scaring’ them, rather, merely to possibly halt a bad deed in progress.

And that “community-minded” person who gave the religious authorities the tip off? I’m sure he/she felt bad for what happened, but I also believe that nobody expected that young man to do something so reckless just to avoid persecution, which was his own fault entirely.

Any Muslim person (heck, even non-Muslim) would be familiar with the very basic principle of Amar maaruf nahi munkar which means is enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong.

If I were doing something wrong and if any  Muslim friend  found it necessary to point this out with the intention of exercising his duty to remind a fellow Muslim of their apparent transgressions, is it their fault if I decided to go jump off a building (and don’t think I’ve never actually considered it during those teen-angst ridden years not so long ago even), because God knows I’m fully aware of how lacking I am in the practising of my Faith but I just can’t find a less-idiotic way to handle the realization? I think not.

Btw, those strikethroughs are there because I re-read the whole part over and concluded that this analogy applies to any wrong thing I do, be it against in the religious sense, or just wrong, period. I have plenty of non-Muslim friends whose morals/ethics are even more impressive than my own, whom might find it in their place to provide advice or stop me from going through with the stupid things I sometimes do, in whatever way they see fit. And yes, I would appreciate any form of intervention offered. Maybe not at the exact moment it was given, maybe not enough to stop me from doing it anyway, but if anyone cared enough to be so concerned about me then hey, thanks. I’m not gonna blame you for it.

So I’m sorry if this rant-derived entry seems unabashedly vocal or out of line coming from a girl who’s still trying in all her best to correct her own understanding of religion. But reading the above post (comment(s) included), it was quite clear how snide and righteously society viewed such heavy matters as the proper implementation of religion. Albeit in a country that primarily consists of people who claim to belong to such a beautiful Faith shared by so many and over centuries in glorious success, there will always be those who are quick to judge simply without basis.

Sure I am not knowledgable enough to quote off the Qur’an off the bat, or to say I’m any better than anyone else concerning the matter. But I thought that in Islam we are all part of a bigger whole? All brothers and sisters, and isn’t looking out for each other based on the teachings of Quran and hadith the least we can do for each other? Flawed and imperfect as we are, humble servants and mortals no less, how is it that we still impose ourselves and our way of thinking to be superior than anyone else’s?

Isn’t the best guideline already there, in the words of the Quran (in which one has to open their hearts to comprehend, or not how different is it from just any other compilation of text?) and the Rasulullah’s actions as an example? And I use the term guideline very loosely because I know how the whole concept can be misinterpreted, but yes, it’s all really in there. If a Muslim doesn’t believe in this most crucial foundation of their belief than something is clearly out of whack.

Why does it seem that we’re trying to find fault with an effort that is in the best of intentions, even among ourselves?

Filed under: affect change, matters of faith   |  1 Comment