Let us show compassion and extend our help to our Muslim brothers and sisters who are being brutally oppressed and mistreated – in Gaza specifically and also elsewhere like in Myanmar, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Iraq, Syria, indeed fee kulli makaan (wherever they may be). We can do this in the following ways:
1) If possible, on a daily basis perform the Taubah and Hajat prayers. Do so wholeheartedly. Let the tears of remorse and repent flow and wet your cheeks.
2) Find out the reality of what is happening in the affected countries. Do not merely depend on Mainstream Media. Make an effort to get information from other more reliable sources of information – especially from genuine Islamic resources.
Find out the historical and political background of the places in conflict. Spread the word through FB postings, etc. Talk to your friends and family members.
3) Boycott products of any company that support tyranny openly and directly in whatever capacity possible.
4) Recite the Qunut Nazilah regularly. It can be done in all fardh prayers – alone or in congregation. As it constitutes part of one’s salat, it must be done in Arabic. Find out how. It can also be done outside of solat.
5) Recite the zikr with all your heart and mind; Ya Muntaqim (Oh Ye Avenging One), Ya Qahhar (Oh Ye Imposing One) & Ya Jabbar (Oh Ye Powerful One).
6) Support and provide financial assistance/donations to aid organisations that practice transparency.
7) Liberate our hearts and minds, and any other form of attachment (financial or otherwise) to whatever parties directly or indirectly associated with the aggressors.
9) Let us close rank and build alliance between Muslim groups. Support any group that opposes the oppression by lawful means in Islam. Do not limit or narrow down the struggle. Any and all parties that show even tacit approval to the oppression, hold them accountable!
10) Avoid debates and arguments in issues of genuine khilaf (difference of opinions among ulama mu’tabar). Advise those who are engaged in the never-ending and unproductive debates to refrain from doing so. We need to come united and channel our energy in combating against bigger threats.
Thanks to a vigilant Singaporean, Rilek1Corner was alerted again on another racist and offensive comment by a male Chinese who goes by the name of ‘Issac Teck Shuean‘.
Issac who stated on his Facebook profile to be residing in Singapore and born in Johor, had called Malays “stupid and poor” and “extremist“.
Last month, another male Singaporean Chinese man, Peter Hu lodged a police complaint to say that he did not post an offensive comment on Muslims. In his attempt to cover up his insensitive remark, Peter Hu claimed that his account was “hacked”. In another posting he claimed that the image was “doctored”. Later on, he said that he was unaware of the offensive posting existence until his friends had informed him about it.
So which is the truth? One story, different information coming from the same guy.
Rilek1Corner was informed that Peter Hu who is openly gay, an avid PinkDot SG supporter and an LGBT activist, had previously argued with several anti-PinkDot activists in a Facebook group called ‘We are against PinkDot’.
Another female Singapore Chinese woman named ‘Kim’ who has an Instagram account ‘@kimmeeoow’ also said offensive remarks on Muslims and Malays.
She claimed her Instagram account was hacked. But preliminary investigations from netizens and tip-off from her friends have revealed that none of her social media accounts was hacked because she was posting as usual after she made those offensive comments. The police are also currently investigating this case.
Also in the hall of shame, we have Amy Cheong who was an employee of NTUC was terminated due to her tactless insensitive remarks on Malays.
Her insensitive comments have deeply hurt the Malay community and left a lasting impact thus far.
While we understand offensive comments made by non Malays/Muslims such as Peter Hu, Amy Cheong, Kimmeeoow, and now Issac Teck Shuean are not true reflection of majority, we the minority, cannot help but notice the increasing number of individuals who are unhappy towards both the Malay and Muslim communities.
Our advice: Keep those thoughts to yourself. Don’t share it on social media because chances are, you will be featured here. And the rest will be history.
Racism is not confined to one race – all communities need to join hands to end it. It is an issue ignored, downplayed and denied.
Let’s move forward. Let’s end racial prejudice and religious discrimination.
I’m getting frustrated being labeled as non-Malay. Why? Here’s my story.
My mom is a Filipino Catholic and my dad is a Malay Muslim. None of my parents convert, and so I was brought up going to church several times a year. Never been to a mosque because my dad has never cultivate any Islamic values in me or in our family. At this age, I still don’t know what is my religion, and I like it that way. But this topic is not about my religion. Being brought up speaking both Malay and Tagalog, and having experience both cultures, I do have a valid testimony to this confusion. Today I want to share my story about being a Filipino-Malay.
But first, I think the term Filipino Malay is oxymoronic.
Filipinos are of Malay stock. I know because I study SEA’s history in uni and this is my area of research.
People of ASEAN mostly they came from Malay stock that is why our face and skin complexion looks very much the same. Although there are many mixed marriage it didn’t only happen in the Philippines.
In the Philippines they call it mestizo while in other countries they have their own abbreviation. Please don’t think that Malay people in the Philippines are the only Malay who practice inter-racial marriages. There are many others in Indonesia (Dutch), Malaysia & Singapore (Chinese, Indian, British, Portuguese), Brunei etc.
Because of different religious background people may forget that Filipinos are actually Malay because predominantly Malays in ASEAN are Muslim while in the Philippines almost all of them are Catholic.
You don’t lump the race Malay as people who subscribe to the religion Islam, and therefore they are Muslims. Neither do you claim all Filipinos are Catholics.
Language is a little bit different but they derived from the ancient Malay language. While Indonesians, Malaysians, and Bruneians can understand each other, many find it hard to understand Tagalog because it is completely different language BUT there are words that are similar or sounded similar. I don’t think there is any problem if people from these countries want to learn Tagalog/Bahasa Melayu/Indonesia.
Tagalog is partly influenced by Spanish language, Malay, Chinese and local language like kapampangan, waray, cebuano.
Spanish = trabajo is trabaho in tagalog
Malay = kerbau is carabao in tagalog, mata is same in both language, as of kanan, kambing, anak etc.
If asked about their race, most Filipinos would identify as being Malay. Filipinos are taught in schools to be proud of their Malay heritage and encouraged to strengthen their ties with other Malays in Southeast Asia.
But Filipinos wishing to migrate in Singapore have to deny this fundamental identification because the Singapore government rejects the classification of Filipinos as Malay. But if Filipinos are not Malay, what ethnicity are they? Officially, Singapore recognizes immigrants from the neighboring Philippines as part of the racial category referred to as “Other.”
Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority have clarified that new Singapore citizens of Filipino origin are not classified as Malays. They are typically classified as ‘Others’ under the race category. Indeed, this was affirmed by Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim who wrote on Facebook that Filipinos are classified as “Others” and not as Malays.
But why refuse the Malay background of Filipinos in the first place? Perhaps it has something to do with the special privileges accorded to the Malay minority in Singapore. Article 152 of the Constitution of Singapore states that the government “shall recognize the special position of the Malays, who are the indigenous people of Singapore, and accordingly it shall be the responsibility of the Government to protect, safeguard, support, foster and promote their political, educational, religious, economic, social and cultural interests and the Malay language.”
For Filipino immigrants, it must come as a shock for them to be told by Singaporean authorities that they are not Malays. To avoid immigration troubles, perhaps it is more convenient for Filipino workers to shade the “Others” category when filing paperwork than to insist that they are Malays.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) spotted by media wearing a luxury watchISIL launched their own passport earlier this week
It is difficult to define someone who recognises no limits, if the definition of limits is constantly changing.
ACCORDING to the West, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), is the world’s most dangerous extremist. Is this a fair statement?
An extremist is a transgressor, who recognises no limit in his mind, speech and acts. He could be anybody. Defined as such, an extremist is not necessarily an Arab or a Muslim, as it is commonly portrayed in the media.
He could possibly be a Christian, a Buddhist, a secular democrat, a scientist, a human rights activist or a feminist.
What makes al-Baghdadi an extremist in the eyes of the West is perhaps his terror tactics, but the same could be said of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
Being elected through a democratic process does not give them the right to determine the life or death of the rest of the world. But that was precisely what Bush and Blair did to the Iraqis, and that has made them the extremists in the eyes of Iraqis and Muslims in general. In the definition above, it is assumed that there must be a limit for everything for it to be rendered good and acceptable.
So an extremist is not a good person because he trespasses what others consider as the limit, regardless of whether he does not know the limit or he simply does not want to honour it knowingly.
But the real problem is, what are those limits? And on whose authority are they to be accepted as the limit that everyone has to observe?
In the man-made system known as democracy, man is said to be the measure of everything, so the limit is determined by man. But what kind of man is actually determining the fate of the world today?
What is the idea that governs his actions and behaviour, like his idea about truth and reality? About right and wrong? And about happiness?
For a secular man, reality is limited to physical reality and truth to factual scientific truth. Based on that, he has developed a peculiar idea about happiness and morality that is basically in constant change.
A secular world view lacks permanence because of its affirmation and preoccupation only with the evanescent aspect of existence. In fact, it is the world view that is built upon the rejection of anything permanent.
So by nature this world view actually has no place for god and religion, because it insists that what is understood by “god” and “religion” must also be open to change and reinterpretation.
Coming back to our definition of extremism, we must conclude in the first place that secularism is itself intrinsically an ideology that recognises no limit. It is based upon the rejection of a permanent truth and reality, making it impossible to agree upon a definition.
Without an agreed upon definition, how are we to know that a limit has been trespassed, effectively making the trespasser an extremist? Yet the secular western world has been all too certain that they always “know” the limit and hence the transgressor.
A correct definition would tell the limit of the thing defined. An extremist is the person who does not know the definition, or he does but does not honour it because he believes that a definition of something could and should change with time.
Not knowing the definition is a simple ignorance that can be easily remedied by imparting the knowledge. But when the person is bent on believing that no definition is forever fixed, something is appallingly wrong with his way of thinking. It is an indication that his belief is characteristically similar to that of the secular man that we have described above.
The so-called jihadis are extremists by virtue of their ignorant rejection of important definitions agreed upon by Islamic scholars throughout the ages. Inspired by the misguided Wahhabi ideology, they have caused great confusion and disunity among the Muslims worldwide.
They are the ones portrayed in the Western media as the Sunnis, yet the title has nothing to do with Islamic orthodoxy known as Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah. The term “Sunni” has been hijacked by the fanatic Wahhabis, who have neither respect towards nor affiliation with authentic Islamic tradition and scholarship. They are the ones who have caused a great anxiety to the West and the world today; yet both are similar in one respect: they do not know the limit.
> Md. Asham Ahmad is Senior Fellow of Ikim’s Centre for Shariah, Law and Politics. The views expressed here are entirely his own.
