Setiap kali isu vaksin dibincangkan oleh pakar-pakar perubatan, ada sahaja netizen yang melontarkan persoalan bahawa vaksin itu agenda Yahudi. Mereka terus salin dari sumber yang tidak berwibawa, bahawa wujudnya korelasi vaksin dengan agenda jahat Yahudi. Tetapi jika diperhatikan betul-betul, pernyataan laman yang dipetik itupun hanya berandaian akan hubungkait antara vaksin dan zionis.
Mereka juga mendakwa sudah ramai doktor-doktor barat yang juga menentang pemberian vaksin. Tanpa mereka sedari bahawa para penentang vaksin negara barat itu sendiri sebahagiannya berideologi Yahudi. Apabila ditanya kepada mereka, berikan nama doktor di Malaysia yang menentang vaksin. Tiada siapa pun boleh memberikan nama. Sejumlah 46,461 orang doktor berdaftar di bawah Majlis Perubatan Malaysia, majoriti menyokong vaksin. Jikalau ada yang menentang, hanyalah doktor yang pelik serta sukar bergaul dengan kebanyakan orang awam. Hanya percaya kepada pendapat peribadi sendiri. Pentingkan diri tanpa melihat kepentingan orang awam.
Dengan pelbagai alasan yang rapuh, mereka terus memutar-mutar helah yang sama. Sedangkan kesemua kegusaran mereka itu sudah pun dijawab oleh pakar-pakar yang lebih berwibawa bahawa andaian-andaian mereka hanya berpunca dari takut pada diri sendiri dan juga takut dengan merosot jualan produk kesihatan yang mereka jual. Sebahagian besar dari penentang tegar vaksin adalah penjual produk kesihatan.
Allah beri kita akal untuk berfikir. Ilmu perubatan ini adalah ilmu alat untuk kebaikan manusia. Ianya sesuatu yang baik dan sudah hilang dari orang Islam. Sebagaimana disebut oleh Rasulullah SAW:
“Al hikmah (kebijaksanaan/ilmu) itu adalah barang yang hilang dari orang mukmin, maka dimana sahaja ia dapati, dialah yang berhak terhadapnya” [Maksud hadis riwayat Imam Tirmizi]
Kita terdoktrin dengan yahudi, yahudi, yahudi atau Barat! Segala apa yang datang dari barat perlu ditolak? Sedangkan sebahagian besar penulisan ilmu perubatan ditulis oleh orang Islam jua. Mereka cedok dan kembangkan ilmu itu dari cendekiawan muslim juga. Banyak alatan pembedahan adalah direka oleh saintis muslim, barat yang menirunya dan mendakwa mereka buat. Kitab Tibb Nabawi karangan Ibnu Sina yang tebal berjilid itu masih wujud dan bongkar oleh barat satu persatu. Barat bukan bermakna yahudi, walau sebahagian mereka adalah yahudi! Facebook pun dari yahudi! Telefon samsung pun yahudi! Jika begitu, kita sudah menjadi yahudi? Menggunakan ilmu alat ini tidak menjadikan kita Yahudi atau zionis. Nauzubillahi min zaalik.
Ilmu imunologi yang sebahgiannya membicarakan mengenai vaksin juga dipelopori oleh saintis ulung Islam bernama Al Razi. Penemuan dan permulaan pembangunan ilmu imunisasi dimulakan oleh saintis Islam yang hebat sekitar abad ke 15 dahulu. Malah penemuan konsep imunisasi bagi penyakit measles (campak) dan Smallpox (cacar) adalah dari Al Razi. Konsep yang sama, cuma barat mengembangkan ilmu itu.
Saya ke Gaza 2012 melihat Hospital Central Gaza, mereka menggunakan sepenuhnya ubatan (termasuk vaksin) dan teknologi perubatan barat! Takkan lah mereka menolak kebaikan (perubatan moden) ini walaupn Gaza dibantai oleh israhell laknatullah setiap hari.
Saya melihat sendiri sistem perubatan dan kesihatan Arab Saudi sepanjang 3 kali penglibatan rombongan perubatan haji, mereka juga menggunakan sepenuhnya perubatan ‘barat’ yang kononnya Yahudi itu. Malah mereka mewajibkan semua jemaah haji disuntik vaksin meningococcal! Adakah mereka bebal atau turut dipengaruhi Yahudi? Adakah mereka tidak melihat ini agenda Yahudi Freemason? Dek kerana vaksin tidak dibuat dalam negara-negara Islam?
Saya tahu isu Rockfeller dan vaksin, tetapi mana bukti mereka membunuh umat? Tetapi kita sendiri melihat bukti atas kapasiti penjagaan kesihatan yang semakin maju termasuk penggunaan vaksin, kematian bayi semakin menurun.
In February, a video of Imam Nalla Mohamed Abdul Jameel reciting a prayer in Arabic that said “God help us against Jews and Christians”, among other things, was circulated online.
He was charged in court and pleaded guilty last week to promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion, and committing an act prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony.
He also apologised to Christian and Jewish religious leaders for his remarks. He was fined $4,000 and has been repatriated back to India.
The issue has come to a closure in a “uniquely Singapore” way. It judiciously combined the application of law via the courts, lots of community engagement efforts by Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam and Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim’s dialogue, and with religious leaders of different faiths. Mr Shanmugam also met the imam for a cordial breakfast.
Few countries in the world have the opportunity to adopt this balanced approach to resolve a sensitive issue, because it needs the existence of social peace and religious harmony, which Singapore works very hard to preserve.
With this closure, it is useful now to deal with the “elephant in the room”, which is Islam’s doctrinal position on the “religious other”.
This discussion is important to make clear to non-Muslim Singaporeans that enmity towards non-Muslims was never a part of Islamic doctrine.
ISLAM AND NON-MUSLIMS: A HISTORY
Islam’s position on non-Muslims was first shaped by historical conditions. This early position evolved over time so that it remained appropriate to the context of the day as the dynamics in the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims changed.
The Quran spoke warmly of Christians because they were more receptive to the message of monotheism, compared with local idol-worshipping tribes in Mecca, when Islam first came.
Furthermore, it was the Christians of Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) who gave refuge to Muslims who fled Mecca to escape persecution.
Similarly, Muslim-Jewish relations in the early Islamic era were positive as they were shaped by an agreement that manifested the congenial dynamics between the two faith communities.
More importantly, early Muslims conceptualised the community of believers to be originally independent of confessional identities.
They regarded Christians and Jews to be members of their community.
It was only later that membership in the community of believers came to be seen as a confessional identity in itself, and this had a lot to do with the prophethood of Muhammad.
Tensions, therefore, occurred in Muslim-Christian as well as Muslim-Jewish relations and due to sharp differences in a number of other doctrinal matters.
Notwithstanding these fundamental differences, the special relationship among the three religions as part of the Abrahamic family of religions was preserved.
The divisive issue of Prophet Muhammad’s prophethood was played down and, instead, the focus was on what bound the three faith communities together.
These are the belief in monotheism, the Last Day and the importance of doing good deeds on this earth.
The attitude of early Muslims was to preserve unity of the community of believers so that they could be assured of Jewish and Christian support to defend their city, Medina, against the common enemy in Mecca, who were not monotheists.
This explained why Muslims did not force Jews and Christians to accept the status of Prophet Muhammad as their prophet, too, but chose instead to focus on teachings that could be accepted by all three faith communities.
But the bigger cause of conflict and division was less religious and more political. It was the violations of parties of the agreement to honour it and fulfil their obligations. These violations were seen as tantamount to treason.
Violators were severely dealt with as traitors and put to death – a punishment that was the norm during wartime.
Despite challenges in keeping alliances and violations of the agreement, Jews and Christians were not regarded by Muslims as enemies.
Who, then, were singled out by early Muslims in their supplication?
THE REAL ENEMY
The supplication by Muslims was for divine help in their war against the disbelievers in Mecca, who were superior both in numbers and strength.
They were the enemies of the early Muslims only because they wanted to kill the Prophet, annihilate Muslims and extinguish Islam from the face of Arabia. It was, therefore, a matter of life and death for the Muslims.
The Prophet’s mission spanned over 23 years, out of which 16 years were spent in a state of heightened tension and war with the disbelievers of Mecca.
Twenty such wars were fought and the Prophet was pained when about 1,000 of his companions were martyred.
The Prophet supplicated to seek God’s help against disbelievers using verses from the Quran that specifically mention them (kafirun and mushrikun).
There is an important qualification, though.
The supplication was not targeted at all disbelievers. It was specifically aimed at disbelievers whose plan was to kill Muslims, drive them out of their homes and destroy Islam.
Disbelieving people who were not engaged in such sinister plans were not the ones Muslims supplicated against.
INCLUSIVE CATEGORISATION
Another pertinent fact is that, besides Christians and Jews who occupy a special relationship with Muslims as People of the Book, there are also a number of other religious communities who enjoy this special status in the eyes of Muslims.
The Quran has categorised Sabians as People of the Book, while there are scholars who also included Zoroastrians.
There are other less known facts.
For example, there was a religious ruling issued in AD710 by Islamic scholars in Kufa, Iraq, to accord Buddhists the same status as monotheists.
This ruling was in response to a query by a young general of the Muslim army, Muhammad Qasim, who upon conquering Sindh province in India was petitioned by the local Buddhist community to allow them to continue to practise Buddhism and preserve their temples. The ruling accorded the Buddhists in question the same status as monotheists (like Jews and Christians) and provided privileges to them, considering them People of the Book, but they were obliged to pay taxes.
Similarly, from an early period, when Muslims arrived in India, Hindus were designated People of the Book, a practical solution that allowed Muslim rulers to permit Hindus to live in peace within the Muslim empire as long as they paid taxes. This also explained why some Muslim mystics consider the Hindu scripture, the Vedas, as a revealed Book and believed that Lords Rama and Krishna could be prophets of God.
As for Taoism, the former grand mufti of Egypt (Sheikh Ali Gomaa) was asked at an inter-faith dinner during his visit to Singapore in June 2014 whether Taoists are People of the Book. He turned to Taoist leaders and asked if their teachings were based on a sacred text, to which an affirmative reply was given. The former Egyptian mufti stated his position that Taoists are People of the Book.
A word of caution is needed here.
It is never claimed that all religions are the same and that religious pluralism is advocated here. All religions are different, although they share the same roots. Religions are like the Banyan tree – they have shared roots, appear to have many trunks (although there is only one trunk) and have many branches that sprawl in different directions as they reach for the sky.
The Prophet of Islam respected all religions; he never denigrated any religion or prayed for the destruction of any religious community. Muslims supplicate for divine help against those, regardless of religion, who wish to harm them in any way.
Imam Nalla Mohamed Abdul Jameel, an Indian national who is facing police investigations for his remarks that had allegedly insulted Christians and Jews during his Friday sermons at a mosque, on Friday apologised for his “act of indiscretion”, which he acknowledged has no place in Singapore’s multireligious and multicultural society.
Early last month, a police report was lodged against an unnamed imam who had supposedly quoted a verse from the Quran along the lines of “God grant us victory over Jews and Christians”, among other things. His comments were captured in a video and shared online.
In his apology on Friday (March 31), Mr Nalla said he was “filled with great remorse for the inconvenience, tension and trauma that I have caused to this peaceful country”.
His actions were also “not complementary to the ethos and essence of this young yet great nation”, he added.
Mr Nalla noted that he had recited an additional supplication in Arabic, which was taken from an old text that originated from his village in India. It was not an extract from the Quran, he added.
“As a resident here from a foreign land, I should have practised my faith in accordance with, and appropriate to, the social norms and laws of this country. I fully admit that my said actions have no place, wheresoever, in this extremely multi-religious and multi-cultural society,” he said.
Mr Nalla, who said he is “very relieved that the society has remained calm” amid this episode, added that he fully respects Singapore’s laws and appreciates the concerns of Singaporeans. “I am truly sorry that I had offended you, and I must bear full responsibility for my actions, as part of my duty to all Singaporeans and residents,” he said.
An imam under police investigation for allegedly making remarks against Christians and Jews during his Friday sermons at a mosque has apologised.
His lawyer Noor Marican said the imam made the apology at the Ministry of National Development building on Friday morning (Mar 31), in front of members of the Indian Muslim association and other religious council members.
Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugamhad said in Parliament religious preaching that encourages violence or pits one religion against another will not be tolerated in Singapore.
Video of the imam’s remarks uploaded to social media sparked widespread debate, with some criticising the uploader for whipping up tensions between religious groups, and others saying he was right in bringing the matter to light. Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim called for calm in the Muslim community and said “on such sensitive matters, it would be better to go to the authorities in the first instance, rather than online”.
By Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir, Associate Professor of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University
It is well-known that Singapore is a multi-religious society. The 2014 report by Pew named our city-state as the most religiously diverse among the 232 countries studied. What is assumed in this discourse is that all religions are the same and subjected to similar state-society relations.
2014 ranking on Religious Diversity Index by Pew Research Center
The fact is, Islam is the most regulated religion in our tiny island and this has been the case for decades. From the appointment of a Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs, to the creation of a statutory board called the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) where the Mufti is located, and to the Administration of Muslim Law Act that has regulatory powers over local mosques and madrasahs (Islamic schools), there is no doubt that Islam is given a unique attention by the state.
A stark under-appreciation of this social reality, especially among the non-Muslims, is apparent to me in the decade or so that I have been teaching in our local universities. I have always asked my students, that if all the Churches were made to say the exact same thing for their Sunday service with a text provided by an office of a statutory board, how would the Christian community react? The students could not even begin to imagine this! Will this then breed mistrust among the Christian community? This is but just one issue besieging the Muslim populace in Singapore.
When I had coffee with a top local social scientist of NUS a couple of weeks back, we agreed that Islam is the most hierarchical and bureaucratized religion in Singapore. Failure to understand how Islam is managed leads to a failure in understanding the reaction of its local adherents.
This distrust of the Muslim religious elites amidst the disciplining of Islam, from prescribed texts for the weekly Friday prayer sermons, to appointed instructors to “upgrade Islam” through the Asatizah Recognition Scheme that makes it mandatory for every religious teacher to be registered (even those teaching Qur’anic reading in the local neighbourhoods), impact heavily on the religious elites. Many scholars have called this age as one characterised by a crisis of religious authority. The situation can be especially dire in our local Muslim community, given the unique structures bearing upon them.
Distrust breeds distrust. It is not that Singaporean Muslims are predisposed towards being rude or as the Minister of Law put it, “kurang ajar”, towards the state-endorsed religious authority. It is the structures that have been put in place that create such an environment.
The recent issue regarding the police report made against an Imam for making alleged “incendiary” supplications against Christians and Jews that are outside the MUIS-endorsed text cannot be disentangled from the issue of the autonomy of the Muslim clerics. I have engaged the local religious elites numerous times over the last few years and have rarely met a group that is more in fear. The culture of fear among the religious class is often talked about and in one of the engagements that I had with a group of religious elites, one of them candidly lamented, “We are directed and scripted.”
It has often been mentioned that attitude reflects leadership. The angry reaction of the Muslim community in light of the Imam issue should be seen against this backdrop. The absence of the voices of the religious elites in the initial stages of the debacle created a void in the community who then went online to make sense of the matter.
Last week, Assoc Prof Khairudin Aljunied was singled out in parliament for encouraging the “vilification” of the whistle-blower, Terence Nunis. The fact is that hundreds of Muslims had begun pitching in their views on various platforms after Nunis’ pronouncements on Facebook. This was substantiated in a belated statement by the Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs, Assoc Prof Yaacob Ibrahim, who mentioned that the video uploaded by Nunis had indeed “sparked a storm” and “generated many emotions both online and offline. Many in our community felt angry, because they believe that the postings could be used to cast aspersions on Islam and the asatizah in our Mosques”.
It is interesting to note that both Assoc Prof Khairudin and the Mufti appropriated a satirical and poetic style respectively, as means of social critique. However, it has been well-documented that the Singaporean brand of criticism is often manifested through humour, satire and poetics as seen in Talkingcock, Mr Brown, Yawning Bread, Jack Neo’s films and the like. Indirect criticism is characteristic of societies living under soft-authoritarian rule.
There are no differences in opinion that if the allegations against the Imam are proven to be true, his incitement has no place in our multi-religious society. But if it is not – and many among the Muslim community have come to this conclusion upon the explanations provided by numerous local religious scholars who have later gone public in discussing the meaning and context of the supplication – then sadly, the Muslim community will see this as yet another example of disciplining and an attempt to emasculate the local religious fraternity despite the state’s paradoxical pleas for Singaporean Muslims to give the local religious scholars their ears.
It remains to be seen in the aftermath of the Imam episode if the state would choose to go down the path of imposing further restrictions to ensure that the MUIS-endorsed texts be read to the letter, curtailing any creative license of preachers and punishing any dissent towards state-appointed authority. The more enlightened way must be to empower the religious scholars in the field and to give them ownership over their areas of expertise to prevent religious discourse from being co-opted, hijacked and subjected to ad hominem attacks.
The coming forward of a good number of religious elites, including its umbrella body, Singapore Islamic Scholars & Religious Teachers Association (PERGAS), with regard to this Imam issue is a good development that needs to be applauded. The social media provides a ready platform for this. These attempts to speak truth to power should also be captured in the mainstream media. PERGAS’ need to again clarify their position after feeling that they were misrepresented in the Malay mainstream media regarding their statement towards Assoc Prof Khairudin is not a good sign. The perception that the Malay mainstream media is not balanced and selective in their reporting has also led many to turn to the cyber-sphere to air their perspectives.
In fostering this development of active citizenship, we need to keep an eye on encouraging diversity and not just promoting those with a certain kind of thinking that the state can easily manage. This is in line with what the PM had recently mentioned in his interview on February 24th in Today newspaper under the title, “Leaders must be able to take criticism, acknowledge mistakes”. Only then can we move forward as a nation.
