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5/25/2006
lonely voice of marina mahathir
She is a champion of a sort. A lonely voice in a world where women are supposed to be wrapped up, unheard and unseen. But she is fighting to be heard, to champion the cause of women in society.
She wrote an article on the sentiments and attitude of believers and how they would react when their faiths are questioned. She pointed to the contrasting responses of Christians towards Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code and the Muslims deadly threats towards Salman Rushdie and his Satanic Verses. Both authors and their books touched on issues that challenged the major doctrines of the respective religions. And the way the believers reacted simply lead the world to stereotype them as either rational or prone to violence.
But her main objective is to call for her sisters in Islam to stand up and present another face of rationality and moderation. Would she find enough believers to take up the challenge and shed the shackles placed on them?
That world only exists in the imaginaton of Islamophobes and bigots. Marina herself is testament to the fact that not all Muslim women are 'wrapped up, unseen and unheard'.
ReplyDeleteshe is lucky that she is in malaysia today. and she got a father that makes her untouchable.
ReplyDeleteif she is in middle east, she might be stoned to death.
would malaysia be the same 10 or 20 years down the road? or would it become another middle eastern kingdom and a devout muslim state?
They may have rights as citizens under hte present Constitution. However, democracy is the rule of the majority and the majority of the population of Malaysia are Muslims. If the majority votes to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state, then the minority have very little recourse. They will have to either accept the new environment or leave if they do not want to.
ReplyDeleteBut if the majority have voted to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state, who are Asean and/or the Americans to deny the Malaysians their democratic choice ? Regime change by Asean ? Led by who ? The little red peesai ? I won't worry about the Americans. They're busy getting their asses kicked in Iraq, Afghanistan and now they're spoiling for a fight with Iran.
ReplyDeleteRegime change by Asean ? Now that's a good one. Asean can't even get its act together to resolve the Myanmar issue. They're fast degenerating into what the Commonwealth is today, just a grouping of disparate countries who meet up once in a while to play golf, or have tea.
ReplyDeletei was just being cynical when i talked about regime change. asean trying to meddle with myanmar's internal affairs.
ReplyDeleteand why would asean go against its own principle of non interference in other countries domestic politics? there must be a devil instigating asean to do so.
and there is only one devil who think it is his god damn right, oops, should be devil damn right, to force a regime change in another country.
once asean violates its own principle of non interference and go down the treacherous path of interferring in another country's affair, it must allow other country to do it to them as well.
live by the sword, die by the sword.