Studying in Melbourne, I've been slightly out of touch with the going-ons in Malaysia. So when on Saturday a friend told me about how a group of Malays from Shah Alam's Section 23 protested against the proposed relocation of a Hindu temple to their housing area by carrying a severed cow's head to the Selangor MB's office and stepping on it in a show of their protest, I was horrified!
Just a few thoughts that I need to get off my chest here:
We Hindus worship the cow as a sacred animal. I don't eat beef because I was brought up that way, as a mark of respect towards the sanctity of the cow. So of course I was offended when I read the article on the Malaysian Insider regarding the protest (
here) and shocked and disgusted when I saw the pictures of the cow-head. Part of me was angry that these people had resorted to such a lowly form of protest - surely there are other ways to make their opposition heard? And part of me was horribly saddened by the fact that there are still Malaysians with practically zero knowledge of the other cultures and religions in the country, and no tact in the way they do things. Do they not realise how seriously insulting it is to Hindus to walk around with a cow's head like that? It's not the same as just carrying a racially provocative banner. It is so much worse.
I've read and heard comments asking how these Section 23 residents would feel if other people carried a pig's head to them instead (which, for the record, I do not condone). But I say, the impact is not the same. The Muslims don't worship the pig, they just aren't supposed to eat it. It would be an insult to certain Islamic practices, but it wouldn't be a direct insult to the very core of the religion itself.
I'm not a person who is ever big on the whole revenge thing. And I'm a firm believer in using diplomacy to settle problems. It makes me sad that something as simple as a temple relocation could be blown out of proportion in this manner. It makes me sad to see Malaysians behaving this way. It makes me sad to see the very rude and angry comments posted in response to this issue. Surely we have all been educated well enough to know better? To act better? To understand better?
And all this makes me wonder when Malaysians will ever be ready to call ourselves one collective Malaysian race and be patient and tolerant enough to accommodate for the vast cultural differences that make up our country. I know that we are getting there... But will it ever be possible to actually
reach our goal of a 1 Malaysia?
Going back to the issue at hand, I looked up the video recording of the protest and found it on YouTube. I'm not going to post it on this blog, but the link to it is
here if anyone who hasn't checked it out already wants to check it out. (This probably won't be viewable in Malaysia.) Grotesque as it may be, I think it is important for people to watch it and recognise that this is not how we want our citizens to act; not how we
ourselves should act. And I hope that by reading the comments related to the video (though a select few voiced out some good points), everyone sees how useless and detrimental it is to be blinded by anger and hatred - about 95% of the comments on this video were absolute rubbish.
Also, I want to make clear of the fact that I am fully aware that this protest is not reflective of the general Muslim population in Malaysia, but just a small handful of misled, uneducated and intolerant people. And I would like to remind everyone else not to make this mistake of generalising all Malaysian Muslims in this manner.
Lastly, I wish the Malaysian government would do more to address this issue - to remand the protesters or even, at the least, to voice out their disappointment about the whole thing. But no. Instead, they attempt to emphatise with the protesters and explain their misled actions (article from the Malaysian Insider
here). I'm sorry, but I
have tried to see things from their (the protesters) point of view and I just cannot understand how they could bring themselves to do something as barbaric as brandishing a cow's head no matter how angry they were. Protest, I understand. But not the way they did it. That's just wrong :(
So anywayyy, those are my thoughts on this issue. Feel free to comment (but please don't be rude).
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