Interesting, is it not?

By MT Webmaster On Nov 15, 2013

I once related a story (I think it was eight or nine years ago) about one of Anwar Ibrahim’s old classmates in MCKK, a retired army colonel, who went to do his Friday prayers at the KLCC mosque. The imam was going on and on about utter nonsense and this ‘Old Boy Budak Kolet’ stood up and shouted at the imam to shut up and sit down.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Islam’s holiest day Friday is where Muslims perform a weekly communal prayer and listen to sermons to guide their life. But for the past two weeks, national laureate A. Samad Said has been attending the Friday prayers in KL’s Masjid India where the sermon is preached in Tamil.

Fondly known as Pak Samad, the octogenarian told The Malaysian Insider yesterday that he does not understand Tamil but that does not bother him one bit. In fact, he is relieved.

Relieved because he prefers not to understand what the message is as the sermons have turned too political for his liking. Samad used to fulfill his Friday religious obligation at the As-Syakirin mosque in KLCC but there was one Friday where the imam called on the people not to demonstrate, but right after prayers, the congregation demonstrated. That made him feel uncomfortable and so he moved to the National Mosque.

But it wasn’t any different. He stopped doing so two weeks ago because the “preacher was reading the sermon and not preaching”.

He became disillusioned as politics and BN propaganda are being propagated in mosques these days through sermons prepared by the federal Department of Islamic Development (Jakim).

(As I see it: http://helpvictor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/political-sermons-in-malaysian-mosques.html)

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The imam was so shocked he actually did shut up and sit down. A few weeks later the imam died and this Old Boy felt so bad because he was not sure whether the imam was so shocked that his heart gave up on him.

Invariably, this Old Boy retired colonel is quite a maverick. I suppose that is why he was my friend although he was not from my batch but from Anwar’s batch.

Now we have another maverick, Pak Samad, who would rather pray in a Tamil-speaking mosque than a Bahasa Malaysia-speaking mosque because he does not want to hear (or rather hear but not understand) what the imam has to say in his kutbah (sermon).

So, yes, I am not the only maverick in town.

When I was detained under the Internal Security Act in 2008, one of the four ‘criminal charges’ listed in my Detention Order was my so-called crime of insulting Islam. And this crime was the result of a police report made against me by JAKIM, the authority that is behind all these Friday prayer sermons.

It seems JAKIM took offense to my criticism of their kutbah. Hence that is perceived as an insult to Islam.

During the two weeks interrogation session, I argued that I did not insult Islam. Instead, I insulted Muslims, in particular Muslims who distort the teachings of Islam and give Islam a bad name. The fact that I wrote ‘Muslims are the real enemy of Islam’ shows that it is Muslims and not Islam that I insulted.

However, that ‘defence’ I put up did not stop them from packing me off to Kamunting two weeks later. And in Kamunting I was ordered to attend religious rehabilitation classes.

I also remember writing some years back about how one day I was so disgusted with the kutbah of the imam of the Sungai Buloh mosque that halfway through I stood up and walked out of the mosque. I did not wait for the prayers to begin and never went back to that mosque again.

When I criticise JAKIM’s kutbah that is perceived as an insult to Islam. How would JAKIM perceive Pak Samad’s boycott of the kutbah by going to pray in a mosque that he does not understand what the kutbah says?

Interesting, is it not?