Picking what to say

It is such a simple question. Can or not the Christians use Allah in the Malay Bible? Yes or no? What is Anwar’s stand? Not the opinion of unnamed and probably non-existent scholars in some unknown part of the world. 

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Rebuffed by keepers of his own faith when he tried to preach at a mosque last month, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was welcomed with open arms at the church of the Holy Family in Kajang after the English and Mandarin masses today.

Parish priest Father George Harrison welcomed the opposition leader as “our brother” before he gave the floor to Anwar, who vowed the 1,200-strong crowd with his 25-minute speech on various issues.

But it was Anwar’s bold and direct approach to answering the questions from the congregation that impressed the crowd.

When he was asked about his stand on the religious issues currently affecting the country and the rights of Bahasa Malaysia-speaking Christians to use the word Allah, Anwar said that even international Muslim scholars thought it was a subject unworthy of debate.

“When I asked an international scholar about it, he asked me what kind of question that was.”

“I told him it was Umno’s question, so he explained that Muslims recite five times a day: ‘Praise be to Allah, Lord of Heaven and Earth’.”

“So, if Allah is Lord for the entire universe, how can there be limitations?” Anwar pointed out.

He also stressed that for Umno, the Allah issue was clearly not about faith.

“If it was, then their stand must be binding on all. But in this case they are saying Sabah and Sarawak can use the word but not in the peninsula,” Anwar said to loud cheers.

He then joked that this meant that a person who boarded a flight from Kuching to Kuala Lumpur will say “Insyallah I’m going to KL” when he gets on the flight but when he lands, he will have to say “Alhamdu Lord”.

Anwar’s meeting of the Catholics at the Holy Family church hall comes amidst religious tension between Muslims and Christians which was reignited last year when the Court of Appeal had ruled in October that the Catholic weekly Herald could not use the word Allah in its publication.

The church is appealing the decision.

Herald had won a High Court decision in January 2009 that had overturned the Home Ministry’s ban on the use of the word Allah in its publication.  – Tunku (http://tunkuaisha.blogspot.co.uk/)

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That was what Tunku Aisha reported today. And Tunku Aisha appears excited about Anwar’s “bold and direct approach to answering the questions from the congregation that impressed the crowd.”

We must carefully note, however, that Anwar was asked HIS STAND regarding the ‘Allah word’ controversy but he never really explained his stand although Tunku Aisha and the 1,200-strong audience at the Church of the Holy Family in Kajang think he did.

Anwar is a master at deflecting questions and skirting around the issue by talking a lot but by saying nothing. This is not only Anwar’s forte but also the forte of most politicians the world over who do not want to directly reply to a direct question while making it appear like they have.

If asked, “Dato’ Seri, is Pakatan Rakyat facing inter-party problems”, instead of replying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (because by saying ‘yes’ you would be admitting you are facing problems while by saying ‘no’ you would be lying), the reply would be, “Unlike Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Rakyat believes in consensus and we allow everyone to air their views, unlike in Umno.”

This type of reply will give the ABU-screamers an orgasm. However, are they or are they not facing inter-party problems? This, he never replies.

When asked about his stand regarding the Allah word, he relates what foreign scholars have said (which you cannot confirm anyway) and then cracks jokes to make everyone laugh. But he never confirmed his stand. He just related what others have said on the matter. Which scholar said this and when/where was this said is also not mentioned.

‘Scholars’ are a dime a dozen. And each ‘scholar’ has his or her own and conflicting view on all sorts of issues. Some scholars are of the view that it is legal for Muslims to enter into temporary marriages, say for a week or for just a few days, mainly for purposes of sex.

Say you are travelling to Jakarta for a three-day business trip and you meet a woman who turns you on and you want to have sex with her. However, as a Muslim, it is haram to have sex outside marriage. So you marry her for just three days so that you can ‘legally’ sleep with her. Then, when it is time to go home, you divorce her.

In Islam, this is called nikah mut’ah. Some may even call it prostitution. It depends on which ‘scholar’ you talk to.

Other ‘scholars’ will tell you that, according to the Qur’an, slavery is allowed and Islam has never banned slavery until today. Slaves are a man’s property so you can lawfully have sex with your slave. That is not adultery or sex outside marriage. It is merely exercising your rights over your property.

Hence if you meet a pimp who owns ‘slaves’ (which you can find in many countries) you can buy that woman and have sex with her. It is lawful in Islam. And in some Middle East countries this is actually still being practiced (read the special reports regarding ‘white slavery’ in Muslim countries).

Of course, not many ‘scholars’ would want to talk about this, especially to Christians in a church, because this will give Islam a bad name. So they will tell Christians only what will excite the Christians to give them an orgasm and make them clap and cheer while they will hide these other ‘dirty linen’ from the Christians.

If you want to educate the Christians regarding Islam then tell them everything. Tell the Christians that they are ‘guests’ and second-class citizens in a Muslim country.

Explain to the Christians whether Malaysia is or is not a Muslim country and whether Islam is merely ‘the religion of the Federation’ (as stated in the Constitution) and, therefore, is not even the ‘official’ religion of Malaysia — and whether, therefore, Malaysia is a Secular country or a Muslim country.

There are many things Christians do not understand about Islam and which is Anwar’s duty to educate them since he is giving a sermon in the church to educate Christians about Islam.

What is Anwar’s stand? Not the stand of foreign scholars whom we do not know who they are or what their beliefs are. Anwar’s stand!

It is such a simple question. Can or not the Christians use Allah in the Malay Bible? Yes or no? What is Anwar’s stand? Not the opinion of unnamed and probably non-existent scholars in some unknown part of the world.

Oh, and by the way, some ‘scholars’ say it is haram for a man to be alone with a woman who is not your family member whom you are not allowed to marry. However, if you have breast-fed from that woman, then she becomes your family member so it is not haram to be alone with her.

So all you need to do now is to suck her tits and now you can legally be alone with her. It is no longer haram.

You only need to ask the ‘right’ scholar to be able to make the wrong thing become the right thing to do. And sucking a woman’s tits means you can now be alone with her, or enter into a temporary marriage with her and you can bonk her for the next few days after which you just divorce her and go home to your wife.

Oh, and one more thing, back in the olds days, the Christian ‘scholars’ said that the Latin American Indians are not human (“you only need to look into their eyes to see that they do not possess a soul”) so it is halal to kill them and take their gold and bring it back to Spain.