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Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Those Arab 'friends'

Below is my letter to Malaysiakini titled Knowing who your true friends are.

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I am quite tempted to say that Helen Ang's article
Your children's future in an Islamic state has jackals snapping at her heels for nothing, but I won't [smile!].

But it's amazing that her quite factual essay has triggered off a few raves and rants accusing her of being an Islamophobe. I would like to know what or where Ang has written in her article to deserve such a wild accusation.

Ang made an astute observation that 'Malaysian involvement in the Gaza flotilla and Malaysia's response to the Israeli military operation against the pro-Palestinian activists both unite Umno, PAS and PKR in a cause beloved of the Muslim world' but by contrast there was an absence of similar outrage to atrocities witnessed in Myanmar, Sudan and Sri Lanka, a fact very few can deny.

Now, she made neither insult nor insinuation when she concluded that 'There is no mystery as it is quite natural that the Muslim brotherhood should be more concerned about the fate of their brethren. It is only the zealous proponents of universal brotherhood who mistakenly believe that this inclination of the ummah may be something unnatural.'

Talking about the Muslim brotherhood I'm going to leave Ang with her erudite and most observant article, and move on to highlight a few points about the ummah.

Following the Boxing Day tsunami, as the Western and Eastern world rallied to the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the victim, with a small nation like Australia donating Australian $1 billion to mainly Muslim Indonesians, the parsimony of the Middle-East Arabs, particularly the Midas-rich Kuwaitis should be recalled to remind Malaysian Muslims who their real brothers in need have been.

Kuwait initially donated US$1 million to the tsunami victims, an amount equal to the gift from an American individual Sandra Bullock. Meanwhile the Saudi Croesus offered (initially) US$10 million to equal another individual's donation, German Michael Schumacher. That these two Arab countries subsequently raised it to $2 and 30 million respectively but then only after they were lambasted by the media of the Gulf countries should not hide their pathetic commitments to helping the ummah.

Not only that, those miserly Gulf Arab nations added insult to injury by claiming from their mosque pulpits that the tsunami victims were evil sinners. Yes, the Kuwaiti Parliament heard one of its members, Walid Tabtabai, claimed that Allah sent the tsunami to punish the immoral and unjust, in other words, a case of azab-e-Ilahi or the wrath of God for the sins of those tsunami victims.

So the poor Muslim farmers and fishermen in Aceh were immoral and unjust. As Tarek Fatah, a progressive Muslim leader and television host based in Toronto, commented in disgust: 'What sick mind could come up with this description? The Kuwaitis and Saudi Islamists lecturing the world about morality is an outrage.'

'Or is it that in the eyes of most Kuwaitis and Saudis, the dead belonged to the despised underclass who live as fourth class citizens in the Gulf States. Dark skinned Indian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian; truck drivers, cooks and maids; all children of a lesser God in the eyes of these Islamists of the Gulf.'

I recall dashing off a letter
Asian victims children of a lesser God.

But whoa, when subsequently Katrina hit New Orleans, the Kuwait who offered the tsunami victims a miserly US$2 million (reminder: which it subsequently and grudgingly increased from 1 to 2 million only after much criticism from the Gulf press) become shockingly generous and immediately gave US$500 million, yes half a billion dollars, to the Americans.

Obviously to the Kuwaiti parliamentarians, mullahs and government, the American victims in New Orleans were less immoral and less unjust than Indonesians, and therefore more deserving and needier of their generous donations.

By the way, Qatar gave the tsunami relief $25 million but the victims of Katrina, $100 million. So much for Muslim brotherhood.

While I, too, have been one who criticised the Israelis for their atrocity against the Peace Flotilla, like some of my friends I wonder when the Malaysian Muslims will be criticising the Egypt government for its complicity in blockading Gaza.

Egypt's fratricidal backstabbing may be traced to the US's carte blanche imprimatur to Israel - Israel wants Gaza blockaded, US swiftly passes word to Egypt, and Egypt immediately complies. As reward for its obedience, US provides Egypt with arms (always inferior to what it gives Israel) and US$2 billion in aid annually.

To put it bluntly, while Palestine has been a victim to the Israeli rapist, Egypt has been a whore to the US godfather. I am beginning to wonder who's the Islamophobe.

8 comments:

  1. In several postings you mentioned Helen Ang.
    Who is she that you are so enamored about?
    Never heard of her.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Eh..not too sure about this Ummah thingy, didn't Iran and Irag during the Gulf war were getting at each other throats during the 80s ?
    Didn't they fight for a good eight year from 1980 to 1988 ?

    Even now Shia, Sunni and the Wahabi are killing each others .

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear KT, The facts are:

    1) Birds of the feather flock together. People who share the same interests and beliefs/values do tend to group together and ignore others outside their group.

    2) If you watch National Geographic and other such like shows often enough you'll find that even in the animal kingdom such behaviour as mentioned above applies, even though animals are considered to be non-thinking/reasoning creatures. Their behaviour is guided mostly by instinct. I'm sure people's are too, to some extent.

    3) This is just a wild guess ;-) - the Kuwaitis perhaps were not feeling too lovey-dovey towards their Islamic brethen because they were attacked and invaded not so long ago by a Muslim brother who, fortunately for the Kuwaitis, were chased out by the Great Syaitan.

    4) Number 3 above may explain why the Kuwaitis were so generous towards the Americans - time to pay back a debt of gratitude.

    5) One last FACT: people don't like to be told the truth.

    You wrote: But it's amazing that her quite factual essay has triggered off a few raves and rants accusing her of being an Islamophobe. I would like to know what or where Ang has written in her article to deserve such a wild accusation.

    Have you ever, in a moment of unguarded, suicidal truthfulness, told someone, even a good friend, that they have bad breath or foul body odour? So, what happened next? ;-)

    Allow me to let you in on a secret known only to a privileged few. Remember the story of the boy who pointed out to the king that he, the king, had no clothes on? Well, that night the king sent his goons to round up the boy and his family, and had them beheaded. ;-)

    D'Truth

    ReplyDelete
  4. A good and apt post. To the man in the street, the double standards applied by the Muslims in Malaysia and in the middle eastern countries would appear to be political and hypocritical - period. Perhaps some respected and fair-minded Muslim can throw some light over these anomalies that the non-Muslims find baffling!

    Michael

    ReplyDelete
  5. The shades of light
    It makes the eyes blind
    Giving out aids
    “You help me, I help you”

    The Middle East countries
    The governments know whom to help
    Amongst the Muslim brotherhood
    Close one eye telling political stories

    The Arabs they think are god people
    Bless with oil the black gold.........
    The envy of the world population
    The centre of the religious faith

    When they play tourists
    You will see their ugly faces
    The wealth they carry
    They treat others like slaves

    In Langkawi the taxi drivers
    They could tell you their anger
    How these Arab tourists treated them
    Some fetched them dumped on half way

    The Arabs complaints
    The Malaysian tourist officials run
    Of tourism money they bring
    Forgetting about dignity.....

    It is wealth
    What they can get to protect
    The comfort zones and black gold
    Of brotherhood a small step will do

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's very simple really. They are hypocrites. There is nothing more to it.

    Once this is understood, then everything falls into place and makes sense.

    The hypocrisy is fueled by religious imperialism. Hypocrisy, double talk and imperialism is there in their religion and culture.

    ReplyDelete
  7. going back to the origin of the iraq -us war 1 and 2, one will find that

    the kuwaitis played an important role in the war as an agent provacateur of the

    us to get the amaericans to bomb the iraqis. As a result the kuwaitis got some oil fields

    which were in the iraqi territory.


    The kuwaitis though declaring themselves as muslims can be relied as reliable slave of

    money and hence as a tool of the americans. The kuwaitis royal dynasty began as desert pirates

    their big appetite for other people's wealth may explain why they behave in the way they did especially with regard to

    disparity in their donations to their muslim brothers as compared to their american benefactor.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It may interest you to read syedsoutsidethebox blog where the current posting is about that witch's cauldron that is the Middle East. Somewhere in the middle one comes across the purported reason why Egypt wasn't/isn't so enthusiastic about helping Hamas.

    ReplyDelete