Sadly there is another 'Mt Everest' tussle over a dead body as Muslims and Christians fight over the corpse of Rayappan Anthony.
His family claimed that he was a Catholic all his life except for six years, when he had converted to Islam after marrying his second wife. They said Anthony had married his second wife in 1990 and his family knew about this. He had also left the family in order to be with his Muslim wife.
But six years later, in 1996, he returned to his first wife Lourdes Mary and entered a deed poll with the National Registration Department.
His family showed reporters documents to prove that the deceased’s name was changed from Muhammad Rayappan Abdullah back to his original name and that he had returned to being a Catholic. The documents were signed in the presence of a Commissioner of Oaths.
However, Jawi officers arrived at the hospital yesterday claiming that Anthony was still a Muslim and that he should be buried according to Islamic rites.
They showed the family members a card that certified he is a Muslim convert but this was only issued in 2005.
Me, what do I think? I am going to blame the deceased for causing his family much grief in this fashion by switching religions and not making clear what religion he was practising prior to his death.
As for the two groups of antagonists, let me relate what Lao Tze said about a corpse. Lao Tze was reputed to be the founder of Taoism. When asked how he wanted his remains to be interred, apparently he said (words to the effect): “If you bury me, the maggots will get me; if you leave me in the open, the vulture will benefit. What difference would it make to me?”
Nicely said, Lao Tze! Maybe there is moral lesson somewhere in his statement.
kT,
ReplyDeleteIslam is one terrorist event away from being driven into extinction. These fools are doomed alrite. They need to fix it before it gets fixed for them! Clock's ticking.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure what you're getting at or why you're targeting Islam?
Equating Islam to terrorism should best be left to the neocon Yanks and Israelis or the extreme Christian Right.
This is another case of a man (the deceased) who had left his religious status unclear, for different religious groups (not religion), one including his earlier family, to fight over.
one thing that baffles me is this: i always thought religion was for the living, rather than for the dead. why do these zealots come running when a man dies. why did they not come to rayappan in 1996, and try to reinforce his islamic beliefs. that may have had some benefit. Now, its a no-win situation. And the agony of the family is unbelievable. I wonder what the people at jais are thinking when they go grabbing dead bodies. its really baffling.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned the correct word 'zealots', they who are "jealous on behalf of God".
ReplyDeleteThat's why!
Ktemoc,
ReplyDeleteMuslims turned Islam into a religion of terrorist. Stop blaming others for their Islamic terrorism. A religion is defined by its practitioners and not the other way round simply because no religion can exist without its practioners. Stop giving us this bullshit about how Islam is a good religion being abused by a handful of Muslims.
Anon is right in that JAWI's mentality is no different from the Islamic terrorist. Both of them practise a religion where the rules are applied without thought to the circumstances involved. It is a universal principle of justice that legal rules are not only bounded by the letter of the law but also by the circumstances surrounding a particular case. Such flexibility seems to be absent in the minds of JAWI who does not give a fuck about the feelings of a widow or her children and the terrorist who kills you in the name of Islam because you are a Shite, Sunni, Christian,Jew and so on.
The extremist behaviour in Muslims is a product of an extremist religion as defined by Muslims.
... like the KKK and their burning cross, the Dutch Reformist Church of South Africa and the white supremacist Apatheid regime, Rabbi Ovidia and his Shas Party of Israel and many more, Senator Robertson, Baruch Goldstein, Menachem Begin ... I could go on and on ...
ReplyDeleteRemember you were the one who said "a religion is defined by its practitioners and not the other way round simply because no religion can exist without its practioners".