I received a post not too long ago regarding the banning of the movie "Sweet Sixteen" by Ken Loach (I have yet to seen it but this incident made me want to watch it more!) because it was construed as highly immoral (though one of the lame excuse given was that the heavily accented Scottish language would not be understood by the Malaysian audience. Yeah right. You think we are all frogs living under the coconut hus, is it?) because of its used of explicit expletives (I love pairing words like these!). This coming from a well known academic (well, at least within Malaysia). They, are supposedly our last bastion of enlightenment. We are living in a dark age indeed.
Also, being a minority member of a Muslim society that is becoming succeedingly rigid (it stupefies and worry me that the people who might one day change a progressive thinking society into the bastion of Jumud . Best way to explain this is that it means ignorance and regression into the dark age and has its origin in Arabic) regressivity and probable repression are actually of my own age, some younger, some slightly older. I have actually met some of them, and they personally seemed rather nice. I am sure most people are rather nice, until you attack their ideologies.
Many of the discussions happening tend to happen in the Malay language, so an outsider exploring might not be aware of all that is going on. It seems that many equate liberal interpretation of Islam with hedonism. While I would shy with overly extreme interpretation of any religion, regardless of which end of the spectrum their veer towards, one must realise that there is no way that one can actually no the actual intention of the founder to the dot. We can only approach as close as possible. And as the religion travels through time, there would have been certain amount of additions and deletions to the knowledge, though I know that I would be crucified for saying this by the religion I belong to.
Yet religion shapes the very core of a person's being, so when that gets challenged, they will rise and close ranks to protect themselves from the infidels and the polluters. I wish I have something more substantial to contribute now, but being in the throes of much confusion and needing time to sort it out, I could only offer such generalised views. Perhaps I might be able to say something more cogent a few months from now. One hopes.
In the meantime, keep adding to my comment box. I feel really lonely, you know (:
And ongoing debate that never wanes is that of moral policing. Somehow, this has to do with the need for power. Perhaps it is high time I should read The Prince properly. But I have got another controversial religious scholar to read now. And yes, my ever-unfinished thesis to do :(
