Posts Tagged ‘intolerance’

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Elangesvaran buried as muslim by body snatchers

July 8th, 2008
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The sad news was revealed late yesterday, when the High Court dismissed application by the family to stop the religious authorities from snatching the deceased and burying him. Details are in the hard copy of today’s Star, page N28. Elangesvaran was buried in the Parit Buntar Muslim cemetery last night. What a disgraceful act by these criminals. Just like when they appealed at syariah court instead of facing the family in civil court. Another definition for cowardice.

All this because there’s some proof scribbled on paper that the deceased had converted. These religious hooligans (extremists or terrorist is also suitable here) did not provide proof to the family about the conversion (at least in public). What’s so difficult about that? Where’s the compassion these guys always trumpet about?

Where in the world in MIC, IPF, DAP, PKR, Gerakan, Hindraf, MHS? Our great Indian leader and saviour of the Indian community…where is he hiding?

The family is planning to put up another appeal, which if they win will result in the body being exhumed and buried (cremated) according Hindu rites.

Let this be another warning (yes, we have plenty of such sad cases every few months) to our community. Think carefully before doing anything rash. Talk to family members, friends, or spiritual organizations so that you don’t make the wrong decision. More importantly, make sure that your religious status is correct in your MyKad, Registration Department system and other relevant documents.

If there’s no proof of conversion is forthcoming, I hope those body snatchers rot in hell.

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elangesvaran stuck between syariah and civil court

July 7th, 2008
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Elangesvaran’s case is still unsolved as reported by Malaysiakini. The religious authorities did something cowardly – they sneaked off to the Syariah court and obtained an order that the deceased was a convert. The deceased’s family are not represented in the religious court Even though precedence exists where non-Muslim families fought their cases in islamic court, its very rare due to the constitutional rights of individuals. Knowing that the deceased’s family won’t be approaching the islamic court or may have not even thought of such idea, these people did this embarassing and despicable act. Such actions only serve to undermine their religion in the eyes of other Malaysians.

On the family’s part, they declared to fight on for the rights to claim the body of the deceased. Says the deceased’s brother, Selvam:

We will fight this all the way as my brother never told us anything about his conversion,” he said. “We have yet to get over his death and now we have to endure this… It is all just too much for my family

Given the success rate of such cases, we can only pray that the family gets justice.

Meanwhile, their lawyer – Karpal Singh is planning to file a contempt of court over the “underhanded” action of the religious authorities (i think the term hooligans is more appropriate) of running off to syariah court while the high court is hearing the case.

This is wrong and we are thinking of filing a contempt of court application against them

Those authorities should have just shown the proof in the the current court and get it over with. Don’t tell me they think the judge will be biased or such cases should not be heard in civil courts. Instead of taking a simple and clear path, they decided to make things more complicated. Can’t blame them since they just make use of the loopholes in the laws to their advantage.

We have leaders trumpeting about justice, Rukunegara, brotherhood, harmony, solidarity, love, freedom and so many other “nice to hear” words, but in reality? The fault is solely on those lawmakers for failing to set right the flaws in the changes made in the constitution. Rather than admitting their mistakes, they hide behind ambigious responses and brush aside any attempts to voice out the dissatisfaction faced by the communities. They have failed to provide remedies. For how long will cases like this continue to take up space in newspapers before something is done? One can only curse that they rot in their hell beyond eternity.

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Advice on Blogging for uni students

July 4th, 2008
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I was surprised to read this piece in NST. Few contentious points which I feel needs to be clarified.

1. I think only a seasoned and well-respected (by online communities) blogger can give such an advice. I doubt the vice chancellor blog. If he does, then I apologise. If he doesn’t, then his advice is not worth much.

2. He also asked students to stay away from blogs that gave negative information about the government. And he goes on to say that he believes students have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Kind of contradicting. Negative not necessarily means wrong, positive doesn’t mean its true. If this is the case, one might as well stop reading newspapers!

3. People blog for various reasons – personal, hobby, organisation, business, political, entertainment etc. Writing against certain things is not wrong as long as it is personal opinion or comes with facts. For example, one can write in support of using drugs for pleasure, either based on facts or own opinion (BTW, I’m not advocating usage of drugs). The readers can make their own decision based on what the writer wrote.

4. “It is not a crime to blog or to comment in any blog. But it is the
blogger’s responsibility to give correct and positive information so
that it does not affect the government and university management” – said the VC. I don’t think its anyone’s responsibility to give positive information. One can only give facts or opinions. If it stinks, it stinks. You can’t write that its fragrant, can you?

He did mention that its good for students to blog or read them so that can be exposed to more

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Breakdown of funds for temples and churches

July 4th, 2008
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Earlier, we read about the amount of money spent for mosques and other places of worship in general.

In today’s Star (hard copy) breakdown of the expenses for places of worship is given as below:

RM3.93 million for Hindu temples
RM3.16 million for other temples
RM1.6 million for churches

It is clarified that since 1991, RM1 million for physical development of churches and temples, and another RM1 million for Hindu temples have been allocated since year 2000.

Now, we can see that temples and churches individually receive less money than Hindu temples, but if combined, its more by RM0.83 million (3.16 + 1.6 – 3.93).

I can only assume that there is less allocation for churches since they are located in strategic areas with least disturbance, have good support from the affluent section of community they serve, or the churches have moved into shoplots, thus reducing maintenance cost. However, I wonder if this cost includes assistance to churches located in Sabah and Sarawak, where there are many Christians among the privileged people there.

Other temples most likely refer to Taoist temples, which again usually have an association, foundation or group supporting it.

For Hindu temples, due to the many sects in Hinduism, there is more temples to be maintained. Then, there’s the issue of relocation or compensation when temples make way for development.

For the period between 2005 and 2008, total money received by these places of worship:

RM8.1 million
+ RM8 million (RM2 million x 4)
= RM16.1million.

Mosques and surau got RM428 million in the same period.

As I said earlier, its a major injustice when the total amount given to these temples (RM16.1 million) in the last four years is just 3.6% of the total allocation (RM428 million + RM16.1 million). The mosques and surau are allocated 26.58 times MORE money than combination of all other places of worship.

Whatever happened to “Kepercayaan Kepada Tuhan”?

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RM428 million for mosques and RM8 million for others

July 3rd, 2008
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In a 60/40 population, 428 million versus 8 million doesn’t look balanced no matter how you cut it. And that is just for the period between 2005 and 2008.

 

Let’s do the maths:

 

428/ 42 months (from Jan 2005 until June 2008) = 10.19 million per month.

 

8/42 months = 190,000 per month.

 

That means mosques get 53.63 times more than other places of worship month-wise. Over the said period, its 53.5 times more than the allocation for temples and churches.

 

And bear in mind that this amount is to be shared between temples (Hindus, Buddhists, Taoist?) and churches.

 

The deputy minister for Internal Security also said that the government has been disbursing RM1 million per year for temples/churches and Hindu temples respectively for physical construction projects.

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