Tarek Fatah's Speech and The Behaviour Question

It took me a while to think on whether to write on this subject or not, but I saw a video that featured Canadian Muslim activist Tarek Fatah taken a few months ago. You can view the video below.

What is interesting about the video is that there are several sentences or statements that Mr. Fatah said during the 15 minute talk: (note the following points are what was mentioned by Mr. Fatah)

1. My own fellow travelers betrayed the calls for social justice and allied themselves with the most horrendous fascist that you could ever meet.

2. Communism was destroyed in the battle of ideas. It took 4 decades by the year 1990 and 2000 communism was wiped out, the gulags were finished, people Russians found the freedom today to live under a different form of what is regard as a separate story. But we destroyed communism without firing a bullet.

3. Today we're fighting another idea of "fascism"that has shut our mouths and you can't speak because we're too scared that someone would turn around and calls us a racist.

4. I can tell you that not more than 1 percent of the country's population knows about the incident because we have forsaken our country and have sub-contracted to some gladiator who would take care of us.

5. And instead of admitting that there has not been a university course on the ABC of Islamization, we tried to sub-contract it to consultants who would made the profit by telling us that "that is what you have to do".

6. We today have a situation that with the religion of Islam is being used as a tool by a fascist force, the combination of the thought that life begins after death and the supremacy of Muslims over the rest of the world is not debated.

7. But we are not willing to stand up in front of the Saudi Embassy and say that "you in the name of Islam practice an apartheid that is shameful."

8. Nobody wishes to insult or demean the Muslim community. However, please understand that there is a distinction between Islam as a faith, which along with any other religion has its own problems and Islamism, which is a political ideology that says that western civilizations has to be destroyed.

9. If we do not confront them today, our children will not forgive us tomorrow.

Although the context of the talk was not aimed at Asian audiences, these points that caught interest has some similarities around here. This came in light of the Christian bashing by some Malay groups over the murtad case just because there have been wild accusations and suspicions unverified sources that there is some conversion case and so forth. Do you notice that from the talk that there are some things quite similar to here like the Malay Supremacy concept that UMNO keeps harping on and on? And this 30 percent quota requirement, where a piece of the pie has to be from this race, isn't that similar to one of the highlights of Tarek's talk there?

Professor Asri (ex-Mufti) pointed out something sometime back which relates to the point of origin  - it's like a child from a rich family who was not given a proper attention but a neighbor with a different wealth and social status was able to take care and got the child's attention. This means, that their own religion has overlooked their need for help and attention. With no help from anyone, where can they turn to or but to hope that someone kind enough to help them to ease the burden and the pain? While those groups keep screaming and accusing others of murtad, but do they even know that they behave like murtads themselves in cases that is the equivalent to a flipside of a coin!

Then what is the idea of fasting in the fasting period, like in Lent or Ramadan? The core idea is to put a man in the shoes of a pauper, who has no money and no means to get food. Here what was observed is that people making wild accusations, improper conduct, going around doing and raving about things that are considered disrespectful to other religions. To commit such conduct particularly during a fasting period is considered somewhat a very shameful and "more sins" committed which I find those who did it don't even know that you can't simply make it halal for what is really wrong in all aspects.

As point #8 simply states that nobody including myself wants to demean. However because of the fear of being accused of making racial sentiments that we didn't do or raise a point to put a check. And if we don't put a check, then you have more complications spilling out like complaints of non-Muslim religions under this and that and so forth. It's actually far worse than raising the point. And on the long run in the next 20 to 30 years or so, our children would punish us for the sins that we commit, that is to let oppression and evil roll over as didn't do anything at all.

Mat Sabu has been recently accused of communism talk during his speech, but many of us still do not know that Communism was over for the last 20 years or so. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, Fukuyama famously called it the collapse of the Communism, so why are those people like Musa Hassan and Khalid Bakar talks about commie as if the country is still in the mindset of the 1950's? As what Tarek said, "Communism was defeated in the battle of ideas."

There also have been mentioned of consultants brought in because we are illiterate over something. Most of the things, including our nation's public image has been left to the devices of the consultants we hire. But at what real cost do we pay out to to have these things and being told of what needs to be done?

That's what I've been observing and thinking about in the last few days or so. Is this really how our other friends should behave really? Then it all comes back to the question: how do you want others to respect you when you "demand" to be respected? Isn't this like a compulsion whereas the ancient books and religion say that there is no compulsion to be imposed on others?