Rahmat Bahagia

Since I have not read about this in the recent issue about the use of certain words (look to the right image) in Malaysia, a thought just occurred to me – that the crazy hard-lined Muslims are painting themselves into a corner. They keep saying that Allah refers to the Muslim God and that the Christian God should be referred to as Tuhan instead. Now, it occurred to me that our national anthem uses the word Tuhan a lot. Let’s see.

Negaraku, tanah tumpahnya darahku,
Rakyat hidup, bersatu dan maju,
Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,
Raja kita, selamat bertakhta.
Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,
Raja kita, selamat bertakhta

Those two lines roughly translate into “Blessings of happiness, may God grant”. Now, to me, it seems odd that on the one hand, these same crazy hard-lined Muslims would want everyone to think that Malaysia is an Islamic state while at the same time, asking the Christian God for blessings every time that they sing the national anthem. To me, it is just odd and implies that Malaysia might be a Christian state. Otherwise, we would not be asking the Christian God for blessings. But this obviously is not true.

Now, on top of this, let us look at our national creed.

Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan
Kesetiaan kepada Raja dan Negara
Keluhuran Perlembagaan
Kedaulatan Undang-undang
Kesopanan dan Kesusilaan

There you go again. See, our national creed tells us that first and foremost, we must believe in the Christian God. Now, I may not understand this but according to the crazy hard-lined Muslims, the Christian God and the Muslim Allah are two different entities. I am ignorant and jahil in these matters but it has something to do with the rejection of the Holy Trinity concept by the Muslims.

And if we take this with the first Islamic kalimah – لا إله إلا الل – Muslims must only believe in the one and only God, in this case Allah and so, this means that no Muslim can uphold the concept of our very own Rukun Negara, which kinds of spells doom for Malaysia seeing that about 60% of the citizens are Muslim. Additionally, it seems to imply again that Malaysia is founded in the Christian tradition as even our national creed tells us to believe only in the Christian God. Once again, this is obviously untrue.

Now, before anyone accuses me of sedition or anything crazy like that, I do love Malaysia and I think that all this is just crazy. I do not agree that Malaysia is an Islamic state and I do not think that it is a Christian one either. Malaysia is, and always will be, a beautifully harmonious multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious state. Let’s all just stand at attention, and sing the national anthem and remind ourselves of its real meaning.

Government and politics should stay the hell out of religion.

My brothers and sisters in the crazy hard-lined Muslim community, do not be jahil and please remember the first wahyu that Prophet Muhammed (pease be unto him) received from Gabriel. Make sure that you truly understand things before taking a stand.

And to those idiots fire-bombing churches, you do realise that you are attacking the wrong churches, don’t you?