Responding to the Islamophobe “Chewyx” on PAS
Well, the person in question is no doubt someone who has an intense hatred for Islam and that is not new. However I felt that I should reply to some of the statements he has made about PAS and Islam in general. Here are the replies that I have made in the comments section of his blog post in question.
“I am vehemently against PAS and all the ideals they stand for.”
Yes, we know that you are an Islamophobe. No need to rub it in into our faces.
“It is especially their Islamist standpoint that I cannot stand.”
So why not admit that this is the real reason that you hate PAS and the Muslims? Its not because of PAS policies, but because YOU have a bone to pick with ISLAM itself. Bah.
“Not that I have anything against Muslims themselves.”
And in the same breath, you choose to contradict the above statement. Since when have PAS members stopped becoming Muslims? Since when, for that matter, has PAS stopped becoming Malaysians? The name of the party speaks for itself: Pan-MALAYSIAN Islamic Party. It is an Islamic party, true…but it is also essentially Malaysian. As for the hilarity of the comment you made here, i.e. “[you] have nothing against Muslim themselves”, it speaks of your ignorance. A Muslim is one who profess the Islamic faith and Islam consists of those who are Muslims. This dichotomy of separating Islam from Muslims, i.e., “I hate Islam so much that I wanna destroy it, but I love all Muslims”, bla, bla, bla, is something I find all too common in the psyche of the Islamophobic mind. It is a self-denying excuse that you are an ISLAM-HATER and a MUSLIM-HATER.
“So far, I have not seen any major positive improvement coming from the Islamic world.”
This is not the place to be discussing this, so I should defer this issue to another time. However, what does this have got to do with PAS, in the Malaysian context per se?
“They are a bunch of people who are still very much stuck in the mediaeval ages. Yes, I am using Afghanistan, the rules of Saudi Arabia as a comparison. Don’t give me examples of how advanced Dubai is.”
More bloody nonsense. The team that make up PAS are not only from the ulama, but professionals as well. Take for example Mohamad Nizar Jamaluddin, the incoming Menteri Besar for Perak. He has not only got a good religious background, but he is also a professional and an engineer to boot. He is not the only one in PAS to have that too, by the way. What kind of self-serving, disgusting hatred for Islam does one has to bring himself to say that the PAS leadership and its members are in the “mediaeval” [sic!] era?
“PLEASE.”
Indeed. PLEASE don’t try to fool us with your self-serving hatred for ISLAM. I do not think that this BULLSHIT that you have written above has got anything whatsoever to do with the party. Its all about ISLAM, ISLAM and ISLAM, nothing else. You are an Islamophobic retard and that is the true fact of the matter.
He has ranted on and on about the crime rates in Kelantan and Terengganu [during PAS rule] being higher than other states in general. A cursory check of the source he proposes shows that he is just plain wrong. Kelantan’s crime rates are in double digits while the other states are in triple digits. I am discounting Terengganu because PAS only ruled the state for one term and it is unfair to blame crime rates in the state on them. As for the hudud and qisas laws, I do not think this person even knows what they are [although he tried to claim otherwise]. He does not even know that Islam is not just a faith, it is a way of life, and that includes politics and world affairs. Secularism is anathema to the Islamic way of life and that is the core belief of every Muslim worth his salt….with the exception of the liberals.
This person can have a thousand Muslim friends if he wants to but the fact remains that he is an ISLAMOPHOBE. Period.
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How SIS ("Sisters in Shaitaan") use daughters of UMNO
So how do you propose to reconcile the fundamentally different philosopy between islamic way of life and secularism?
Comment by allen — March 14, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
Living in Australia all these years I am quite used to ignorance about Islam, but it still surprises me when such comments occur in Malaysia itself. But it also highlights the ’separateness’ of our society when such misconceptions run rampant. I wonder how far your angry (and understandably so) rhetoric can go in changing these people’s minds when education might well prove more effective, assuming such individuals are open to receiving a contrary opinion.
But PAS is proving a very effective vehicle in watering down such misconceptions-there are plenty of non-Muslims like myself who, while fundamentally opposed to a creation of a theocracy, fully understand that PAS is alone, among the main political parties, that sticks to its guns. It behaves rationally, ethically and does not force its views down anybody’s throats. It has its aims, but full well understands that until such time as its aims can be democratically realised, must deal with the everyday reality of give and take.
It is a model of how a responsible political party should behave (something DAP can learn from if it wishes to gain popularity amongst secularists like myself), and I think you may well be pleasantly surprised as to how well it now stands in the eyes of non-Muslims. Doesn’t mean we’ll vote for PAS, but I can tell you many of us respect the party. People like this ‘Chewyx’ form a minority, as do the Malay-Muslim nationalists in UMNO that make up the other half of the coin.
Comment by pkler — March 14, 2008 @ 12:28 pm