Friday, July 27, 2007

Little Lies

Are we lying to ourselves about our country, nation, state, whatever?

In our 50th year of existence under the crescent, star and stripes, some if not a lot of things have gone awry.

Before I go on, I rue the loss of two words that used to sum up Malaysia.

Muhibbah.

Gotong-royong.

Yes, the muhibbah is missing, folks. So is gotong-royong. Haven't seen those words in the daily lexicon for years and I expect they are all but extinct now. Not even endangered but completely lost from use.

Don't let the people in power tell you otherwise. When was the last time they, if not you, used those words.

Be that as it may, the loss of those Malaysian words and concepts come at a time when Malaysia's economy is humming along with more projects across the nation and people gettin parochial and vested individual interests and rights take centrestage.

Islamic state, you say? That debate and declaration has been going on for years with naught to show for the attributes that make up an Islamic nation ie. integrity, truthfulness, cleanliness, neighbourliness, fairness etc.

Instead, we just have the morality police, the faith restoration centres, the halal hubs - which also covers the enforcement personnel who insist on people declaring coffee money halal - that appear to make up an Islamic state.

We think it is more an Islamic state of mind! Just another bare-faced lie.

On the other side, we have fellow citizens who think blogging defines life and anyone who blogs and is detained by the authorities means a crackdown on bloggers. Well, get a life and don't lie about your importance to the world.

We are all tiny cogs in the wheel of life and we could do better than put a spanner in the works for Mr Raja Petra Kamaruddin and his entertaining stories.

Sweet little lies by all and sundry.

To quote Abraham Lincoln - "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

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