controversy caricatures..

recently we are unexpectedly faced with the issue of our prophet muhammad (saw) caricatures which were initially published by the danish newspaper, then subsequently reproduced by other papers in europe as a sign of press freedom. Our 'sarawak tribune' newspaper had also inadvertently reproduced the caricatures and they had paid a heavy price for their silly mistake. apparently the caricatures were drawn in such a way to show that our prophet muhammad (saw) was a terrorist or sword-wielding mad man. there was a global protest by muslims against this blasphemous act of the western media.

sadly, some of our muslim friends were indifference towards the issue. may god bless them.

i learnt a few hard lessons about this episode and i would like to share them with you. i realise that a lot of my muslim friends do not know or do not care that as muslims we cannot draw caricatures of our prophets, not just prophet muhammad (saw). some of them only came to realise about this blasphemous act after they read the newspapers or watched the tv. unfortunately, our government had never directly discussed about this blasphemous act in the media before, but only did so after the protests went global and it had affected our government role as present chairman of OIC. and quite naturally, our beloved PM had to say something smart about this. i think the indefinite suspension of the 'sarawak tribune' would not do any good to the people if our government do not continue to explain other blasphemous acts in islam which must be avoided by malaysian media at all costs.

as i expected, all of my non-muslims friends were initially confused why this issue had became so big and i had to explain to them our islamic beliefs and faith regarding the caricatures. and now, they understand it and hopefully they will respect it.

my main point is that nowadays many muslims are not well informed about islam. some of us only know how to pray, fast and give 'salam', but we are not sure of other important rituals and rules. we have to confess that the world we are living now is drifting away from the true islamic virtues and teachings. the hard truth is that the muslims in Malaysia are losing their religion and their economy rapidly to non-muslims. i hope we would not end up someday like bosnian muslims in their country.

i think it is not enough for us to join the global protest if we do not make efforts to inform the non-muslims what are the blasphemous acts in islam in the first place. it is my fervent hope that the muslims, the christians, the jews, the hindus, the buddhists in Malaysia will always learn and respect each other religion to avoid unrest and misunderstanding.