To know is to love. Or so said
a friend of mine who is allergic to people. To love is to accept and understand
each other in health , sickness, mental breakdown and every form of psychotic
retardation. My friend, with such power of love , we can go through every
nook and cranny of this world together, overpowering every obstacle and
tribulations. But before we can reach that we need to know each other ,
every detail of our acts and choices; for example; there might be a reason that
a punk decides to skip exams like he's the school's principal-yes, in order to
love , we need to understand each other, embrace each other's weaknesses and
weirdness. Ah, this is ridiculous, yet true. Love at first sight is a heinous
crime and cannot be acceptable as love, but pure lust.
No, I'm not writing about love. Screw
that Shakespeare thingy and go real, my friend. I suppose that , if to know is
to love, then to know is also to hate. In other words, we need to understand
someone before we decide to hate them.
Some would say that it is wrong to hate, but man, this is part of human
nature. Try to put that aside. The topic tonight that I wish to explicate is in
regard of hate at the first sight.
Hate at the first sight is an
inexplicable phenomenon, yet it happens
almost too commonly. Some people does not have any particular reason to hate, but they just happen to bear such
ill-feeling, either through unconscious informal teaching or indirect internal
transgression. Yeah. Allow me to
explain. Unconscious informal teaching means that the hate towards others is
unconsciously taught , usually by a parent to his/her children, teacher-student
or from the elders to youngsters.
An example for this kind of hate at
the first sight is senior folks who experienced the May 13 tragedy, which
results in an unrequited hate in their minds towards other races. Stories that
they convey to the younger generation bring them to hate -which explains the
term 'hate is taught' . These kind of people exist in abundance-such as the
infamous Ibrahim Ali. The level of
interaction between races are kept at minimum, separated by geography and
occupational differences, and thus this young generation knew naught of each other. They studied at separate
vernacular schools, live in different atmospheres, and are practically separated through the
ever-existing divide and rule effect. They know not of each other, yet they
hate each other unconditionally. This is the glorious hate at the first sight.
As for the hate bearers such as the PERKASA, it is not weird that such group
can exist, but the fact that there are people who listen to their blunders is
plainly unacceptable.
Indirect internal transgression-sorry
for the fancy name- happens due to
rampant labeling and the act of blaming others.
When an Indonesian maid performed acrobatic acts with a 4 month old baby
, the society reacts by cursing Indonesians. Perhaps cursing the maid herself
is acceptable-I know it's not- but what do Indonesians have to do with her
crime? From the few Indonesians I have met in my life, I learnt that they are
among the most productive and hardworking people, at least ten times more than
I am. They had contributed to this country more than I did in all these years.
So why do we hate? The mainstream media
has a habit of labeling people- which I don't know whether it's intentional or
not. Suppose that there was a robbery in my village, and the police caught the
villains. Shouldn't it be enough for the media to report that " Three
robbers caught red handed" instead of " Three Indians detained for
robbery" ? What is the logic behind putting the label of race behind their
names? The society ended hating not only the robbers , but also their family,
their children and the innocent majority.
This form of logically flawed
hate at first sight caused numerous wars hundreds of years ago, and a
supposedly civilized generation should be able to dismiss this irrational way
of thinking. Altercation between only two men could result in a war between
tribes, when things could have been settled fair and square. I suppose that the
reason behind this hate at the first sight is that human instinct actually yearns for war and
conflict, and some people have a longing to put bullets in some people's head,
but they are born in a wrong generation and a wrong time.
And the same goes to some Jews in Palestine, the fact that the
Zionists invaded Palestine does not mean that all of them condone such violent
and inhumane acts upon the civilians. They themselves never asked to be born Jews, did they?
For my fellow ISMA brothers, just
because we are born as Malays and Muslims, that does not permit the act of
hating others. The act of prioritizing Malays just because they are Muslims
means that we are arrogant with the nikmat of Iman and Islam, and to refuse and
reject the reconciliation between muslims and non-muslims means that we declare that Islam is
exclusively ours. What if Allah decided that the Chinese people are the ones to
be blessed with Islam, and we remained under the shadows of Hinduism, all those
hundreds of years ago? What then? Do we have the right to brag again? Just because the idea of liberalism comes from
the West, that does not mean that fellow liberal muslims condone homosexuality
and hedonism. The fact that we are different does not mean that you can hate.
"They regard as favour upon you (O Muhammad
) that they have embraced Islam. Say: "Count not your Islam as a favour upon me. Nay, but Allah has conferred a favour upon you, that He has guided you to the Faith, if you indeed are true."(AL-Hujurat; 17)
Don't hate me, my
friend. Let us love.
