Secrets of the Kings

                      Have you ever thought about the possibility that everybody has an ability or talent which is unique to themselves? It is not hard to imagine; 7 billion human beings, and each of them having something only they can do, or if anyone can, they can do it with the best possible way. After countless DNA information being interchanged, and human beings going through  all sorts of experience as they grow old, it is not inconceivable that every single person might have developed something they are particularly talented.

                           Some people might discover within themselves superior physical strength , or a heightened sense of touch. Some others might see more colours in the world than others, or that they can calculate numbers amazingly fast-things like that which we might call geniuses. But having a unique talent does not mean that it is good, or that it could actually be beneficial, or even newsworthy. It is always a possibility that having a unique ability is not something great, it could always be something lame, mundane; useless.

                 Think about the being able to chew faster than anyone else. What good would it do, even if you are the fastest chewer on earth? There’s only so much that  a person can eat. Perhaps you have the ability to flap your ears like an elephant , or an inert talent of stacking rocks in a perfectly vertical position. Some people could perhaps have the talent to stare at a  laptop screen for days like I’ve been doing, or squat for a week like  it’s no big deal. If you want to be a bit gross, someone could have the ability to fart continuously for a minute , or catch a fly with a finger.

                      These suggestions , these possibilities that I have written, are indeed unique, but most of them are in no way special, or beneficial. Strange abilities like these you could only profit from freak shows, or during family gatherings, when you decide to show distant relatives your weird talent. They would end up calling you ‘that weird cousin’ in their minds for the rest of their lives, or worse being ‘that gross guy who farted non-stop at a  family meeting’.

                           What good does it bring from thinking about mundane occurrences anyway? I do have a strong and reasonable motive , which is to uncover the mystery of the esteemed Kings of this wonderful country. People had been speaking about the greatness of our Sultans and defend their impeccable honour, these last few weeks, that I had to try to figure out the reason behind this obsession. It is hysterical really, the lengths people took in defending these royalties.

                      Honest men and fearless intellectuals were caught and charged in court for the reason that they have somehow insulted the Kings; probably hurt their feelings and made them cry. What is there in these small group of exceptional beings, that people even asked those dissenters to be hanged to death? I , for the life of me could not comprehend the reason.

                    It came to me that perhaps our Kings have their own  special talents or abilities; you know, like Elsa and her icy fingers. Perhaps one of them could grow his nails twice the rate of normal people. It is also not impossible to imagine one of the kings could jiggle his butts perfectly to the rhythm of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  Who knows that perhaps one of the kings is a master in drawing perfect circles with just a pen?

                They could indeed be real, but currently we have no proof to back those informations, and more than that, I do not think special talents are enough to make their supporters jail others merely for speaking against the Kings.

                 What is the secret of the Kings? When people say that they ‘must’ protect the Kings, what is it that they are protecting? Why? What do they see , when they speak  of the Kings?

              Legions of men who opposed feudalism and monarchy had written and said all kinds of things in their critiques , from ridiculously complicated essays  to cuss words, but currently in our country they do not seem to work. Perhaps the most famous example would be John Locke’s Two Treatise against Robert Filmer’s work, but the writing is old , full with words I’ve never seen before, and the reality about the monarchs are different. Perhaps we need a ridiculous writing to match a ridiculous situation in this country, sprinkled with pop culture references.

                         First of all we have to agree upon the ‘divine rights of the kings’. Unlike kings from earlier times when there were prophets who  chose kings among the people¹ , under the guidance of revelations, our kings have no such proof of legitimacy. There are no more prophets, and the Quran does not appoint any of these men as Kings.  They only have their bloodlines as proof of their  kingliness . If the standard Indonesian sinetron tragedy could ever happen- the son of the previous king was switched with another peasant’s baby after childbirth  due to an evil doctor’s plans, and the current king is just the son of that poor peasant, then the current king certainly would have to abdicate.

Have you not considered the assembly of the Children of Israel after [the time of] Moses when they said to a prophet of theirs, "Send to us a king, and we will fight in the way of Allah "? He said, "Would you perhaps refrain from fighting if fighting was prescribed for you?" They said, "And why should we not fight in the cause of Allah when we have been driven out from our homes and from our children?" But when fighting was prescribed for them, they turned away, except for a few of them. And Allah is Knowing of the wrongdoers.

(Al Baqarah- 246)

                     Could it be then that the worth of the King is in his blood? Is it  the difference in the amount of iron in the blood? Could it be that their blood is gold in colour? What the heck is it that makes these people so special, if the structure of their blood cells are no different from oppressed old men who spent their later years grudging about their lost youth? Is the blood of the fathers of the kings any different? We would have to cut the kings to pieces to figure out, but by then there would be no more kings, and people would not need to worry about them anymore.

                      In Shinobu Ohtaka’s work Magi; The Labyrinth of Magic, the king candidates selected by the three wise magicians are people with superior physical strength and wit, and each of them have the power of Djinns at their disposal. Ohtaka probably took the idea from the prophet King Sulaiman which had the Djinns under his command. Sulaiman a.s was also blessed with the ability to understand the language of animals and control the winds.²

And to Solomon [We subjected] the wind - its morning [journey was that of] a month - and its afternoon [journey was that of] a month, and We made flow for him a spring of [liquid] copper. And among the jinn were those who worked for him by the permission of his Lord. And whoever deviated among them from Our command - We will make him taste of the punishment of the Blaze.

(Saba'-12) 

                      What does our kings have though, that they should be regarded with such honour and bathed with wealth and praise? I bet they could  never even fart for a minute if you ask them. I do not think that having the whole police force at your disposal to jail anybody who might oppose the monarchy  is  a  reason why one should swear fealty. It is a monopoly upon violence which is used to silence dissenters; the very original form of despotism.

                       Are they the prettiest beings on earth? They certainly aren’t. Are these kings intelligent people? They probably are , but there could be billions of people with greater intellect. They certainly aren’t the wealthiest either, and I am not sure that the wealth of the kings actually belongs to themselves.

                        Now we have cleared that there is nothing special about the human  part of the king . They do not possess special powers, they are not special enough; in essence, they are just humans. When the king dies, he gets stuck in the dirt similar like everyone else, and in the hereafter he does not get discounted for his deeds, unless if he was a  pious man.

                          Some people argue that we need to protect the king because he is the symbol of- there should be a long list- religion, unity, historical heritage , Malaysianness, even Islamic Governance! Considering that there is nothing special about the human part of the kings, and that they work as symbols, it should  not even matter whether these kings are humans or not. Consider a job where you need no special ability or talent, no requirement for beautiful faces, no degrees needed, only your blood; even a dead king would do the job-of just being there, and the particulars of the human part is not necessary.

               

     Even a cup would do the job- fill it with the king’s blood , and call it Sultan Cawan. A cup would be the bigger person-he won’t mind some insulting words ,and he won't put people in jail.

                 Islam had freed us human beings from the enslavement to the devil and men, and I refuse to be subjugated to another.

             If people are indeed in love only with the idea  of a king, in the romance of it, and not the characters of the men who became king, nor about their abilities or ruling prowess , then the actual monarchs does not have to actually exist. They should stay as ideas, living in fairy tales where the kings are absurdly just, in story books and poems.

                  Should we preserve the monarchy  because of the history of their predecessors? While some of them actually brought some civilization in this country, the same group of privileged men were also responsible in selling Penang to Francis Light, bringing Brooke to Sarawak , and losing Singapore to imperialists. Even if their predecessors painted the history of the nation, the current monarchs sit powerless, wasting taxpayers money , and putting innocent people in jail. The current kings aren’t copies of their legendary ancestors-just phony beings who are incredibly touchy. Historical heritages should be put in museums, not palaces.

                  I am writing in search for the secret of the kings, in their physical bodies and hypothetical minds ,and the idea of a king, and indeed ,I have found none.

1.       1

How to be a Terrorist

               Mr Daniel  Taub wore an elegant black suit that night in the studio, and he presented the cameras with the best of his smiles. He seemed to be extremely at ease with  the BBC presenter, after all the years giving public lectures and radio talks, as  an esteemed ambassador. He is a silver fox, you  see , the kind which would have girls squealing all over him if he’s a character in a manga. No one would have looked better than he was  with his gold-tinted glasses, that phony sonuvabitch. 

                   Mr Taub had an important  task that evening in the London studio.  He was about to face the whole world and defend the actions his country did. There would be huge consequences  for every word that he was about to say later during the interview, and a blunder might even lose him his job. But Mr Taub had no need to fret; he’s the perfect man for the job. He held his posture straight , like the soldier he once was, but with a slight drop in his soldiers, so that he might look cool and intellectual and all. He looked civilized enough to force anyone with the worst of intentions  to treat him with nice words. No one would have thought that Mr Taub is an accomplice and a defender of murderers, if they have not known him well enough, because, well, he wore a suit that evening.

                     The cameraman signaled everyone to get in their places as the live broadcast in BBC World was about to start. Mr Taub  probably felt  a bit nervous that evening, because no matter how extraordinarily fabulous you are, you have to be  bit nervous in front of cameras. However, he showed not even the slightest flush on his face. When you have experience speaking to the public for years, you learn how to hide the anxiety- under the tables, probably. 

                

             And thus the BBC lady started the interview with a smile on her face. It was a huge interview for a not too surprising turn of events in the Middle East. Mr Taub had probably done this routine for a few times now.  Mr Taub said that evening that his friends in Israel had to start their ground offensive in Gaza.  His face showed a somewhat pained expression –perhaps a pang of guilt , for being the phoniest guy on earth. After weeks of shelling houses, hospitals and schools, and killing people from a distance, they had decided that it was time to get up close. Apparently throwing bombs from behind a high wall does not ensure kills, and friends in a first-person shooter would have given  you hell for being such a cheat. Freaking campers.

                           The lady presenter and Mr Taub probably knew each other by the way they looked at each other ,after years of interviews, but I could only guess as much, by looking at the screen , on top of a plane. When she asked Mr Taub about the massacres ,” When is this all going to end?” , she sounded so compassionate and loving, like a wife asking her husband  when he’s going to quit smoking, or worse a mother asking her beloved son to stop playing and go to sleep. I half expected the fabulous Mr Taub to reply with “ Honestly,my dear, I don’t give a shit”.

               You don’t ask a murderer about when he would stop killing. A sensible person in that studio would have stabbed him in his eyes , for being a murderer, and punch his stomach for being such a pretentious human being. That night Israeli Defense Forces ascended into the cramped Gaza and started killing all those terrorists who hide behind month-old babies and insanely pregnant women. There were terrorists under the broken floors of UNRWA schools , in bunkers under Shifa’ Hospital, inside small water pipes and between the fine grains of sand  . They were everywhere, yet they were nowhere to be seen , as if they were ninjas or something.

             Mr Taub spoke of the ground offensive as if it was an unavoidable natural order forced upon their consciousness, as if there was no any other option.  The IDF was not the hero they deserved, but the hero they needed. The dirty job needed to be done, by someone.   All they need was kill. I have to disagree, Mr Taub, because for all the options available for your people , they could have been playing desert volleyball instead of killing people.

                        That was my recollection about the interview on that day of 17^th July , a day of great 

misfortune as the plane MH17 crashed and IDF stormed into Gaza-probably just a mere coincidence. The BBC lady thanked the fabulous Mr Taub for gracing her studio with his presence, to courteously inform the world that his friends would kill some more that night. Common sense told us that we should treat with high regard someone with such civilized courtesy, and furthermore, he wore a nice black suit that evening. That probably explained why nobody punched his face in the studio.

                     I remembered when Obama visited Malaysia not too long ago, nobody threw shoes at his face. Probably because he wore suits too back then. There he was , all fabulous and charming, gracing the audience in the esteemed Universiti Malaya. I had anticipated news of him being slapped with Croc slippers or something to no avail, because Malaysians are civilized men, and we act civil in front of civil people. We were worried about some stupid and uninspiring questions some students asked the guy, and some sensible people who protested that day were given show cause letters. I’d rather be uncivilized.

                   We probably had simply forgotten that day that his government was the main sponsors of the atrocities done by Mr Taub and his friends, that his nation has murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq in the search for the elusive WMD that was never found, and another hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan, in search for an old geezer. An honest mistake. The United States too were apparently mistaken in their war efforts, and we need to forgive civilized men when they make such honest mistakes. And because these men wear incredible black suits too. We need to learn from mistakes, forgive and forget.

                If ISIS wants to succeed in being world rulers, they should start wearing black suits and speak English like that phony guy Mr Taub, because apparently if you do such things you get every excuse that you need. They should also stop killing journalists in front of cameras, because that is not very good for publicity. They should’ve fired bombs from hidden holes and used drones to kill civilians, because it is apparently more humane. They really need to learn the art of killing people. ISIS leaders should also learn how to be friendly with BBC lady presenters.

              ISIS is wrong , they are murderers, the real terrorists and they have misused Islam’s name in every way possible, but nobody should ever give Americans the moral high ground  over ISIS . When US defence chiefs stated a few days ago that ISIS is beyond anything they’ve seen ,it was the  the height of irony. What claim does this criminal has upon the other?

Adventures of the Attasian Man

 I am currently reading al-Attas’ book, Islam and Secularism, and I’m trying hard to understand and to agree with his thesis. It is  not an easy read, seriously. The book is riddled with  philosophical terms, lots of metaphors and names you haven’t heard of.

                As a supporter of liberal values (it’s a secular Western thing), it is necessary for me here to display my loss of adab, as the chapter the Muslim Dilemma demands me so. It is however somewhat difficult to demonstrate the lack of adab by  means of putting knowledge in all the wrong order, sequence and methodological hierarchy, therefore, it ought to be shown literally. Literally, like an alien intellectual bearing false knowledge usually does. Also , I am a cynic that wishes to be taken seriously, so please do so.

     

  Oh, bother.

           I am also currently in deep distress  for a whole lot of things after reading a part of this book, and I’m currently contemplating whether to continue my reading, because the realization that this revelation had brought me so far is too cruel to accept. The skies feel heavy and overbearing, like they would fall upon me and destroy myself because of my apparent pretentiousness. Currently , it is not a preposterous thought to imagine that my life so far had been nothing but mistakes and nothing but a  show of insolence to our ancient masters.

                    How could it be not distressing to discover that after going thousands of miles around the world to study, that it had been worthless after all? I had been studying Economics, under the tutelage of secular Western capitalists who have no idea what the heck is Fardu Ain, at the centre of secular civilization, without any proper islamicization. Judging from al-Attas’ hierarchy of knowledge, the course with which I am about to ply my trade to the world  is nothing but a danger to Islam and Muslims; a mere afterthought of the secular world.

                    It can’t be helped that after hundreds of years of research and intellectual discourse , in which Muslim scholars themselves had played their important roles, that my lessons until today had been nothing but false knowledge. I wonder what would my Spanish maths lecturer would think if I  tell him about the inevitable fact that he is not a shining light , nor a flickering candle, but just a piece of shiny candy wrapper that merely reflects false electronic light in the darkness of the secular world! 

                 Compared to al-Attas , all my teachers so far are located far down the intellectual food chain, because, well, al-Attas knows the shit. He knows the distinction between the real intellectuals and the inferior others, and between great leader and scammers. That is why , under his guidance, our nation had been gloriously blessed with esteemed leaders with superior knowledge and attributes. Al-Attas does what an al-Attas can.

                    I can’t help wondering  about the fact that he himself studied in the western world and for a time he gave lectures at universities there. Shouldn’t he like explode or something as soon as he arrived there, due to the extreme disagreements between his being and the very  essence of the western civilization; their intellectuals being his arch nemesis and all? How could he even breathe the air in that part of the world?

                      Reading al-Attas is really a glorious experience , because it made me realize the sanctity of knowledge and the apparent falsity of my wretched ideals. Something like my essence and my thought going against each other,  my intellect going against my rational- imagine yin and yang fighting each other over dominance. This book is a must-read for those seeking to torture the mind with inner fighting; those with the audacity to paint others as false and inferior, and those people who fell in love with the past, the dead and unreachable past.

                     I can be wrong wrong, and I can always be. Not like al-Attas , because superior beings like him with merits far beyond his faults couldn’t possibly be wrong.  I am also currently writing with the arrogance which is inherent with secular intellectuals, also with the youthful skepticism that defies almost everything that ancient people write in their ancient books. I can also be wrong because there had been nothing in my writing but rhetoric written with inferior journalistic form, compared to al-Attas’ strength of spiritual conviction.  Perhaps I haven’t been able to realize that old scholars are immune of being wrong, because they have much more spiritual strength and that they are legendary and all, but still I couldn't bring myself to agree.

                        Edward Said  in his Culture and Imperialism used a beautiful word ; counterpoint; to illustrate how people from different civilization had been working together. Counterpoint means a combination of two or more melodies that are played together-it’s a musical term. It means that in a musical ensemble, the addition of  another melody to the music makes it better, retaining its harmony. It is the addition of something else different in a pleasing way.

            That’s how the esteemed teacher pictured how people from different continents, of different colours worked together in order to   produce the world that it is now. He stressed that the process is not all the time beautiful, with the horrors of imperialism, subjugation of others for the benefit of the winners-in fact most of the time it isn’t. But one couldn’t possibly deny the fact how huge is the contribution of a civilization to the growth of the other, although sometimes  the rise of one imperial power is upon the ashes of the imperialized.

                       Amartya Sen in his Identity and Violence rejected the thesis of clash between civilizations. He refused to accept that people are categorized and judged based upon their ideologies only, put into small boxes, instead of being viewed with their supposed actualities. He said that people shouldn't be judged upon their different ideologies only, but because people have so many other different identities, they couldn’t possibly be seen in black and white.

 I am a Muslim, a supporter of some liberal values , an Arsenal supporter, an avid gamer, a horrible doodler, a Malaysian, a fan of boring books, and a man who refuses to see in black and white. I've said it countless times, and I would do so again and again. How is it conceivable to reduce the world into Islam and the Secular West, and to rank their intellectuals against each other in hierarchical superiority?

             

                

         Their views could always be wrong, because they aren’t Muslims. Also because Edward Said wrote in his Representations of the Intellectual that an intellectual should always be a secular being. That man, he fulfills the criteria of being al-Attas’ arch nemesis.

                        

-currently trying to resume my reading. Sorry for any apparent loss of adab.