What If Their Parents Had No Sense

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 I have not posted anything for two days. A couple of reasons. I am engaged with some reading and research - on my favorite topic the Quran (and that other thing : religion). I am also spending time engaging with some folks overseas, outside the country in some prolonged discussions. You guessed it - about the same subject. And I dont need any surat tauliah either. The discussion is more involved, its open discussion, no holds barred, thousands see what you say. One small misstep and someone hammers you on the spot. So its sniper time. One shot only. You must know exactly what you are saying. And keep your head low.
My old friend asked me if I had been threatened by anyone (and I stopped writing the past two days). 
(Are you under pressure or threat from writing about the current state elections?)

No such thing. Well so far so good. But yesterday the YouTuber Papa Berry was summoned to the police station over that Chinese woman at KLIA thingy. I think that was a stupid waste of time and waste of resources. 
(Ha ha I just received another WhatsApp from another friend : Bro good morning. A bit silent, all good?). All good. Thank you.

The country is facing extreme uncertainties. And the big boys (or at least one very short fellow, hello Tan Sri ketot) are raking in money again. Once again the deals are in the billions.   And once more the Arabs are back in the game. Same shit, different can.
But we have not pulled out of the dive which began many years ago. The most critical danger is our education - or the public education system. The sekolah kebangsaan and the government run university system. Counterbalancing this threat is the private education system, and the vernacular education system which are performing heads and shoulders above the gomen system. But the success of private education and vernacular education is itself a perceived threat to the 3R folks. They dont see the success and the life-saving contribution to the economy (considering the kebangsaan system has failed). What they see are just 3Rs. 
Which brings me to today's story. This piece of propaganda:



I am very suspicious of the true intentions behind stories like these, written  78 years ago and obviously skewed to prolong the memory of other than the 27 million Russians who died in the second world war (as just one example).

I can sympathise with the writer. But he forgot to mention the British monopoly over the black African slave trade for about 300 years. Or the British and later colonial American massacre of the native Americans. Shooting and burning the aboriginals in Australia. And on and on and on. To me one of the worst excesses of the British was their export of opium all over the world including to China where they engaged in the Opium Wars to force the Chinese to start smoking opium.
I once read the history of the British owned Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. They accepted opium as collateral for loans. One of the duties of the Mat Salleh bank managers was to ensure that the bank vaults were always at higher than street level and were dry. To keep the opium dry and safe from floods. So the bastards corrupted the world. 

What happened to their Christian values? What happened to their education? What happened to Locke, Berkeley, Hume, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham? These were British philosophers.
So you see education can make you an engineer but there is no guarantee that education will make you a good person. Take the politicians around us - all over the world. They are the murderers, they are the sodomists, they are the thieves, they are the racists, they are senile whackos, they are the mad religious freaks. Read the previous post by Ferri Anugerah Makmur.

Yet they are all educated. The politicians are all highly educated people. Yet the syaitan or satan fully controls their thought processes.
Education does not help them. There are other things that are more powerful which can neutralise the benefits of education.

Chief among these are religion, culture, traditions, ideologies and that potentially most destructive of components 'what our parents thought us".
I can only recount my own experience. My "saving grace" happened in 1986 - I watched a recording of Ahmad Deedat, in the US. For the first time in my life (26 at that time) I saw that the Quran was not a sing song, mantra book. It actually had some use. It could be used to discuss things. (Later I would learn to disagree with Deedat but n'theless I am grateful that he opened my eyes to the Quran).The Quran says things like this : 
Surah 2:170 "When they are told, "Follow what Allah has revealed herein," they say, "We follow only what we found our parents doing." What if their parents had no sense and were not guided?" 
You dont have to read the Quran to understand this. There is no guarantee that the older generation has much sense or that they are on the right track.

To me what it really means is that you have to cut the umbilical chord at some point in your life. You have to use your own brains.
The late Mr Lee Kuan Yew once said, 'Given a choice I will put my trust in the younger generation than the older generation'. 
The older generation always has vested interests (aka their own interests). Because they are very short of time. Biology is ticking. They look out for their own interests. The young are always just beautiful. The young are just beautiful to look at, they have hopes, they are idealistic. They are the future. 
But they must think on their own and they must think well.  And to be able to think we must use reason. Or logic. Aq'l in arabic or akal in Malay. And thinking is free. How do we start thinking? Just ask WHY? 
WHY can be extremely subversive and toxic for those who have no sense.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
By Syed Akbar Ali 

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