Two odd months ago I deleted all social media apps on my phone. Back then according to the Screen Time App on my phone, I spent wasted on average 2+ hours a day on social media. Fortunately, I’ve successfully got rid the habit of scrolling through my social media feed. Nowadays, I no longer have the urge to scroll through my social media feed. Alhamdullilah.
Unfortunately, with Covid-19 making a resurgent, I have no choice but to start scrolling on my social media feed again. Information seemed to travel faster on social media rather than the mainstream media. You tend to get the news straight from the horses’ mouth. Yeap, I meant it both literally and figuratively. Be it the horses such as the YBs and the ministers. Or official outlets such as the KKM, media and journalists.
Fortunately, we have one of the best things happened to us during this rather panicked-stricken time. Being the good samaritan I am, I’d like to share it with you.
It’s is the story of our Prime Minister Muhyiddin. He claimed that he is the Abah that we never asked for, but the Abah that cared for us. I never liked the idea of anyone acknowledging oneself as Abah. It’s fine if I looked up to you as my Abah. But it’s a whole different thing if you start looking down on everyone of us, and think of yourself as our Abah. We have had a Prime Minister who’s been on the job for 22 years and he never once claimed to be our Abah, our Atok (grandfather) or even our Tok Nek (Great-grandfather).
Imagine if someone at your office goes around and starts referring to himself as Abah. Isn’t it weird? To top it off, he thinks he knows what’s best for you. Yikes!
Having at this as our news headline is shockingly stupid.
Muhyidding did this officially mind you! Several times in his PC on Covid-19, he referred to himself as ‘Abah’. The most recent PC on Covid-19, Muhyiddin again referred to himself as Abah when he said “Maaflah jika abah ini mula menggunakan rotan” (loosely translated as “Sorry if this father need to start caning”). It’s the ultimate ‘vomit blood’ (a term my good mentor used to say when she just couldn’t stand someone’s cringy-ness).
I actually disliked this ‘Abah’ thing right from the start. This is a gross Machiavellian nature of Muhyiddin and his propaganda factory. There’s a reason why I dislike hate this. This is straight up, a feature of government paternalism. I’m not against of all forms for paternalism government but I am against of what Muhyiddin is doing with this ‘Abah’ thing. There are specific reasons why I hate his usage of “Abah”.
Why I hate Muhyiddin referring to himself as Abah
Portraying himself as the father and everyone else as infantile children. This entails several unintended (in this case, definitely intended by him and his propaganda team) consequences. Chiefly, it portrays everyone else as infantile children, and he himself is the one and only person who’s an adult. And as children go, we don’t know enough and him as the parent, know best. This is an insult to the us, the Rakyat as a whole. Especially when the Rakyat thinks it’s the politician who created most of the mess that we have today. Remember the stupid Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities? The facepalm Kedah Exco? The decision to not enforce mandatory quarantine by Ismail Yaakob even when the experts said otherwise? Or the gross incompetence in following SOP by our Religious Affairs Minister Zulkifli even when he’s preaching for folks to follow SOP. It’s no wonder he received the short end of the stick from the the people.
So who’s the children creating all of these mess now? Muhyiddin and his Pak Long, Pak Ngah and whatever Pak? or us the Rakyat? It certainly looks to me that the politicians are the one behaving like children and created a bunch of the mess we have today.
Politicians behaving like children is normal. When Abah acting like an adult for all the wrong reasons, we need to call it out lah.
Trying to nullify disagreement and opposition Malaysians have deep values in respecting elders. Especially our father, mother as well as our uncles and aunts. When Muhyiddin starts to refer to himself as Abah, little by little we will all succumb to his manipulative ploy to make the public see him as the ‘Abah’ to all of us. And us being strong in our Asian values, ‘we can’t oppose him as he’s our father’. The more people accept him as Abah, the harder will any dissent be, because the dissenters will be deemed as going against the general public. So much so, it’ll soon be taboo to say anything bad about our dear Abah. Soon, we can’t even comment negatively, because it’ll be deemed impolite to say anything not nice about him. And soon enough, we need to prostrate to the Supreme Leader Muhyiddin! Yes, that’s a sarcastic sentence. I need to stress it because People seemed to have lost the art of enjoying sarcasm and parody these days.
All hail to Supreme Leader Abah Muhyiddin.
I’m not alone in this
It is encouraging to see that I’m not alone in this situation. I’m not the only one who’s fed up of all this manipulative endearing Abah ploy by Muhyidding and his propaganda machine. Immediately after his most recent infamous Covid-19 PC, a throng of netizen expressed their anger, disappointment, laughter, of which all of them are definitely not positive towards Muhyiddin’s Abah ploy. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
"Maaf, jika Abah mula menggunakan rotan".
Come on, PM's speechwriter. A 1 y.o. baby just died of Covid. Case count reached all-time high time today. People are angry, anxious, afraid. So much uncertainty over the future.
This isn't the time for your Abah joke. It's getting old.
He really think Malaysians are still deluded into treating him as a daddy figure ke after whatever crap he and his gang did? How can someone be this disconnected from the reality?
Some media outlets even used it as a headline for their news story and tweet. Check out this Awani quote tweet and the comments on Awani Facebook post of the same story. You’ll see just how fed-up the people are with Muhyiddin’s Abah manipulative antics. Even Twitter is trending with #MuhyiddinOut and #KlusterMenteri.
Don’t let Politicians decide who our Abah is
You Mr. Politician, will forever behave like a kid, so don’t pretend you are like a father to us. Just look at the daily parliamentary sitting to have a taste of their children behaviour. Even my youngest daughter kindergarten class is not this childish and she’s only 4 years old. Muhyiddin should stop degrading the word ‘Abah’ by associating himself with it. Just be Abah to your own kids, not the Rakyat.
Only us, the Rakyat, have the right to hold someone high up there, and honour them the with word ‘Abah’, ‘Bapa’ and the likes. Do not let the politicians take this away from us. We are the one who decides who our ‘Abah’ is in politics.
Till next time. Be safe and remember our SOP for Covid-19. It’s getting worse by the minute, thanks to our politicians behaving like children and not following the SOP.
Editor’s Note: It’s been some time so as you may have guessed, this will be a long one. Perhaps my long time friend Mat Not will be able to draw this whole for the challenged readers.
With this much politicking going on, we can pretty much ignore the calling for less politicking since the leaders in the country are pretty much ignoring the call as well. Nothing is further than the truth when it comes to the Malay saying, ‘Abah borek, anak rintk’, right?
At this point, I think that ‘enough is enough’. Let’s all follow ‘Abah’ footsteps and let’s all all ignore the call to stop politicking. Just like ‘Abah’, the right way to go is “ALL IN” and make the change you wanna make.
Okay Abah, let’s all follow your footsteps in igoring the calling to stop politicking.
One thing that apparently is not enough and really grabbed by attention is how most Malaysians reacted to the issue of refugees from Myanmar. Granted this is an old topic but the solution is something that is apparently new to everyone. Pray to read on till it’s the part where we talk about solution to the problem.
The hatred seeps in.
A huge majority of Malaysian, and to my surprise, even the Malay Muslims reacted the same. I expected differently from my Muslims brethren since majority of the displaced refugees are fellow Muslims. Majority of the general public felt that the Myanmar Refugees, The Rohingyas to be specific, overstayed their welcome. More than that, many felt that it’s better to kick them all out of the country and let them be somewhere else. Here are some example what the netizens are saying.
Aku dulu kesian la jugak dengan Rohingya ni cam oh shit refugees kesian depa ni. Tapi bila duduk Ampang, bersepah Rohingya curi Obike la curi pokok orang la, mintak sedekah lepastu bila orang tak bagi dia maki dalam bahasa dia(ini jadi kat aku) dia siap ludah lagi. Jadi? Makanya?
This guy got 14.4K likes. You can look at the replies of the tweet above and see how racists we can be even to folks of the same religion. To illustrate, let’s change some words,
Aku dulu kesian la jugak dengan Melayu ni cam oh shit miskin kesian depa ni. Tapi bila duduk KL, bersepah Melayu curi Obike la curi pokok orang la, mintak sedekah lepastu bila orang tak bagi dia maki dalam bahasa dia(ini jadi kat aku) dia siap ludah lagi. Jadi? Makanya?
Let’s take a look at another one. This is a story that make the rounds in WhatsApp groups and Facebook postings.
Dulu ada satu orang tua pernah bagi tahu saya, ada 3 bangsa dalam dunia ni yang takkan ada negara sampai bila-bila
1. Bani Israel 2. Gipsi 3. Rohingya
Rohingya ni bangsa tak ada maruah, tak ada harga diri. Apa yang jadi pada diri mereka sekarang adalah balasan kerana lari dari perang. Mereka pernah lari tinggalkan raja dan ulama mereka di Bangladesh, mencari kesenangan hidup di Burma. Tergamak buat macam tu. Lepas tu Burma bagi senjata suruh lawan musuh, mereka jual senjata. Mereka pernah jadi talibarut British lawan Burma. Sebab tu orang Burma (nama baru Myanmar) berdendam.
Kita orang Melayu mana pernah buat macam tu kat raja kita. Apa yang kita nikmati hari ni mungkin balasan baik dari Allah atas pengorbanan tok nenek kita yang tak pernah lari dari perang walaupun asik kalah.
Bermula dari serangan Chola, Siam, Burma, Portugis, Belanda, Inggeris, Jepun, Komunis, militan Sulu, terbaru virus Covid 19, kita tak pernah lari. Kita lawan walaupun ada polis dan askar kita terkorban.
Tak macam Rohingya, sikit-sikit lari, sikit-sikit lari..
Bayangkan lah di Langkawi nuu.. orang kita bagi rumah atas bukit kat Rohingya ni, dibakarnya rumah tu, taknak, takde standard katanya. Dia orang demand nak duk rumah taman ada aircond. Mujur jauh, kalau depan muka saya, memang saya terajang tang muka tak kira jantan betina, tua muda.
– copy paste –
You guys can do the same exercise, change some words and replace it with Melayu. See if it sounds racist.
Apparently Rohingya is now at the same level of the Israelies. They hated the Rohingyas so much that they grouped the Rohingyas together with Israelies. Oh my…That’s one way to rile up the Malay Muslims. They immediately gobbled it up. It’s so easy to get under the skin of the Malays.
Remember when this was making the rounds. That is why now no Mulsims consume any of these products. Eh…Wait, did the Muslims really boycott these brands?
I’m also mildly entertained by the fact that the story above conveniently forget about our own history as a nation. With Malayan Union, we go against the what the Sultans and Rajas have decided. Of course we make it nicer by telling everyone that we are protecting the royalties lah. When in fact, we didn’t like what the royalties was doing and we were going against them.
Talk about “bangsa takdak maruah”, the Malays are well know to be running RM2 Alibaba businesses, well known to be oh-so-easy in accepting bribes. But I guess when the Malays are doing it it’s not an issue. We Malays give and accept bribe in full dignity. It’s so full of dignity that we call it ‘sedeqah’. We runs RM2 Alibaba businesses proudly without any shred of shame. But the Rohingyas…they are a shameful bunch.
Not Hatred but it’s the limited resources
Now, In my ‘debates’ or ‘discussions’ with my fellow friends on the topic, they denied they are being racist. They flat out denied. Okay, let’s agree to disagree there. So I asked why are you so hung up about helping the Rohingyas? They claimed it’s about resources. Our country have limited resources, those resources must be spent on Malaysian instead of the refugees.
The first of the resources the Rohingya Haters claimed is limited is Job Vacancies. One of the request from the refugees is to be given some form or permit to work here in Malaysia so they can get some form of income. Rohingya haters claimed that we have limited jobs hence we shouldn’t offer these jobs to them. So many Malaysian have yet to secured any employment so why are we giving these jobs to them. More so during this Covid-19 period. We shouldn’t give them things that even we ourselves don’t have enough. That’s what the Rohingya haters are saying.
Second example, money. Governments have limited amount of money. Hence if we spend the monies on the Rohingyas, there would be less money for the Malaysian people. Government doesn’t even have enough for us Malaysian, so again, we should not give them things that even we ourselves don’t have enough. That’s what the Rohingya haters are saying
Then a good friend of mine said this;
Minta kat ayah sendiri x dapat… Pas2 dengar cerita ayah jiran sebelah baik… Try pi minta.. dapat la plak… Nak buat camna dpt ayah baik… Syukur la… Harap2 ayah ingat/bantu anak sendiri dulu… 😁
Harap2 ayah x bagi ayam panggang jugak la… Nant tersalah anggap plak anak sendiri… Anak pun manusia jugak… Ramai plak tu… Susah jadi ayah ni… Kena adil..
Some folks claimed that it’s a matter of resources and not race.
Many of the Rohingya haters felt that they themselves didn’t get enough from the government so why should the government give to others than Malaysian?
That is the crux of the matter. We always feel that we don’t have enough of something, everything, anything. Mind you the people that I debated/discussed with are people who are educate and have university degrees, own house(s), families, a stable and good jobs/businesses, have a good future waiting for them and their kids, and clearly are in the M40 and a bunch of them are in T20.
Yet compared to the Rohingyas who only have the clothes on their back, no home, not even a rented home, no education for them and their kids, no jobs, no country to go back to and worst of all, no future for their kids.
These haters feel that they still deserve more compared to the Rohingyas. They still feel they don’t have enough things yet especially compared to the Rohingyas. They still feel that they must get what they wanted first before giving to the Rohingyas.
Among the most viral and verified demand of the Rohingyas was the letter by MERHROM. It’s mainly revolves around them wanted to earn a living in Malaysia with proper permit and with proper insurance paid by the employer along with lower treatment charge at government hospitals. You can see the scanned letters here. I purposely linked it to a website that echos the Rohingya haters so you can see just how bad these website that promote hatred against Rohingyas.
The real problem
Now that’s a long intro to come to a point that I want to make. We need to change our minds from this ‘scarcity mentality’ to ‘abundance mentality’.
Let’s try to understand the two mentalities. First up is Abundance Mentality. This is a state of mind that believes ‘there is more than enough’. And because there is ‘more than enough’ we can all enjoy the what we’ve been given by Allah. Since we can all enjoy it, we can all win. It’s Win-Win for the both of us.
The second one, the bad mentality that we want to lose is ‘Scarcity Mentality‘. They believe that ‘we only have so much of this pie‘. ‘If you take some, there will be less for me‘. So in their mind, they will lose if they give it away, or if they other party get some, the other party wins. It’s a Win-Lose or Lose-Win situation.
The scarcity mentality is what these Rohingya haters really believed in. They believed that we don’t have enough on this world. And that God didn’t give them enough to live on this world so they can’t share. If they share this wealth, they will lose out.
Let’s examine what Islam says about these two states of mind. Let’s look at Quran 2:268
Syaitan itu menjanjikan (menakut-nakutkan) kamu dengan kemiskinan dan kepapaan (jika kamu bersedekah atau menderma), dan ia menyuruh kamu melakukan perbuatan yang keji (bersifat bakhil kedekut); sedang Allah menjanjikan kamu (dengan) keampunan daripadaNya serta kelebihan kurniaNya. Dan (ingatlah), Allah Maha Luas limpah rahmatNya, lagi sentiasa Meliputi PengetahuanNya.
Satan threatens you with poverty and orders you to immorality, while Allah promises you forgiveness from Him and bounty. And Allah is all-Encompassing and Knowing
Quran 2:268
Here the Quran likened scarcity mentality as the devil’s tricks or threat. It causes us to feel jealous, hate, anger and pettiness. The Quran condemns these feelings as the trick of the devil.
In the example of the Rohingyas haters I shared above, they are jealous of Rohingyas to get a work permit? Pettiness of the Rohingyas to get more affordable hospital treatments? Just how much hatred are in your heart my dear friends? You have a job, you have a house and a family. You have a country that loves you and takes care of you. None of the Rohingyas have these. Will we lose our work permit? Will you lose your homes? Will you lose your country? Do you feel threatened? by the devil? and you succumbed?
In the same sentence, Quran highlights the abundance mentality through His bounties and forgiveness. The Quran promises abundance if we’give’ and ‘share’ His wealth. Not if you ‘keep’ and ‘hoard His pie just for you’. Here the Quran stresses that we should discard the scarcity mentality and adopt the abundance mentality so that we received God’s forgiveness and unlimited bounties.
For comparison sake, Let me also share what the Bible says about the same abundance mentality.
Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full–pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back
Luke 6:38
Even the Christians preach the same thing. Give and you will get God’s unlimited bounties.
The solution
I don’t want to talk about the isolated cases where the Rohingyas, were found to steal, rob and behaving in a bad manner. These occurrences do not represent the whole of the Rohingyas. Moreover, these are the symtoms of a larger problems. If there are those who break the law, take them to task. It doesn’t matter if they are the Rohingyas, Malays, Chinese, Indians or even the Martians. Take them to task. we have the police to take care of these issues. Don’t use this as an excuse to succumb to the trick of the devil.
My dear friends, you all pray 5 times a day, you all say your prayers. Some of are are teachers, headmasters, business owners, government servants, and some of you even lead the prayers at your congregation and yet you easily succumb to this simple trick of the devil. Don’t talk and preach the devil’s trick. Stop.
Start talking about giving more to the Rohingyas because they need it more than us. Then don’t stop there, give more to those in need no matter if they are the Rohingyas, Malays, Chinese, Indian, Caucasian, heck even if they are the Romulans. And in turn, you will get Allah forgiveness and his bounties. Quran guarantees it.
Please read up more on Abundance and Scarcity Mindset. I love what Stephen Covey wrote in his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective people’. It changed my world when I first read it during my college years. Let’s hope it’ll do the same to you.
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