Are the Natural Disasters Wrath of Allah ?

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Are the Natural Disasters Wrath of Allah ? From Kyaw Kyaw Oo’s Words of Love

This post is response to those who are accusing Islam as the religion of Angry God.Talking about recent flood disaster in Pakistan,some claimed that Muslims do not wish to help their brothers who are facing great natural disaster.

*(Saudi Arabia donated 44 Million USD, Turkey donated 11MillionUSD, and most Muslim volunteers worked without talking much!).Some of them started blaming Islam as a religion that taught natural disasters as a punishment from God to Muslims. That is the reason why most Muslims do not help their brothers who are being punished by the God, they said. And that is the reason why I write this post.

Politics and religion a heady mix

Malaysiakini letter by Anushka Anastasia Solomon | Sep 3, 08

“… All mankind is of one author, and is one volume…”

                                        –For Whom the Bell Tolls, John Donne.

I read with interest what Lim Guan Eng said about not wanting Malaysia to be a theocratic society, whether Islamic or Christian.

His vision is akin to the Father of the United States, George Washington, who maintained the place of each man, woman and child under the olive tree. He refused to be coerced.

Religion ought to be a personal matter between man and God. Otherwise, it becomes a freak show of power and politics as in recent years has happened in both the United States and Malaysia.

So politicised is religion in the United States, that the two men running for president of the United States were invited to a game show type Christian forum at the Saddleback Church.

Beware violence in name of religion

 

KUALA LUMPUR, July 24 — Many individuals and groups have abused the name of God and religion to justify violence and terrorism, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said today.

The prime minister said such extremism had been observed many times in the course of history and in each instance, the virtuous teachings of religion had been twisted and manipulated on behalf of one’s religion, for the sake of political gain or personal profit.

“In our own time, we have witnessed many injustices committed in the name of religion, including the occupation of someone else’s land and the dispossession that ensues from it. This is surely an affront to the dignity of the person, and a blemish upon the freedom that is a human being’s birthright.”

Is there any thing called Secular Ethics?

 Is there any thing called Secular Ethics?

 

Edited and extracts from Malaysiakini’s column by Sim Kwang Yang,    “Is ethics possible without religion?”

We are all condemned to be moral agents. When we choose a course of actions, we make the decision according to whether it is morally good or bad.

In this confusing and increasingly secular world, a pertinent question would be: Is ethics possible without religion? Or are there any thing called Secular Ethics?

If this question is one on matter of fact, then the answer is a resounding “yes”. In Socrates and Confucius, we have two great philosophers who have expounded their ethics without recourse to any supernatural being.

The authority of Socratic system of ethics is his Form or Idea of the Good, which can be achieved by his epistemological method of dialectic. Many of his tenets have since haunted the Western world. Is it really true that ethics can neither be legislated nor taught? Is it really the case that to know the good is to do the good, and nobody does bad things intentionally?

The rainbow of pluralism

I have edited and adapted to the Myanmar context from the original letter to Malaysiakini by Yeo Yang Poh

I hope Malaysiakini and  Yeo Yang Poh could understand and forgive for this. They should even be proud that they could contribute a very good letter for the fellow Myanmar/Burmese citizens.

YEO YANG POH is an advocate and solicitor, and the immediate past president of the Malaysian Bar.

Like birth, race is, for all of us, a matter of fact in which we have no choice.

This simple, neutral fact of nature, however, weaves such a painful web of complexity, once it passes through the maladjusted looms of the human eyes, hearts, and minds.

Far from being a distinction without a difference, race has provided the ugly excuse for_

• discrimination,
• prejudice,
• fear
• and hatred.
• In the worst circumstances, the boisterous looms of race churn out bales of cloth soaked with human blood.

Just as_

• many sins are committed in the false name of God,
• much evil has been perpetrated under the mischievous pretence of championing a race.

Why has it come to be so?

It is rooted_

• in the perceived need for human beings to compete for limited resources, initially
• to meet one’s need
• and, later, one’s greed
• (or, more accurately, the greed of those in power).
• Banding together of persons increases their strength in the tussle for resources.
• Race became, and remains, one of the most convenient criteria to be used for rival groupings.

It takes little time for the leaders and the upper echelon of the pack, who have the most to gain in the economic and political game, to realise that the easiest way for them to retain support and control is to provide justification for discrimination

• (‘this is our land’),
• entrench prejudices (‘they are inferior’),
• instill fear in the followers (‘they will rob you of what you have’),
• and sublimely encourage hatred (‘their children will trample all over yours’).

So it snowballs.

• By painting other races as an ominous threat to the well-being of one’s own race,
• one can instantly become the champion of a cause,
• the hero who offers to save his race from humiliation.

This cunning but cowardly man in a superman suit_

• lights fires
• so that he can ride in each time for the staged rescue.
• As time goes by, this pattern is institutionalised, exploiting the weakness and vulnerability in the psyche of a mixed populace.

The fake angels

Such are some of the troubles of our multi-polar and terribly disturbed world, and of the difficulties faced by many pluralistic societies, MYANMAR/BURMA among them.

While we never celebrate our togetherness as Myanmar or Burmese, one of the most patriotic things we may usefully do is to examine our successes and failures, ask ourselves honestly how much of the ills described above have befallen our own society, and urgently seek better ways forward from now on. This must include a candid re-examination of our race-based system of Military Government Policies discriminating on MIXED BLOODED PEOPLE e.g. Burmese Muslims and Burmese Chinese.

How may we do that?

Racial differences_

• do not need to lead down the path of discord and conflict,
• notwithstanding the long periods of political propaganda that have duped a lot of us into thinking otherwise.
• Race may be a fact about which we have no choice,
• but what we would do with this fact is a matter very much of choice.
• We have suffered long and hard, because more often than not the wrong choices, urged on by power mongers, had been made.

We may begin by realising that_

• racial differences are never the real enemy.
• The culprit is the inequities in the distribution of resources within a society, regardless of race.

Harmonious race relations will be achieved by_

• building a fair and equitable society
• in which resources are applied and distributed in accordance with need, ability and effort;
• rather than for satisfaction of greed, manipulation or corruption.

The politics of race, and the fake angels who sing that lone tune, must be exposed for what they really are:

• persons too selfish
• or too incompetent to provide for all,
• and too weak to govern except by_
• o dividing
• o and ruling.

We must wake up to the fact that we belong to one race, the human race.

One much-touted approach to avoid racial prejudice and combat discrimination is_

• to build a culture of colour-blindness.
• See not the skin colours of persons,
• or see beyond their colours.
• requires one to ignore the obvious differences that one’s senses perceive,
• and to act as if those differences do not exist.
• acknowledges and accepts racial differences as a positive enrichment of the diversities of our world.
• No basis or excuse for discrimination,
• but for non-discrimination
• and mutual appreciation.

Unity forged, not forced

• Instead of being colour-blind,
• we should be colour-appreciative.

In other words, we learn, understand, accept and appreciate the differences that exist among various races; and know that the world is better and richer for it.

• A rainbow is beautiful precisely because it is not single-coloured.
• And none of its colours could, nor should, claim a larger share of its glory.

By the same token,

• integration, when not entirely voluntary, is not the best solution for a plural society.
• A better approach is to embrace plurality.
• Pluralism is the silver lining for the world’s future, as it is for Myanmar’s.
• Pluralism is_
• o not to be merely tolerated
• o or accepted.
• o It should be embraced.

Sixty years ago, Burmese of all races united to free themselves from colonialism.

• Sixty years hence, we face new challenges in a globalising world.
• Failure to adequately meet these challenges will enslave all of us, regardless of race, as much as colonialism would have.
• To meet these challenges, unity is essential.
• 1. But unity requires equality.
• 2. Unity cannot be coerced.
• It has to be forged, not forced.
• If people feel less than united, it does not help calling them unpatriotic or disruptive.
• It is usually due to the presence of inequity.
• Examine the causes, and effect change.

There is such a lot to do, and so much to change within ourselves.

Let us reject race-based politics in Military Government, Ethnic Minorities and all the opposition Groups including NLD.

Let us_

• embrace equality amidst pluralism,
• and be colour-appreciative,

so that the next 60 years will be far better than the last.

General Aung San’s speech to revolt against the Fascist military rulers

General Aung San’s speech

to revolt against the

Fascist military rulers

From Moe Thee Zone and Sit Mone’s blog

I DREAMT OF POPE VISITING MYANMAR

I DREAMT OF POPE

VISITING MYANMAR

Last night I dreamt that Pope Benedict XVI had visited Myanmar, went to see Karen State, Shan State, Chin State, Kachin State and at last Depayin village.

The following are his remarks in my dream that are quite similar to his speech after visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp. The following is the excerpts of my dream:

As “a son of God” he asked God why he remained silent during the “unprecedented widespread numerous crimes on humanity” of the SPDC régime. In a place like Burma/Myanmar, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?“ To speak in this country of horror, in this place where unprecedented multiple crimes were committed against God and man is almost impossible — and it is particularly difficult and troubling.

“To implore the grace of reconciliation — first of all from God, who alone can open and purify our hearts, from the men and women who suffered here, and finally the grace of reconciliation for all those who, at his hour of our history, are suffering in new ways from the power of hatred and the violence which hatred spawns.”

Burma/Myanmar, he said, is a place where the human heart still cries out to God, asking where he was, why he was silent, why he did not save his people.
“We must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God,” the pope said, asking him to save humanity and to help all people actively resist hatred, violence and attacks on the dignity of others.

“All these inscriptions speak of human grief; they give us a glimpse of the cynicism of that SPDC régime which treated men and women as material objects and failed to see them as persons embodying the image of God,” he said.

“SPDC régime wanted to crush the entire Burmese people, to cancel them from the register of the peoples of the earth.”

Pope Benedict said, the SPDC régime wanted to destroy Christianity, Islam and true Buddhism as well, replacing it with “a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of Myanmar Tatmadaw, the rule of the powerful.”

The obligation to remember what happened in Burma/Myanmar and to recognize the depths of hatred of which people are capable should not focus simply on numbers, the pope said.
“The individual persons who ended up here in this abyss of terror” were real people, he said. I ask you to stand firm in your faith! Stand firm in your hope! Stand firm in your love! Amen!” he concluded, speaking in Polish on the last day of his trip.

Note: My humble and sincere apology to Pope Benedict XVI for using his name and words. But I hope I am not insulting the Holy Pope but praising and looking up to him, appealing just not to look back into the history but to realize that the ugly Holocaust History is repeating itself in present Myanmar/Burma in another form. And it is not committed on one race and one religion only but all the races and religions of Burmese people, as long as they are not on the SPDC side. Dear Pope please visit our country and speak on our behalf and kindly pray to God for all of us to be liberated from this Fascist Nazi SPDC Régime.

KO TIN NWE 

………………………………………………

Comments

David Law said _

Dear Ko Tin Nwe, to quote your article: “the SPDC régime wanted to destroy Christianity, Islam and true Buddhism as well, replacing it with “a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of Myanmar Tatmadaw, the rule of the powerful.”
This has prompted me to write an article about “Myanmarmy-ism” as the new religion of Burma, and Thanshwe is the top God, Ee Hmway Kyaing is the Goddess, and all the other generals are the lesser gods and nat-spirits.
As sort of like Jupiter and Hera and all the rest.
 Hmyawbar, in a future issue of BD

Ko Tin Maung said _

Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate, professor and holocaust survivor said, “The question is not where was God during the Holocaust, but where was man?”