OCT 17 — It’s simply amazing observing the things that people are willing to do to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. We don’t even have to look too far. Just take music for example. Rock ‘n roll somehow got fractured into hard rock, folk rock, garage rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hardcore, right down to all the post-this and neo-that subgenres that keep popping out nowadays. And for what?
My opinion is that deep down we humans are all supremely insecure beings and are forever in need of some form of validation or recognition that we’re somewhat more special than the others, no matter how insignificant that “special” is.
We try our best to convince ourselves that our particular tribes/groups/packs are better than others. We feel intellectually superior for liking or disliking certain things, and congratulate ourselves for being “mature” when our behaviour is no more different than the high school kids we always make fun of when we watch those crappy Hollywood teen movies.
And so we have avant garde people who look down at rock ‘n roll Neanderthals; rock ‘n roll people looking down at soulless pop stars; art film people looking down at Hollywood film watchers; the list goes on and on and on.
Adults shake their heads disapprovingly at us kids for being petty when it comes to our tribalism in music, fashion, film and whatnot, but are they really that different from us?
Last week my band played in Penang at a gig called Goggle Fest, held at the historic Tapak Pesta Pulau Pinang, and we certainly had a blast, even though the searing island heat was sometimes excruciating.
The gig started a wee bit late, which is unfortunately a normal occurrence when it comes to Malaysian gigs, but other than that everything went smoothly and the organisers sure did a great job. They booked a sort of guest house/hostel-like place for the bands to stay in, and each band was assigned a liaison officer (it sounds better than the word they used — escort — ha ha) to move us around and things like that.
After the show we went straight to Batu Feringghi to check out the night market and of course, the infamously cheap pirated DVDs that you can find on sale everywhere there; so I guess there were loads of happy faces to be seen there that night as a result of all the shopping.
We then went to have dinner at a seafood place further up the road, which was also very nice and satisfying and cheap, and on our way back to the car we noticed a weird-looking house (was it a prayer house? A kindergarten?), with loads of cardboards and whiteboards full of writing that were mostly about God. It was after I noticed the photos of various bearded men that were also hung there and the name of Imam Ali that I realised that the house is a Shia home, or a Shia prayer house.
We talked a bit after that about the differences between the Shia and Sunni schools of thought in Islam, but mostly my mind wandered off all the way back to the time when I was still a student in a university in London, to a time when there were a lot of firsts in my life.
For a kampong boy from Ipoh, that was the first time I’ve ever met anyone who followed a school of thought other than the Shafie school that most of us Muslims grew up following here in Malaysia. That was the first time I got to see different ways of going about doing the same things like prayers, taking the ablution and so on.
That was the first time I got to pray together with all these different brothers of mine, and being the curious cat that I am, I tried hard to understand and learn the differences between the main Sunni schools of Shafie, Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali (and yes, I’m still no expert so don’t ask, okay?).
And the best part was, I got to do all this without anyone telling me that this or that school of thought is better. Yes we’re different, but at the end of the day we’re all the same. We worship the same God, read the same Quran and have the same Prophet in Muhammad (PBUH).
Fast forward to when I’m back here in Malaysia, it’s really disheartening to hear people say that in following the Shafie school, we here in Malaysia follow a better and “safer” path than the other schools. “Tak mau ada was-was,” people say. There we go again with trying to be exclusive. We keep on complaining about what a pity it is that we Muslims don’t unite. Well how can we when we’re this petty?
Back to my earlier story about the Shia house in Penang. The single most startling thing I’ve ever experienced when I was in London was when a Shia brother asked me whether we can pray together and for me to lead the prayer, to which I naturally said yes since I’ve missed the main group prayers anyway, so no biggie right? He then told me that that’s the first time anyone Sunni has ever agreed to his request. So we did our prayers together and had a little chat after that.
Thinking about what we in Malaysia think about the Shias, and the things I hear about them from people I randomly talk to here (usually not nice things), it irks me even more how hard we try to be exclusive here.
God has even given us an opportunity to bond and communicate with fellow Muslims when we go to perform the Hajj, which I think might be the real reason for performing the Hajj, more so than the rituals, but how many of us actually bothered to use them? Not that many, judging from the evidence at hand here. But then again, we are exclusive aren’t we?
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