“I sincerely and genuinely reiterate that my visit to the Surau Al-Huda was not politically motivated, and had no motive to put into question the sanctity of suraus and mosques,” Serdang Mp Teo Nie Ching said on Saturday...
Teo explained that she had visited the Kajang surau on Sunday, Aug 22, as their MP, in order to hand over to them the state government's monetary contribution for repairs to the surau fence... She had timed her visit in order to break fast with the surau's committee members and congregation…
“Since I was invited to say a few words, I in all sincerity gave a brief explanation of the state's education programmes that benefit the people of Selangor,” she said, adding that she welcomed advice from all parties on better execution of her duties... (Malaysiakini report, Aug 28, 2010)
The Perkasa panic over Teo's visit to a surau in Kajang intrigues me. The latter had gone there in humility to present a state donation to repair the fence. She is now a sensation and forced to mend fences. She may be meeting with the biggest religious head of the state - the Sultan. There will be repercussions. There has already been.
To be equating what she did with the fate of the American modern revolutionary leader Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz) - that 'Brother Malcolm' was supposedly assassinated because he was preaching to Christians - is to be totally ignorant of what happened in the history of the American Civil Rights movements.
It signifies that one does not have any clue at all to the close relationship between Malcolm X and the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, a Southern Baptist minister in the Christian and Nation of Islam struggle for equality and equally opportunity. But then again, perhaps some Malay ultra-fascist nationalist groups do not read much of anything to exist as anything.
At a time when Malaysia is celebrating its “Merdeka”, or whatever one may call this nationalistic ritual, we are seeing the continuation of the absurdity of arguments over religion, by way of crises manufactured so that attention can be taken away from the larger issue of the present regime in the process of being dismantled.
Malaysia's “Merdeka … Merdeka …” cry will be greeted elsewhere - buried in the psyche of the nation - with chants of “diperhamba … diperhamba...” or “enslaved .. enslaved...”, referring to the closing of the captive mind and the notion of Hang Nadim (who saved Singapore from the swordfish) in chains.
Because the manufacturing of crises and the bogeyman called race and ethnicity is no longer a working tool of structural violence to be deployed as a reason to create havoc and chaos come the 13th general election, religion becomes the next available sharp object to pry open the mind of Malaysians so that fear of another riot can be filter-funneled into them.
I hope Malaysians will in no way buy into this script a la Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massace, or even Pontianak Gua Musang, written by those who wish to deface Islam by way of associating visiting its house of worship as a “blasphemous” act. Only simple-minded people masked as sophisticated racists, handsomely paid and in need of cheap publicity, will resort to such orchestrations.
Opening doors to understanding
Let us leave this “tabloidic” notion of what is ailing Malaysians religiously. There is a larger concern of how much we have progressed this Merdeka when it comes to understanding each others' religion.
There is an urgent need for peaceful dialogue on the universality of religion and the common destiny of humankind charted via different paths, before violences become a norm for conflict resolution. Only through education can respect and tolerance be made a culture, although in Malaysia this will take a few more generations, assuming that ten steps back are not orchestrated in this difficult but desired path to peaceful agenda towards developmentalism.
Essentially - all religions are monotheistic, and even in evolved philosophies and folk religion too, the submission of the self is to one the great force of peace.
Every summer, I have been teaching comparative religion as well here in the United States and nothing like what is reported in some tabloidic news media is happening. The door to any house of worship is open to anyone to learn from each other, provided that the intent is right and the visitor respects the ethics of visiting.
It is necessary for the visitor to first find out what are the dos and don'ts of visiting the place. I assign my students to visit masjid, Buddhist temples, synagogues, Catholic and Protestant churches, Hindu temples, and even the Church of Scientology and the Native American reservation, to get them to learn about something they have never known before.
The result - fantastic opening up of doors to further understanding the beauty of the varieties of religious knowledge - and strengthening one's own belief.
In Teo's surau visit incident, Malaysians are learning to differentiate between rational and ridiculous arguments. I would go for an all-out promotion of the teaching of comparative religions as early as in our high schools and especially in our universities. There is tremendous value in such a course offering.
Our hope as Malaysians is to taste “Merdeka” (freedom) in the way we think about religious tolerance and not to continue to be “diperhamba” (enslaved) by any well-paid ultra-nationalistic-fascist group, out to close shut the Malaysian mind - especially that of the Malays.
DR AZLY RAHMAN, who was born in Singapore and grew up in Johor Bahru, holds a Columbia University (New York) doctoral degree in International Education Development and Master's degrees in the fields of Education, International Affairs, Peace Studies, and Communication. He has taught more than 40 courses in six different departments and has written more than 300 analyses on Malaysia. His teaching experience spans both in Malaysia and in the United States and in a wide range of teaching context; from elementary to graduate education. He currently resides in the United States.
I have been busy with my social exploration and experiment with facebook. I think it is a wonderful postmodern tool of creative engagement. As a professed Luddite, I am still yearning to go back to the cave. But in the meantime, I will go back here where I started -- my blog "between cybernetics and existentialism". Stay tuned for my screams of consciousness ...
Visual: Lobby, Student Center, Princeton University, New Jersey
Folks, I am back from the cave; back to our column A Republic of Virtue. These are the fruits of my 'brief contemplation' in the form of entries on my facebook status pages.
A REPUBLIC OF VIRTURE Azly Rahman
1. Maybe ... life is a beautiful journey of construction and deconstruction, bricolage of battles crafted to one's heart desire, the past rewritten, the future non-existent both collapsing into one grand symphony of the here and now, of spirits, souls, demons, angels, protons, neutrons of nano-bytes of sound bytes of consciousness dancing like white noise waiting for a prophet inside of us to pull them back in place –ar
2. Evolve we must even from ape to man, even through natural and metaphysical selections -- ar
(primitivism in the tradition of animalistic culture can be observed in hyper-modern societies such as malaysia, as materialism dictates the evolution of political maturity and civility; as the law of the jungle and cannibalism rules, as postindustrial tribalism in the form of violence-leaning race-based hate-based politics is in constant display, orchestrated by the hidden hands of machiavellianism -- so that primate politics can be a feature of civilization.)
3. When corruption becomes a norm and nobody cares, cultural decadence becomes a celebration, family breakdown becomes a way of cultural progress. And politicians act like ultra-modern slave-owners to the masses, using the machinery of the state to control the mind, material, media, of the nation -- when all these are happening we are seeing a de-evolution of a society on its way to be transported to the planet of the apes. - ar
4. As human beings try to understand the universe and its creator, does the universe even care about our existence? -ar
5. If life imitates Nature, what then does Nature imitate in this hierarchy of Form and Appearance, of Illusion and Reality? - ar
6. Life ... conceive it like an installation of art and music, of light and sound ... and of prolonged silence -- ar
7. We exist simply as a complex marker of a network of conceptual interconnectedness of signs, symbols, and signifiers of a larger world existing in a realm we can never comprehend its meaning other than what is being taught to us by those who owns the means to craft the imagined knowledge of the Unseen -- ar
8. Must teachers in Malaysia join political parties? Or -- should they spend time studying philosophy and practising critical pedagogy? Will they become tools of the State, using their influence to colonize the enquiring young minds and turn each of them into yet another brick in the wall nourishing their mind into catatonic states? – ar
9. Love gives life to living; like a million lotuses bloom, growing and permeating into every cell of the mind body, soul, nourishing these like a thousand eternal springs - without love ... hatred haunts like hovering hawks from hell in cohort with hungry hyenas waiting to feast on the human mind, body, soul, decaying and diseasing every cell till death in midsummer triumphs – ar
10. How must one become enlightened in one's lifetime and what next ... and what then must one do? -- ar
11. There is no quick way to success and supreme wealth; it is a long journey of hard work and gratitude at every step of successful failures that determine the 'blessed-ness" of what one own; even so, the idea of 'ownership' is a contradiction; one doesn't own anything except what is granted by Fate or Free Will in order to test one's understanding of the meaning of "success", "wealth", and of course "gratitude"-- ar
12. The greatest enemy of knowledge is ignorance – Socrates
13. Know thyself ... know thy enemies ... a hundred battles ... a hundred victories -- Sun Tzu
14. Aahhh ... facebook is emerging to be the ultimate medium of postmodernity in which the self assumes a cybernetic life, the mind becomes a heteroglossic-consciousness machine, the world of the inhabitant is now a panopticon and a synopticon, and the past, present, and future collapse into a maya and a world of cybernetic beingness and nothingness of informational overload -- ar
15. Think and be merry; smoke the peace pipe of eternity; dance to the tune of humanity; act to help alleviate poverty; educate each other of the meaning of social equality – ar
16. We must remove the dark burqah of cultural identity that borders on destructive and suicidal ethnocentrism, that Talibanizes the effort towards tolerance; instead we should only wear a thin veil of ethnic marker so that we may still honor the needs of identity politics but celebrate the human desire to learn to live ... and live to learn about each other's godly-constructed differences – ar
17. Seek not the elusive fountain of earthy youth and vitality but rather, speak softly to the senses within, serenading them with the songs of remembrance of things past and profound, so that they may in turn speak to you and bathe you in the oasis of the oneness of the self -- the self that dwells in a fountain of unseen majesty – ar
18. From veda to veritas to viva to victory; from wisdom to truth to glory to victory -- evolve we must from one plane of consciousness to another, from space to consciousness to nothingness, so that we may become noble not by birth but by living a life of everlasting bliss -- ar
19. If there is a journey that will bring one to the seven heavens, it must begin through the eyes - ar
20. Let not society corrupt your soul ... from a distance pierce through its eyes ...-ar
21. I wear my sunglasses at night so that i can see through the soul of the newer machines and pierce through the origin of the ghost within; in the eyes of the machine lies the seedless soul of destruction, planted when science became the tool of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism – ar
22. Sacrifice not your child to save tradition even if it means abandoning rites and rituals that do not makes sense to the rational mind; for the child may be a father/mother to Man that will create newer cultures that will hopefully destroy ones that call for the child to be sacrificed -- ar
23. Become the subject you wish to objectify; the argument you wish to deconstruct; the crystal ball you wish to observe the world from; the self you wish to praise and worship -- ar
24. Doubt grows with knowledge. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
25. "The gentleman reaches upwards; the inferior man reaches downwards ... the gentleman understands what is right; the inferior man understands what is profitable" -- Confucius
26. "When Nature exceeds art, you have the rustic. When art exceeds Nature you have the clerk. It is when art and Nature are harmoniously blended that you have the gentleman." -- Confucius
27. People deserve the government they voted into power; one cannot be sorry when one chooses to be safe but behind the idea of the manintenance of the status quo lies a complex system of structural violence rooted in historical and dialectical materialism laced with ethno-religious fundamentalism. people are addicted to the political suffering they themselves gave birth to: rejoice hence -- ar
28. Initiate interfaith dialogue intelligently so that we may be inspired and illuminated by the intensity of the inter-connectedness of the inner self with the illusionary world we hope to be involved in; so that we may become universal beings inspired by the power of the particularity of the individual self we inhabit in this world of intermediaries -- ar
29. I left my heart and soul in Planet Pandora and wish to learn the language of primordial reality and become a warrior-prince to battle against objectifiers and profiteers of Ultimate Reality -- ar
30. The struggle by the Na'vi tribe is reminiscent of the struggle of the Naga tribe in the Indonesian poet W.S. Rendra's The Struggle of the Naga Tribe (Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga). It is also the story of the Penans in Sarawak
31. Return to paradise we all must - ar
32. The evolution of Malaysia's tolerance towards the creation of ethnically-based hate groups signifies the advent of the hitlerization of society; a body politics plagued with the inability to deal both with the implosion and explosion of neo-feudalistic cybernetic construction of the falsehood-ness of race-based politics. what then must malaysians do? -- ar
33. REJOICE -- for a million souls that liveth a million ways there is and there must be to understand the meaning of truth and of divinity, never will one be the same as another; rejoice -- for a million hearts will silently or openly revolt against any means for others to impose the meaning of the meaning of the meaning ... of truth. to each mind and soul to each truth one holds -- ar.
34. Maybe, the ultimate test of faithfulness lies in one's faithfulness to one's true self of which faith in others and other things emanates or dissipates -- ar
35. In his deepest darkest moments, man is best left alone in his inner world of eerie silence ... so that he may be serenaded and lullabied by the sirens of his heart in his odyssey towards his glorious and shining moments -- ar
36. Be brave to discuss even of the proof of the existence of the self, the larger Self, the soul, the Supreme Being, and spirituaity; it is a way to evolve into rational souls and into accepting that the simplest questions are the most profound; be brave even to conduct a skillfully sustained dialogue on these as this can be exhilirating and enlightening -- ar
37. Who needs the matrieya, the mahdis, the pied pipers and prophecies, soothsayers and saviours, when we can craft our own story of rise and fall, birth and death, destruction and illuminations, heaven and hell -- our story in all its glory as we become masters of our own destiny, with fate's conspiracy? -- ar
38. Octopuses of the world unite; predict who will win the the next world war ... combined yours will be better than Nostradamus's, for sure the fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones -- ar
39. The next Malaysian World Cup 2014 team will consist of young and talented under-80 players such as V. Arumugam, Soh Chin Aun, Santokh Singh, Mokhtar Dahari, Bakri Ibni, James Wong, Othman Abdullah, and a few imported players such as Fandi Ahmad, K. Kamamoto, Rudy Hartono, Liem Swie Kim, Prakash Padukone, and Malek Nor: truly multicultural -- ar)
40. The Dutch and Spaniards will both win the World Cup and the world; the Dutch will get Dutch East India Company, free trip to Batavia, & get to rule Jawa for 300 years and get a bonus installation of apartheid in South Africa, the Spaniards will get Chris Columbus and an armada of Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, & get to ... rule the Phillippines for more that 300 years and will get a bonus of the Spanish-American War - ar
41. Man is born free, yet he is relegated to live in a psychedelic world, mediated by the media he creates, by the cyberspace he inhabits, by the invented realities he does not know offered to him, by the world of soundbites, sight, and sound that mesmerizes him, by the surrealisitc word he has fallen into, in a Baudrilliardian sense -- ar
42. Part of my mind is still resonating from the those multi-mega watts of amphitheatre sound of last night's Kid Rock and Bon Jovi concert. Need time to go back to the sound of silence before analyzing this advanced giant-screen and video-enhanced rock kapak experience in the former Giants Stadium -- ar
43. Instead of the public universities talking about Vision 2020, Islam Hadhari, the culture of information technology, world-classism ideology, blue ocean strategy, and now the newest of the newest of the new economic strategy, why not teach how to deconstruct ideologies, take the nation out of cybernetic fantasies, and start teaching radical theories needed to dismantle totalitarian societies – ar
44. How green is your valley, how red is your ideology? - ar
45. Be brave enough to leave one's culture, race, ethnicity behind; in all these lie the seed of destruction, domination, desolation; lie power relations in which the master uses his grand narrative to subjugate the slaves; lie the disabling aspects of civilization; lies superstition, caste, class, and the contradictions; ... through language of these lie the violent enslavement of the mind; "culture colonizes" -- ar
46. Fly with the dove that caress human souls, that pierce the eyes, that nurses spirits to freedom, that selfless bird of freedom that loses nothing for he is everything; run not with wolves that shred the mind, body, and soul to pieces and leave it to rot for hyenas to feast upon -- in life the inner self can whisper distinction to make, the path to choose. Witnessed by Love that reigns supreme. – ar
47. Education cannot live and breathe on discrimination; it must flourish on love and hope for humanity, social change cannot live on idealism alone but on humanism and existentialism, and revolutions might be a better alternative than innovations if the latter merely sugarcoats the pareto optimum level of the status quo that is corrupt to the core -- ar
48. That was a torturous one hour (on Maysian TV) of struggling with the beautiful broadcast of the Malay language -- I survived! -- ar
49. I will be on TV1 at 10 p.m. Malaysian time tonight via Skype (talking in Malay – help me Lord ...) on talent, brain drain, and national development with panelist Dr. Zaini Ujang of UTM.
50. Who would have guessed that The World Cup 2010 is a conspiracy; of the rise of newer neo-colonialism in the way the Europeans are again wiping off the Third world nations, of the triumph of techniques over temperament, machines over man, teamwork over tango, and avatars over natives – these only the disciplines of “soccer-osophy and soccer-litics” I call, can explain -- ar
51. An unexamined soccer game is not worth playing -- ar
52. Art, music, literature, science, and philosophy must be transformed into tools of social revolutions; we can no longer afford to surrender these to the hegemony of the ruling class nor further fragment the masses into human crumbs destroyed by postmodern incomprehensibilities and insensibilities -- ar
53. I have turned to stone, but when I roll like a rock, I will gather moss; a rock feels no pain, a stone does not get high, one can imagine me, like in Camus' Sisyphus, being rolled up and down the hill till eternity and Sisyphus remaining happy; never think of carving me for I wish to remain like Lao Tzu till change makes me permanent -- ar
54. Skyscrapers and twin towers signify how uncivilized we have become as we tried to reach the gods in search of truth in materialism; civilization is mistaken as progress in which the essence of truth in humanity, that is "primitivism" is buried in the ideological structures of power, greed, hedonism, and social cancer, all these embodied in the necessary evil called the "state" or in the Malay language, "kerajaan" -- ar
55. He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty. -- Lao Tzu
56. Let us live in self-governing vegetarian communes with a garden, a vegetable farm, some water buffaloes, basic needs, solar-powered hut, no TV, lots of books, meaningful conversations, and a facebook account -- no governments, no politicians, no schools, no stock markets. no cars, no nonsense -- ar.
57. WASTELAND II:
I want to write a thousand verses or more/Or maybe one or less/As I opened my eyes to see the darkness of the blinding light/I want to write as the hands writes/As the consciousness screams/As I see the might/Of everything in sight/ ...
58. We rightly deserve the government we voted into power; so that we may be made comfortable with the fear we have, since only a government that uses fear to control its people will be able to best meet the needs of those who already have fear historically structured into their mind, body, and soul - ar
59. It is not enough to oppose iron rule, but to cut its hands off with the might of the pen -- ar
We are 'book of signs" to be written, revised, rewritten, erased ...as we write our life story, as we become scripts and postscripts, we have objectified ourselves and limit our realm of existence ... writing differs from the spoken word ... from the word become flesh and from language becomes inscriptions becomes installations, embedded in these are ideologies to humanize or dehumanize - ar
60. To me, writing can be a terrifying act; you don't know what you will deconstruct – ar
61. Seriously folks, men too should take up gardening not golfing. There is philosophy in gardening and politics in golfing ... unlike golfing where you may learn to bury your business or political enemies alive or to finish off your political jumping frogs unceremoniously, gardening has a philosophy where your see love springing out of the ground and frogs looking like your dream princes -- ar
62. Find beauty and meaning, even in the most mundane of all things we engage in, find love and hope even in the most difficult and dullest child we are educating, find awe and inspiration, even in the smallest garden we create with our own hands -- for a life lived examined begins with all these -- ar
63. First the colonizers capitalized and fragment on race, next the cultural imperialists did it with Coke and McDonalds, next the locals are doing it with religion and circuses ... these are styles of colonization. Wake up folks ... unite through philosophy of cultural action for freedom, keeping religion to your own private ... self ... it is a class and caste war, not about nationalism and ethnicity ... -- ar
64. At a time when the Muslims in Malaysia are now arguing over yet another set of variations of islam -- Wahabbi, wasabee, wannabe, or what-its-going-to-be -- aside from Sunni-Shiah-Sufi-Salafi sensiibilities, what they need are: a rational mind, a revealed text, scriptures of other religion, world philosophies and a willingness to deconstruct everything, live simply, simply live, and ask the simplest questions – ar
65. All these fightings are making the orchestration of political manipulations easier, so that behind these intense moments of "divide and conquer", more can be stolen from the public coffers. Malays are the most obedient people on earth, ... thanks to feudal culture, interpretations of religion, and an iron rule hidden under a velvet glove.
66. What a waste of a collective human mind. Reading and the study of philosophy is shunned against, one would rather be glued to the television 24/7. The situation is actually hopeless. ... artists, thinkers, writers, educators, musicians, etc. must ignite this revolution of radical change in thinking beginning with the questioning and deconstructing everything and breaking down the old order.
67. First the colonizers capitalized on race, next the cultural imperialists did it with Coke and McDonalds, next the locals are doing it with religion and circuses ... the styles of colonization. Wake up folks ... and smell the black roses. Unite we must, through philosophy of cultural action for freedom, through praxis, keeping religion to your own private self ... it is a class and caste war, not about nationalism ... it has always been this kind of war.
68. Malays possess Nostradamic ideas – Puteri Buluh Betong was the first test-tube baby, Hang Tuah a prototype of Robocop disguised as an over-glamourised fool, Hang Nadim a clever investment banker who fooled the King of Temasik into importing banana trees, Si Tenggang a warning to Malays not to venture far but to lead Perkasa, Raja Bersiong a warning to modern Malaysians to be vigilant
of blood-sucking leaders -- ar
69. The history of every epoch is the history of the ruling class, Marx said. The compilation of Malay legends and myths and 'chronicles of ancient rulers' is the work of the scribe commissioned by the ruling class. The Sejarah Melayu is one. It is an effort to pass down false consciousness and a male-and-phallocentric version of 'history' to the younger generation. -- ar
70. I am feeling red and seeing the darkness of the garment I am wearing, as I look into the eyes of the selves that are piercing into mine; as I asked: how real are the colors of our existence? -- ar
71. Is not the world a gift, from the lover to the beloved ... ? -- ar
72. All there exist are merely metaphors of love and the beloved, of loving and being loved -- even the kama sutra of Vatsyayana spoke of the metaphor of oneness from two-ness and many-ness; of the detachment of the fruits of one's action in the way we act out the part in this world as stage. the conversation between Lord Krishna and Arjuna is essentially about this; not merely being immersed in nothingness but the recognition first that there is self and the larger self and there there is the seeing but not with the physical eyes that see. The lover and the beloved is essentially about that metaphor of being in love not only with creation but with the universe and the ultimate reality that creates, as the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, the Mahabharatta, the sutras, and the puranas would teach. Whatever that is manifested in the mind/thought is acted upon in the reality of physical action and all these have no boundary as seen from the eyes of Ultimate Reality... the world inside and outside collapses into one.
73. We have been living too much with "attachments' and possessions, have we not? Of the need to own materials that are taken from nature and from others. essentially this is the disease of modernity. The nature of the larger self is seldom explored; we have forgotten to live with the dictates of our dharma and plant the seeds of "bodhi" in the way we conduct our lives. We plunder and enslave people, build weapons of mass destruction for the big and small mahabharattas we create out of our love for this world of maya. We are doomed. and that's when many will wait for the coming of Prince Rama, in this last phase of the Yuga ...
74. Where does Sita Devi come into the picture then if not as a metaphor of "waiting for the beloved" and the wait ended when she came home guided by the lights of Divali.
75. Man's true nature is love -- from where man and women came from and unto it they shall return. The means at arriving and returning may differ but the measure of humanity is through the amount of love manifested at different levels, time, space. ultimately as some believe, all will go back to Brahma.
76. Aahhh ... with the 7-0 loss of North Korea, the country will once again become a hermit kingdom and contemplate defeat in this game of capitalist proportion; – ar
77. know thyself, know thy enemies, a hundred battles a hundred victories -- sun tzu, in the art of war
78. The United States of America will win the next World Cup if it applies the strategy of transforming of innocent boys into GI Joes, men into Avatars, a village Texas idiot into a president, foot soldiers into drones, nothingness into globalized sensations, and high school boys into Tom Cruises, -- into its soccer training programs. that's America. Love it or go crazy living in it ;) -- ar
79. Contrary to popular belief, the best way to some men's heart might not be through their stomach, but through their head; this species of men would prefer intelligence than indigestion ... and give a woman not a dozen roses or two, give her a dozen species of it, so that she will learn the multiculturality of love ... and how many cultures profess world-wise love, perennially -- ar
80. The french soccer players must learn to contain their head-butt anger; at the rate they are going, they will again, have another tennis court oath, storm the Eiffel Tower, build themselves a Statue of Liberty, and guillotine all the soccer balls in Paris -- ar
81. There is no truth in historical documents -- only evolvingly sophisticated falsehoods propagated by the ruling class -- ar
82. History can be a selective collection of memories of the strangest people; of eccentrics and schizophrenic leaders ... what's missing are those buried under rubles and statistics -- ar
83. Fatherhood is a resounding success when, even a daughter will speak, think, and act like her father and speaks of him with pride and praises long after he is dead and gone ... -- ar
84. Those crazy Americans have a good chance of winning the World Cup -- provided they don't go crazy on the field thinking that it's touch football, slam dunking like LeBron James, and the goalie running all around the field doing home runs when he's supposed to be a wide receiver. Those crazy and arrogant Americans ... -- ar
85. The famed Oceania team Awstralya lost in the World Cup because of mass hysteria and spirit possession; players were jumping around like kangaroos and putting each other in their pouches, the team was cut into half by half-time -- such is the power of the modern soccer voodoo priests, paid handsomely in Euros -- ar
86. Because humanity comes from love and out of the act of love, the idea of falling in and out of love seems alien and alienating; it is the constant renewal, reconstruction, or the rediscovery of grounded love that might seem more inviting for philosophers to ponder upon -- ultimately, love conquers all -- ar
87. Master Kung (Fu Tze) spoke a lot about peace -- that begins with oneself and transcends to family, community, nation, and the world. Lao Tzu and Mencius complemented the idea with a philosophy of Nature.
“Since I was invited to say a few words, I in all sincerity gave a brief explanation of the state's education programmes that benefit the people of Selangor,” she said, adding that she welcomed advice from all parties on better execution of her duties... (Malaysiakini report, Aug 28, 2010)
Malaysia's “Merdeka … Merdeka …” cry will be greeted elsewhere - buried in the psyche of the nation - with chants of “diperhamba … diperhamba...” or “enslaved .. enslaved...”, referring to the closing of the captive mind and the notion of Hang Nadim (who saved Singapore from the swordfish) in chains. 
It is necessary for the visitor to first find out what are the dos and don'ts of visiting the place. I assign my students to visit masjid, Buddhist temples, synagogues, Catholic and Protestant churches, Hindu temples, and even the Church of Scientology and the Native American reservation, to get them to learn about something they have never known before. 
