im blogging from school. waiting to have lunch with the rakan-rakan(peng yous).

there's like.. 15 ppl here in it lab 3. and guess wat? only one is a guy. omg. he just left. haha. so now there's abt 14 of us all girls.

and remember.. ppl here in the S4 block are mostly from accounting or business. so, effectively, what i'm trying to say is... one day, the entire white collar industry might be ruled by women!

YEAH! GIRL POWER!!

but seriously tho.. there are like SO many more girls than guys in business and accounting. I wonder what the actual demographic break down is.

hmmmmmm...

ANYHOO, i'd like to continue with part deux of my 4 part miniseries. i love tt word. deux. sounds like d'uh. hoho.

We're going to talk about issues regarding RELIGION today.

all the way up on the ooh so touchy touchy scale, religion gets a 5 out of the maximum possible score of 5.

*hold on to your hats*

alrity. so i guess the biggest issue we've had regarding religion recently is the CARTOON thingie. but generally speaking, these few years, the spotlight has been shining down (hard) on Islam.

I tink i speak for a lot(if not all) of my muslim friends when i say that having a spotlight on you at all times is not exactly fun. especially for shy ppl like me. HUARGH HUARGH HUARGH.
for me, the toughest thing is explaining to friends of other beliefs that not all muslims are terrorists and not all muslims are extremists.

in fact, there is a lot of flexibility in islam.

for a start, there are 4 school of thoughts in the religion. these 4 schools are used by the 4 different "zones" in the world. think of the world as a muffin. and think of ppl as the chocolate chips that are mixed into the muffin. then, let god(if u believe in god) cut the muffin into 4 pieces. next, god nominates 4 special ppl, each to be in charge of one piece of muffin. these special ppl are called "imam"s or leaders, and they are the ones who come up with the rules that govern the chocolate chips.

of course the rules that these imams come up with must be in line with god's guidelines, rules and regulations. as such, there is usuali only small discrepancies btw different school of thoughts.
Besides the 4 school of thoughts, there is also things like the 7 ways or slangs(qiraats) to read the Quran. and then there is the "makroh" ruling, where sthg u do is not sin, but doesnt earn u brownie points either.

there are many many more ways to show the religion's flexibility, and i've just scratched the surface. of course im not an expert, and i cant even claim to be a good muslim. but of course, one day, i hope to be.

so ain, u ask, if islam permits so much flexibility, then why are the muslims so worked up over the CARTOON issue?

OK.

the thing is, we, as muslims, have been thought never to depict the "pictures" of our prophet Muhammad or of god because we believe that They are the most divine of the divine and there is no "humanly" form or expression that can truely represent Them. we are thought not to associate them with a face, and to only carry them in our hearts and in our faith(iman).
so of course we muslims got pissed when they actually had the cheek to represent what we believe is god's divine messenger as a man in a turban with a bomb on His head.

U can liken this episode to the one years ago when Sinead O'Connor tore the pope's picture on live television.

That incurred the wrath of many Catholics worldwide.

But of course.

Why should such INSENSITIVITY be tolerated?

i mean, if ppl call u ugly to ur face, u'd be pissed too rite? wat more, these kinds of action attacks ur faith- something that lives in your very core.

Budden, on the flip side, of course there are some muslims who dun reali know wats going and make a BIG hoopla out of things. wat good will a protest outside the Danish embassy bring?
Does that manner of handling things make ppl respect the ppl of the faith, what more the religion?

I THINK NOT.

but of course these ppl are not reading this blog. and even if they are reading, they'd think im too liberal minded, yadayadayada.

to these ppl i say,

EAT SHIT.

now, there's a respectable way of handling ppl.

hoho.

and now ain has to go eat.

AU REVOIR. and think about it!