Speaking out for my Muslim friends

The beautiful ceiling of Schloss Schwetzingen's mosque

 

A quiet section of Kuala Kangsar's Ubudiah Mosque

 

On this day 74 years ago, the Japanese attacked Hong Kong and a whole lot of other places, including Pearl Harbor (over on the other side of the International Date Line; hence it still being December 7 over in the US when the attacks occured).  Unlike my grandparents and parents (one of whom was born in Japanese-occupied Penang), however, I've never personally lived in times when Japan was at war -- and feel blessed that this is the case.

 

Although I've never personally experienced living when a world war was taking place (and sincerely hope that I never will), I've lived in one country that has been at war when I was resident there.  The country in question is the USA -- and it's notable that each time they waged a war when I was there, the enemy was identified as Muslim.

 

Despite not being a Muslim myself, I found myself being called upon to explain -- and felt compelled to defend -- Islam and people of the Muslim faith on several occasions when living in the US, especially after September 11, 2001.  This was on account of my hailing from a country whose official religion is Islam (as well as where religious freedom is enshrined in the constitution), about the only thing some Americans I met seemed to know about Malaysia (and frankly, I'm amazed that they even knew that!).   

 

I still vividly recall a heated argument I had in a Philadelphia bar with an American acquaintance who refused to believe that I could be a Malaysian and yet not Muslim.  When I told him that not only was this the truth but that I had attended a Convent school in Penang (run by the government) whose headmistress was an Irish nun, he actually got angry with me and said that this was all impossible; this because his view of Islam and Muslims (none of whom he had ever met) was that they were intolerant extremists -- something that I was moved to conclude that he was more like than the people he wholesale accused of being the case!

 

As might be expected of someone who grew up in a majority Muslim country, I have had friends who are Muslim for much of my life.  Actually, I don't only have Muslim Malaysian friends but I also have had Muslim friends over the years from Singapore, Tanzania (where I lived for a time with a Muslim family with whom I shared many meals, laughs and fun moments, and, at other times, with an American-Zanzibari Muslim couple, and rent-free for a few months in the house of a Muslim friend when he was out of town), Eritrea, Mali, Turkey, England, and also the USA.  

 

In the case of the last: one of my Muslim American friends is the kind of person -- Caucasian, born in the Midwest, and going by the Christian-sounding name he was given at birth -- that doesn't fit the Muslim stereotype that the narrow-minded likes of Donald Trump have.  Actually, none of my friends would fit the image of Muslims that Donald Trump has -- for otherwise, he surely would have no reason to fear or hate Muslims so much that he'd advocate banning all Muslims from entering his country!

One of the reasons why I felt compelled to blog about this is to register my shock and horror that a supposedly serious American presidential hopeful could be so idiotic as well as  prejudiced.  I also want to do my bit to point out that not all Muslims are violent, horrible people -- and that, in fact, the majority of those I have known in my life are actually pretty nice folks who one would feel privileged to call "friend".

 

In addition, I remember the following words by German pastor Martin Niemöller, who spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps, and don't want what befell the likes of him to happen in my lifetime:-

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
 
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
 
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
 
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.