I expected this, which was why I hadn't entered the mosque yet. They say that it's better for you to enter the mosque on Fridays right after the call for prayer and listen to the weekly sermon before the prayers start, but from the headlines of the newspapers this week I knew what I'd be in for if I sat in and listened. I knew. It happened when a certain political figure of the mid/late nineties was charged for leaving cum stains on a mattress after sodomizing his driver and it happened after America said they would Remember before sending their soldiers to a lost cause. And I knew it would happen again this week.
Lunch finished, the sermon was still in full swing and I didn't want to miss prayers so I cleansed myself and walked in and just as I suspected, the headlines of today were now the subject of our prayers, filled with venom and anger and absolute hate. And I am not here to write about these Acts of Violence on Holy Soil. Far from it. That is a discussion I'd rather not discuss on a public forum such as this, accessible to all, especially in a country where bloggers can be arrested, maybe even for writing about how bloggers can be arrested.
(Oops. Shit.)
But no. I am not here to write about the pain and suffering in a war torn land and what I think about it. What concerns me is the sermon. The hate filled sermon filled with bile and bigotry. I did not come to the mosque to hear this. I did not want to hear about the conspiracy theories of the Rothschild family in relation to the Zionists in 1927 nor did I want to hear the letter written to them by some British politician. What next, I wonder? Would this Imam go so far as to bring up David Icke's theory of Alien Man-Lizards taking control of the world in the guise of key political figures?
I did not come here to pray for vengeance, death, destruction and genocide. I did not come here to listen to the sound of a religious man's blood boiling. I came here to pray, pray for my family's health and the well being of the people I hold dear, and to thank God for every good thing in my life. And whilst I have absolutely no problem with the mass prayer for those that have fallen in that country far away, I could have done without the negativity and rabble rousing that preceded it. I'm not the most religious of men, but when I do pray I hold those moments quite sacredly.
I left the mosque and got into my car, thinking about 2009 so far, not even a month old. Kitty called and asked why she was being bombarded with SMSes urging her to boycott McDonalds and other such Western consumables. As she told me this, I drove past the American embassy where traffic was reduced to a slow crawl as PAS members protested, holding up banners informing the public that drinking the White man's coffee guarantees the death of a Brown man.
These Acts of Violence were a Big Issue. A big issue indeed. But other, better, nobler and braver writers than myself knew how to tackle these issues. My issues were close to home, within a small radius, and I couldn't even tackle them properly. In the past month and a half I've somehow gone from having one of my cats run over and the other lost in the jungle (which, depending on whether you love animals or not, is either a big deal or not worth writing about) to sending my mom to the hospital because the Pains have come (what Pains? None of your damn business) before coming back to my office to be shafted violently from behind by the numerous Powers That Be in the industry I belong to.
From these issues the radius opens up to the slightly public issues, but still close to home such as the proposed RM20 increase in movie ticket prices for Hollywood movies in order to increase sales of locally produced movies (which will very obviously increase piracy of Hollywood movies tenfold and make little more than a pebble sized increase in the revenue garnered from local produce in the box office), or the gang bang raid on New Years Day where
(No, I have no major thoughts on that issue. It was just the first story of the year that caught my attention and made me giggle with glee.)
Yes, these are small issues, tiny issues, miniscule issues in comparison to the BIG ISSUE. But whilst the BIG ISSUE does upset me (and if it doesn't upset you you're probably either made of stone or that evil bitch from The Weakest Link) and people on-line and off will all be discussing it for a quite a while, going through their views and opinions and how much action should/must/has to be taken, it's the little issues close to home that affect me on this, the second week of our brand new year two thousand and nine and I hope to get them in order before I even think of attempting to save the world.
Happy New Year, peeps. It sure started off with a bang.
