Nothing & Everything

In view of the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon, there have been a lot of talk among the Muslims. The link below will take you to an audio(mp3) of Shaykh al-Ghudayaan's, an Islamic Scholar, view on this matter. Thus, let us all pray to Allaah that we benefit from his saying, Ameen.

http://www.salafitalk.net/st/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=6&Top...

You wonder why I have put the word "National" in parantheses. Usually, writers do this when they mean to reflect the word as having a meaning other than what the word implies. First, let us analyse and search the meaning of the word "national" :

from Cambridge Dictionaries Online :

Definition
nation Show phonetics
noun
1 [C] a country, especially when thought of as a large group of people living in one area with their own government, language, traditions, etc:
All the nations of the world will be represented at the conference.
The Germans, as a nation, are often thought to be well organized.
Practically the whole nation watched the ceremony on television.

2 [S] a large group of people of the same race who share the same language, traditions and history, but who might not all live in one area:
the Navajo nation

national Show phonetics
adjective
relating to or typical of a whole country and its people, rather than to part of that country or to other countries:
a national holiday
Britain has more than ten national newspapers.
The company's national headquarters is in Rome.
The children were wearing traditional national costume/dress.
The government's view is that raising taxes now would not be in the national interest (= would not be good for the country).

national Show phonetics
noun [C usually plural]
someone who officially belongs to a particular country:
Thirty people, including six UK nationals, were killed in yesterday's plane crash.
All foreign nationals were advised to leave the country following the outbreak of civil war.

read this at its website here

What we are able to extract from the above is that "national" carries a meaning of collectiveness. Something that is in common, a common belonging if you will. We will most certainly see certain aspects of "nationality" on "National" Day. For example, large groups of people mostly decked out in the red and white "national" colour assembled at the "National" Stadium to witness and enjoy the "National" Day Parade.

Participants will feel united and a sense of belonging as a result of the euphoria and the atmosphere. All different multi-races will sit together side-by-side in the stuffed and cramped terraces, cheering, singing...as one. Civil servants, private sector, NGOs...all borders and lines blurred on this particular joyous occassion. Lights, colour, vibrant dance moves, music and patriotism all ingredients mixed together. The parade will boast the "nation's" military might and technology. Climaxed by the one and only fireworks display. A burst of colour and sound, loved by many if not all participants.

And then it ends. The jostling will begin. The participants start their way home and suddenly, the lines are not so blurred anymore. The cheering and singing will be replaced by the honking of cars and motorcycles, not to mention some expletives, on the road which by then would have been already in jam due to the huge mass of participants.

The public transport is not spared either. Rushing for seats will be the train-takers. Train doors opening will signal the start of a crunching scrimmage which I honestly think only belongs on the rugby field. And in the devastating aftermath will be sharp threatening looks - opponent to opponent. Where have all the sense of belonging gone?

The buses will witness a more horrifying phenomena that the world has ever seen! It is the amazing effect of older citizens on the seated passengers to strangely doze off once they board the buses. Not to mention the aura of a pregnant lady or better yet someone with a toddler or a baby, most passengers will be affected and start to doze off or have a sudden interest in newspapers and books. This unexplained phenomena can also be adapted to the trains. Where have the courtesy gone, in which the "nation" have seen a lot of campaigns for?

Back on the roads, its another sequel of the Fast and the Furious with the taxis pitted against the cars and motorbikes. One will always have a few "nice" words for the other. And a "collectively" big part of Singaporeans will almost forget that civil servants endorsing their passports and checking their cars are of the same "nationality" as them. Complaining is free-of-charge so they try to do lots of it. They seem to forget that time when they sat together, cheering and singing, in the cramped terraces, in patriotic harmony.

Looking back, "National" Day is aptly named because the word "Day" is in singular form thus bearing the meaning that we are a nation only on that one day. Therefore, the cynicism, complaints, rudeness, unfeeling, hypocritical character of the "nation" is justified for the rest of the 364 days of the year.

My two cents worth. Prove me wrong and I'll be happy to call myself a Singaporean...

I sat down at the table and started to eat. I remembered thinking to myself that the curry was missing something. As I ate, I started to regret buying the food at that particular stall. Then, something hit me...

Actually, it was the TV. I saw images that disturbed me. I saw death - a lot of it. It was the news and it was showing the footage of the latest casualties of an air strike by Israeli forces onto Lebanon. The curry went totally bland and it did not even matter then.

Silenced and ashamed, my eyes were glued to the TV screen. Wailing mothers grieving for their lost, maybe dead, children, forlorn-looking children not more than 5 years old squatting by the debris over a charred body, locals just standing around observing the carnage of what was once their homes. It was familiar. I was sure I had seen all of that before. And right I was.

Its the same scene over and over again. Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya...the list goes on. Why is this happening? What are we doing to stop this? Who is to blame? Chechnya alone have thousands and thousands of their people killed or abducted by Russian troops and this includes children and women. The media calls the Chechen army "rebels" when all they are doing is their duty which is to protect their countrymen on their own sovereign land.

Its a new war and this war is better known as the media. Anyone who has control and the means are able to take advantage of this thing called media. A camera is all you need to push your propaganda down other people's throats. Even if your propaganda is filled with lies and deceit and half truths, people tend to believe it because hey its CNN. The ones who manage to get the bigger slice of the media pie will be the ones who will be believed, drowning out the other side of the story no matter how untrue the content. The US certainly knows how to play this media game. They use it blatantly in their political pursuits. The media is at the mercy of its users, to be perverted, to be manipulated, even modified to suit one's gain. The media, proven to be a strong medium, is ironically unable to defend itself.

It has extended itself being an accomplice on many occassions. The media has aided many a crime, including making invading a sovereign nation particularly to serve one's own greedy political interest, a heroic act. It has been a silent witness to the greatest and most heinous conspiracy known in recorded history. It has helped to lie, cheat, steal, degrade, marginalize, manipulate....ingredients in a perverted recipe that we, the people, love to concoct and enjoy it ourselves. We find a hidden and subconscious desire and satisfaction in learning of another's downfall. We possess a selfish relief in consoling ourselves that " hey, I'm like so glad that it ain't us out there."

Somebody out there reading must be saying, or at least have this cross his/her mind :

"But the media has done a lot of good too!"

Well that is true, so true. But its just the way it is. Nobody cares. Just like how the media makes a big story out of the Moscow Theatre siege by Chechen "rebels". What the people see is how Muslim "terrorists" in masks take hostage of more than 800 people and how the Russian army "heroes" stormed the theatre killing all the bad-guys and saving the hostages. What we fail to remember and register in our minds is that the Russians had gassed the theatre beforehand resulting in deaths of a lot of hostages. So when gas-mask-wearing heroes save the day, we should ask ourselves who was the one doing all the killing that day? But who cares?

When the dictatorship-led Iraq was attacked and deemed to have weapons of mass destruction, the heroes of that day were the Americans. Most of us stood with them when they invaded Iraq in their pre-emptive bid to rid world of evil and I dare say some of us cheered when that statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down. And how do we know this? Oh, the media of course! Our eyes glued to the TV screen in silent admiration of the Oakley-sunglasses-clad soldiers. Some of us sympathised with them when they honored their dead who fell on the battle-field. On the other hand, do we care that after all that shelling and destruction added a few years on, we still have not seen concrete visual evidence of WMD in Iraq? Do we even pause to think before our meals and dwell on the fact that thousands of Iraqi children will only have breadcrumbs to eat that day?

And Palestine, oh Palestine! Where do I even begin? An evil injustice in that robbing someone of their own land is rightful. But do we care? Oh no! Because those guys who blow themselves up, they are the evil ones. At least, that is what the media helps us to think. I am not condoning suicide-bombing but I sure am not condoning masking the truth or twisting it or even making it up.

What about September 11th you ask? The media helps us to come to the conclusion that a group of Arab Muslim terrosists armed with box-cutters hijacked a few planes thus crashing two of them into the Twin Towers, the heat of the burning jet fuel melting the steel frames causing them to collapse. But who cares if the jet fuel's heat could never be enough to melt steel. Who cares if out of the nineteen hijackers, 5 to 7 of them have been discovered alive and well enough to interviewed. Who cares if WTC 7, a 47 storey building located near the Twin Towers which was not hit by any planes save for only a few fires, also collapsed and pulverised to dust later that fateful day. Who cares at all? Muslim terrorists did it, come what may that is the truth! Why?

Because the media said so...