Surat Faris Osman Abdat "Open (Long) Letter to LKY Over Hard truths" ini disiarkan dalam The Temasek Review, edisi 21 Mac 2011 yang antara lain berbunyi:
Dear MM Lee
It is indeed encouraging that you have offered a correction on the statements you had made about the Muslim community and our national integration in your latest book ” Lee Kuan Yew : Some Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going”.
Certainly, your statements had enveloped our nation for the last few weeks with a suffocating air of silent unpleasantness and uncertainty. It was a situation which had required an urgent and genuine remedy since our racial and religious cohesion was obviously at stake. Your statements have the dangerous potential of loosening the threads which bind our nation together and it is heartening therefore to observe you acting to restrain the situation by acknowledging the fallaciousness of your statements.
Hence my letter today, written in the same spirit.
It is out of my concern, my deepest concern, for our national cohesion that I see the need to revisit your statements.
Your statements in your own words are -
a ) “I would say today, we can integrate all religions and races except Islam.”
b ) ” I think we were progressing very nicely until the surge of Islam came and if you asked me for my observations, the other communities have easier integration — friends, intermarriages and so on……than Muslims”
c ) ” Muslims socially do not cause any trouble, but they are distinct and separate. ”
d ) That Muslims should “be less strict on Islamic observances.”
It is an easily observable fact that the core of your statements were directed at Islam. Therefore even though your statements were about the Muslim community and its supposed failure to integrate, it is Islam which was the target for your blame and castigation.
What make these statements extremely significant is because this is not the first time you have made similar comments about Islam. There is a pattern, a trend, indeed a tradition. It is obvious that you carry a specific point of view about Islam - a viewpoint which I as a Singaporean Muslim consider necessary to address, expound and explore since that viewpoint is unhealthy in the context of our multi-racial and multi-religious nation.
Therefore despite admitting that the Muslim community is indeed integrating, a serious problem still remains and that problem is not solved by you having stood corrected. The danger of your specific comments about Islam, past and present, to our integration process cannot be underestimated, much less ignored, whether those comments are made in the context of our national integration or otherwise.
Certainly I’m not suggesting that your statements about Islam by themselves are enough to endanger our racial and religious harmony. That would be ridiculous. Rather the fact is your statements occur in a situation where the non-Muslim majority of our nation has been bombarded almost daily by our local mass media including the Straits Times, Today and Channelnewsasia with frightening images of Islam, images which are completely questionable in their authenticity.
Therefore your statements about Islam dangerously reinforce, or making true, those images of Islam which are exploding from the pages and screens of our mass media.
Having said that, least the reason for my objection is misunderstood, let me make it plain and clear now that my objection of your statements about Islam, past and present, does not arise from a sense of indignation of having Islam fairly criticised or accurately depicted. Indeed, as a Muslim I do not have a problem with criticisms made against Islam as long as those criticisms are supported by facts.
Rather my objection comes from the fact that your statements about Islam, past and present, contained not a single drop of truth..." Read more in http://www.temasekreview.com 21 March 2011
Comment:
Melayu Islam di Singapura telah tidak mendapat layanan sewajarnya sejak negara itu mencapai kemerdekan lebih 46 tahun yang lalu. Baru sekarang Menteri Kanannya merangkap mantan Perdana Menteri Lee Kuan Yew terasa begitu. Kenapa ya baru sekarang? Untuk mengetahui isi hati menteri itu, bacalah Some Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going.)
Semuanya sudah berlaku dan berlalu. Orang Melayu, satu kumpulan minoriti dalam negara pulau yang satu ketika milik Melayu yng bernama Temasek, kini berada di persimpangan jalan akibat salah tafsir pemimpin yang mengendlikan kerajaan. Salah tafsir ini juga memberi tamparan hebat kepada kelompok masyarakat Melayu yang memuji-muja kerajaan sejak sekian lama. Tugas Melayu sekarang mungkin berdepan dengan kesukaran memperbetul persepsi kurang tepat kerajaan pimpinan PAP dan kembali mencari jalan keluar supaya Melayu tidak lagi terpinggir terus ibarat melukut di tepi gantang.
Melayu Singpore lihatlah wajah anda!
ReplyDeleteHow many Faris Osman Abdat are there in Singapore? Or is this Faris not Singaporean?
ReplyDeleteAku tak tahu dan tak perlu ambil tahu apa yang berlaku kepada orang Melayu di pulau Temsek itu. Sebabnya aku tak tahu berapa ramaikah orang yang menganggap dirinya Melayu sudah keluar agama memeluk agama lain? Aku sedih, betul-betul sedih.
ReplyDeleteMencari kewajaran dalam melansungkn hidup (survival) orang Melayu Singapura memerlukan tindakan aktif bersama etnik majoriti yang memerintah. Apakah golongan etnik Cina membenarkan usaha ini. Bimbang nanti ia cuma mainan bibir sahaja. Bak kata mat saleh lip service semata-mata.Faham-faham sahajalah.
ReplyDeleteada orang Melayu di Madagaskar. Ada orang Melayu di Cocos Island. Ada orang Melayu di Afrika Selatan dan ada orang Melayu di Ceylon. Adakah mereka sama nasibnya dengan orang Melayu di Singapura?
ReplyDeleteMungkin bagi LKY agak sukar menerima Islam atas sebab-sebab dia sendiri yang tahu. Kita makhluk Tuhan tahu di mana kita berada dan telah ditakdirkan demikian rupa. Islam mengajar kita merendah diri, jujur, saling memaafkan dan saling menyayangi dan mengasihani.
ReplyDeleteBukankah dalam Islam dinyatakan kita perlu taat setia kepada pemerintah yang ada, tidak kiralah pemerintah itu bersikap tidak mesra rakyat. Maka manfaatkanlah peluang seadanya, wlaupun terpaksa minum air yang ditapis dari laut. Bukankah begitu member kita rakyat Singapore, sdr Jamal Tukiman. Sdr Jamal tak marah kan?
ReplyDeleteAku tidak fahamlah. Nama Singapore. Dulukan namanya Temasek yang mengikut sejarahnya ditemui Sang Nila Utama. Kemudian apabila ternampak seekor singa di pulau itu, lalu ditukar Sang Nila Utama kepada Singapura. Apabila merdeka, namanya lebih dikenali Singapore. Kenapa tak kekalkan Temasek?
ReplyDeleteSeperti di India, kini orang sebut Mumbai, walau dulu dipanggil Bombay. Begitu juga Myanmar. dulu orang panggil Burma. Yangoon dulunya Rangoon.
Barangkali rakyat Singapura keturunan Melayu boleh cadangkan semula nama asal Singapore supaya lebih dekat dengan daerah Nusantara dan mesra rakyat serantau.
Untuk menjawab atau mengulas cadangan Peminat Sejarah Woodlands, adalah dicadangkan untuk bertanya kepada Menteri Kanan Lee Kuan Yew atau mungkin kepada generasi Angkatan Sasterawan 50 a.k.a ASAS 50. Cikgu Arif atau MAS boleh bantu.
ReplyDelete