SPQR,

When I was there they were a happy and gentle people ... apart for the communist emergency, which is a different issue.

THE NEW CHALLENGES OF POLITICAL ISLAM IN MALAYSIA, Working Paper No.154, June 2009, by Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid (Universiti Sains Malaysia)

Abstract:
Long regarded as an embodiment of tolerant Islam peacefully co-existing with modernisation within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society ... Rising occurrences of Islamist-related terrorist violence have been cited as evidence of surging Southeast Asian Muslim radicalism, to which Malaysia, the rarity of its Islam-related commotions notwithstanding, is held not be immune. Both foreign analysts and the Malaysian government have been inclined to situate such an obtrusive phenomenon within the context of the rising penetration into the country of doctrinal rigidity espoused by the Wahhabi-Salafi school of thought predominant in contemporary Middle East. Traditionally acting as recipients rather than generators of intellectual developments within the ummah, Malaysian Muslims, as part of the non-Arab Muslim periphery, are said to be susceptible to Middle Eastern-originated radicalism, as exemplified in interlocking transnational contacts and agendas sowed between increasingly globalised Islamist networks adept in exploiting latest trappings of modernity. ... It is argued that, belying the regime’s profession of a form of progressive Islam known as Islam Hadhari, Malaysia under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s Premiership has witnessed an abrupt escalation of inter-religious tension which not only threatens to disrupt communal harmony and nation-building, but also poses a security risk. The origins of such instability could arguably be located to political Islamism within the regime, in particular to its home-nurtured Islamic bureaucracy, which has become Islamist.

"... past orthodoxy ... posited Southeast Asian Islam as the quintessence of peaceful and tolerant Islam – an ‘Islam with a smiling face' which prioritised spiritualism over legalism (Wright-Neville 2004a: 27-29).

Malaysia's strategic trade/economic partner is the Middle East, and Islam of the ME is Political-Islam, radical Islam. I wouldn't recognise the place now.

Many Indonesians seeing the same problems arising there, condemn admitting teachers from Ryadah bringing not only a grim fundamentalist Islam, but also an un-culture.

im CHALLENGING..the free*association..law
on new years eve..at the south bank[i will be coming from the east/likely by train]..i will be wearing my true colours

my name will be under..my..biker name
[nightmare]..the signage holding on my colors..have symbolism
that will be tattooed upon my flesh..just in case they try..to take my colours..

the words on my patch..will include the words info wars/nightmare
one under god then 178808..i expect my death./.by police man
somewhere around 11;11 pm..[so my father advises]

its all..to try to link to..this
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6152#178808

anyhow war is over..if we want to
cheers..

its not gods will
its my promise..love you dani elle

following the petition..re gods will..do try to catch up
where..are we..in relation..to revelations..?

let it snow..[the sign/of the times]
http://biblehub.com/revelation/20-3.htm
what links the cold spell..in the north?

A Wanderer in the Sprit Lands, by Franchezzo
(A. Farnese), [1896], at sacred-texts.com
http://new-birth.net/booklet/Wanderer_a4.pdf

CHAPTER IX.--The Frozen Land--The Caverns of Slumber.
I was next sent to visit what will indeed seem a strange country to exist in the spirit world. The Land of Ice and Snow--the Frozen Land--in which lived all those who had been cold and selfishly calculating in their earthly lives.

Those who had crushed out and chilled and frozen from their own lives and the lives of others, all those warm sweet impulses and affections which make the life of heart and soul. Love had been so crushed and killed by them that its sun could not shine where they were, and only the frost of life remained.

Great statesmen were amongst those whom I saw dwelling in this land, but they were those who had not loved their country nor sought its good. Only their own ambitions, their own aggrandizement had been their aim, and to me they now appeared to dwell in great palaces of ice and on the lofty frozen pinnacles of their own ambitions.

Others more humble and in different paths in life I saw, but all alike were chilled and frozen by the awful coldness and barrenness of a life from which all warmth, all passion, was shut out.

I had learned the evils of an excess of emotion and of passion, now I saw the evils of their entire absence. Thank God this land had far fewer inhabitants than the other, for terrible as are the effects of mis-used love, they are not so hard to overcome as the absence of all the tender feelings of the human heart.

Yuyutsu & Danielle,

Sorry about the delay in reply. I was just going to let this go (given the time of year and the fact that I probably won’t even be able to answer it all in four posts), but the thought of doing so still seems wrong. It would be wrong of me to just leave remarks - that on the surface seem reasonable - to go unaddressed as if there were nothing more to say. Particularly on a topic that myself and others feel is one of the most important.

And besides, it just looks like evasiveness on my behalf; which would be particularly unfortunate given that I have addressed most the points made here several times before on OLO.

I’ll try to get back to you both in a week or so.

The author wrote: “I hold the view that religions are predominantly about a love that unites humanity and seek to share the resources of the world equitably. Thus, I believe in a God who does not punish non-believers.”
Everald, my understanding is that God is justice. He has forewarn us all of the fate of the non-believers. We have all been given the opportunity to know Allah experientially and being forewarned is forearmed. Our fate relies on the Mercy of our creature and our rank in the Hereafter upon our deeds in this life. The disbeliever chooses their fate, they seek nothing of the Hereafter, and so they attain nothing of the Hereafter. As for Hell, without it is a mercy for those who heed the warning and a source of justice, as this hadith with it accompanying story, illustrates.

A Sweeper Becomes a Millionaire

The Messenger of Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “(Often it so happens that) for a certain believer, Allah ordains a high position that he cannot achieve by himself. So Allah afflicts him with some physical or material distress or grief from within his family, whereby he is granted the good fortune of being patient. Thus Allah raises him to the high station originally decreed for him.” [Abu Dawud]

An expatriate working as a street sweeper in Makkah saw his life change in a blink during Hajj season after his estranged brother sought to make amends for wronging him by returning his share of the family fortune.

The Bangladeshi man was sweeping Taneem Street in Makkah when an old man wearing the Ihram cloth of Hajj pilgrims crossed the busy road and embraced him warmly much to the perplexity of passersby. However, the sweeper returned the embrace, indicating his familiarity with the older man.

Cont ...

Cont ...

The embrace in fact was between two brothers who had not seen each other for more than five years in the aftermath of a bitter dispute over inheritance rights, Saudi news site Sabq reported. The two men were from a wealthy family in Bangladesh, but the older brother had refused to give his sibling his share of the inheritance estimated at 17 million Saudi Riyals in cash and several properties.

The older man even managed to have his younger brother sent to prison when he asked for his share. The younger brother, disappointed and dejected, opted to leave Bangladesh and work as a sweeper in the holy city of Makkah. As it turns out, the sweeper has become a millionaire in his home country.

He told the people who gathered around him and his brother that he had forgiven his brother who had apologised profusely for mistreating him and that he was ready to return home.

The older man said that he had been diagnosed with cancer and that he was not sure how long he would live. He had looked for his brother in several places to ask for his forgiveness and make amends for all the years of deprivation he had forced him to endure. He even offered financial rewards to whoever could help him locate his brother.

The younger brother said he was ready to forget the past and move forward with his new life. “I will always be kind to the poor and the needy,” he said. “I have learned a lot about deprivation and poverty in the last five years. I will always be fair with everyone after the years of injustice I lived through,” he said in Arabic, a language he learned during the time he spent sweeping the streets of Makkah.