A comment from Keen got me thinking about how ignorance towards things in life often breeds prejudice. Then Lucia found this very nice article in relation to Article 11 that proposes the idea that maybe the reason for all these strict and complicated laws and double standards is because as a nation where Islam is the main religion, the bulk of society or at least the people in charge aren't secure enough to trust themselves or anyone else with upholding something they are supposed to be believing.

Then again, maybe that is the issue in all this. It's the reason why movies like Babe and Passion of Christ was banned or at least heavily restricted away from muslims. It's the reason why other religions have don't really have their issues properly address on the same level as that to do with Islamic matters. Like an only child in a world where you're afraid of everything you see and are used to the comforts of home, what we have more or less is built a society of Muslims that work on the selfish but very familiar childhood principle that "What's mine is mine. What's yours is also mine".

I'm not really a hotshot psychologist when it comes to working my way through the building blocks of society, but I do know for a fact that one of the reasons why anyone builds layer upon layer of defence to protect themselves from the outside world is because they have created a perception of fear towards that world. I'm not talking about the kind of pathological phobia where you freeze up and can't do anything. I'm talking about the one that seeds doubt and insecurity in our ability to deal and handle with the situation should we come to face it.

If you are completely secure with your relationship between you and your God, why would you actively try and prevent people from trying to find that security between them and their idea of God? You're already good to go, up there on your pedestal screaming to the world how beautiful your beliefs are. Alright, we get it. You love God the way you love God. We certainly aren't trying to stop you from that manner of worship. So why should you stop us from our idea of what God is to us? Do you seriously think that the freedom to believe what we would like to believe will dilute the purity and beauty of your belief? I'm pretty sure there is enough conviction in your bones given what you say to drive that belief around the world from now to the end of time. So why bother?

This kind of hypocrisy by saying you can accept everything else unless it doesn't put Islam first shows the kind of prejudice that comes with insecurity. It doesn't just breed people who think like yourselves to shy away from all that isn't pure and worthy of God's enbrace. It teaches everyone even those you consider unbelievers to do the exact same thing.

Given an example, it's easy to see other religious people in the country talk high and low about how their idea of God is great for them. But in matters such as Article 11 or even the case of Lina Joy which yields a bigger concern to the society…I see nothing but silence on their part. Outspoken they are about their own beliefs, hypocritical as the rest of society when they get the whiff it also concerns another belief.

I have lived those both worlds between what you think and what they think and the reality of it is, no one is any different from each other. Everyone, driven by the isolation of ignorance and the perpetuation of misconceptions will built the universe of prejudice and a world of contempt, only looking towards what benefits them and their beliefs the most because no one else is too sensible to walk out and start shedding those fears by asking what we don't understand and above all accepting another's beliefs as just part of human society.

Maybe it's time for everyone, not just Muslims to stop all our double standards. Stop our fears. Stop thinking that everything else will corrupt our sense of purity for that matter. It's time to grow up and walk out of our dark caves into the light of knowledge and above all the understanding and acceptence of what we do not fully comprehend by ourselves. To quote that I remember reading before.

"You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them." - 17:36

To think I'd be the one to quote from the good Book, but let it not be said that I never understood what I was born into to begin with, after all…you always hope that at the end of the long road, things that you pick up like that could always be put to some use and see to it we become better people from it. It does no one any good to do otherwise.