The halal food and utensils controversy is one amongst many that will come out from the Malaysian school system shortly because some PAS followers and obscurantist Islamic teachers are worried of how Prime Minister Abdullah Ahamd Badawi's Islamic Hadhari will proselytise the minds of the Malays against their (PAS') interests to retain the Islamic status quo they cherish.
Almost all Malaysian parents with school going children know cleanliness is not the priority of the Education Department. If it is, then it must be blind or simply hypocritical because the canteens in almost all schools are filthy and unhygienic with stray cats wandering on the dining tables.
The children's lavatories are not meant for humans. They are filthy beyond description. And everybody knows that there is no or little inter-racial mixing in schools. There is virtually none after school hours. The baju kurong and the tudung are divisive elements.
Most Malay teachers are simply bigots. Our 15-year-old daughter, on entry to a school at the beginning of the year, was asked by the headmistress whether she had been circumcised. Her father thought it was a bad joke and I told my girl at home that she was not from Kaduna in northern Nigeria and she did not need female genital mutilation.
She repeated it to the headmistress the next day.
Sura 5.3. and Sura 6.145. in the Quran expressly forbid pork. The Quran also says that each community has its own regulations concerning food. The Quran castigates through Sura 2.168, 5.87, 6.118, and 7.32 those who would impose arbitrary dietary laws rather than be grateful for God's bounty.
Today, people exposed to science accept the view that the pigs were forbidden for hygienic reasons. Trichinosis is a disease caused by a small parasite in uncooked or infected meat - almost always pork in cold and temperate climates.
This was discovered in 1859. How could the Arabs have known this when there were - and are no - pigs in Islamic Arabia?
Muslims face two fundamental issues. Firstly, they must follow the teachings of Prophet Mohamed as contained in the Quran and secondly, follow Islam as expounded, interpreted, and developed by the ulama through the Hadith (traditions).
There is a third dimension of what Muslims did, and that was Islam Hadhari. Islamic Hadhari often reached magnificent heights despite the two factors above and not because of them. Islamic philosophy, science, literature art and Islamic musicology are good examples.
There are a few planners in Umno who sincerely believe that Malay Muslims must be dragged from the sandstorms of seventh century Arabia to modern times. But it will be very tiring to peel the blinkers of the very many who follow obscurantist Islam in our education system.
