The Hijacking

It takes loads of maturity and emotional intelligence in dealing with matters that had been heavily hijacked and tipped against your favor  

a brick of soap, a hijack story

The not so long penerangan gaffe had netizen all riled up upon seeing the nation 55th independence slogan entitled 'janji ditepati' ( promises fulfilled ), to emphatically remain impartial uttering those words, is hardly possible. Picture this, lay a fish on the floor, within the same room, set a cataract infected cat and watch its claws landed on what smelled as fish - in this case, janji ditepati is beyond fishy -in a myriad of ways to sniff at it janji ditepati is obvious propaganda and desperate mental conditioning of epic proportion. This prompted the minister responsible for penerangan to respond - no, preached - the masses ' to any closed mind, things may looked bad'. I suspected this minister smell nerve may had been misaligned somewhere between the brain grey matter. 

Alas, together with hyper inflated hari raya ever witnessed, makes the national day celebration that doesn't genuinely ever belonged to us, in every possibly way you are trying to swallow it, the propagandistic flavors is too fermented . Janji ditepati is just too much. Previous national day slogan were a successive message of patriotism, words of encouragement or calls for unity. Until 2012 when penerangan had broke the monotony and hijack it for its vested agenda. Trolling further, a song is released to further micro-mould the Malaysian mind that we owes the incumbent government for the wealth, success and peaceful nature of the nation. A plagiarized theme song teaches us a lesson that democracy runs the Japanese bathhouse-way of  'you rub my back - I rub your back'   

As steams hisses and pours, penerangan refuses to drop janji ditetapi slogan and relentlessly kept convincing the rakyat should reconsider their perspective. Amongst the song catch phrase 'janji sudah ditetapi, kini masa balas budi' ( Promises had been fulfilled, now its your turn to … ) had left the opposition laughing on the saliva-savings upon the obvious intention of penerangan to lembu-nized the rakyat into their democracy-defying schema. Penerangan had been suckered into scoring its own goal. Together with allegations that the song presented a uncanny resemblance of an Indonesian Christian song stung penerangan so badly, espescially upon the Utusan Melayu audience; an audience which the daily loves to bombard with the Christening of Malaysia phobia. Before wrapping up, the 'janji ditetapi' gaffe will forever be a fine example to reckon how cheaply the strategies penerangan had employed to win peoples heart. Most importantly, it’s a tale of delirious attempt to hijack national day. 

Brick-of-soap 

A direct seller walks up to you to sell a brick of soap. Asked what are the benefits, the seller struggles to answer much of it. But automagically turns adrenaline driven in telling you it’s a muslim based product, made with halal precursor chemicals and in compliance with hardly heard ultra-stringent Islamic manufacturing procedure. It comes with steeper pricetag. Would the 'Islamic soap' create a critical imbalance in the decision to purchase over the conventional soap? For unsuspected mind, yes, a religion is beyond question - but, in the dog days of penny pinching and desperate ( both seller and potential buyer ), saying no is tempting - and believe me, a self proclaimed agent of God-backed product can call you 'bakhil, kedekut' or 'unislamic' 

Say, our government runs on Islamic platform. By then, choses the motto "Hanya Parti Islam Pilihan Umat Merdeka" ( Only Islamic Party The Choice of Independent Soul ) for the 55th national-day, we would be walking in a different thorny grounds anyway. If 'janji ditetapi' is a clear cut uncivilized hijacking of merdeka celebration the situation above is complete opposite to justify hijacking of Islam. An Islam-based slogan, doesn't matter it’s a creation of mortal minds prone to error - has its merit, amongst its followers, who prepare to defend it on the street, even through forums . Religion hijack job is a double edged sabre, it worked both ways - including scarring those Muslims by birth and by right and non believers. We've seen it - youngsters claiming they are in right path preaching others to do things the right way, right way meaning their way - dress, act, talk and eat their way, prompting a question amongst the existing muslim " do we dress our religion heavily to qualify for one?" 

God team

For God backed team is invincible after all- those who fight for religion causes shall remain fearless and God himself shall protect them, A free haired female economist trying to formulate Muslims out of their financial deficiencies, a wine drinking geo-chemist that worked with NASA analyzing the greatness of God on Martian tectonics and a moral police that patrol Facebook walls to remind people that leggings is haram, in harshest and offensive manner - each doing their bid, but which ones is right?. A whole load 73 of them before the end of time, with a fraction sees the right path to be purist, true to the days of prophet; another chooses the middle path and another progressively seek reinterpretation of Holy Quran -  all doesn't mix all that well. With all these ruckuses, a young person tended to steer off the crowd, do whatever necessary, and keep silent only to be brushed off for being 'ignorant'. God is fair, and a role model is never too far and too hard to reprise, the prophet is a fine example. Even the prophet exemplary are being filtered to fit and justify a certain way. Again, felt to jump out of the cycle only to be shoved in over again. 

Again; who could argue with the self proclaimed God team? Islam is ad-din and applied everywhere, never try to separate religion with daily life strings by strings - you're a secular! worst, you're a kafir! 

In all fairness, it’s a slippery zone to get encapsulated in. To say no to the more islamic brick-of-soap. You reject the soap, you reject Islam. Hijacking can happen in all forms that perplexed us in many ways. National-day for votes in the case of janji ditepati. Religion for political power. Education for wealth gains. Whatever it may be, it’s a crazy world out there.