Another Terengganu blog

The East Coast always has a special place in my heart. Been seriously considering a move to Dungun /Kemasik/Ma'daerah, somewhere "nearer" to Kuantan. More accessible to my KL family.

Found out that a friend of mine, living in Kuala Terengganu has a blog. Interesting one, especially the earliest posts and the latter ones, on Terengganuspeak and Terengganu memories.

I haven't been doing much of the blog rounds, busy with other stuff and mostly doing my interacting on fb...but since he mentioned his blog to me, thought I'd share it here. Its a waste when interesting blogs such as this are not shared.

I'm an "F". I think Osama is hot.

Good read, this article. The Grade A Muslim.

Relevant also to many "westernized" Muslims who have this bias. Any ulama who opens his mouth to advice fellow Muslims are immediately set upon like rottweilers going for the kill. Because what they say does not fit into "their" needs/whims/desires/mindset(like concrete). Remember the yoga/tomboy issues? Religion must suit them and their western ideals. I wonder what those rottweilers are saying about the proposal for "nikah gantung" for teens? Worse than handing out candy flavored condoms, I suppose? :)

Ooooh...found more of Junaid's pieces...love his writings!

The Only Good Muslim is the Anti Muslim

His interview with Noam Chomsky: Civilisation vs Barbarism

Protect Klang Gates Quartz Ridge and Selangor State Park from the proposed KL Outer Ring Road (KLORR)

"The Klang Gates Quartz Ridge is a world-class geological monument that is internationally recognized for the size, scale and splendour of its quartz dyke - the longest in the world - and, if not disturbed any more, stands every chance to be declared a World Heritage Site. The site also harbours a unique vegetation with five species of plants that are found nowhere else in the world, and our endangered wild goat (serow). "

sign the petition here

Talent

Love this girl's comics and her honest take on life

http://secondsanctuary.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html

Taysir Alouni's Interview with Osama (and the non-existence of Al-qaeda)

Just putting this up, so people can read from the horse's mouth. From a REAL journalist, whose career was unjustly cut short.

Note that at the time, all "so-called evidence" pointed to "Muslim hijackers". Osama never said he sent them, he was merely expounding his agreement to bringing terror on American soil just as America has done over decades all over the world, starving and slaughtering millions of Iraqi and Palestinian children and women by sponsoring Israel as a way of pressuring them to stop. I don't think he knew other that what was being quickly spread and pinned on Muslims.

read also about the non-existence of Al-Qaeda.

http://www.religioscope.com/info/doc/jihad/ubl_int_1.htm

The Power of Negative Thinking

by VN Narayanan

We live in a hostile world where all of us constantly feel the need to be loved, accepted, respected and admired. Our fears, allergies, hates, outbursts, withdrawals and evasions are manifestations of our need to protect ourselves from rejection and humiliation. They are not negative; they are our shields and warning systems.

In the twilight years of the Soviet empire a joke was doing the rounds in Moscow about the state of the nation and the economy. Mikhail Gorbachev, addressing the Soviet people, says: "When I assumed office, our country and economy were at the brink of a precipice. Undaunted, we took a bold step forward and…" That joke is as good an indicator of the consequences of mindless positive thinking as any that one can imagine.

Contrast that with Sufi poet Bulleh Shah's advice:

Jit jit umr gawai, hun tu haar fakira
Jeet da mool ad kasira, haar da mool heera

(You have expended your life winning victories. O fakir, now get defeated. The value of victory is half a grain; the value of defeat is that of a diamond.)

That is the power of negative reasoning at its most potent and wise. For centuries, humans have been fed on the legend of Midas as a person of great fortune and a symbol of success. He got a boon from the gods that whatever he touched should turn into gold. Enviable, generations of humans held him to be. I say, pitiable, not only because excess of gold is not worth having, but also because Midas was the most miserable human being imaginable. He could not eat a fruit because it turned to gold and he couldn't touch his wife because she turned to gold.

Ever since humanity invented sin—God did not create sin, we did—and evolved moral codes of conduct and slapped divine sanctions on itself, civilizations have sought to divide all actions, words, thoughts and feelings into 'good' and 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong', 'positive' and 'negative'. But different human societies have ensured that these terms are conjugational—"I am right, you are mistaken, he is wrong; we are good, you are in error, they are evil." While conflicts are continually maintained, raised to the boil and cooled off intermittently, the fiction is sustained that Truth is one and only the paths vary.

So, we are told by sincere sages as well as fake prophets down the ages, that such actions and feelings as love, affection, warmth, confidence, joy and optimism are positive and should be assiduously cultivated and pursued and their seeming obverse—hate, fear, guilt, anger, depression, gloominess and loneliness—are negative and need to be overcome if not avoided altogether. This labeling of good and bad, right and wrong and positive and negative is so deeply entrenched in the human psyche that every human being's outlook on oneself, others and onlife itself is shaped by it.

The perceived oppositeness of these labels ignores two vital facts. Anger, hate, guilt, depression, and so on are basic to all humans and are not character traits. And their obverse terms are not exactly their opposites. As Nobel laureate Elie Weisel says: "The opposite of love is not hatred but lack of caring." I have extended that wise statement to other areas. The opposite of democracy is not dictatorship but absence of accountability. The opposite of knowledge is not ignorance but arrogance. The opposite of Truth is not falsehood but righteous assertion of dogma. The opposite of faith is not reason but blind acceptance or rejection.

Thanks to the blurring of vital distinctions between opposites, men and women carry feelings of guilt, emotional upheavals, fear and hate as vehicles of bad feelings. And they feel bad about feeling bad; get angry at their own anger and depressed with their own depression. Instead of realizing that 'positive' feelings like love, affection, and hope also lead people to despair, depression, hate and anger, they get convinced of the negative impact of their negative feelings and get "trapped in a cycle of hating the very feelings that are there to guide them towards maturity".

In a brilliant analysis of 'the power of negative thinking', a British doctor of psychology, Tony Humphreys, argues that there is no such thing as negative feeling, thought or action. What one perceives as negative emotion or feeling is actually a protective feeling or emotion. The negative label, he says, "blocks us from seeing their (guilt, hatred, depression, fear and despair) protective and deeper alerting functions".

We live in a hostile world where all of us constantly feel the need to be loved, accepted, respected and admired. That need is under permanent threat from the emotional and social environment in which we live. Our fears, allergies, hates, outbursts, withdrawals and evasions are all manifestations of our need to protect ourselves from threats of rejection and humiliation. They are not negative; they are our shields and warning systems.

Dr Humphreys says that feelings of fear, guilt and depression are actually a "creative response to perceived threats to self-esteem and they guard against the possibility of further experience of hurt, abuse and humiliation". They are also attempts to alert people to the need for self-correction and change and provide the impetus and energy for taking action needed to bring about change.

The point is, people in society are not uniformly endowed with strength, wealth and status. Different people respond differently to situations and the primary instinct is to guard oneself against rejection and humiliation. If you are socially and economically vulnerable, you take the protective mode but as a person of stature in society with high self-esteem, one would go beyond protection and respond to the alerting function of one's feelings.

If only everyone starts looking at all others as composites of feelings, emotions, drives and thoughts, neither positive nor negative but as individual responses to moments and situations meant to protect oneself or draw lessons for the future, there would be less of cruelty and violence in the world. Low self-esteem is a trap laid by labels; it is up to us not to fall in it. Our emotions, thoughts and actions are part of our defense mechanism. They are not meant to debase or demean us unless we get convinced that we are negative.

Let us banish from our lives negative labels and live life positive.

The world's a stage

This earth is full of people who have difficulty being honest with themselves, much less the world at large. They are tired actors who can't take off their masks anymore, because it has been on too long. They cannot admit to their own frailties as humans, yet smirk from their precarious position at those who can. Little realising how it all comes around to everyone...one fine day.

No, this is not written in anger or meant as a rant against anyone/the world (as these perfected actors/actresses have a tendency to view)...just an observation.

And a smile.

And a realisation that what matters,

is being to true to oneself.

And I am.

I'm not perfect. I haven't figured out many things yet. I may not deal with many things the way I wish I could, sometimes. (I've certainly given up trying to deal with it the way "others" think I should..ie: "more palatable to their pretense-filled world")

But.

That's being human.

Something many cannot admit to being.

And no.

There is no "magic pill" that can make you one. (That some seem intent on making me swallow, to be like them, because "that's the way to go, say the unchallengeable 'experts' ")

Only by feeling everything, ups and downs,highs and lows raw and unedited, and unanaesthetised, can you discover yourself.

Not by anyone telling you how.

And I'm glad to go through it all.

And only I know, that I'm much more than you perceive.

And that's enough for me.

Because I don't have to pretend to be anyone I'm not

for myself.

My sympathies to the washed out actors...take a break, I say :)