On boycotts and BMF

When you’re in need of blood because of an injury or treatment, you don’t get to ask ‘I want blood from muslims first’. Same goes when you need help from doctors, nurses, police or complete strangers. That’s when you realize how silly this buy muslim first thing is. Most of our fellow countryman was born and grown up in this country. They have called this blessed land home all their lives. They don’t have anywhere else to go to if you ask send to go back to where their great grandparent came from.

Imagine if your family moves to a foreign country, say like Australia. They opened up a business and they worked hard to give you and your family a good life. And then for some reason, the locals there launched a campaign to buy locals or christian first. How would you feel? Not nice isn’t it? Like the wise rapper Tupac Shakur once said: do not do unto others what you don't want done unto you. That’s pretty much how our fellow Malaysians would feel when you do this buy muslim first thing. No matter how good your intention is, discrimination along racial and religious lines will only sow discord, generate hate, mistrust and ill feeling among each other.

Do not let politicians with agendas use you as their tool to achieve their political ambitions. Creating a bogeyman or common enemy especially from outside their race and religion is a tried and tested method to gain political support. These people don’t really care about helping fellow muslims or the unity of the people. They’re just doing whatever it takes to control you and gain political power. Never let yourself become their pawns in achieving their end goal of getting into office.

As for me personally, I don’t really care whether the business I buy from is muslim owned or not. The first thing I always look at is the price and if all is equal, quality and good customer service. Frankly I believe this bmf thing is not sustainable in the long run. Living in a multiracial country, how long before you run out of muslim business to go to every time? How about non-muslim bumiputra business owners, do you boycott them too? Already there’s anecdotal evidence of muslim business owners taking advantage of this uncalled for campaign to raise the price of their products. How messed up is that? Buy muslim first so that the owner can buy a brand new Mercedes? I don’t think so.

Hazy days

Millions of dollars lost every year directly and indirectly from the Indonesian haze not to mention the health cost amongst their own citizen and neighbouring countries. Yet here we are suffering from another bout of hazy season. Who are to blame for this ecological disaster? Some say it’s the big palm oil estate owners whose to blame. Truth is, subsistence farming is the main culprit. Big plantation companies do not slash and burn. Problems are with the enclaves. It is tough to control them from burning during dry seasons. A palm oil tree takes 7 years to grow and could be productive for 15 to 20 years. It make no sense for these plantation owners to burn down the trees every 2 or 3 years.

It is a complicated combination of need (of the small time farmers) and tradition. Perhaps the authority should take a more proactive role? To those irresponsible farmers burning their crops every other year, is it worth it with the damage that you have done to millions of lives? I’m pretty sure they know and are aware of the calamity their action brought but they did it anyway. The haze reached it’s peak worst today with hundreds of schools closed across the country, my kids and the school that I worked at included. You can smell the acrid burning odour outside the house. While the kids and teachers didn’t have to go to school at all, the rest of the non-teaching staff have to work as usual, haze or not. Yes, they gave us an option to work from home if we have significant health problems or unexpected parental obligation. Many still come to work anyway because they have tonnes of work to do.

You can see in the media pictures of Indonesian’s President Jokowi walking around ground zero, witnessing first hand the devastation that the fire and haze brought and how he laments about the folks who caused it. I believe those were merely lip service. I can almost guarantee you we’ll be suffering from the same hazy predicament next year. It will take a paradigm shift and significant education to make those farmers stop burning their land.