Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- Allah Yang Naikkan Harga Barang?
- Pondering Tamil schools in Malaysia
- How Meritocracy Entrenches Inequality
| Allah Yang Naikkan Harga Barang? Posted: 11 Sep 2013 08:42 PM PDT Menariknya saya terbaca satu komen yang menyebut: 'Kalau begitu pegawai-pegawai penguatkuasa kawalan harga barang sedang menentang ketetapan Allah lah?!' Ringkas, tapi penuh makna. Akidah Sebelum kita pergi kepada hadis yang diguna pakai dalam penghujah isu ini, saya suka menyebut bahawa dalam sejarah umat Islam pernah muncul aliran Jabariah yang menganggap bahawa semua perkara adalah ketetapan Tuhan, manusia sama sekali tiada pilihan. Jabariah tidak termasuk dalam kalangan Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, sebaliknya mereka termasuk dalam golongan Ahlul Hawa (pengikut hawa nafsu). Saya percaya penulis berkenaan tidak demikian. Nabi s.a.w mengajar kita tentang takdir dan usaha dalam masa yang sama. Apabila manusia berusaha, namun gagal disebabkan aturan perjalanan alam yang membabit pelbagai pihak; iklim, manusia, masa dan lain-lain, maka manusia hendaklah akur dengan kehendak Allah dalam hal itu. Segala yang berlaku dalam alam ini dengan izin Allah. Tiada apapun yang boleh berlaku tanpa izinNYA. Namun, apa yang DIA izinkan, bukan semestinya DIA redha. Demikian, apa yang DIA redha bukan semestinya DIA izinkan. DIA tidak redha kezaliman Firaun, tetapi DIA mengizinkan kewujudan Firaun atas sistem alam yang diciptaNYA. DIA redha hamba-hambaNYA bersedekah, tapi bukan semua mereka DIA izinkan memiliki harta yang banyak, atas sistem alam ciptaanNYA. Maka, di situlah adanya pahala bagi niat yang baik. Maka, DIA juga menetapkan Hari Pembalasan selepas kematian untuk membalas kebaikan dan keburukan. Usaha Kita disuruh berusaha kerana keizinan Allah itu sering berkaitan dengan usaha yang menuruti sunnah ataupun tabiat ciptaan alam. DIA boleh memenangkan para nabiNYA dalam sekelip mata, namun itu tidak berlaku. Semua para nabi terpaksa berjuang dan mencari sebab musabab untuk membolehkan mereka menang. Lihat Maryam ibu Nabi Isa, ketika dia dalam keadaan lemah hendak melahirkan Nabi Isa a.s., Allah menyuruh dia menggoncang pokok tamar. Rutab (tamar masak) pun jatuh berguguran. Firman Allah: (maksudnya)
Lihat, padahal Allah Pemberi Rezeki, tidak bolehkah DIA gugurkan sahaja buah tanpa perlu Maryam bersusah payah menggoncangnya?! Jika pun dia goncang, sekuat mana sangat wanita yang sarat mengandung dapat menggoncang pohon tamar?! Tidakkah dia sedang mengandung dengan pilihan Allah terhadap dirinya. Ya, namun, Allah mahu hidup ini berjalan menurut tabiatnya, usaha tetap disuruh dan bantuan Allah akan mengiringnya. Takdir Sama halnya dengan sakit demam, walaupun segalanya ketentuan Tuhan, namun Nabi s.a.w menyebut:
Kita kena berusaha, kita tidak boleh cakap 'ini semua takdir' lalu membiarkan penyakit merebak. Allah itu al-Syafi (Penyembuh). Benar, tapi kita kena berusaha mengatasi penyakit. Sabda Nabi:
Kata Al-Imam Nawawi (meninggal 676H ketika mensyarahkan hadis ini memetik kata-kata al-Qadi 'Iyadh yang menyebut:
Jika seseorang jaga kesihatannya, namun penyakit datang juga maka bersabarlah. Anggaplah itu ketetapan Allah. Ada hikmahnya. Ada sebab musabah di luar dari kemampuan diri. Ada pahala atas kesabaran itu. Tapi jika sendiri membahayakan diri. Melakukan perkara yang merosakkan seperti mengambil dadah, ataupun rokok, ataupun apa-apa tindakan yang bahaya lalu terkena penyakit, maka sebelum dia menyerah kepada takdir, dia hendaklah menyalahkan sikapnya terlebih dahulu. Allah telah ingatkan (maksudnya)
Jika seseorang mati kerana sakit atau tanpa sebarang sakit maka kita terima sebagai takdir. Namun jika dia dibunuh, walaupun itupun takdir, pembunuh mesti dihukum. Ulama tidak boleh bagitau mahkamah 'jangan salahkan pembunuh kerana itu takdir, Allah itulah yang menghidup dan mematikan'. Demikian jika ada yang dirompak dan dirogol, tidak boleh kita beritahu bahawa dalam Islam penyelesaiannya 'terimalah sebagai takdir dan bersabar, jangan salah sesiapa, rezeki ketentuan Allah'. Dalam Islam ada undang-undang jenayah dan pesalah boleh dihukum. Ada sistem keadilan yang wajib ditegakkan. Jika anda masuk ke kedai, anda dapati pekedai menaikkan harga barang dan bila anda tanya kenapa lalu dia jawab "Allah menaikkan harga barang". Apakah anda akan berkata: 'masyaAllah, akidah awak terlalu teguh, awak sangat beriman'. Ataupun, 'awak menggunakan nama Tuhan untuk ketamakan awak!'. Dalam negara ini, ada berbillion projek yang dipersoalkan. Ada istana yang dibina dengan harga berbillion ringgit. Ada projek harta awam yang tersangkut atas pelbagai alasan berbillion harganya. Apakah jawapannya: 'semua itu takdir Allah?!'. Saya juga lebih tertarik dengan kerajaan sekarang, lebih dari pembangkang, tapi bukan itu cara berhujah yang betul untuk membela.
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| Pondering Tamil schools in Malaysia Posted: 11 Sep 2013 12:39 PM PDT About 2 months ago The Star reported that the Deputy Minister for Education, who is also an elected Member of Parliament and a leader of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), announced that 13 Tamil schools will receive RM20 million in total under the Action Plan for the Future of Tamil Schools in Malaysia (PTST), to upgrade "classrooms, canteens, sports fields, fences and safety." I've not reviewed the PTST action plan. I decided that before I review it, I should assemble some thoughts and questions about Tamil schools in Malaysia. This is my first attempt to do so. Please indulge me. Before you read further, name 5 Indians in Malaysia. They don't have to be alive, it doesn't matter if they're long dead. Just name them. Now ask: which of them was most likely educated in a Tamil school in Malaya/Malaysia? My experience of Tamil schools My brother was 2 years older than me. When my parents sent him to Standard One in the local, national school, I wailed daily. I too wanted to go to school. But I was too young. I was so miserable I became sick. What were my parents to do? Kindergarten was not an option. At that stage in its history, our little town in Johor had no kindergartens. As usual, it was my mother who came up with a solution. She reminded my father that he was the chairman of the board of the local Tamil school. She implored him – and if you knew my mother you'd know that's not too strong a term – to send me to Standard One in the Tamil school. I was an "auditor," i.e. one who attends without being on the register and gets no credit. The Tamil school was in town. It met on the top floor of a dilapidated wooden shop which certainly would have failed a fire and safety inspection. Below it was an Indian barber shop. The schoolroom was actually the meeting place of the Indian Association – of which my father was also the elected chairman. I can only recall one teacher and one classroom, so the school must have been in its infancy. I think my father's decision to send me to the Tamil school was an abuse of his authority. In any case, my health and my self-esteem were soon restored. Self-esteem? Well, I showed them! As the youngest in the family of four, I made it clear once again that I could get what I wanted! As it turns out, I was the top student in my class. Though only 5, I could read and write in Tamil before I was 'enrolled.' This was because my mother included me when she taught my brother at home while my father was at work. In the evenings, when my father was home, he would teach my brother English, and I would join in as well. After one year at the Tamil school I was moved to the national school. I suppose tongues wagged in the community because the chairman of the board didn't send his own children to the Tamil school. (We continued to study Tamil at home.) I don't know how the Tamil school eventually moved into more appropriate buildings, how a headmaster was appointed, teachers were selected and hired, etc. I just know that about 20 years later the Tamil school headmaster became chairman of the local branch of the MIC. He also wrote and sold short stories to the Tamil Nesan newspaper, to supplement his meagre income. I don't recall any other Tamil school teachers. Tamil/Indian teachers and teacher training There were many Tamil teachers in the national schools which I attended. The national schools also had Anglo-Indian, Ceylonese, Malayalee and Telugu teachers. In 1976, after sitting for the Form 5 MCE examination the previous year, I applied to Teacher Training Colleges (TTC) in Malaysia, although I was sure I would be offered a place in Form 6. I learned later that I was not accepted for teacher training because my results were "too good for TTC" and wise administrators had decided I should go to Form 6 instead. I suppose they thought I was likely to eventually qualify for University admission. If you've read any history of schools in Malaysia, you'll have heard of Kirkby. Read more at: http://write2rest.blogspot.com/2013/09/pondering-tamil-schools-in-malaysia.html |
| How Meritocracy Entrenches Inequality Posted: 11 Sep 2013 12:24 PM PDT In a move that took many industry players by surprise, American regulators recently opened a probe on the hiring practice of JPMorgan Chase in China. Ongoing investigation seeks to establish if the investment bank's recruitment of the offspring of high-ranking and influential Chinese officials aka "princelings" – one of whom is the son of a former banking regulator, the other the daughter of a now-disgraced railway official – was a quid pro quo for coveted business deals, prohibited under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). What's the fuss about, you may wonder. Isn't the hiring of relatives of powerful politicians and well-connected persons of that ilk a time-tested and pervasive practice that extends far beyond China? Going a step further, you may even, like New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, defend such hiring decisions in a matter-of-factly manner: … given that many of the children of the elite have some of the best educations and thriving networks of contacts, it is hard to see how businesses are supposed to not seek them out, let alone turn them away. As hard to defend as the phrase may be, it is a reality of life, "It's not what you know, but whom you know." Being well-connected, of course, doesn't mean a new hire is "unqualified." The children of political elite who are educated in top universities are the norm and not the exception. However, by arguing that the princelings are being hired on their own merits and by dressing up their inherited advantages as a "reality of life," Sorkin has conveniently glossed over the modus operandi of meritocracy. Meritocracy Unraveled The fallacies of Sorkin's argument may be illuminated by our local debate over meritocracy. First of all, the need to revamp the concept by adding adjectives to it is, in itself, telling of the pitfalls of meritocracy. For instance, "fair" meritocracy connotes that meritocracy can be unfair; "compassionate" meritocracy underscores how meritocracy may breed a sense of self-entitlement or elitism; "unfettered" meritocracy implies that meritocracy itself has to be restrained. How is meritocracy unfair? Kenneth Paul Tan explains in "Meritocracy and Elitism in a Global City," Meritocracy, in trying to "isolate" merit by treating people with fundamentally unequal backgrounds as superficially the same, can be a practice that ignores and even conceals the real advantages and disadvantages that are unevenly distributed to different segments of an inherently unequal society, a practice that in fact perpetuates this fundamental inequality. In this way, those who are picked by meritocracy as having merit may already have enjoyed unfair advantages from the very beginning, ignored according to the principle of nondiscrimination. Meritocracy, defined as a system that rewards according to ability or achievement and not birth or privilege, may be unfair precisely because it is blind to differences of class, wealth and social status. Under Singapore's education system, for instance, the concentration of good schools in well-to-do neighborhoods and the greater means affluent families have for tuition programs clearly afford the rich an edge over the less so (Donald Low, "Good Meritocracy, Bad Meritocracy"). This is to say that between two equally intelligent children, one from a poor family and another from a rich background, the former has a lower chance of gaining entry into good schools. Such a passive blindness to differences in the name of meritocracy already aggravates inequality. What is worse, however, is a policy that actively reinforces inherited advantages. A fine example of this is the preferential access to schools given to children of alumni. No wonder experts have found that Singapore's education system has the proclivity to stifle intergenerational mobility. Meritocracy, therefore, may be unfair and perpetuate inequality in two ways: (1) by simply disregarding class, wealth or status differences on the principle of non-discrimination, and (2) by deepening differences through discrimination against the less privileged. If life is one big competition for resources, (1) is akin to inadvertently giving the rich and privileged a head start in the race, whereas (2) is like deliberately installing obstacles in the way of the disadvantaged. How does meritocracy that purportedly reward in accordance with one's ability degenerate into a system that recompenses based on one's birth and wealth? This has to do with how meritocracy is defined in a society and who defines it. From Meritocracy to Nepotism and Elitism The hiring practice of investment banks currently under scrutiny again proves illustrative. New York Times reported that JPMorgan initiated a program called "Sons and Daughters" in 2006 to impose proper standards when hiring relatives of China's ruling elite on a separate track. However, the program subsequently went awry: … in the months and years that followed, the two-tiered process that could have prevented questionable hiring practices instead fostered them, according to the interviews as well as the confidential government document. Applicants from prominent Chinese families, interviews show, often faced few job interviews and relaxed standards. While many candidates met or exceeded the bank's requirements, some had subpar academic records and lacked relevant expertise. In this instance we see clearly how the definition of "merit" has been reduced from stellar paper qualifications, relevant expertise plus apparent familial connections to familial connections above everything else. The best person for the job need not be the brightest. His or her merit lies in "opening doors," or more explicitly, bringing in business deals, and is rewarded thus. Now expand this scenario to a society. Read more at: http://singaporearmchaircritic.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/how-meritocracy-entrenches-inequality/ |
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