Is There Such a Thing as a Stupid Question?
There are all types of questions. Sometimes, what is asked, and how it is asked, reveals something about the asker, and it’s a revelation more important than the answer being sought.
Last month, Malaysian lawyer, activist, and one-time self-nominated political candidate Siti Kasim used an opportunity to speak into a microphone and ask a representative of Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) (English: Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia) two questions in a tone of an incensed schoolteacher trying to keep her emotions in check:
If a non-Muslim becomes the prime minister of Malaysia, what is Abim’s stance?
On the issue of separation of religion from politics, what is Abim’s stance?
Here are better, more important questions with obvious answers she could’ve asked at a crowded forum hosted by Bersih Congress titled “Implementation of democracy in the country’s democratisation phase”:
How do you make a good grilled cheese sandwich?
Are there any cats more gorgeous than Louie, Maggie, and Lucy?
Was The Lion King based on a true story?
Who killed Nazrin Hassan?
What is the reason that government schools are not improved?
Is Malaysia woke?
Why does Jason Derulo say his name in his songs?
Who am I?
Do all words have established meaning or is everyone permitted to redefine or negate meaning according to personal fancy?
Why is the critically endangered Malayan tiger used to represent Malaysia, not the three-toed sloth, the Bornean orangutan, or the giant tortoise?
Albert Einstein claimed that there are no stupid questions. He was incorrect. There are different factors to consider when someone asks a question.
Asking a question, and variations of it, especially repeatedly, when there are answers that are easily accessible, though ones that are often not the answers you want to hear, suggests the question itself is not stupid but perhaps the person asking it is.
Asking it repeatedly as a bullying tactic to get the response you want to feel like you’re righteous is equally stupid because there are bigger problems to grapple with in Malaysia after 60 years of ignoring difficult questions. It reveals your disinterest in understanding something you make more effort to seem deeply concerned about. And some questions don’t require research if you have enough knowledge to come to an answer that’s based on logic and observation.
Mr. Garrison, South Park
I don’t think Siti Kasim is stupid, I think she fails to see how she is part of the problem. And asking petty questions is another unfortunate trait of Malaysian culture. It directly explains why Malaysians are not problem-solvers due to fear of serious questions, debates, and discussions.
Serious debate and discussion mean truths would have to be acknowledged = A lot of feelings will be hurt + Must be prevented in Malaysia = Malaysians are fragile people.
When you’re fragile and can’t acknowledge hard truths, you depend on flawed ideas and irrational beliefs to get yourself through the day. It becomes difficult for clear-sighted people to take you seriously. You get angry and suddenly anyone who opposes, disproves, or challenges you is a racist, bigot, homophobe, transphobe, fatphobe, Islamophobe, anti-Semite, bully, meanie, et cetera and must be punished, shunned, or reported to the police.
Nothing gets done because of all those trivial distractions engineered to divert discourse and problem-solving.
Society collapses.
By logic, society can’t thrive or function to its best abilities under weaklings, or the mentally ill.
Are the questions Siti Kasim asked stupid?
In the context of Malaysia, many things are nonsensical, so naturally, the absence of sense produces stupidity in all forms, including the inability to ask or answer difficult questions. In the context of everything happening in the world, they should elicit a straightforward, educated response by now. So that people who’re uninterested in understanding why a non-Muslim shouldn’t be the Prime Minister of antisocial, dysfunctional Malaysia can stop asking simplistic questions that don’t accurately address a complex situation.
Consider the fact that the Malays don’t have real power.
All the supposed power is forced and contrived due to the circumstances which they take for granted. On top of that, they are not united as a group. This is odd because “Islam teaches unity which is the most important ingredient for the survival of people on this planet.” (Unity Is Strength, Quran Explorer)
Islamic values aren’t observed or understood among many Malays who are Muslims. How the Malays can survive without manufactured power that’s led to the creation of illusory self-concepts in many of their minds, and as a fragmented group in a multicultural society with significant group dynamics is something to contemplate. Because the Malays are held together by a loose thread.
The infantile Left tries to boil almost everything down to inclusivity and diversity, as though those things are of utmost importance. In different societies in the world, the majority of people are tired of being forced to capitulate to the whinings and demands of minority groups who act on entitlement stemming from a puerile victimhood mentality. Their purpose is to hold others captive in their game of control.
On Siti Kasim’s second question to ABIM, Malaysia is not a secular country.
Nor is it not secular. As addressed by numerous people over the years, including reformist PM Anwar Ibrahim, the country is somewhere in between. But this is the problem with many liberals. They can’t be bothered to understand things properly, including things that can be easily Googled. It’s easier to cling to their black-and-white thinking and deny the complicated truth.
It’s like Ursula from The Little Mermaid (1989) (the only version that matters).
Ursula, The Little Mermaid, 1989 (Walt Disney)
Was she an octopus or was she a squid? Some give the easier answer: “She was a squid because she only had six tentacles.” The more complicated answer is that she closely resembled an octopus but Disney didn’t have the funds to draw eight arms, and it was more difficult to draw back then, so she became a sea witch with six tentacles and two arms.
In other words, they improvised to create an ambiguous sea creature.
Malaysia is kinda like Ursula. Nobody really knows what she is, but many will just assume they know, or insist they know based on what they want to be true if they weren’t part of the production crew at the time.
(Edited to add: She was a result of the circumstances the animators had to work with, and was a bit of a sleazy psycho. Also one of the most memorable Disney villains ever created, props due to Pat Carroll).
Islam is named the official religion of the country, which makes it not secular. It also guarantees freedom of religion. Additionally, Malaysia doesn’t have the same developmental evolution or social makeup as nations like Turkey, Russia, the UK, the US, France, Senegal, or Sweden. Tajikistan, where 96% of the population is Muslim, recently passed a law to officially ban the hijab to prioritize Tajik cultural identity over religious identity.
So consider also the fact that Muslims believe that Islam is a way of life and not just a religion and that Malay Muslims, in particular, believe it to be central to who they are, even if many don’t realize the spread of religiosity in Malaysia followed the Islamization that happened in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini.
What is the strong cultural identity that the Malays fall back on when they can’t use Islam as a shield, or a weapon against any perceived threat, which is what many of them do — exploit religion — because it’s all they’ve got. As said above, even as religious Muslims, the tenet of unity stressed in Islam is not observed among the Malays.
The majority of Malays were historically from villages. Many Malays I’ve met in urban cities, whether KL, Boston, Philadelphia, or elsewhere, have a hard time hiding the fact that they feel inferior because of or embarrassed about their background and it’s revealed in various ways. Some seem bitter about being Malay and try to distance themselves from it, especially around Western influence.
There are Malays who will claim that the Malays are a warrior race.
Warrior race my ass.
Maybe in the time of Mat Kilau and when physical threats were taken out with silat.
Let’s not piggyback on Malays from a completely different time, who did all the hard work of expelling foreign intruders and proved themselves to not be weaklings. A lot has transpired since then, including psychological damage. People have been dumbed down by entertainment, news media, far-left lunacy, religiosity in the absence of exemplary education, or guidance, and having all sorts of mental disorders whether they realize it or not. Most don’t.
The threats are psychological now. And Malaysians are unequipped to confront them. The people have been conditioned over the years to be passive, confused, delusional, and character-impaired. There is no cohesive cultural identity uniting the population as is standard in other nations, but dishonest folks will conveniently ignore that fact.
Important factors like these were never addressed by previous leaders, despite the myriad experiences, studies, truths, and wisdom other former colonies and foreign intellectuals produced back then that Malaysia could’ve learned from but failed to, being a country that does not engage in any introspection and as a result:
Doesn’t understand why it’s important.
Doesn’t put any importance on the question of identity, and other profound metaphysical ones, particularly in the case of the Malays.
Doesn’t know itself.
Can there be a complete separation of religion from politics? Some people will argue it’s not possible. Others will say it’s possible, but they use countries like Sweden, Turkey, the UK, the US, or Lebanon as examples. People in those countries are mostly irreligious or have shifted away from religion because asking difficult questions and engaging in difficult discourse was part of their growth process.
All of them also have strong cultural identities everyone can understand.
People vote and make political decisions with the influence of their respective values and ideologies, whether it’s religious, liberal, feminist, Chinese, atheist, narcissist, et cetera. Democracy itself is known to be a flawed system and becomes dangerous if the majority of people in a specific society are lazy thinkers who make uninformed or emotional decisions.
The liberals in Malaysia shouldn’t be focused on trivial issues like inclusivity and feelings when it comes to leadership or anything else.
The question is why do the so-called open-minded Malaysians enjoy pretending everyone is on the same page and that there is no fragmentation so they can keep asking about a potential non-Muslim leader to sound good-hearted?
The question is why do those Malaysians think it’s normal to take shortcuts in life, expecting no one to notice it, and then expect the same outcome as others who put in the difficult work to be who they are?
