YOURSAY | 'With freedom comes responsibility, consideration and respect for people's values and beliefs.'
‘Extreme music’ gig cancelled after protest from churches
Charlie Chan Son No 13 Jack Sparrow Just Joined The Boat: Goatlordth Records, the organisers of the Devouror Live in Kuala Lumpur concert, are fools to think that the band's lyrics are not provocative and reflect freedom of speech.
In this instance, nothing is further from the truth. Effectively, the Council of Churches (CCM) exercised their own freedom of speech to protest the concert, and the guilt lies with the group itself.
They can sing all they want, but not provoke sensitivities of the people who believe in their respective faiths.
It's good that the organisers decided to pull the plug on the concert. There are boundaries of civility.
Anonymous 1470491491148271: With freedom comes responsibility, consideration and respect for people’s values and beliefs.
Reckless or unrestrained freedom which peddles unwholesome ideas is not freedom of speech. Know the difference.
Ian Chai: As a practising Christian, I probably would never pay money to listen to the music of Devouror.
However, I am at the same time concerned that we may have compromised a greater ideal – freedom of expression – with this move.
Pharaoh: Many are commenting on 'rights' and 'freedom' after the cancellation of the Devouror concert. Really? There is no one country in the world that upholds absolute freedom of speech!
Rights must come with responsibility. Don't believe me? Well then, go board a plane and say it's my freedom of expression to say "I have a bomb," and see what happens to those rights and freedoms.
Change For The Better: @Pharoah That's a stupid argument. You will be seen as directly putting people's lives at risk if you say "I have a bomb."
This incident with Devouror is entirely different. I am not a fan of such music, but banning any and everything because some people complain is not the answer either.
Where will it end? If we take such arguments to their logical conclusion, we must ban almost everything we take for granted in our daily lives, as it will offend the sensitivities of some of the people all the time.
We could have allowed this to go on in a ringfenced manner, but as usual, we crack an egg with a sledgehammer, in true Malaysian style.
Hopeful: Everyone seems to be getting the freedom of speech wrong. First of all, freedom of speech is not freedom from any consequence. It only means that the state is not clamping down on any expression.
Of course, we don't have that here in this country, but that is not the issue with the Devouror gig being cancelled.
Let's get the facts straight. In this case, as much as Devouror is expressing its freedom of speech with its anti-Christian lyrics, the CCM is also expressing its freedom of speech to complain about the band.
The organisers took it upon themselves to cancel the event – there was no ban from any state actor. In fact, no government official even commented on this incident, at least not to my knowledge.
Yes, there are legitimate clampdowns on freedom of speech in this country. You don't have to look very far. Just today, a forum on the hijab is being investigated by religious authorities. That is curtailing free speech. This isn't.
Quo Vadis: Freedom and licence – as has been put across so well – you have the right to swing your arm freely, but you are constrained from hitting the nose of one who has the right to be in the same space as you inhabit, inasmuch as that person also the right to swing his or her arm freely, but is constrained from hitting your nose.
Unless, of course, you are the Earl of Selkirk, alone on a deserted island, devoid of other people and noses to injure.
Khalil Gibran: Everyone seems ready to ban this anti-Christian band because it insults Christianity, but when controversial Islamic preacher Zaik Naik insults Hinduism, that seems okay.
Exorcise 'devil of inaccessibility' first, disabled activist tells churches
Grrrrrrrrrrr 2019: If this has been a Muslim group calling for cancellation of any concert, we would be calling them zealots. What is the difference here? Can a concert affect your faith?
What the council has done is to now promote Devouror's popularity, as before this I never even knew this group existed, and like me, many will be checking out their music.
Jay: I do not support embargos, boycotts, or bans. Nobody in Malaysia had even heard of this idiot band until CCM general secretary Herman Shastri became their publicist.
Anonymous_555: The concert is a choice one makes – to watch or not. Who is any politician or religious authority to decide for the people?
We've had enough of religion trying to impose their brand of morals on the people.
Jais confirms probe into 'de-hijabbing' forum
OceanMaster: Women have taken centre stage and are at par, if not better than men in most parts of the world in every discipline.
It is therefore not beyond expectation that women the world over, educated and contributing to the well-being of the societies they live in, will question the wisdom of the cultures that continue to treat them as the lesser of the genders.
When a minister in 2019 questions this natural psychosocial evolution, clearly we have a medieval slave master at the helm.
Islam needs leadership and pragmatism. Otherwise, the followers of this great religion will have to continue to be torn in a flux of two opposing forces.
Proarte: Malays never wore the hijab for 500 years, but only began to do so from the 1970s onwards when oil money from the Middle East and political Islam started to fund the spreading of fundamentalist Arab Muslim values throughout the developing Muslim world.
I am not normally given to conspiracy theories, but I think the dominant Western economies that controlled oil production in the Middle East wanted fundamentalist Islam to spread because they knew it would stunt intellectual development, creativity, freedom of speech and create tension in their societies.
This was a sure way to control the oil flow, since the locals would not have the capability to develop and manage their own oil industry because of the deleterious effects which religion has on rational thought.
One only has to look at Malaysia to see how very low ethical and intellectual standards are promoted. The refusal to ratify UN treaties is conclusive proof of this. How can any religion or human being not sign up to ending racism, discrimination, genocide, and ethnic cleansing?
Non-Muslims, according to the logic we have here, have to be 'pak turut' (followers) and should not hold positions of authority. Muslims are told by people like Zakir that Muslims must elect corrupt Muslim politicians over upright and incorruptible non-Muslims.
What is the result when there is a cynical and total breakdown of civilised values? Endemic corruption and grand-scale kleptocracy by the elite.
This symbiotic relationship between local Muslim proxies and foreign powers is made possible by the deleterious effects of fundamentalism.
OMG!: A number of inaccuracies here. It was Ayatollah Khomeini's triumphant return to Shiite Iran in 1979, after the Shah fled, that captured the imagination of Muslims everywhere, including the Sunnis of Malaysia.
You paint a picture of Muslims being dumbed down, but does that tally with reality? Your views veer towards bigotry. Perhaps they arise from a fear of remaining disempowered within a Muslim-majority country. I can understand this.
I'm not assured that 'modern society', whatever that means, is all that wonderful. We have a small group of individuals worth billions, while ordinary men and women have to work so hard just to feed their families. The income gap has got worse in the last 30 years.
I do applaud activist Maryam Lee's actions and courage to make it a woman's personal choice on what she wears, and wish her success.
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