Hungry Ghost Festival: How to avoid meeting ghosts? When the ghosts see red! Fascination for all things spooky

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How to avoid meeting ghosts

By BEH YUEN HUI newsdesk@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: Cutting hair, shaving, going for outings and hanging clothes outside the house are among the things people should avoid doing at night throughout the Hungry Ghost Festival.

People should also avoid moving house and getting a new vehicle, as it is believed that the chances of bumping into ghosts are higher by doing all these.

“Keep away from the walls because ghosts love sticking to it,” said Master Szeto Fat-ching, a famous exorcist and feng shui guru from Hong Kong.

He said although ghosts are around during daytime, they are more active at night.

Thus, precautions have to be taken during the month-long festival beginning July 31 when the Hell Gate is open and the spirits are allowed to return to the human realm.

Master Szeto also said women are more prone to seeing ghosts than men.

Famous guru: Master Szeto talking as the guest deejay for 988 radio station in Kuala Lumpur recently.

According to the Yin and Yang philosophy, women belong to the Yin category the same as ghosts and so they are easier to “click” with each other.

“There's nothing to fear because the ghosts are more afraid of humans than we are of them.”

Dubbed the Ghost King of Macao, Master Szeto was invited here by Chinese radio station 988 as a guest deejay in a ghost-related programme in conjunction with the festival.

He also shared his stories and exchanged views with over 300 supernatural fans at an “up close and personal” session here on Wednesday.

Besides the above mentioned taboos, Master Szeto also warned the public to not take the offerings on the streets that were served to the “homeless spirits” or make fun of the belief.

Read more in Daily Chilli (www.dailychilli.com) about Master Szeto's encounter with a tree demon in Sabah, which left him confined to his bed for three months.

When the ghosts see red!

By CHRISTINA CHIN sgchris@thestar.com.my

Taoists believe that spirits are at their most powerful during the seventh lunar month.

IT'S Hungry Ghosts or Phor Thor festival now. The Chinese equivalent of Halloween, the festival is still very much alive in predominantly Chinese areas like Penang, and believers are now busy appeasing the spirits through ritual food offerings, burning of joss paper, and stage shows.

According to Taoist ghostbuster Ong Q Leng, spirits are at their most powerful during the seventh month of the Chinese calendar but those released from the gates of hell are not harmful.

“The harmful ones are the restless spirits that roam the earth freely throughout the year,” says Ong, who claims to have seen them all, from office hauntings to eerie bodily possessions.

The 34-year-old spiritual healer shares some advice with those low on luck during this festival.

Heavenly protection: Lai, possesed by Tua Pek, preparing a talisman for a family of devotees.

“Do not wear red this Hungry Ghost Festival. The spirits are drawn to red, so avoid anything red, including underwear. This is especially so if things have not been going smoothly for you these past few months.”

She also warns believers against going out past 9pm.

“Stay away from drugs and alcohol because it's easier for spirits to take over those who are intoxicated. If you are always alert, it's also difficult for people to cast a spell or charm you.”

Ong's caution may offer some “personal protection” against the unseen but hauntings are not limited to people.

The 65-storey Komtar tower in Penang which houses Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng's administration has its fair share of stories about ghostly apparitions. Staff members who experienced unnatural phenomenon on one of the higher floors recently called in an Ustaz to conduct prayers and sprinkle black pepper, apparently to “cleanse” the place.

Law firms seem to be a popular haunting ground in old George Town, with chilling tales ranging from smelling burning incense late at night to seeing an old woman roaming the corridors.

A 33-year-old senior partner in one firm shares: “A feng shui practitioner came to our office once and saw a child running around. In fact, we had an employee who suffered a miscarriage and it is thought that the baby's spirit followed her to work.”

Another lawyer, who also declined to be named, relates how a client saw “another lady” in the conference room when there were just two of them.

“My boss too has a gift' for seeing these things'. One day, he saw an old woman wandering along the corridor but she vanished as he approached her. I've heard that during the Japanese Occupation, soldiers were beheaded here.”

At a developer's firm not too far away, the office workers have come to terms with sharing their premises with “unseen friends”.

“There have been many unexplained incidents; the air-conditioner starts even after it has been switched off and radio channels change randomly. A monk hired to cleanse the place failed to drive away the spirits, claiming there were just too many to capture.Every year during the Hungry Ghost Festival, we make offerings to the spirits here,” one senior staff confides.

Even cars are not spared the spooks. Writer E. J. Loh, 46, recalls how a nee-kor (nun) who performed the funeral rites for her premature baby, sold her car, claiming that the child's spirit was “disturbing” her. The nun had driven the dead child in a casket to the crematorium.

Ong, who offers healing, spiritual cleansing, feng shui tips and general consultation to her clients, reckons that seven out of 10 cases she sees are caused by evil spirits or black magic. Her clients are from different races and religions, and include Germans, Australians, people from China and Hong Kong, and Singaporeans.

She says she has seen cases of clients experiencing extreme body aches, youngsters speaking in old voices, and those who cannot stop sobbing or whose eyes and tongues are rolled back as they stare blankly into space.

“Whether it's Thai kong tau or Chinese mao shan (black magic), it doesn't matter. I will try to help as long as the victim trusts me.”

Ong, who always appears confident, is the first to admit she is not always this brave. Growing up, she says, she used to be scared out of her wits by apparitions she saw, which led to her stuttering as a child. But by the time she was 11, she was so fed up of being frightened that she started “scolding the spirits and threatening them not to bother her”.

Four years ago, while working as a sales representative, it dawned on her that she could use her “gift” to help others.
 
Her most recent success was helping 73-year-old Zainab Sulaiman from Kelantan. The widow, who lives in a wooden house in Kampung Penambang Bunga Emas near Kota Baru with her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, had been plagued with hundreds of mysterious fires which destroyed over 250 articles of clothing, mats, curtains, mattresses and many other things. Last month, Zainab made a trip to Penang to thank Ong.

For Ong, the more evil spirits she battles, the stronger and more alert she feels.

“I don't get tired although I sometimes work from early morning until past 3am.”

Temple medium Lai Seng Hee says the younger generation are not as sceptical about ghosts as you would imagine.

“The temple is always packed with devotees who include young Mercedes-driving professionals and businessmen,” he shares.

Lai, 47, goes into a trance at the Leong Hong Keong temple in Penang to assist Tua Pek (Grand Uncle) devotees to communicate with the deity.

The temple, which was established more than three decades ago, is dedicated to underworld deities - Tua Pek and Jee Pek (Second Uncle). Tua Pek - the Chief Inspector of Hades - always carries a fan while his assistant Jee Pek, carries a chain. Together, the brothers are known as Poh Tiao Pek.

Three nights a week, Lai goes into a trance until way past midnight. Devotees come from as far as Johor, Kuala Lumpur and Kedah with pleas to cure their illnesses, prolong the life of a sick loved one, or keep away evil spirits.

Lai's service was procured after the tragic and gruesome murder of three-year-old Ooi Ying Ying in 2007, a case that jolted the nation. Lai used a dried, wax-coated lime to communicate with the dead girl a method the former electrician learnt from a sifu (master) in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The seance was filmed by a Hong Kong production company for a documentary.

Lai's expertise was also sought to help “collect” fragments of Ying Ying's soul and conduct rituals to appease her soul.

Lai says during the Hungry Ghost month, spirits of the ancestors will try to contact their living descendants.

“They don't mean any harm. They may have some requests or want to warn their families of some impending danger.”

Fascination for all things spooky

By CHRISTINA CHIN 

MALAYSIANS are a culturally diverse lot but one common thread is their fascination with the supernatural. Whether you are Chinese, Indian or Malay, stories of ghostly encounters are part and parcel of the Malaysian experience.

While our spooks look nothing like the Twilight films' vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen, the local spirits, ghosts and ghouls are, indeed, hauntingly real for some.

Weighing in on the subject of Malaysians' fascination with the supernatural, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) associate professor Dr Muhammad Azizan Sabjan from the School of Humanities (philosophy and civilisation section), explains that from an Islamic perspective, jinns do exist.

“The main difference between them and us is that they are invisible. Only those bestowed special skills or talent' by God can see them,” he explains.

“So, the belief in the existence of jinns in modern times is not superstitious but the way one conducts certain ceremonies to appease them, is,” he adds.

But ghosts have been unfairly blamed whenever something goes wrong, Xiao En Cultural Endowment chief executive officer Dr Ong Seng Huat (pic) opines.

Dr Ong, who is also a Taoist high priest and a visiting professor to China's National Overseas Chinese University (faculty of religious and cultural studies), says the supernatural is a convenient excuse and one that is widely accepted even today.

“For instance, mass hysteria happens when one loses coordination, consciousness of identity, feeling and body movement. You read about it happening in schools a lot lately. Is it the doing of a spirit or are pressure and stress really the culprits?

“People sympathise when you tell them that you are disturbed' by a ghost or someone has placed a hex on you; but admit to being mentally ill and you will be shunned. So mental illness is often passed off as a ghostly encounter,” he explains.

However, ghostly encounters are not to be dismissed, he says.

For the Chinese, there are ancient textbooks that list down symptoms of patients' ailments based on the type of ghosts they encountered.

“The old Chinese physicians were learned people who addressed all these problems. They didn't just blame it on the supernatural,” says Dr Ong.

In ancient China, he says, the ashes of paper talisman with Chinese writings actually had medicinal properties. The paper dispensed to patients who claimed to have been afflicted by ghosts was made from plants like ginger and bamboo leaves.

“And jossticks in the old days had aromatherapy benefits. These days, the talisman handed out may cause more harm than good. I don't even know what they are made of.”

Dr Ong says society's belief in the supernatural has its pros: “When you believe in the realm of the ghosts and gods, you will be more inclined to do good for fear of the repercussions.”

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UK Riots: Lessons to be learned; Role for US crime guru?

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Lessons to be learned

Comment by LOURDES CHARLES

The perceived police inaction during the riots in Britain has shone a light on our own cops' response to protests here.

ANY Malaysian watching the riots in London and other cities in England must have asked what were the British police doing? Why did they restrain themselves? So much so, that people around the globe were wondering how the hooligans were allowed to carry out such criminal acts of looting, robbery and assault.

In some scenes, the police were seen retreating and reports estimate that no fewer than 100 policemen were injured and at least five police dogs hurt by these thugs.

The authorities there did practically nothing, allowing the yobs and rioters to set fire to shops,  supermarkets and other business outlets, while others looted, assaulted and robbed passers-by.

No water cannons were used nor were there mass arrests made during the incident.

Only after four days did the police there act by deploying 16,000 personnel to patrol the streets in their bid to maintain law and order. They have arrested more than 1,000 people but not before three people were killed with losses amounting to millions of pounds.

These young criminals may have issues with unemployment and a sense of hopelessness in England where inflation, slow growth and budget cuts have hurt them but that is no excuse for their acts of violence.

Only the most diehard bleeding liberals would want to blame the system for the criminal acts of these opportunists.



Their targets, as we saw, were ironically the neighbourhood shops people they knew and small businesses that have provided jobs to the people.

To smash, loot and burn these shops is hard to comprehend.

One looter was even quoted as saying: “It's us versus them, the police and the system.”

“They call it looting and criminality. It's not that. There's a real hatred towards the system,” he said.

The British riots have generated a debate with the social media here comparing the police's handling of the looting and arson there and the Malaysian police's action over the Bersih 2.0 protest, where water cannons and tear-gas were used.

More than 1,000 people were arrested here amid allegations of police brutality. The roadblocks set up ahead of the rally also led to public complaints.

Some said it was unfair to link the British riots with Bersih 2.0, as there was no damage to public property in Kuala Lumpur. To make comparisons, the argument goes, would not be fair.

Police operations in any part of the world would always be subject to scrutiny, as civil society becomes a crucial part of a growing democracy.

From discussions on British TV, the sentiment is that the police did not want to be too robust in confronting the rioters for fear of being criticised, as has happened in the past.

Many were worried that their superiors would not back them if there was a public backlash. No policeman would want to risk losing his position and pension over such controversies. They have the power and authority but feared exercising them.

Civil lawsuits against the police by aggrieved parties, including burglars, are a norm there.

Even now London police are bracing themselves for another possible suit by some 5,000 demonstrators who took part during the G20 protests in April 2009 in the now infamous “kettling” case.

The demonstrators may sue Scotland Yard for false imprisonment as judges found that the mass detention (preventing them from nearing the summit area) for five hours was an unlawful deprivation of liberty under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Human rights are so stringent there that even a suspected burglar who was chased by a police dog and bitten is said to be suing the police. Never mind that the stolen loot was found on him and he was charged with burglary.

He is expected to be compensated with about 50,000 (RM245,000) for his injuries.

Some of us here would cry out that it is a case of excessive democracy and abuse of human rights. Demonstrators have their rights to protest but those who suffer losses have their rights, too. So it came as no surprise that the public in Britain is outraged at the response to the rioters.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and London mayor Boris Johnson were filmed on television being scolded by the public for the slow action against the yobs, the British term for hooligans.

Most of us must have been outraged to see how the young criminals taunt the policemen while openly breaking into shops. We would have expected immediate arrests, not days after the looting.

There is also a lesson which the British policemen as well as the PDRM can learn from this episode. Social media was used extensively in the riots. Young people knew in advance where people could gather to make trouble via Twitter and Blackberry Messenger but the police were unaware of it.

They were so clueless that many wondered why the police did not show up in potentially explosive areas.

There seems to be a shift in public opinion since the recent anarchy following a series of seemingly peaceful protests which turned violent such as the G20 in April 2009 as well as the Nov 10, 2010 student fees protest where open clashes took place in the streets of central London. Now they want their police to be more assertive in carrying out their duties.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron has now told the police that they should adopt a more robust approach and has given them the green light to use water cannons and rubber bullets to quell the rioters.

The British incident serves as a lesson for us here. Preventive measures are good and though we sometimes criticise what is termed as highhanded action by the police, at least the cops here are doing a decent job in keeping law and order.

Britain's top cop slams UK role for US crime guru

LONDON (AP) - Tensions between Britain's government and police leaders flared Saturday over Prime Minister David Cameron's recruitment of a veteran American police commander to advise him on how to combat gangs and prevent a repeat of the past week's riots.

The criticism, led by Association of Chief Police Officers leader Sir Hugh Orde, underscored deep tensions between police and Cameron's coalition government over who was most to blame for the failure to stop the four-day rioting that raged in parts of London and other English cities until Wednesday.

Cameron criticized police tactics as too timid and announced he would seek policy guidance from William Bratton, former commander of police forces in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. British police have branded the move misguided and an insult to their professionalism.

"I am not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them," Orde said of Los Angeles, which the 63-year-old Bratton oversaw until 2009.

"It seems to me, if you've got 400 gangs, then you're not being very effective. If you look at the style of policing in the states, and their levels of violence, they are fundamentally different from here," said Orde, a former commander of Northern Ireland's police and deputy commander of London's Metropolitan Police. Orde made his comments to the Independent on Sunday newspaper.

The riots row overshadowed a day of peace on England's streets and continued progress in processing more than 2,100 riot suspects arrested so far, mostly in London, in unprecedented round-the-clock court sessions.

In England's second-largest city of Birmingham, prosecutors charged two males with the murder of three men in a hit-and-run attack Wednesday, the deadliest event during the past week's urban mayhem.

Both males - identified as Joshua Donald, 26, and a 17-year-old whose name was withheld because of his juvenile status - were being arraigned Sunday at Birmingham Magistrates Court on three counts each of murder.

The breakthrough by a team of 70 detectives came less than four days after Haroon Jahan, 20, and brothers Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, were mortally wounded when a car struck them at high speed. The trio had been part of a larger group standing guard in front of a row of Pakistani-owned shops.

The killings threatened to ignite clashes between the area's South Asian and black gangs, but the father of Haroon Jahan made a series of impressively composed public statements in the hours after his son's death pleading for forgiveness, racial harmony and no retaliation.

Hours before Saturday's murder charges were announced, the father, Tariq Jahan, told journalists at a Birmingham news conference he had received thousands of letters from well-wishers worldwide.

"I would like to thank the community, especially the young people, for listening to what I have to say and staying calm," said Jahan, 46, a delivery driver for an electronics chain.

Police in London were continuing to interrogate several suspects linked to the riots' two other killings: of a 26-year-old man shot to death in a car after a high-speed chase involving a rival group of men, and a 68-year-old loner who was beaten to death after arguing with rioters and trying to extinguish a fire they had set.

England's forces of law and order have been on the defensive over their slow initial response to riots that rapidly spread Aug. 6 from the north London district of Tottenham to several London flashpoints and, eventually, to Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham and other cities with high gang activity.

But police leaders mounted a series of critical interviews Saturday underscoring their view that Cameron was jumping the gun by seeking foreign advice at a time when his debt-hit government was pressing ahead with plans to cut police budgets by 20 percent.

Leaders of the police unions in London and the northwest city of Manchester - which dealt relatively harshly with rioters and quelled trouble there in one night - stressed that Cameron needed to listen to their expertise first, rather than seek to apply lessons from America's better-armed, more aggressive approach to policing.

"America polices by force. We don't want to do that in this country," said Paul Deller of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents more than 30,000 officers in the British capital.

Deller, a 25-year Met officer, accused the government of not being serious about following Bratton's recipe for reducing crime.

"When Mr. Bratton was in New York and Los Angeles, the first thing he did was to increase the number of police on the street, whereas we've got a government that wants to do exactly the opposite," he said, warning that planned budget cuts would mean 2,000 officers lose their jobs in London and thousands more nationwide.

Ian Hanson, chairman of the federation's Manchester branch, said local officers knew better how to police their own communities than "someone who lives 5,000 miles away."

Results of an opinion poll published Sunday suggested stronger public support for the police than for Cameron's approach to the crisis.

The poll, commissioned jointly by British newspapers Sunday Mirror and the Independent on Sunday, found that 61 percent thought Cameron and his Cabinet colleagues were too slow to end their foreign summer holidays following last weekend's outbreak of violence. Cameron returned to London from his break in Italy's Tuscany region Tuesday, after almost all of the London rioting had passed.

And strong majorities backed greater support and resources for the police, calling for planned budget cuts to be put on hold. About 65 percent said British troops should be used to reinforce police in event of future riots, while even heavier majorities said police should be permitted to use water cannon and plastic bullets against rioters and impose curfews on unruly communities. All of those measures have been used to control street violence in the British territory of Northern Ireland but never in Britain itself.

The survey of 2,008 people, conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, had an error margin of 3 percentage points.

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UK riots: resembles more of the Third World, bring up questions about society, moral decay! Anger still burns

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London’s Blitz today

BEHIND THE HEADLINES WITH BUNN NAGARA

As Britain resembles more of the Third World, what awaits developing Third World countries after development?

THE young men looting from the shops were not in Haiti, at least not anymore. The others coordinating more trouble for the government with their BlackBerrys were not in Egypt’s Tahrir Square either.



They were in London, capital of the once-global empire on which the sun never set. How did a great city that once ruled much of the world gravitate to the depths of a battle-strewn Iraq or a lawless Somalia?

It was not the first time that wanton violence had erupted in a city that sees itself as a leader of the “civilised world” after it had sent countless “civilising missions” around the globe to bring the “natives” up to speed on living a fuller and more meaningful life.

There was rioting two years ago when London hosted the G20 summit, and another eruption in the poorer parts of South London in the early 1980s, among others. But this time seemed the most serious: even a middle-class suburb in northwest London like Ealing had not been spared, with fires reminiscent of the wartime Blitz.

After street violence spread through the city from Camden, Clapham and Hackney to Lewisham, Peckham and Woolwich, it fanned out to other major cities across the country. Evidently the natives in Britain have been restless, and it could be that they felt excluded from living a fuller and more meaningful life.

For many of the youths on the rampage, living a better life meant having that new pair of sports shoes, the latest cellphone or the big flatscreen TV in the shop window – without having to pay for it. And thus the looting.

The apparently untraceable BlackBerry messaging system among fellow users also came in handy when avoiding police surveillance. Thus the “struggle” for the freedom to have what they’ve always wanted, by “liberating” snazzy items from the shelves of retail outlets.

Troublemakers seemed to have been encouraged by the fact that both the prime minister and the deputy prime minister had been abroad on holiday at the same time. But the urgency of attending to the troubles has meant that nobody has asked why have a deputy at all if both were going to be away simultaneously.

Several outcomes have been painful in their predictability. Politicians rushing home to address the problem have criticised the police handling of the riots, the police have rejected the criticism while claiming to have some of “the best officers in the world”, and liberal NGOs are concerned that the offenders might be punished too harshly.

Two issues now stand out as requiring some soul-searching before making the tough decisions necessary.

One concerns how the mainly youthful offenders are to be treated. The need for quick justice in the courts to deal with the many cases has caused some quarters to be anxious about the quality of the judgments and sentencing.

Another concerns the style of policing, particularly when initial responses from the force seemed inadequate. But efforts to alter the Metropolitan Police’s standard operating procedures have met with resistance.

Two related challenges for Downing Street are its insistence on going through with its 20% or £2bil (RM9.8bil) cuts to the police budget over the next four years, and the plan to engage an American policing consultant to advise on changes.

Both issues have further alienated the force from the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, who still insists on proceeding with them. The opposition Labour Party and the general public are largely on the side of the police.

A Guardian/ICM poll across Britain during the week found that 44% disapproved of Cameron’s performance, against 30% who were satisfied with it. Some 45% found the police performed well against 27% who felt otherwise.

A 56% majority of the public also felt that the police were already under-resourced before any cuts, against 41% who felt the force had what it needed to maintain law and order.

As for the reasons for the rioting, 45% cited the criminality of rioters, 28% saw their lack of respect for society, 8% believed it was the lack of jobs for youths, 5% said it was the police shooting death of a young man in Tottenham, 4% blamed the government, 2% blamed the police, 2% blamed the economy and only 1% felt it was racial sentiment.

However, it need not mean that racism is insignificant. Among the few deaths so far, three had been of Asian Muslims in Birmingham by a hit-and-run driver, although public attention has focused on the single white victim in Tottenham.

If racism is a bigger factor now than before, the problems before Britain are set to grow exponentially. In much of the earlier rioting, race was not a factor despite appearances as disillusioned individuals joined in against the established order.

As I made my way to the centre of rioting in Brixton some three decades ago, I asked a local for the precise location. “Oh, you mean the frontline!” he said, with a sense of dread and eyebrows raised.

I found the spot and it never seemed as terrifying as what Britons generally have had to experience in 2011. Things have obviously deteriorated, and might still worsen further.

Yet no other country can be so smug or self-righteous as to say it is immune to the kind of problems Britain has lately experienced. Neither Thailand nor any Arab or other country is insulated from such social disruptions.

Britain as pioneer has been proud of being “the mother of democracies” and the father of capitalism as the original “workshop of the world”.

If its troubles are a sign of things to come, other rapidly developing countries may want to consider some contingency plans within easy reach.

London riots bring up questions about society

MIND MATTERS By RAJA ZARITH IDRIS

I AM one of the many thousands of Malaysians who studied in England in the 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, I have visited England, specifically London, three times – for an alumni weekend in 2009 and for other invitations I received twice last year, first in October, when I visited the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies and gave a talk to Malaysian students, and again in December, after receiving an invitation to discuss Islam and programmes carried out for the Muslim community there.

I also met up with some students from Johor. So, at a Malaysian restaurant I sat, surrounded by these young, bright students studying at different colleges in London, some doing engineering, others medicine. Initially, there was some awkwardness both on my part and theirs – until I asked them about the Tube (London Underground) and taxi fares. I told them I used to take the Tube and the bus and that I could only afford to take a taxi if I had not used up the monthly allowance my father gave me. Talking about public transport fares then and now seemed to break the ice. I didn’t seem so alien after all.

When news came in about the London riots, I thought about our Malaysian students who are studying there. I wondered about the safety of this particular group of Johor students whom I had met.

We’ve all seen footage of the riots in London and in other British cities. Like in the United States, many people in Britain and other countries in Europe are facing unemployment, less spending power and falling property values. Some British journalists were of the opinion that moral decay and the yawning gap between the rich and the poor were two of the many reasons which caused the riots.

Moral decay

Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, in his article “The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom” wrote: “Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.”

I emailed my English boarding school friends to ask if they and their families were all right. One of them had seen the video of Mohd Asyraf Haziq Rossli bleeding on a street before getting robbed. She wrote back: “I saw the clip of the youth being robbed and it made me feel sick and very angry that people could behave in such an inhumane way. The fact it was a visitor to the UK makes it much worse and I hope he recovers well and does not think the majority of the UK is like this. I feel parenting has a great deal to do with this and there has been a loss of respect for authority, elders and community.”

Another friend, a doctor with the National Health Service, wrote: “London was quieter last night. The police advised us to shut the practice early and send the staff home which we did. The high streets look like battle zones with shops boarded up or shuttered.

Divided we stand: Riot police facing a mob in Hackney, north London, on Monday. — AFP

 

“It is really unbelievable with the fires and the looting making it feel a bit like civil war! We have a disenfranchised, disconnected and discontented generation who we need to re-engage.”

We Malaysians, however, shouldn’t be so smug and think that our country is far superior than Britain. We, too, have a “discontented generation”, with many young people who are unemployed or who choose to remain unemployed. And we have gangsters too.

We have a huge number of single mothers who are left by their husbands to fend for themselves and their children. We have unwed mothers. We have far too many cases of incest. We have drug users and drug suppliers. We have animal trafficking. We have heard and read about child abuse.

At the same time, it could not have escaped our attention that there is a simmering tension between the different racial communities. Religious authorities make conflicting media statements which leave most of us bewildered rather than reassured. Who should we believe? And why can’t they sit down and argue the issues at hand?

We have again and again failed at agreeing to disagree. Since it is Ramadan, and even before the London riots began, I had started to think again about our society and our social problems. Being hungry does that to you. We become introspective, we question our values and our priorities.

One of the things I realised – and one which has become more and more blatant over the years – is that we place more value on our outward appearances. Thus, designer handbags, shoes and clothes emblazoned with logos are what we strive to possess because owning them means that our husbands are successful or that we ourselves are successful in our own careers.

We have become superficial and we definitely defy the saying of not judging books by their covers. Many affluent middle-aged women have taut faces, no sagging jawlines, and flawless skin. And yes, I say this with much envy because I do not have great skin; I have more chins than I would like and my eyebags are reaching the proportions of the must-have Birkin handbags.

Similar concerns

We do, therefore, have similar concerns with the already-developed countries: we have made it a priority to have material things rather than striving to be good, decent people.

It has become unfashionable to talk about moral values, integrity, spirituality and all other things which we may or may not possess but which cannot be seen or touched physically. We struggle with all things intangible. We prefer to have possessions which we can see, touch and hold.

As Hisham Hellyer said during his lecture titled “Islamisation in the 21st Century: Islamic Renewals”: “For despite the wailing and moaning about the ‘evil West’ and its corrupting influences that one so often finds within the Muslim world, the Muslim world at large is rushing to become Western as much as humanly possible. And it is not rushing to imbibe those laudable aspects of Western civilisation that do continue to exist through the grace of God, despite the many problems that exist in the West ... The Muslim world sees the technological advancements of the West, and rushes to be like the West ... forgetting that actually, the mark of progress according to the Islamic worldview is an increase of taqwa, not material wealth.”

So, do we, in Malaysia, also have that “universal culture of selfishness and greed” which Oborne wrote about when describing society in Britain? I would like to think that we don’t but a part of me knows that we do. I don’t see much effort at giving back to society or of wanting to learn about those who live wretched lives. It is hard for me to ignore that despite our rush to be a developed country we still have many social issues which need to be addressed, if not solved. I cannot look the other way and ignore the poor who live in deplorable conditions in some parts of Johor Baru. Our cities have grown but together with this growth is the increase of the urban poor. If they are filled with anger or frustration, it is because we have not made enough efforts to listen to them, or to help them.

One of the things I saw, and which I will never forget, was of men and women queuing up to get their wang ihsan after the floods of 2006. They stood patiently in the grounds of a mosque as a government officer wrote down their names and addresses.

A couple of years ago, I was flipping through one of those glossy society magazines and I saw a designer handbag that cost RM90,000. Would I have asked my husband to buy it for me? No, because the sight of those flood victims standing in line to receive just RM500 makes such a purchase sinful. How many families would the cost of that handbag help feed? Thinking about this, I would like to understand more about taqwa, and what it truly means. I don’t need to know about wealth because I already live a privileged life.

For Malaysians, the London riots should not be seen as something that would never happen here or that we do not have young people who are frustrated by life’s unfairness. We should instead realise what we should do because it is our responsibility towards the young people of this country. They deserve a chance at a better life. And they shouldn’t have to be part of a riot for us to realise that.

The writer is Chancellor of UTM; Royal Fellow, School of Language Studies and Linguistics, UKM; Royal Adviser of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford.

Anger still burns in epicentre of UK riots

by Marc Bastian 

LONDON, August 14, 2011 (AFP) - Tottenham in north London is still smouldering with anger and frustration, one week on from the unprecedented wave of rioting, arson and looting that broke out here then swept across England.

Last Sunday residents of the multi-ethnic neighbourhood were assessing the scale of the damage after a night that saw running battles with riot police, homes and businesses reduced to cinders and stores smashed into.

But while the clean-up continues and businesses get back to normal one week on, the tension has not dissipated.

Tottenham High Road, the neighbourhood's main thoroughfare which was the scene of last Saturday's explosion of violence, remained a crime scene for a week, taped off by the police as they gathered evidence.

Saturday should have seen the area streaming with football supporters for Tottenham Hotspur's match against Everton as the English Premier League season kicked off, but the game was postponed for safety reasons.

"We're closed since last Saturday," a Turkish restaurant owner said as he finally reopened for business, a week on.

"People never demonstrate here to protest. Everybody's unhappy, frustrated. Economy, racism. And suddenly it all explodes," he said.

The trigger for last Saturday's riot, which then sparked a wave of arson, looting and disorder across London and then to cities beyond, was the death of Mark Duggan.

The 29-year-old was shot dead on Thursday, August 4 by armed police operating with officers from Trident, the unit of London's Metropolitan Police that deals specifically with gun-related murders in the black community.

He was stopped in a pre-planned attempted arrest.

A non-police issue handgun was recovered from the scene. The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which investigates all deaths involving officers, said there was no evidence of an exchange of shots.

Last Saturday's events began with a peaceful march to Tottenham police station on the High Road from Broadwater Farm, a 1960s public housing estate that is notorious across Britain for a deadly 1985 riot.

However, within hours, rioting broke out.

"The people wanted police to know that they're messing up," reckoned 14-year-old Dillz Shah.

His friend Jeffrey Freeman said: "The people wanted revenge for Duggan's killing.

James Cardelle added: "My dad thinks Duggan was a very good man, he knew him."

Duggan lived on Broadwater Farm, a collection of ugly-looking grey social housing blocks.

"He was a nice guy. So sad," said Mohammed Abrar, 22, from beneath a grey hood.

The October 6, 1985 Broadwater Farm riot followed riots a week before in Brixton, south London.

They were sparked by the stroke death of a black woman during a police search at her home on the Tottenham estate.

Youths rioted, attacking police with petrol bombs and bricks. Shots were fired at officers and a policeman was hacked to death by a mob in some of the worst urban rioting in Britain of the past 30 years.

Then, as now, fingers were pointed at police "lies", but also at "anger" provoked by governments past and present.

In a hairdressing salon opposite a burnt-out two-storey building, the black clientele lambast the authorities and the upper echelons of society.

"They abandon the population"; "the government has tripled the tuition fees"; "they cut the benefits"; "they evict people whose children were involved in the riots"; "these bankers have stolen our money", they say as they discuss the situation.

Perry Linton, a 50-something, is "frustrated" by a society in which "we worked hard, very hard, to get what? Things went worse".

Linton adds: "Racism is a big issue".

Christina Showunmi, a mother in her 40s, replies: "Racism? I don't want to think about it, otherwise it will affect my attitude towards other people. So I just block it out of my mind."

"True", other customers say. "We do the same".

Stella Saunders, 60, was having her nails painted blue.

"The youth are hanging around, have no jobs. If the factories were open, it would keep them busy. Everybody needs hope and an income," she said.

If not, despair is simply passed on from generation to generation.

"If you have no hope at 14, 15, how can you become a good parent?" she said.

Showunmi warned: "This will happen again and it will escalate. The government will make it happen again."

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