Self-improvement and preparations for the future success
Posted on November 24, 2007 as sanooaung
Where there is hatred, let me sow Love.
Where there is doubt, let me sow Faith.
Where there is darkness, let me sow Light.
Where there is despair, let me sow Hope.
Where there is injury, let me sow Pardon.
For it is in Giving that we receive.
It is in Pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born to Eternal life.
(St. Prancis.)
The best revenge is forgiveness.
We must try to forgive and forget.
Yes, our anger, hatred and grievance would definitely burn our own heart.
Animosity burns and destroys not only the enemy and the innocent surroundings and the immediate neighbours but also one’s own-self.
Animosity and the desire of revenge blind a person and may even unintentionally leads to a self-destructive course.
Hatred incites and grows reciprocal hatred from the opposite side.
Only if we discard and stop our hatred – the reciprocal hatred will diminish and disappear.
Viscous circle of the hatred, revenge, animosity could be stopped by forgiveness followed by love.
We must not even secretly or quietly keep hatred and desire for revenge even in our heart. We should not just pretend to be magnanimous from outside appearances only.
Forgiveness is more effective and sweet when we are winning or when we are in a position to revenge. That is the best time to forgive, forget the bitter feelings, start a new friendship, do something your enemy never expected by just try to be nice, gentle and good on him.
This is the best way to cut the vicious circle of revenge. In this way, we can change our enemy in to one of our best friends. Redemption resulted to transform him in to your saviour. He could be changed totallty and will be even possible to sacrifice his life for us if really necessary.
It is very easy to push your small minor enemy in to a life long fore by a simple, stupid revenge.
There is a saying that even if we have a thousand of friends, it is not enough. But even if we have one enemy, it is too much.
It’s all too easy to play the victim and complain about institutionalised racism and discrimination when one is not bothered to help oneself and one’s family to deal with and overcome the vicissitudes of life that is never fair on us as Muslims.
Very few of us are born with a silver or golden spoon in our mouths. But for most of us, a good education is key to social mobility and increased earning power.
Simply put, we play with the cards that we were dealt with instead of bemoaning our fate and demonstrating noisily about the unfairness of it all although it is true that we are unfairly discriminated. But just look at the realty, who will help us? Our Muslim brothers around the world? They are all selfish, greedy and totally useless. Christians or others? We need to help ourselves! That’s the truth.
We must cultivate mutual respect, trust and understanding among all the religions.
We must search, point out, and promote the common virtues and good points from our various religions.
We must ignore the controversial, potential igniting differences in various religions.
Actually, non of us can easily prove that the other religions are totally wrong and our religion is absolutely true and right. Religion depends on our faiths.
All of the religions some times need blind faith without any question.
We are not arguing here that any religion or all the religions are not true. Actually I am a practising Muslim and absolutely believe in Islam.
But I would never say or try to prove that other religions are wrong.
According to Islam, Allah had send more than 124,000 prophets to our world.
There is a strong possibility that the various religions are just the various forms of a common faith with different approaches.
There may be gradual degradation or slow changes because of prolonged time factor but we should not blindly accuse that other old religions are wrong.
In spite of serious instances of abuse of various religions by some of their claimed followers so as to justify or instigate acts of brutality and bloodshed, there are positive and helpful common themes in these religions. Therefore, peaceful and candid intra-faith and inter-faith dialogues are important tools in working for such goals.
This is not my point or idea to argue the different concepts and beliefs of the religions.
I here by want to promote mutual understanding and respect of all the religions.
Let us not provoke each other.
Let us promote mutual understanding, mutual love and mutual respect for each other.
All the religions have common good virtues and teachings.
Let us highlight the common and similar teachings and leave the differences to practice personally in our own homes and in the premise of the religious worshipping places. We must fulfil our religious rituals and prayers in our own houses and in worshipping places.
We should avoid argues, debates, quarrels and discussions on religious differences. These must be avoided in the public but it should be strictly done in the confines of our own religious community.
We should have a communication hot line open always to discuss any social and religious problems among the different faiths as we are staying together and the potential problems will crop up any time.
Engaged Islam is the path we, Muslims in Myanmar should choose, in this modern world of multiethnic society.
As we are staying in a non-Islamic country, it is more important for us not to isolate our-selves.
But we must communicate, relate, discuss and have a dialogue with or Buddhist Burmese friends.
No man is an island. We should not just stay in our own religious atmosphere.
We have a lot of things to do in unity despite of our differences in religions.
We have to build our beloved country.
We have to work together to eradicate hard core poor. Many social and welfare works. World peace and more important than that, peace, stability and progress of Myanmar etc.
We should cooperage extensively in various social and welfare works.
We all should look after and work together for the less privileged of our country.
The poor, the aged, ill patients, orphans and people out of job, drug addicts, ex-addicts, ex-criminals, socially out cast people like beggars, prostitutes, HIV positives, school drop outs, delinquent children, domestic violent victims are few of the people we want to mention here.
Works of merits like building schools, extension of schools, opening free or subsidised clinics and hospitals, rehabilitation centres, rest-houses and resting places for the travellers, digging wells, building ponds, cleaning the streets and city etc could be co-ordinated and done together by the various social and welfare groups regardless of the difference of religion.
Those voluntary works should become the regular meeting centres of co-operation for the people of different religions.
By working closely together, we can build mutual trust and understanding.
Don’t let our-selves become religious fanatic.
Extremism is always bad. Islam teaches us to practice moderation.Buddha also advised the followers to choose the moderate, middle path.
Acting extremely is always bad, especially in religious matters.
Siddhartha(563-483 BC) followed the extreme path for many years in meditating but could not get enlightenment until he changed to the moderate path.
Mutual trust is important.
We must try to understand the other faiths.
If we have no interest, we cannot know others’ feelings.
Only if we know and understand the others, we will have a faith and trust.
From that we could sow and grow tolerance.
Stop pointing fingers, finding faults regarding the past mistakes.
Whether right or wrong, forget the past. Try to forgive others.
Try to change our-selves to be more effective, efficient and faultless.
Try to avoid committing the same mistakes.
Look for the future.
We must be considerate. Think and feel from the opposite side. We must reduce the confrontations and increase the dialogues base on common good virtues and teachings. We must cooperate extensively on social and welfare works.
We must be sensitive with the feelings of our Buddhist brothers. We must never insult their beliefs.
Jealousy and hatred are interrelated.
There follows the fear of loosing out.
Hatred is associated with fear.
Love drive out fear.
There are two forms of love in Myanmar concept.
1500 is the hot love between the two lovers and among the husband and wife.
528 love is cool and it is a universal love between – brothers and sisters, friends, parents and children etc.
In long term marriage, the couple develops both loves, extended from hot love into cool love of mutual friendship.
Loving-kindness is difficult to understand by non-Myanmars, who may have this but if I am not wrong, never categorised into a separate word.
This we called, Myitta, is the tender love and kindness for all the creatures even extended to the animals and to our enemy.
Actually all kind of loves drives out fear.
Love or more correctly loving-kindness leads to trust, content and peace of mind.
Truth is not only necessary but also essential.
We cannot achieve trust by deceiving others.
If there is mistrust, the fear grows and leads to unwanted, undesirable preparations for the possible aggression.
If we are truthful and reliable only, the others will trust us.
Truth promotes confidence from both sides. Yes not only from the other side but our self-confidence also grows.
Mutual confidence and trust break down our unnecessary shields. And friendships will prevail.
I trust and strongly believe that with the good will and strong friendship, our Burmese Buddhists will even protect us or save us from the danger.
Lack of trust, fear and insecurity by any side leads to mutual suspicion.
The fear of loosing and suspicion of the other side might strike a surprised attack may lead to the plan of the early strike by one of the opposing party.
That mutual preparation for a possible fight, attack may lead to unnecessary tensions, misunderstanding or even an eruption of accidentally starting a fight leading to a fullfledged war.
Let our Burmese-Buddhist friends that we love and trust them.
We must prove to them that we are trustworthy and reliable.
“The best defence is attack”. That was a very popular saying in football.
But the better defence than the attack is peace, mutual trust, love and friendship.
No war is good or desirable.
Victory is the illusion of the philosophers and the fools. In a battle or a war, no one wins. Both sides lost because both sides suffer.
So try to avoid all violence – fights, arguments and wars.
Do not provoke others.
It is better to keep in silence. We should use our two ears given by God twice than the single mouth. Ears are solely meant for the hearing. Please kindly note that the mouth has other functions of eating, chewing, swallowing and breathings also.
It is better to stand up and talk, argue or present our views later after careful thinking.
Please always give some cooling off time. Give some amount of time for both sides to re-examine, re-evaluate. re-assess and re think. Try to avoid emotional immediate rebuttals.
Even if we are right, some of the things are trivial and not worthy of pursuit further. Most of the time, the results we can achieve by remaining calm and stoic are better.
In another way, we should never allow our-selves to be provoked.
If we are provoked, we lost control of our-selves. We could not distinguish between the right and wrong response. We are at a disadvantage in an argument, negotiation, quarrel or fight.
Anger blinds us and not only the enemy but also the neutral surroundings lost respect on us. We loose face also. We lost our composure and open up our weakness, the opposite side can easily take advantage. Some of the clever people will intentionally provoke us intentionally to exploit us and knock down us off balance. We must be clever and our mind must be strong enough not to become victim of provocation.
We are not promoting to abandon the preparing for the self-improvement to have all round strength and power.
Non-poisonous snakes are not even respected by the children.
If we are weak, we are always exposed to the exploitations of the bullies and thuds.
We have to prepare and strengthen our-selves physically, intellectually, economically, socially, mentally, spiritually etc.
We have to promote our health by living in a healthy way.
Eating nutritious foods, avoid cigarettes, liquor and drugs. Avoid dangerous sexual behaviours.
Do regular exercise, plays sports.
Learn Martial arts for self defence and if get a chance try to learn by participating in civil defence and military training.
Learn and study hard
Malcom X told us that the education is the passport of the future.
Islam promotes education.
Islam encourages us to learn from the cradle to the graveyard.
Islam advises us to even go to China (from Arabia) to learn.
Actually Muslim town Bukhara, the famous for Islamic teachings, is in China and the most famous Islamic Scholar Imam Bukhari was educated there.
We have to work hard
But it is more important to work smart.
To be able to work smart, we need education, skills, modern technology and know how.
Even after the schooling period of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Education and had already entered the employment period, we always need to polish up or brush up our knowledge and skills.
On job training, further studies, evening classes and R&D (Research and Development) are always needed to improve our-selves and to value added our products.
Paper qualification is important in the advancement of the carrier ladder.
Acquiring the relevant experience and skills are also very important for the promotion but lack of paper qualification may stop us at certain crucial step of promoting into the specialist, consultant or expert level. The status, parks, salary scales etc. are totally different at that top professional and management level from the simple oridinary workers.
Other essential living skills like learning – driving motor-bike and motor car, computer and Information Technology, swimming, at least one foreign language etc. is also very important.
We must maintain the high moral values
Bad moral will destroy all of our achievements.
Sex, corruption liquor and drugs have cause the downfall of many great personalities in the history.
Reading habit is also very important value.
Motivation books are the vitamins for the mind. These books could improve our communication skills. We want to recommend the book written by Dale Carnegie “ How to win friends and influence people” and translated by our late democratically elected Prime Minister U Nu.
Actually nowadays there are a lot of books on these subjects and many have been translated in to Burmese.
I want to recommend the “Chicken soup for the mind” series also.
We need to improve our mental power and communication skills as well as physical health and muscular power.
We must be thrifty and have the habit of saving for the rainy day.
Our Myanmar Muslims’ traditional believe in hard work to survive and to gain status in life may be simply because our ancestors were immigrants and they always had to thrive very hard in the foreign hostile land.
If they did not work hard, there was no one to rely or depend upon. Just do or die only.
It is more important for us to work harder as we all had already cut off our umbilical cords from our ancient migrant ancestors’ mother lands. Most of us even could not trace or even know our roots or from where they come from.
We had burnt the bridges.
Abandoned or destroyed the rafts or boats our ancestors had used to cross the oceans and rivers.
There is no question of return or retreat. We must stay on forever.
Myanmar or Burma is our new home-land.
We Myanmar Muslims’ inherent character and habit of _
placing importance on hard work,
education,
thrift,
family relationships,
respect for elders are the precious assets for us to maintain.
Those individual skills and powers will be more effective and strengthened by the unity among the fellow Muslims and preferably extended to our Buddhist brothers.
We must always hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
If something went wrong and we failed –
don’t blame others.
Accept it gracefully.
There is a saying – the success has a lot of fathers and the failure is an orphan.
Almost all the people will deny their responsibility.
We have to accept the failure with the open mind.
No need to made a witch hunt or search for the scapegoat.
After accepting the failure, we have to search for the real cause, without bias.
What, where, when, why and how it fails.
Who is responsible is not important.
Even if some-one accidentally or intentionally triggered our downfall or failure, it is very difficult to blame or change that person. Don’t be a paranoid.
It is our struggle. It is our interest to make sure that, that person could not damage our struggle, in any way. We have to make sure that, that won’t happen again. It is our responsibility to smooth out all because it is our own struggle for our success.
From all the failures and disasters, we must learn the lessons.
These are blessings in disguise.
Make those failures pillars for our success.
Try! Try! Try! Again and again.
Never give up the hope.
Thomas Eddison had failed about five hundred thousand times before he successfully invented an electric bulb.
Don’t stop trying. Think and analyse what went wrong. Correct it. Improve it. Prepare your-self.
Try again. Victory is for those dare to try again and again.
Perseverance is the key-word for success.
Easy success is actually not very sweet nor precious.
Victory gained after a lot of struggles are really sweat and gratifying.
Easy to get Iron and Copper are cheap.
Gold, Diamond and Ruby are precious because it is rare and difficult to get.
Actually power comes from within.
If we, Myanmar Muslims have_
confidence,
self respect,
proud being a Muslim and
if strongly believe that we are not a simple person,
but one day will surely progress,
there is definitely a very bright future of crowning with the success.
Inner spiritual strength is more important and always guides the outer physical power.
Even if we are weak physically, inner spiritual and mental strength and power will guide, train and convert it to become powerful.
And we must be ready to give a helping hand, to others, any time.
If we have a chance, we should try to help any one we encounter at any time irrespective of race and religion.
Mutual help promotes the friendship. One important thing is that we should not help just to get back immediate rewards or favour.
Even if that person never thanks or betrayed us, we should never doubt about our helping spirit.
It is our duty to help.
It is a charity.
That good will be never forgotten.
We have to reap what we sow.
We will reap the rewards of all the good that we have done.
We must not forget that we will have to pay for all the bad things that we have done.
Self-discipline is very important for us.
We have to commit our-selves to improve the living standard of our-selves, our family, our relatives, our friends, our neighbours, our town, our country and our nation.
Ultimate goodwill of brotherhood among the different races is very important.
Muslims are ordered by Islam to be loyal to the nation and country they lived in even if the government is a non-Muslim ruler.
But if the ruler is very cruel, discriminate and commit tyranny and atrocities on Muslims, we are allowed to fight back a Holy war.
If we are weak we must migrate from that place.
We are ordered not to just die under the atrocities.
God will condemn those died without doing any thing.
God promised the paradise for those die during the religious struggle.
And God also promised to fulfil the prayers of those suffering the un-justice.
It is very difficult to change the other people, whether they are right or wrong.
It is easy to change our-selves.
Yes, it is better, easier and more effective if we try to change our-selves.
It is easier than fighting, quarrelling or arguing with others. Once you started to blame others, they will deny and start defending them-selves.
The stone wall will be built, they will give all the excuses and will even point the finger back to us and start to blame us.
We would not get the desired result but will make a new enemy.
We have to change our-selves to win over the hearts and minds of our Burmese Buddhists brothers and sisters.
If they believe that we are sincere, trustworthy, reliable and good they will definitely change their hearts and corporate and even help us.
In Islam, our most important duty as the citizens of the non-Islamic State is to obey the government and abide by the rules, regulations and the laws of the land.
But if the government discriminate unjustly on us, we have some options to choose.
The first and easiest thing is to perform special prayers to Allah. And Allah had already promised to answer the prayers of victims of injustice.
Second choice is to resist or protest in a peaceful manner, if possible within the law. At least we must have some courage for that protest.
Another step should be borrowed from the Mahattma Ghandi’s civil disobedience.
We could take a more peaceful and milder form by avoiding direct confrontation with the law or the authorities. Even Ghandi’s “Salt Protest” is direct confrontation.
That type of direct confrontation may be a little bit difficult in Burma’s political, social and economical life, because the APC dominance is still omnipresent and omnipotent. Army, ex-army, SPCD, Swan Arrshinn and the USDA or ‘Kyant Phot’ or the thuds of SPDC still dominate and influence our every-day’s life. If we refuse to cooperate with them we, will suffer first.
Another better way is to migrate to a better place.
Some of the people only have a chance to do this because most of the host countries are not willing to accept us.
Although they claim to be Muslims, they created a lot of lame excuses to justify their hostile activities to us.
We are poor distant cousin brothers in Islam, in contrast to Bosnian and Indonesian real brothers in Islam for them.
Even non-Muslims from other Asean countries, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Arabs got more favourable treatment by Immigration and Home Ministries because of policies and laws which clearly discriminate on the citizens of Burma (Myanmar) irrespective of religion.
The last option is to take armed rebellion.
It is not an easy option for each and every Muslims in Myanmar.
We have to sacrifice all.
And just look at the Rohingya rebels and other rebels including some Muslims. Who is willing to support financially, politically, militarily and etc?
And after all we do not want outside influence.
Power must come from inside the country only.
Even if Muslims could topple the present government, who could guarantee that the next government will stop all the discriminations and give us all the rights including the right of representation in the government.
Almost all of the prtsent opposition leaders from NLD, ABSDF, government in exile to the armed rebels have almost the same racial policy with the present military government.
So what is the use of the Muslims’ sacrifices.
So I hereby want to advocate or promote the other alternative means of struggles for us.
Power of the powerless.
Muslims in Myanmar(Burma) must struggle to get the ‘Power of the powerless instead of armed struggle.
All kinds of violence, means more risks and less chance of success.
As we are a minority only, we have to sacrifice a lot without any hope at all.
Instead of aiming to get the top executive administrative Power, we should aim to get the power to influence those in power!
To become a power broker, king maker, king breaker, or have the power to pull the strings from behind the curtain should be the target of Muslims in Myanmar.
Power of friendship,
power of wisdom,
power of intelligence,
power of knowledge,
power of wealth,
power of good connections,
power of goodwill,
power of good tract record,
power of trustworthiness,
power of good moral and manners,
power of unity and
power of cooperation for mutual benefits and prosperity
are the main pillars of the POWER OF THE POWERLESS.
All of us know that power leads to corruption.
And the absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Any one in power will corrupt.
Even if we, Muslims have power, there is no way to guarantee that we would be able to avoid this totally.
And those corrupt leaders or rulers could not escape Sansara, or they may have to pay back later on the judgement day.
According to Buddhism, even Lord Buddha, was scared of becoming king, and tried many times to avoid or abdicate.
Actually if we look at the condition in our country, it is a blessing, in disguise for the Muslims. Instead of wasting time and grooming ourselves to become a politician, we could use, our time mainly on education, economy and of course on religious and social works.
It is better, less controversy and is sure of good results.
If we become highly educated professionals, wealthy, good moral characters, no one could ignore us.
Definitely we would be able to influence any politician in power.
So it is no need, for the Muslims in Burma to be jealous of our Burmese Buddhist friends in power.
No need to fight them or sabotage them but we must slowly and steadily try to expend our influence and contacts with them.
We must build a good relationship for the mutual benefit.
We must aim at the win win situation.
No need to make them poor or suffer.
We must increase the economic pie instead.
No need to rob or reduce their share. In Burmese, we have a well known saying: “The water from the ocean could not dry up because of drinking by one person.”
Yes! If the economic pie is big enough or if we could magnify it to accommodate all of us, there is no need to fight for a bigger share.
So we all must work hard to improve our living standards,
reduced the poverty rates,
to improve our infrastructures,
to increase our literacy rates,
to promote peace and stability,
to reduce hatred and suspicions,
to catch up the economy and living standards of Asean tigers and Asia dragons.
Our country is poor and needs a lot of constructions and development. If we continue to fight, we will suffer.
If we have no political power to abuse_
we will have less sin,
less enemy and
will get more time to spend on more productive and useful things.
We could use that valuable time for our-selves, our family, our religion and for our country.
Even if we use that time on recreation and health it will indirectly increase our productivity.
Please do not hate the Burmese Buddhists, ever if they happened to be monks or nuns.
Hate or not we are already ‘trapped’ in this one country, to stay, struggle, work and survive together.
Whether we like or not, we have to see and communicate every day.
Hatred will only made our lives miserable.
It will destroy our heart and body.
Buddha had already said:“Hatred and anger will destroy or burn our own body and soul.”
Mutual loving kindness will usher in the peace, development and prosperity.
When we speak we should avoid falsehood and lies, non-beneficial words and those words not easily acceptable to others.
We should always tell the truth, if it is beneficial and if acceptable to the recipient.
And for backbiting, Islam prohibited us to from telling the bad things about others at their back, even if those were the truths.
We should not give up hope.
I would like to quote a poem of Rabindranath Tagore, (1861-1941) translated in to Burmese. Because we, most of the Burmese knew him and his poems, I hereby like to translate in to English from the Burmese.
“If you miss the moon and waste the time with the sorrow and crying, you will miss the stars also.”
I even want to add, that after the dark stormy night, the clear dawn will definitely follow.
If we waste the time crying for the missed moon, we could also miss the beauty of the dawn.
Please stop crying for the spilt milk.
Nothing is really lost or priceless to be missed.
The fish we failed to catch always seemed to be big.
Please, just accept the real fact or pretend that the forbidden grapes are sour.
Be content with the local fruits we got.
There are much more precious things on earth to achieve.
Don’t waste time on lost opportunities or things we could not get.
As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had rightly pointed out, FEAR is the worst enemy in all of us, including Burmese Buddhists, other minorities, other races, other religions and Muslims in Burma.
Fear of extinction,
fear of dominance,
fear of total assimilation and
disappearance of race and religions pushed us apart.
Like fear of unknown sounds and shadows in the dark. If we just close our eyes, stay or hide under the blanket, the fear would never go off.
We would never be able to overcome that fear. If we switch on the lights, search with a torch light, we may find out the cause, leaking or dribbling water taps, moving tree branches scratching the window, a cat or a rat etc.
Because of the western propaganda’s bias reporting and illustration of Muslims as terrorists and extremists, many people have preformed bad images on us followed by fear.
This is our duty to try to change our image in them with our friendship, goodwill, generosity, loving kindness, co-operation and help etc.
Sports and social welfare are the easiest routes to approach others.
Especially Muslims must establish a good relations with not only the civilian Burmese Buddhists but also even with the monks.
We should learn how to communicate properly, respectfully and to behave correctly with the Buddhist Monks. We have to use some special words and phrases with respect. Once we manage to ‘talk’ to them in a proper way or religious protocol, all of the difficulties will be over. You will be surprised how helpful the monks are on us.
If there is no propaganda warfare or incitement and direct participation of the Military Intelligent spies, Swan Arrshins and USDA thugs, no one will ever harm us.
Even during the Military government sponsored anti-Muslim riots, true monks protected the Muslims.
The very good relation of Buddhists and Burmese Muslims and especially the merchants of Mandalay Zeygyo (Zeycho) Myanmar Muslims’ skill to communicate with the Buddhist monks was mentioned and praised by one of the most famous lady journalist ‘Ludu Daw Ah Mar’ in one of the most famous Myanmar Magazine, ‘Shwe Amu Tae” in 1998.
So we need to grow and also show the loving kindness for all the citizens of Burma (Myanmar). They would definitely appreciate and return an appropriate reciprocal response.
We need to use our mosques to base and expend our social and welfare works.
Myanmar Muslims have enough manpower and Finance to start a health care works, education assistance works and legal aid works.
We should extend our free or partially subsided clinics and hospitals.
We should open and extend public libraries, tuition classes, religious classes, motivation and moral workshops, IT training, business and legal- aid bureaus, homes for the handicapped, orphanages, domestic violence victims and aged. We could work together with our Burmese friends.
Vocational training, sports activities and training, teaching English speaking and other foreign languages are also helpful for the youths.
Zakat funds and other funds also must be set up and use with transparency to aid the poor, for the education and to help to start small business.
For the disaster and tragedy aids there should he donations without strings but for the education and business aid, we should strictly consider non-interest loans only.
Once graduated and get jobs or if business thrive and progress, they should be made to pay back the dues so that other needy persons could benefit from this scheme. Most of the successful people stay away from those organizations after they graduated or success because they are shy to disclose their past. That is the wrong idea. They should be even proud of their success achieved from that pooer start.
We should not only aid money to start a business but should advice and give training for that.
And we should form a net work to help their business running. We should encourage to franchise our Muslim business.
We must organize business seminars and workshops and act as match makers for the Muslim would be investors, Muslim skilled and unskilled workers and professionals.
This could be extended to the foreign Muslim investors.
We should set up Psychological and other professional consultants like, social and voluntary workers to assist the people with various problems, marriage counselors, drug and alcohol addicts, delinquent children and women etc.
We should even consider a match making for Muslims.
Job searching, job training aid for the retrenched workers must be considered.
We should give advice when there is any dispute.
We should even consider assistance between the various activities between landlords and the tenants, property buyers and sellers.
We should even consider opening business of retail shops, restaurants etc, for on-job training for the Muslims.
Printing press, motor car and motorcycle workshops are also good to provide on-job training.These should be open to the non-Muslims also.
By these activities we could build mutual understandind, mutual trust and it will lead to religious tolerance.
There should be noboundry. Not only inter racial and inter religious tolerance and understanding but we need intra racial and intra religious unity and co-operation. So called pure Myanmar (Burmese) Muslims must work together with thoseMyanmar Muslims preserving or leaning towards Indian subcontinent.
The ‘Council’ or Burmannized, assimilated must co-operate with Tabligh side under the Mufti and Maulavis. It is not the time to fight among our-selves. I wish to point out one thing, even if we point the other side as Kalas or Indian Muslims, the Burmese government would never consider us as Burmese. Even if someone eat pork or enter the monkshood, they will call them ‘pork eating Kala and Kala. Phongyi.
We should avoid extremism from both sides. There must be a compromise. The other side must also shed the extremist views. Should avoid differences by restraining from patty fatwas. Islam is actually a social and family oriented religion. Even not like the Buddhism, which advocate the monkshood and ignore all the worldly things.
I myself like Tabligh activities because it really cause the Islamic revival and but always feel uneasy when they forced us to follow them for days or weeks. They are forcing Muslims to ignore the real world of our business and families. Some of us even hate this and pointed to the ignored families leftbehind. Why should not we compromise. Islam never teaches us to ignore ourlove-ones, families and business.
Tabligh-Muslim groups go around the countries to call, invite, preach, teach and train Muslims. Founded in 1927 by Maulana Mohd. Ilyas (1886-1944), a Sufi from Delhi. In 1934, he started a revivalist campaign, reminisce of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). Invited to come and pray at mosques and participate in various religious activities. Tabligh teaches that worldly affairs are subordinate to the religious duties. Although no one could deny that Tabligh activities are good, these are little bit at one end of extremism.
If the Tabligh leaders could compromise, it will become a very good platform for Muslims in Myanmar. We all should change for the benefit of all the Muslims in Myanmar.
Buddhism advocate the middle path, “Myit Zima Padi Pada”. Confusious advised to take a moderate stand and to avoid the extremism, “Zhong Yong”. In Islam, Al Baihaqui Hadith relates:”The best way to conduct your affairs is to choose the middle path.”
Muslims in Burma must stop nursing bitterness about all those past and present injustices.
Resentment and hatred must not allow to colour our heart to turn black. We must be magnanimous from now onwards for our future progress.We all must control our extreme emotions and desire for revenge. We must promote moderation, loving kindness and care .
I have actually no right to demand all these from the people who were and are suffering under the successive Myanmar Military extremists.
We must_
recognize,
sympathized
and help the victims of oppression,
discrimination,
aggression,
persecution
and prosecution.
But forgiveness and loving-kindness must replace the revenge and hatred.
Our wisdom of the brain must overrule the feelings of our heart.
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