Insensitve Ustaz

When I was studying in UPM, my college where I used to stay, always organize special dinners for all sorts of occasions. Like for hair raya, sports awards day, farewell dinner, awal muharam, hari raya haji and as such. But never for Chinese New Year or Wesak day or Deepavali.

There was one dinner that I remember to this day. The dinner was a simple dinner to appreciate one of the college’s staff who was retiring.

One of the invited guests was an ustaz. I don’t remember what was the main reason he was there. May be, he supposed to say some prayer or just there for the free dinner, I don’t know and I didn’t care.

As any dinners, there would be a lot of speeches before eating. It usually started with the students’ head giving a short speech, follow by college principal and then it ends with the guest.

When it came to this ustaz turn to stand on the stage to say something,

He started his speech with this line:

"Asalamualakum kepada pelajar yang beragama islam dan kepada pelajar yang BELUM memeluk islam".

WTF. What an offensive and insensitive line to start a speech.

Who die and make him think that I am ever interested in “memeluk” his agama. Why he is so stupid to assume that “yang belum memeluk agama islam” will feel welcomed by his speech,

It has always offended me when they categorized me under “non-muslim” or “non bumiputra” (Read my anger statement here). Now this “clever” man want to put me in a new term “yang BELUM memeluk islam”. Fuck you ustaz. Why I even bother to call him ustaz… fuck you man.

The line really offended me and my Chinese and Indian friends. At that time a few of us wanted to just walk out of the dinner, but we back down for the respect to our college principal, who was a nice man.

We felt the ustaz was very insensitive to others’ belief and religion. He should have never utter the line, it should have just stop after his salam to his muslim friends. Should he felt obligated to greet us believer of other faiths, he can just say Salam Sejahtera. That would be proper.

To me this ustaz is just like a katak di bawah tempurung. Living in his own world, in his own comfort zone. His world only revolves around his islam. What a sad man. His is ignorant and insensitive to other faiths.