READ THIS: BEFORE YOU DEMOLISH the GREAT BIRD of LANGKAWI

by Azly Rahman  

Read this poem before you demolish the great set-in-stone bird of Langkawi:

POETRY
for the great bird of Langkawi

"Before You Demolish Me"

Say my name
Say my name
Read my lips
It’s LANG-KAWI
not UNTA-KAWI, dude
It’s a bird so free
So majestic so pretty
Not some animal you breed
for slavery

Say my name, dude
Say my name,
Ya Maulana Ya Habibi
It’s LANG-KAWI
not your kambing biri-biri
you sacrifice to remember
some kind of human sacrifice
of a child saved by some story
crafted for a belief whose meaning
lost in heaps of subjectivity and fallacies

Say my name
Say my name
Before you demolish me
It’s LANG-KAWI
Island of the majestic eagles
symbol of freedom
symbol of bravery
soaring with high intelligence
cruising the airwaves with dignity
eyes so beautiful
with piercing beauty
a symbol of heroism
of a glorious kingdom’s philosophy

and you wish to demolish me
with your fatwa so faulty
so obsessed you and your tribe are
with your turban
and your tubular thinking
and your chains of ignorance
of the history of LANG-KAWI
Yes, say that again
It’s LANG-KAWI
and not UNTA-KAWI
or KAMBING BIRI-BIRI
you wish to replace
at the mouth
of this island
I love with sincerity

Take your fatwa and use it wisely
To catch the thieves of this country
the robbers of this nation
who stole more that the weight of gold
of this statue of this mythical bird
guarding the kingdom of old Langkawi

Take your camels, your goats, your kibbash
and your turban
and your green robe
and you unshaven beard
and rally them all with your ana
and anta
and your ya Habibi
and Ya Maulana
and your fatwa
to call upon those still in slumber
of the ills of this country
plagued with lies shroud in mystery
hidden in layers of hypocrisy
Rally against these
Demolish these
and not that bird in Langkawi

And what's my name again?
It’s LANG-KAWI
Again,
It’s LANG-KAWI
Not UNTA-KAWI
Or 72 dancing white raisins
mistaken as houris

It’s LANG-KAWI
The Eagle of the island of Majesty
and I’ve been around
a bird so free
longer than your ideology
brought by those
still struggling
to clip my wings
with your fatwas
and your hypocrisy

- azly rahman

Destroyed by those who see god in money

SO - I wrote those verses.

The proposal to demolish the statue of the mythical bird of Langkawi does not make sense, as nonsensical as the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statue in Afghanistan and the artifacts in Palmyra, in Syria - these by destructive Islamists who do not study history nor appreciate the legacy of civilisation’s memory.

It painfully reminds me of ruins of a temple in Bujang Valley, Kedah, destroyed by those who see god in money. I wrote the following notes some time ago, in protest of the insanity at Bujang Valley.

It is not just ruins of an ancient temple demolished to a pulp, it is a semiotic piece of your very existence as a people; a reality constructed socially through language that defines it.

More than this, it is a monument upon which you are to preserve as an anchor of learning, and an installation of an inscription that inspires you to inquire into the ethics of authenticity; a system of belief of what the self is and how society in all its progressive strands of stability and harmony, and what salvation through the philosophy of samsara means and how these in turn , through a trajectory of transcultural evolution has defined you through the language you use daily with words such as:

jiwa, raga, sukma, anugeraha, sangsara, puji puja, sembahyang, citrarasa, gurindam, seloka, hina dina, duka nestapa, kala, dewata, bayu, indera, purnama, suria, cakerawala, saujana, panca indera, sandiwara, astaka, shurga, neraka, dosa, pahala, alam semesta, durjana, sahaya, nescaya, kelana, mergastua, derma, dharma, budi, bakhti, budi-daya, budaya, lakshamana, singgahsana, ceritera, sutra, sengketa, jaya, cinta, negara, ayahnda, ibunda, maya, ...

All these and more are the postscripts of the reality of who you are - these and the entire spectrum and kaleidoscope of the existentialism of your and your community’s collective consciousness.

And you are ashamed of this past you failed to see the beauty of its philosophical glory? And you are waging a jihad against what you perceive at the phallo-centric object of blasphemy? What shallow understanding of what you have of the ethics of authenticity and the paranoia you have build within yourself, projects in your insecurities worse that a Freudian misinterpretation of the Oedipal and Elektra Complexes.

And you destroy what you do not wish nor care to understand? And you call it the will of Man honouring the word of god? Or it is all about money and more money in these nice words you have crafted as a prison-house of language - words that no longer have any meaning in this world of the globalisation of Nothingness, in a world of a stream of consciousness that flows violently - a world of Legolands, this and that harems for Walt Disney, of tourism economy that destroy the environment arrogantly, endlessly, unrepentingly.

And cultural barbarians you are - that should be kept outside the great wall of our kingdom of hope built upon the natural growth of the renaissance of knowledge and upon and enlightened path shined unto us, at this yuga of a festive and joyous celebration of cosmopolitanism, of cultural acceptance, of the diversity amongst us, between us, and inside of us. These are the hanging gardens we shall build to keep you and your jihad at bay.

I have said my piece. I am still in deep anguish. Let us now ask how could this have happened and what then must we do, and how do we bring these kinds of barbarism to a grinding halt.

Have we become a nation of destroyers - of our memory, our economy, and our willingness to use history as a mirror for our pride and dignity?

Yet, we cry out loud to be called a developed country.

What the **** are we?

Read more: https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/355156#ixzz4JiniwNs2