No ban on lipstick and high heels
KOTA BARU: The municipal council (MPKB) has clarified that remarks on lipstick and high heel shoes in its circular in May, were meant to spread religious activities.
Its public relations director Azman Mohd Daham said the circular was not a compulsory guideline for Muslim female staff to follow but to encourage them to observe the Islamic dress code.
"Muslim women need not be unduly worried. No action would be taken if they wear thick make-up or high heel shoes," he told journalists.
Azman was responding to a news report that MPKB had banned Muslims from wearing make-up and high heel shoes which generate loud noises in business and commercial premises under its jurisdiction.
Thick make-up and high heel shoes can give rise to cases of rape and adultery while on a hindsight, a strict adherence to proper Islamic attire was to preserve the dignity of women here, the circular said.
The case was among several that MPKB has found itself embroiled in some form of controversy.
Previously, it was criticised for banning outfits deemed to be sexy and made it compulsory for Muslim women to wear headscarves at commercial, trade and tourism premises.
The latest circular also touches on wearing long sleeves up to the wrist, not to wear transparent attire and wearing socks which cover up their ankles.
State Women Affairs Committee chairman Wan Ubaidah Wan Omar was reported to have said that she supported the circular and asked why women should slave themselves to attract men by wearing high heels and excessive lipstick.
She contends that make-up in light portion was allowed and wearing high heels too often was unhealthy as it placed undue pressure on the feet of the wearer.
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I am just curious to know what the noise-making high heels issue is all about. Have Kelantanese women been tapping out sultry messages with their feet? You know, like the penguins in Happy Feet? Has Kota Bharu been suffering from an excess of clattery heels? Which somehow has an unwanted effect on the men? (I would have thought they'd just get a headache...)
Anyway I'm glad the MPKB has reversed their circular and are trying to reassure Muslim women there that even if they insist on 'slaving' themselves to men by wearing excessive lipstick and high heels, they won't be punished. Frankly, high heels make me cranky and not in the least bit friendly to anyone.
(BTW The Star should really do something about the grammatical skills of their reporters. What on earth is 'makeup in light portion'?)
Talking about smallmindedness, Hannah Yeoh, the new young ADUN for Subang Jaya had an encounter of the peabrained kind recently. The school should be ashamed of themselves. But they are not the only ones with minuscule minds. A friend told me of a similar incident at her neighbourhood school where the Parent-Teacher Association wanted to invite the current PR MP to their AGM but the school refused to allow it. (In fact they also wanted to invite the former BN MP). The rationale was that the Ministry of Education is still under the BN. Funny, I thought civil servants (and isn't that what school heads are?) are supposed to be neutral.
We are breeding smallminded people in our schools, it seems.
Leo Tolstoy once said - Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
ReplyDeleteWhen the avenues of blame start to run out, they might start blaming women for blushing, because that would excite and entice men to rape.
And when rape still continues to exist, they will simply blame the mere existence of women.
Let's just have the Kelantanese men castrated instead. that ought to stop rape. LMAO
ReplyDeletehttp://cleffairy.wordpress.com
Salam,
ReplyDelete(Refer http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/84917)
Gincu, tumit tinggi haram di K. Bharu
Jun 23, 08 6:23pm
Majlis Perbandaran Kota Bharu-Bandar Raya Islam (MPKB-BRI) mengeluarkan larangan terbaru kepada pekerja Islam, antaranya tidak memakai gincu dan kasut tumit tinggi yang tidak mengeluarkan bunyi.
Yang dipertuanya Shafie Ismail berkata arahan itu bagi mengelak berlakunya anasir jahat seperti rogol dan zina selain menjaga maruah serta peribadi muslimah di negeri ini.
Katanya lagi, lapor Bernama, muslimah dilarang memakai solekan yang jelas dilihat seperti gincu dan tidak dibenarkan memakai kasut bertumit tinggi yang mengeluarkan bunyi.
Jika hendak memakai kasut bertumit tinggi, tumitnya haruslah diperbuat daripada getah, katanya dalam pekeliling yang dikeluarkan kepada mereka yang bekerja mengendalikan semua premis dalam kawasan MPKB-BRI.
Etika berpakaian yang perlu dipatuhi termasuklah memakai tudung labuh, tidak jarang dan menutup dada; memakai baju berlengan
panjang sehingga ke pergelangan tangan, memakai baju labuh dan longgar serta memakai sarung kaki.
Shafie berkata mereka yang gagal mematuhi peraturan itu boleh dikenakan kompaun seperti peruntukan Undang-Undang Kecil MPKB-BRI 1986 dan jika sabit kesalahan, mereka boleh dikompaun tidak lebih RM500.
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PAS-flavored Islam is not Islamic teachings at all.
I've lived in Kelantan for 9 years, and I still don't get it why PAS is so obsess with women dresses and skins(and now high heels and lipsticks).
If PAS opinions(read obsession) to be believed, I wonder how many ppl have raped their mothers and sisters who wear high heel and lipstick last year in Kelantan?
Is there a word to describe this kind of obsession?
The Barisan Nasional government encourages women to look good. Nice make up, nice clothings, nice shoes and if one wears anything less than nice, people will be hinting that one looks not nice. So it contradicts what it has been preaching like being religiously clothed. The website belonging to the Jabatan Islam or is it Majilis Islam does tell women how to dress themselves and majority of the women fall short of the standard set. As for the shoes, some women go round, making annoucements that they are coming with the noises made by their shoes. Probably it is their sign of their importance.
ReplyDeleteIt is not shocking to know that civil servants are political minded. The reason is easy. Their bosses are politicians. Civil servants help the politicians by deciding who go up, who go down, who come in and who go out.
well, maybe our women r simply toooooooooo pretty...
ReplyDeleteMalaysian Men Banned From Non-OIC Countries
http://juslo.blogspot.com/2008/06/malaysian-men-banned-from-non-oic.html
Dalai Lama wants Islamic states to follow Tibet
http://juslo.blogspot.com/2008/06/dalai-lama-wants-islamic-states-to.html
hmmmm..as they're supposed to "cover up", why not put on more make up? First they go for the hair, then the arms, then the legs..now the feet [must be some kind of fetish], AND the all empowering magnetic bulging, red, inviting, ..lips. What i'm saying is when everything is covered up, whetever balance that is seen becomes the focus.
ReplyDeleteHi MM,
ReplyDeleteThe article and write up reflects one fundamental issue at hand: our education system has not kept up with our 'outward' progress.
Lebih baik diam dari bercakap. Inilah jadinya apabila pentadbir dan pegawai kerajaan berfikiran simplistik. Dia ingat semudah itu nak ubah perangai manusia. Dalam keadaan ni, bukanlah lebih baik dok diam-diam saja. Tak ker gitu?
ReplyDeletehttp://pokpet.blogspot.com
"Ekoran dari beberapa akhbar media perdana mensensasikan isu ini, Majlis Perbandaran Kota Bharu (MPKB) - Bandar Raya Islam (BRI) menjelaskan ia tidak pernah melarang golongan Muslimah di bandar itu memakai gincu. Walau pun mereka yang ingkar dengan arahan ini boleh dikenakan denda sehingga RM500, tetapi pendekatan dakwah MPKB-BRI lebih menjurus kepada mendidik dan bukan mencari kesalahan,"katanya.
ReplyDeleteOK, fine. I have nothing against "EDUCATING" the masses, and it might be just the media's was of sensationalizing the issue.
But still, MPKB which is clearly under PAS state government, which in turn is UNDER Pakatan Rakyat umbrella. So they should consider tying up to more PR-friendly values instead. Do I sense PAS being hard headed?
I second you passionately on the re-education of The Star (and every other Malaysian publication for that matter).
ReplyDeleteThis is what Kelantanese women need:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.no-contact.com/images.html
Roger Cohen: Why Obama should visit a mosque
ReplyDeleteBy Roger Cohen
Published: June 25, 2008
ISTANBUL: I'll admit it, I'm thin-skinned about the kinds of slurs and innuendo about Muslims that have accompanied Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Years of being subjected to them while I covered the Bosnian war did that.
We heard the whole gamut back then: how the European Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo were really "Turks" engaged in a "demographic genocide" (through high birth rates) against Christians, and how they were engaged in a plot to establish a "Muslim crescent" looping up from Turkey through the Balkans, and how they roasted enemy prisoners alive on spits.
All the while, of course, said Bosnian Muslims were being herded by Christian Serbs into concentration camps that were centers of torture and systematic killing of a cruelty Europe believed it had forever banished.
That was before 9/11, of course, and before the Egyptian-born writer Bat Yeor popularized the term "Eurabia" to express her vision of a Muslim-infiltrated Europe capitulating Munich-like to Islamism, and before Pat Buchanan's apocalyptic "The Death of the West," and before Americans were encouraged in numberless ways to equate Islam with terrorists plotting Armageddon.
Give Americans the Rorschach test today and what they'll detect in the ink blots are bearded Muslim "suiciders."
I'll admit something else: My own feelings about Islam have veered back and forth in recent years. Most of us were ignorant when the planes-turned-missiles struck. We've been searching for bearings: even the word "jihad" is variously described as a holy war against the infidel and an inner struggle for higher spiritual attainment.
When, in 2005, I talked to the Somalian-born Dutch author Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a meeting in The Hague that had to be organized like an undercover operation because of threats to her life from Islamic radicals, I was struck by her words: "Islam is not a religion of peace, or only of peace with other Muslims. We should acknowledge that it's a very violent religion, instead of pretending, like Bush, that this violence is not true Islam."
Certainly, the threat to her made in its name was violent.
Certainly, the Koran is a long way from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Certainly, there are Koranic verses that Al Qaeda and other extremists have been able to use in attempts to sanctify their murderous acts.
Certainly Islam, politically expressed, has often proved irreconcilable with modern notions of pluralism, democracy and women's rights. But a "very violent religion?" No. From Beirut to Baghdad to Cairo to here in Istanbul, I have often felt the wonders of hospitality and generosity and wisdom that seem to well from Islam.
At Obama's old school in Jakarta earlier this year, an establishment scurrilously described as a "madrassa" in all the innuendo, a gentle principal showed me the large mosque and small Christian prayer room. He then invoked the words emblazoned on the coat of arms of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country: "Unity in diversity."
That's what I saw among the kids at the school, 85 percent of whom are Muslim and the rest Christian. That's also what America's supposed to be about, not religious slurring and stereotyping.
Yet, because he's called Barack Hussein Obama, and because his Kenyan grandfather was a Muslim, and because his commitment to Israel has been questioned, and because the U.S. Rorschach test is Muslim-menace mired, he's had to tread carefully.
As Andrea Elliott of The New York Times chronicled in an important piece, Obama has visited churches and synagogues but no mosque. He had to apologize after two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred from appearing behind him at a recent Detroit rally.
Obama should visit a mosque. He has repeatedly shown his courage during this campaign; Americans have responded to his intellectual honesty. One of the important things about him is the knowledge his Kenyan and Indonesian experiences have given him of Islam as lived, rather than Islam as turned into monstrous specter.
This enables him to break the monolithic, alienating view of a great world religion that is as multifaceted as Judaism or Christianity.
I've no doubt that Obama is a strong supporter of Israel. But what I find as important is that he would come to Islam without prejudice.
That's the precondition for dialogue, whether with Iran or between Israel and Palestine.
Here in Turkey, a Muslim country of myth-dispelling permissiveness, I met with Joost Lagendijk, the chairman of the Turkey delegation of the European Parliament. He's Dutch. What he hears at home is, "Fear of Islam and fear of Muslims and fear of immigrants."
Fear-mongering about Islam is a global industry. It thrives on ignorance. Obama has a unique power to break the cycle, not least by emboldening moderate Muslims to denounce terror. Nothing would do more in the long run for the security of the world.
(Readers are invited to comment at Cohen's blog: www.iht.com/passages)
Note:
Obama is as surely a very liberated man as you are, Marina!
Ma'am-
ReplyDeleteI think the "smallmindedness" of our school system has been ingrained right from the 22-years of your esteemed father's premiership. I bet that had it been during TDM's time, the same would be the case.
Assalamualaikum semua.
ReplyDeletesy sgt2 menyokong ape yg kerajaan Kelantan lakukan. perkare remeh begini mungkin dipandang tidak penting bg sesetengah pihak, tp ia sbnrnye mmberi kesan dlm kehidupan yg semakin mengganas. jika bertumit tinggi mengeluarkn bunyi, menarik perhatian kaum lelaki yg bkn mukhrim, adelah haram disisi agama, sm seperti memakai gelang kaki. bergincu juga begitu, bkn kah kecantikan itu perlu dtg dr hati yg murni. jika kite nak hidup dlm keberkatan, perkara remeh jgn dipandang rendah atau sinis. kalau sesuatu dilakukan tidak bertentangan dgn hukum ALLAH, kite ikut, jika tidak mau ikut kita diam. sebaliknya jika sesuatu dilakukan bertentangan dgn hukum ALLH, kite kene tegur, kite nasihat. smoge ALLAH tidak murka kpd kite dan menurunkn bala. Nauzubillah. ALLAH hu alam.
Salam,
ReplyDeleteQuote Nurul: I think the "smallmindedness" of our school system has been ingrained right from the 22-years of your esteemed father's premiership.
Nurul should understand that we can't put the blame on other people because it's not going to solve the problem.
Quote isabella: sy sgt2 menyokong ape yg kerajaan Kelantan lakukan.
I quote Mkini on the issue - "Majlis Perbandaran Kota Bharu-Bandar Raya Islam (MPKB-BRI) mengeluarkan larangan terbaru kepada pekerja Islam, antaranya tidak memakai gincu dan kasut tumit tinggi yang tidak mengeluarkan bunyi."
I strongly oppose any laws/codes/acts/instructions from authorities detailing on dress code or what ppl should wear or not.
I'm also don't believe that GOD forbids Muslim women from wearing lipsticks or high heels.
I don't mind authorities instruct its staff to wear decent dress because it's general and proper, but not when it comes to give specific instructions or as championing by PAS - to be enacted into laws.
Even if isabella believes that certain dress code was instruct by Allah, even then it shouldn't be enacted into laws by authorities.
If we're to follow PAS version of interpreting the Quran - I foresee that in the near future PAS will stated specifically "PIGS" as the forbidden animal to be eaten in the laws.
We don't need PAS to tell us that PIGS are haram to eat because we already being told in Quran that it's forbidden to eat "meat of pigs". Btw, notice that it's "meat of pigs", and not simply pigs!
So, let us leave the decision to follow GOD's laws into the hand of ourselves and not by legal means.
p.s Marina you should read this http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/05/29/egypt18959.htm
These ppl were sent to prison because of their HIV status!!
Btw, do you still remember that not too long ago, some PAS politicians suggested that HIV/AIDS ppl being sent to secluded place like Pulau Jerejak to confine them there?!
Good evening Marina,
ReplyDeleteOnce again, PAS seems to be short of national issues.
As usual in their small minded brain, womenfolk are blamed for men's sins. Can't they just understand that RESPECT and SELF RESTRAIN is exalted in Islam. They should keep their hands off things that doesn't belong to them. If they do, then it surmounts to stealing and thus is a SIN!
["Muslim women need not be unduly worried. No action would be taken if they wear thick make-up or high heel shoes," he told journalists.]
ReplyDeleteI don't know about others but I smell sarcasm in this.
Anyways, I still don't get why they banned lipstick-wearing and high heels at the first place. No lipstick = pale lips = unhealthy looking people. But whatever of course. It's not as if people would want to use thick/dark red lipstick anyways.
We all learn from each other. There is no race is this world that can claim that they have not learned from other races. There is no language in this world that has not incorporated words from other languages into its own.
ReplyDeleteMany decades ago, the Muslim Malays were mostly sarong-clad; and at that time, when any Muslim Malay broke ranks and wore long pants and shirt, he would be considered pro-Western and thus a traitor by the Muslim Malay community. Later on, even if you ate burgers and hot dogs, you risk being branded pro-Western and a traitor. I like variety. Variety is the spice of life. I like to eat different kinds of foods. UMNO has managed Malaysia based on the Muslim Malay mindset. We urgently need more secular and liberal Malays.
My Muslim Malay brothers and sisters have baffled me. Today, there are Malays who can make and sell roti canai, roti terbang, and noodle stir fry. Try www.youtube.com and you would be convinced. I have got to be careful to say the following, but non-Malays will tell you that some Malays eat pork too. I hope it did not take your breath away. I guess if you are hungry you will eat just about anything. I wished more Malays would eat pork. Again, I hope it did not take your breath away.
Today, some non-Malays are better than Malays in Bahasa Malaysia.
All religious scriptures have things that they are proud of on one hand, and things that they conceal because they are ashamed of on the other hand. Generally, human beings do not admit their mistakes and religions are no exception. Religions no longer have a monopoly over truth and knowledge. Increasingly, we have to rely on contemporary wisdom. A good secular and liberal education will help. Nobody in this world can tell you that he/she has had a complete education and preparation for life; on the contrary, we have to keep learning new things. Try www.youtube.com to learn some new things.
It was males who wrote religious scriptures. If females wrote the religious scriptures, then the scriptures would be very different. Few females, these days, would tolerate polygyny. The point to remember is that from now on, females should play a greater role in this world. None of us can blame ourselves for how the religious scriptures have been written. The scriptures were written a long time ago. It is a different world now. We have to keep learning new things. I assure you that there are a million new things we have to learn. We are primates. As homo sapiens sapiens, competition has been shaping and reshaping us. We have to grow and keep learning. No religion in this world can be applied permanently. We cannot be rooted to any religion permanently. We cannot base our lives on scriptures that were written a long time ago. Religions no longer have a monopoly over truth and knowledge. As we learn new things, we change our faith. Changing faith is an inviolable human right. I assure you that we have a million new things yet to learn.
I believe that it is a changing world. I assure you that we have a million new things yet to learn.
but wasn't it started by that guy in the sky, with the forbidden apple which eve took... so goes the story.
ReplyDelete