Prisoners in Paradise

An excellent thought-provoking comment piece below by Dr Azzam Tamimi on Malaysia's own Guantanamo Bay. It is something we often forget when we travel to beautiful tourist destinations and holiday resorts such as Malaysia, Thailand and Tunisia that the governments in these countries have some of the most brutal and terrifying human rights records in the world. The Internal Security Act has been the cause of endless persecution of those deemed hostile to the Malaysian governments - families have been destroyed, children orphaned, wives widowed and mothers left alone because of this piece of legislation, a legacy of Britain's colonial past.

Too often we tend to turn a blind eye to such oppression in order that we may enjoy our "well-deserved" holidays without disturbace by the natives. And who is to say anything is amiss in a land where the azaan sounds 5 times a day, where Islam is ostensible in all quarters and where progressive modernism and economics flourish. As Muslims, it is our duty to do what we can to be at one with our brothers and sisters. Rather than spending hundreds of pounds supporting the Malaysian tourist industry, would it not be more to our benefit on the Day of Judgment if we wrote to the Malaysian government and informed them that we would not be visiting their country until such time as they revoked draconian laws such as the ISA?

The same goes for other popular tourist destinations such as Turkey and Tunisia, where sisters are stripped naked of their hijab by the authorities, Thailand whose Muslims face daily discrimination and even murder by the government, and the UAE where migrant workers from South Asia and North Africa are treated as modern-day slaves. What is the benefit of ziyaarah to the masaajid and historic sites of these places when by doing so we continue the oppression of our own brothers and sisters? The economies of these countries thrive on their tourism industry - if we can do nothing else, we can boycott this industry and inform the governments of these nations of our boycott. So what if we end up with nowhere to go on holiday? What would you prefer - a few weeks in the sun or the pleasure of Allah and the gardens of Paradise for eternity?

May Allah reward Dr Tamimi for raising such an important issue as this one.