Larissa asks if you want a banana?
Remember Larissa Riquelme? The famous phone-in-bobbs-girl of World Cup 2010 who promised to bare it all if Paraguay wins? Not only that, she later said she will still bare it all even if Paraguay got kicked out ... she just wanna show off her well endowed body, I supposed.
Anyway, she is back. This time ... with a BANANA!
Larissa Riquelme
It is disappointing, indeed ironic, to see how nationalistic and racial sentiments have increased in tandem with the so-called globalisation and the move towards a 'borderless' world.
In Europe as in the United States, groups have mushroomed to "reclaim" the land from foreigners, ignorant of the fact that were it not for the foreigners, their countries would not have seen development at all.
As if by divine wisdom, it is always the case that only a multiracial country can prosper and develop, as proven in Europe, where the immigrant communities' have contributed immensely to Europe's growth and enriched its cultures beyond what the Westerners had been used to.
Similarly, we have seen how in Malaysia groups such as UMNO, its offshoot Perkasa and their mouthpiece Utusan Malaysia have exploited racist and religious sentiments, but have also exposed their stupidity to a level never imagined in our recent history.
How else can one explain the outcry by these groups over the mentioning of Lim Guan Eng in the Islamic supplication, or over the presence of a DAP woman in the Muslim prayer hall in Serdang? These groups, thinking they could exploit the people's ignorance, only managed to expose their own ignorance of Islam. They grew up on a diet of uneducated interpretation of Islam and refuse to be flushed out of their cocoon of ignorance.
But more recently, we have seen how a small but noisy group of hooligans have been trying to exploit racial sentiment, albeit in a bigger way, in Indonesia. They are not unlike Perkasa and UMNO whose actions often paint a bad image of Muslims and give the wrong signals to non-Muslims, thereby stunting the growth of Islam among non-Muslims. In this case, Bendera, who have been protesting at the Malaysian High Commission, forget that the basis in which they are fighting for is not for justice, but based on artificial borders and the unIslamic type of nationalism imposed upon the Nusantara by the Dutch and British. How stupid they look when they to! rched th e Malaysian flag.
We should not be angry at them. As Muslims, no amount of flag-burning should make them worked up. These flags are after all human creation and colonial legacies. We should condemn them because they fight based on narrow racial sentiments.
Perkasa and and their Indonesian twins Bendera are the kind of people that always encourage others to make generalisation. Perkasa does not represent Malays and Islam anymore than Bendera represents the kind and mature Indonesian population.
Finally, my hats off to Harakahdaily for an excellent English page. It goes a long way towards disseminating the true message of Islam, not Islam Melayu, but the Islam which our great Prophet has taught us to be a blessing for the worlds.
See What Barisan Nasional Gotta Say?
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