Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 19 January 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
Am I imagining this or are you still in Europe? Anything going on out there?
Flying High

I’m in Europe at the moment (with very bad Internet connections) and that’s where I saw the news of the massacre in Paris. Naturally, I condemn these horrific murders committed in the name of Islam but which, and this is becoming tedious to repeat, has nothing to do with Islam. But far too many young men (and even young women) are attracted to the aggression, promise of brotherhood and sense of mission that militant Islam is presently offering. If lives are empty of meaning, purpose and a future, then many energetic young men could succumb to a promise of excitement in the hellhole of Syria. And if the only interpretations they hear of Islam are angry and racist, then it could be a logical next step.

Ultimately, I think it’s too simplistic and unhelpful to lay the blame for this latest attack exclusively at the door of Islam. Every nation or region has a different story and trajectory. Asia, Europe and North Africa are very different from each other. The killers were French of Algerian descent, and I think that the real answers can be found in that troubled history. But that is not to say that Muslims around the world shouldn’t take this as an opportunity to reflect on what the murders mean to them.

What really concerns me is the attack on the freedom of speech and how the deceased authors of Charlie Hebdo made it difficult as it is to defend the freedom of speech. I had never heard of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo before the attack, but the magazine’s authors had been under threat of violence for a long time because of their cartoons depicting, among other things, the Prophet Muhammad posing naked and all major religious figures and politicians. The cartoons are vile, racist and not even remotely funny. To me, they look a lot like the Jew-baiting cartoons of Germany in the 1930s. I just don’t get it. It must be a French thing. I’m used to and I understand the enquiring liberalism and humour of the US’ Jon Stewart and John Oliver, or the playful subtlety of the UK’s satirical Private Eye magazine. At the moment, Prince Andrew is in the middle of a sex scandal and Private Eye has a cover photo of him with the Queen. She says, “Slap the cuffs on him, officer!” and he says, “Oo-er, that sounds fun.” That makes me laugh. By comparison, the “satire” of Charlie Hebdo has the subtlety of a punch in the face.

But France is France, and if French intellectuals don’t want to build bridges with Muslim communities or understand Muslims, and instead would rather burn bridges by lambasting Islam with crude cartoons, then that’s their choice. It’s France, they can do what they want and nobody should be killed for it. I don’t know much about Charlie Hebdo, but I’m going to guess that their message is that they are French and therefore, must never be pressured into subscribing to the taboos of other cultures or sparing the feelings of politicians. I don’t like the cartoons I’ve seen but yes, they are French, and they can do what they want in France. Killing unarmed cartoonists simply confirms the growing prejudice to the French and European public that Muslims are violent and cannot be reasoned with.

Dear Kam,
I heard a strange sound in my home the other day. I’d never heard it before and I was very frightened, but when I found out where it was coming from, I realised that I have a landline. I didn’t know.
Ring Ring

I’ve just been to Venice, which really is as beautiful as I imagined it would be. It really is full of canals, gondolas and palaces, and sometimes, I felt that I was in a film set because it seemed too perfect. Venice was gorgeous, but what really struck me was when I watched Italians and I saw how much time they spent talking on their mobile phones. It seemed so different from Malaysia and London, where I had just come from.

In Malaysia, you see people constantly bent over their phones, either surfing the Internet or more likely sending text messages, but rarely actually talking on the phones. I’ve been on holiday for six weeks and I’ve not received even one phone call, but I’ve done plenty of communicating through emails, Facebook and Twitter. I was standing behind one Italian man who was talking on his phone for ages, and I realised that his one conversation was longer than all my phone conversations put together, ever. As soon as he put the phone down, he started a conversation with the attractive girl in front of him. I have never, ever, ever done that. That is simply impossible to imagine. What is wrong with Italians?

The text message was invented by Nokia in Finland, and I saw a documentary once where Finnish people explained that they don’t like to talk to other people. They just don’t like to talk. They said that the text message was perfect for them because suddenly they could have a social life without the need to actually meet anybody. Suddenly, they could have an entire relationship, a flirtation, a romance, dates, lover’s quarrels and break-ups without even having to meet the other person. Meanwhile, I’m going to guess that Italians don’t even know how to send a text message.

I became exhausted just watching Italians talk all the time, so I’m not saying their lives are better. But if Italians are at one end of the spectrum and Finns are at the other, I wonder where Malaysians would fit. I’m going to guess that Malaysians like to talk to family and friends but do not generally start up conversations with complete strangers. And I think that young Malaysians do like to sell an image of themselves, a parallel and almost fantasy version of their lives on Facebook. The Italians I saw would be too busy having actual conversations for that.

Dear Kam,
My Internet connection broke down recently. It was the worst day of my life. I think I need to get a better life. Or a better Internet provider.
Lost World

I’ve been away for a long time and I’ve been having to rely on free WiFi to keep in touch. But how come free rarely ever actually means free? Free is one of those words that is really simple to understand. It means no charge, no payment. It means, well, free. And yet, when you attach the word “free” to, say, WiFi, it suddenly means the opposite of free. Free WiFi means pay some money and you can have it for free. I’m fairly sure that means it’s not free.

So, with intermittent WiFi, I’ve been struggling to understand a strange news from Malaysia. Let me see if I’ve got this right. An alleged illegal gambling Malaysian is being investigated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. And our home minister sent a letter to the US exonerating this person and saying that he has been helping in national security issues. Er, what? Does that make sense? I must have misunderstood something because my Internet connections have been so bad. I’ll blame the Internet. That’s what it’s there for.

Reprinted with the kind permission of