Who Can Talk About Anything?

I'm writing this in response to SuaraMalaysia.com's entry on 'Who can talk about Islam?'. Instead of focusing on Islam, let's look at it from the point of view of 'anything'.



Who can talk about anything? Everyone can talk about anything. The response however, will depend on who you are, what are your credentials and who are your audiences. If you're a thermo nuclear scientist, talking theories to people like me, who will give a hoot? But a thermo nuclear students or fellow scientists will listen with interest, with few comments and remarks, and maybe a heated debate will pursue. If you're a 'warung' (stall) politician, people at the 'warung' will listen with interests if they have nothing better to do, but they know whatever you say will disappear with the wind the moment the words leave your lips. The same talk will be repeated again and again, day after day, but still nothing comes out of it.



But, if you're interested in something, aside from listening to opinions, you might want to do your own research and ask questions to the right person until you get the clarification that you want. Just like lecturer in class, he/she might not be interested to entertain students with questions that obviously show they have not done any homework/reading at all. So you might want to make sure at least people will not think whatever comes out from you is not due to your ignorance and stupidity. Admit what you don't know, that you're not sure about something, but that is what you've heard or read. And then ask people nicely what do they think about it?



I don't like to be dragged into discussion where people are not really interested to know the truth but instead, prefers to sprout whatever they want to say like a 'warung' politician. It happened to me once. A non-Muslim colleague passionately say this and that about Islam, how Islam discriminate people by saying non-Muslim is a 'kafir', and non-Muslim eat dirty things. My first question is what did he meant by dirty things. He told me Muslims like to use the word 'haram' for food. And I told him, 'haram' means forbidden, not dirty. That really stopped him in track. I don't have to say anything else but you should see how uncomfortable he is trying to take back his remarks. 'Kafir' means non-believer. If you're a Muslim, non-Muslim is a non-believer. If you're a Christian, non-Christian is a non-believer. Whether you're a believer or non-believer of any religion, what you are has no significance except in religious matter. There must be some way of identifying those who are not a believer and to Muslims, 'kafir' is the word for non-believer. It didn't occur to me before that a word can be an issue.



That particular event with my colleague really opened up my eyes. I've always respected his intelligence. We are in the business of information management. We have every means available to us IF we want to find the information. And here, I have a colleague (an intellectual person) who simply says things without even some basic knowledge of the subject. An intelligent man can surely find the information that he wants if he's interested to know the truth. Obviously, he's not interested. I don't care if he's not interested. But it will be better for him if he don't say anything in the first place when the subject matter is not of interest to him. I still respected him (in the matters of work) but I also know he can be ignorant and stupid on other things.



Can you talk about anything? Of course you can. What category are you in?



1. Those with the right credentials

2. 'Warung' politicians

3. Those with interest in the subject (you've done your own research/homework)



I know I'm from the 3rd category. I'd listen with interest to people on category 1 and 3. If you're from 2, don't waste my time.