More please O’ Mufti of Perlis.

The Mufti of Perlis is a brilliant man.

In his Mingguan Malaysia column today, he said it ‘loud and clear’.

“Banyak ceramah agama belum capai piawaian ilmu.”

Exactly. That’s why I never bother to watch the religious forum on TV.

BUT I once watched and followed an interesting religious program on ART. The program = ‘Parables in the Quran’.

Why? Because the host, Moez Masoud, a good looking young man (who looks more like a rock star than a Mullah), and his funky guests gave the message that Islam is not ‘owned’ by Ustaz and Tok Lebai (who would often talk about things yang kita dah tahu).

According to the Mufti of Perlis, “kadangkala penyampaian agama oleh sesetengah pihak tidak memperlihatkan kehebatan isi ajaran Islam. Banyak perbincangan dalam saluran-saluran TV amat tidak mencapai piawaian yang sepatutnya.”

He was commenting on what was discussed in a meeting of ‘pemikir’ Islam.

According to him, while some comments were too harsh, they could be very true. And the truth hurts... Ouchhh.

Among the comments:

“Ahli-ahli panel ceramah agama di TV seakan-akan pelawak atau badut. Ucapan mereka sekadar lawak jenaka atau cerita untuk kesukaan budak-budak. Tidak ada nilai ilmiah dan kekuatan menyelesaikan masalah umat. Tidak menampakkan kematangan Islam.”

Well, can our TV producers come up with something like ‘Parables in the Quran’?

Susah. Why? Because based on my experience, the production and editorial teams of religious programs would normally want the views (read: blessing) of/from the religious ‘authorities’.

More often than not, the religious ‘gate-keepers’, prefer the programs ‘safe’, ‘non-controversial’ and ‘non-threatening’.

As a result… terbitlah rancangan yang merisaukan Mufti Perlis.

But there are also bright sparks here and there.

Jejak Rasul was good.

But then after a couple of seasons, jadi ‘penat’.

Why? Because we don’t have enough thinkers and people with vision. And we don’t reward them well.

We don’t want to ‘invest’ in ‘pemikir’.

We hire kuli-kuli. And oh yes… we hire them on contract, jimat sikit company, nanti bila tak perlu, terminate jer…

Kalau hire, we pay them ciput and we pay high ranking TV officials a lot!!

But who churns the programs? Not the highly paid warlords, but the ciputista paid soldadus.

And who gets punished when the editorial ‘kurang menyenangkan’ sesetengah pihak? The soldadus.

Bak kata satu dialog yang diucapkan oleh aktres Azean Irdawaty who played ‘Julie Dahlan’ in a telemovie… “Nothing is fair in this world. I story you or you story me. You jangan buat my blood go upstairs…”

And another good one from Kak Yan in the telemovie… “just now I saw a mutton crossed the road…”

Don’t get me wrong, Azean Irdawaty speaks perfect English.