A recently concluded training that I organized on women rights is another eye opener.
Not that I shut my eyes to the issue before this, but I do not have to deal with it straight on as I did during the training.
One of my fellow facilitator propose that for examining a specific aspect on whether or not women can imamate, we should look at contemporary examples of women, who faced death threats and hate mails, risked their lives to prove their beliefs that women can be an Iman. Subsequent to that, we will bring up these examples supported by past experiences found in hadiths of how this is possible.
To put things in context, my dear Watson, is, as many contemporary thinkers put it, is elementary. Or, to understand the agencies that influence a woman's approach to dressing themselves or behave, as feminists contextualize women issues.
I kept my mouth shut at this point while my brain tried as fast as it 29 year old living cells can process thoughts. Then , I explained my view as a trainer. A trainer is a person whose job is getting across messages or new infos that at times are delicate. The message can also many a times be uncompromising or heaven forbids, potentially blasphemious. In doing so, I need not only weigh the probabilities of doing it by looking at the context of the message or infos I want to inform the target audience, but also the target audience's context.
Like for the previous training on women rights, my audience are basicly a bunch of normal peeps that thinks "gender" is one of the column we need to fill in those official forms. They are Muslims who pray and fast and loves to watch Akademi Fantasia. They could come up with crude jokes on why people love to dress baby boys in blue and at the same time, concerned with the rape and sexual harassment cases that happened to their friends or family members. They wanted to learn about women's rights but could not identify what are the things they need to learn.
So, as a trainer, I would say let's plan our training content and session in the light of our praticipants's context. Can they stomach Amina Wadud when they themselves have problem digesting the idea of women equality? What about looking at women as Syariah Judges and Muftis? They might have issues with these two areas too. But after some convincing, they rule out having the issue as the main theme but rather put it up for power point. I said sure. But of course, during the training itself, people just simply stared into blankness, pretend not to listen or whispered among themselves. Well, at least, they don't go off board screaming "blasphemy" or walked out. To me, the passive repsonses is normal when you talk about something they are not comfortable with. After the session, I had a round of casual chat with them and discovered about 90% of them are uncomfortable with the topic. That's likely to happen as I have assumed that to happen from the start.
Okay, so, some vocal imaginary readers might raised his/her imaginary hands and ask this very real question, " Then what's the biggie, dude?"
The biggie is this. The inter-faith commission, the proposed new direction requesting family memebers to inform their family if they want to covert, Islam Hadhari, Islamic State, Kongsi Raya, the recently concluded training and a list of other issues that you could group together with the rest here lacks one thing. It lacks a structure for people who are not comfortable with issues that are beyond the context of their beliefs, faith or norms but are confronted with these issues head on to actually name their discomfort and identify their fears. I just realized that as much as the facilitators of my programme tried their best not to sound imposing when speaking about the issue of women as imamate, it still came out sounding imposing. Or is it just natural for areas like religion or race to have such effect after all. And people are citing "unbelievable" or "this is too much" when they listen to the presentation but they could not offer a reason for feeling that way. Has the supression of freedom of thought, opinion and choice in our society reach a depressing level where people walked around in state of fear, angry or blur without knowing why? Or is it because of our culture that stresses on courtesy and politeness? Well, I think we could still speak our heart and mind politely. I mean, that's why our ancestors are able to invent courteous mode of language plays in order to be cynical such as simpulan bahasa, pantun or gurindam. Not only to court or flirt around, you know.
Or maybe, there won't be any structure at all. damage done is damage done. No such thing as damage control. Isn't that scary then? For forever we will not be able to deal with our personal fears over some contemporary issues except by having those mental battles that could be frustrating and depressing for us to handle.
Sigh
This house needs a loooong vacation next week.
Not that I shut my eyes to the issue before this, but I do not have to deal with it straight on as I did during the training.
One of my fellow facilitator propose that for examining a specific aspect on whether or not women can imamate, we should look at contemporary examples of women, who faced death threats and hate mails, risked their lives to prove their beliefs that women can be an Iman. Subsequent to that, we will bring up these examples supported by past experiences found in hadiths of how this is possible.
To put things in context, my dear Watson, is, as many contemporary thinkers put it, is elementary. Or, to understand the agencies that influence a woman's approach to dressing themselves or behave, as feminists contextualize women issues.
I kept my mouth shut at this point while my brain tried as fast as it 29 year old living cells can process thoughts. Then , I explained my view as a trainer. A trainer is a person whose job is getting across messages or new infos that at times are delicate. The message can also many a times be uncompromising or heaven forbids, potentially blasphemious. In doing so, I need not only weigh the probabilities of doing it by looking at the context of the message or infos I want to inform the target audience, but also the target audience's context.
Like for the previous training on women rights, my audience are basicly a bunch of normal peeps that thinks "gender" is one of the column we need to fill in those official forms. They are Muslims who pray and fast and loves to watch Akademi Fantasia. They could come up with crude jokes on why people love to dress baby boys in blue and at the same time, concerned with the rape and sexual harassment cases that happened to their friends or family members. They wanted to learn about women's rights but could not identify what are the things they need to learn.
So, as a trainer, I would say let's plan our training content and session in the light of our praticipants's context. Can they stomach Amina Wadud when they themselves have problem digesting the idea of women equality? What about looking at women as Syariah Judges and Muftis? They might have issues with these two areas too. But after some convincing, they rule out having the issue as the main theme but rather put it up for power point. I said sure. But of course, during the training itself, people just simply stared into blankness, pretend not to listen or whispered among themselves. Well, at least, they don't go off board screaming "blasphemy" or walked out. To me, the passive repsonses is normal when you talk about something they are not comfortable with. After the session, I had a round of casual chat with them and discovered about 90% of them are uncomfortable with the topic. That's likely to happen as I have assumed that to happen from the start.
Okay, so, some vocal imaginary readers might raised his/her imaginary hands and ask this very real question, " Then what's the biggie, dude?"
The biggie is this. The inter-faith commission, the proposed new direction requesting family memebers to inform their family if they want to covert, Islam Hadhari, Islamic State, Kongsi Raya, the recently concluded training and a list of other issues that you could group together with the rest here lacks one thing. It lacks a structure for people who are not comfortable with issues that are beyond the context of their beliefs, faith or norms but are confronted with these issues head on to actually name their discomfort and identify their fears. I just realized that as much as the facilitators of my programme tried their best not to sound imposing when speaking about the issue of women as imamate, it still came out sounding imposing. Or is it just natural for areas like religion or race to have such effect after all. And people are citing "unbelievable" or "this is too much" when they listen to the presentation but they could not offer a reason for feeling that way. Has the supression of freedom of thought, opinion and choice in our society reach a depressing level where people walked around in state of fear, angry or blur without knowing why? Or is it because of our culture that stresses on courtesy and politeness? Well, I think we could still speak our heart and mind politely. I mean, that's why our ancestors are able to invent courteous mode of language plays in order to be cynical such as simpulan bahasa, pantun or gurindam. Not only to court or flirt around, you know.
Or maybe, there won't be any structure at all. damage done is damage done. No such thing as damage control. Isn't that scary then? For forever we will not be able to deal with our personal fears over some contemporary issues except by having those mental battles that could be frustrating and depressing for us to handle.
Sigh
This house needs a loooong vacation next week.
