So we are imprisoning youths now, are we?
A curfew for youths under 18 years of age. Individuals under this age will not be allowed outside their premises at night. The idea itself sounded ludicrous but worse still those interviewed on television expressed almost gleeful agreement. The notion is seriously flawed, allow me to demonstrate.
By placing all youths, henceforth taken to mean any individual under the age of 18, we are assuming that youths who go out after night fall either engage in immoral activities or have an intent to engage. There are however a multitude of other activities that youths engage in after night fall. I was often not at home at night when I was that age but I was no where near houses of ill or questionable repute. I am certain many of our youths today, are I did then, leave their houses for the gelanggang silat because silat training are often held at night. Moreover, youths of this age are often hungry and ready cooked food is not always readily available at home especially when there are no leftovers from dinner. So many youths often head for the local roti canai and teh tarik stall, I would like to assure our beloved ministers that it is incredibly hard to engage in immoral activities at these stalls especially in the more crowded ones. There are a million other reasons why youths might go out into the night, only a fraction of them involve immoral activities.
Secondly, because we are targeting the youths in this action, we seem to be assuming that only youths are engaged in these unwanted activities. Even a casual observation will reveal that the immoral activities in question often involve adults in far greater numbers than youths. More importantly, these youths are often made the victims and are exploited in one way of another. So in fact, what we will be doing is imprisoning the victim and rewarding the perpetrators by regarding their misdeeds as an acceptable aspect of life. Worse still, while most of our drug addicts are youth, at least that is the impression given by mass media, we need to remember that there is a far greater probability that the main perpetrators, and beneficiary, of the drug and smut business are older than 18. so the youths who ride the LRT to get to the nightspots are locked in their homes while the profiteers are free to ride home from these establishments in their luxury cars.
A third possible reason for this proposed imprisonment may lie in the belief that night spots and adults bring in revenue that can be taxed by the government. So they are allowed, frowned upon but allowed just the same so long as they supposedly involve only adults. The flaw in this idea is that if these spots make much money these days it is because these same youths frequent them or otherwise young flesh is used to entice the elder crowd. Either way, their business would be hampered by youth curfew. I am not saying that we should allow youths to engage in immoral activities at these premises, instead I am wondering if this double standard is not more damaging to these ‘acceptable’ establishments that it is to the youths themselves. If so, would this move not be potentially damaging to the amount of tax collected?
Fourth, a 16 year old will be able to vote in five years time. By that time, he would have had five years in which to build up resentment against those who passed the laws that kept him or her in ‘unreasonable’ and ‘unfair’ imprisonment of the curfew. You might be in power now but when these kids become voters, you have a much harder job trying to convince them that you are the one to vote for. Adding to that, the opposition, I am sure, will have no qualms in exploiting this resentment to the fullest.
Fifth, we could say that we impose the curfew for the youth’s own protection. Lately, we have seen a troubling number of reports on incestuous crimes. By imposing this curfew, we are also locking up the victims with the perpetrators together if the crime is not the first time. If the crime has yet to happen, then we are increasing the opportunity for it to happen, especially when the booze joints are still open to the adults.
With this curfew, we are in fact marginalising the youths, excluding them from the premise that we cherish freedom because if we cherish it for ourselves, then it is wrong to deny it to others, especially our own youths. This does not mean however that we should accept all that they do. We can punish crime, we can act to prevent bad things from happening but we cannot rob the freedom from a whole generation of people and expect them to thank us for it and vote to have us remain in the position to keep imposing the same thing on further generations. Contrary to the belief held by many, I have found that individuals under the age of 18 can in fact think. More shocking even, I found that they actually have memory although many of us who have at one time been of that age seem to have forgotten that we also had memories back then. Imposing this curfew is like placing a blanket punishment on the whole generation for the acts of a few, or even the suspected acts of a few. Really it differs from pre-Islamic Arab acts of burying baby girls soon after they are born only in a matter of degrees. I seem to remember there were talks of making our society a ‘caring society’, a ‘masyarakat bertamaddun’, a ‘masyarakat madani’, a ‘loving society’ and even an ‘advanced’ society. Was it all just talk of was there any substance to it?
Bad things will happen, people will do bad things, it is inevitable. We can also act to protect those we love from bad things and from doing bad things but we can only do so to a certain degree. We need also to remember that the are human beings and human beings have free-will. I once asked an ustadz what the difference was between the prayers of a human being and that of an angel, and why is it that the human being is placed above even the angels. He said, the answer lies with God but he thinks that it is because angels have no nafs to steer them away from God and that their worship is the only thing they know. The devil of course was a different case which needs elaboration beyond the scope of this piece. The human being on the other hand can only be told to worship God but will only do so because he chooses to. Their prayers are therefore better because they do so out of choice. Do we imagine that our youths have no freewill that they will not turn against us if they have reason to? Do we also imagine that all youths will choose the wrong path should they be allowed to? When did we become so bleak and pessimistic that we no longer have any faith in our fellow man, especially our own youths?
A curfew for youths under 18 years of age. Individuals under this age will not be allowed outside their premises at night. The idea itself sounded ludicrous but worse still those interviewed on television expressed almost gleeful agreement. The notion is seriously flawed, allow me to demonstrate.
By placing all youths, henceforth taken to mean any individual under the age of 18, we are assuming that youths who go out after night fall either engage in immoral activities or have an intent to engage. There are however a multitude of other activities that youths engage in after night fall. I was often not at home at night when I was that age but I was no where near houses of ill or questionable repute. I am certain many of our youths today, are I did then, leave their houses for the gelanggang silat because silat training are often held at night. Moreover, youths of this age are often hungry and ready cooked food is not always readily available at home especially when there are no leftovers from dinner. So many youths often head for the local roti canai and teh tarik stall, I would like to assure our beloved ministers that it is incredibly hard to engage in immoral activities at these stalls especially in the more crowded ones. There are a million other reasons why youths might go out into the night, only a fraction of them involve immoral activities.
Secondly, because we are targeting the youths in this action, we seem to be assuming that only youths are engaged in these unwanted activities. Even a casual observation will reveal that the immoral activities in question often involve adults in far greater numbers than youths. More importantly, these youths are often made the victims and are exploited in one way of another. So in fact, what we will be doing is imprisoning the victim and rewarding the perpetrators by regarding their misdeeds as an acceptable aspect of life. Worse still, while most of our drug addicts are youth, at least that is the impression given by mass media, we need to remember that there is a far greater probability that the main perpetrators, and beneficiary, of the drug and smut business are older than 18. so the youths who ride the LRT to get to the nightspots are locked in their homes while the profiteers are free to ride home from these establishments in their luxury cars.
A third possible reason for this proposed imprisonment may lie in the belief that night spots and adults bring in revenue that can be taxed by the government. So they are allowed, frowned upon but allowed just the same so long as they supposedly involve only adults. The flaw in this idea is that if these spots make much money these days it is because these same youths frequent them or otherwise young flesh is used to entice the elder crowd. Either way, their business would be hampered by youth curfew. I am not saying that we should allow youths to engage in immoral activities at these premises, instead I am wondering if this double standard is not more damaging to these ‘acceptable’ establishments that it is to the youths themselves. If so, would this move not be potentially damaging to the amount of tax collected?
Fourth, a 16 year old will be able to vote in five years time. By that time, he would have had five years in which to build up resentment against those who passed the laws that kept him or her in ‘unreasonable’ and ‘unfair’ imprisonment of the curfew. You might be in power now but when these kids become voters, you have a much harder job trying to convince them that you are the one to vote for. Adding to that, the opposition, I am sure, will have no qualms in exploiting this resentment to the fullest.
Fifth, we could say that we impose the curfew for the youth’s own protection. Lately, we have seen a troubling number of reports on incestuous crimes. By imposing this curfew, we are also locking up the victims with the perpetrators together if the crime is not the first time. If the crime has yet to happen, then we are increasing the opportunity for it to happen, especially when the booze joints are still open to the adults.
With this curfew, we are in fact marginalising the youths, excluding them from the premise that we cherish freedom because if we cherish it for ourselves, then it is wrong to deny it to others, especially our own youths. This does not mean however that we should accept all that they do. We can punish crime, we can act to prevent bad things from happening but we cannot rob the freedom from a whole generation of people and expect them to thank us for it and vote to have us remain in the position to keep imposing the same thing on further generations. Contrary to the belief held by many, I have found that individuals under the age of 18 can in fact think. More shocking even, I found that they actually have memory although many of us who have at one time been of that age seem to have forgotten that we also had memories back then. Imposing this curfew is like placing a blanket punishment on the whole generation for the acts of a few, or even the suspected acts of a few. Really it differs from pre-Islamic Arab acts of burying baby girls soon after they are born only in a matter of degrees. I seem to remember there were talks of making our society a ‘caring society’, a ‘masyarakat bertamaddun’, a ‘masyarakat madani’, a ‘loving society’ and even an ‘advanced’ society. Was it all just talk of was there any substance to it?
Bad things will happen, people will do bad things, it is inevitable. We can also act to protect those we love from bad things and from doing bad things but we can only do so to a certain degree. We need also to remember that the are human beings and human beings have free-will. I once asked an ustadz what the difference was between the prayers of a human being and that of an angel, and why is it that the human being is placed above even the angels. He said, the answer lies with God but he thinks that it is because angels have no nafs to steer them away from God and that their worship is the only thing they know. The devil of course was a different case which needs elaboration beyond the scope of this piece. The human being on the other hand can only be told to worship God but will only do so because he chooses to. Their prayers are therefore better because they do so out of choice. Do we imagine that our youths have no freewill that they will not turn against us if they have reason to? Do we also imagine that all youths will choose the wrong path should they be allowed to? When did we become so bleak and pessimistic that we no longer have any faith in our fellow man, especially our own youths?
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