We need lots of love and Lat now.

Please click pic to enlarge it!

Okay! Okay! I'm a Lat fan!

I think we need one of our funniest cartoonists, Lat to cheer everyone up after one hell of a hangover following the Federal Court ruling in the Lina Joy case.

Yunno-it keeps playing in my head...Why couldn't it be the best Hollywood-style happy ending many of us Malaysians wished it to be?

Why didn't the poor girl be given her decent human rights in this world and she could marry her true love and they live happily ever after? Any Tom, Dick and Harry could see what the two judges actually did was to condemn her to the mercy of a Syariah Court that is in all likelihood, judging from many reports, of either using the barbaric Communist method of placing her in a forced re-education camp or making her undergo so-called 'counseling' or shall we say coercion by certain so-called religious persons to return to a religion she absolutely wants out ...

Then again, the implications of the court's deplorable decision on a wider scale with regard to our state of secularism are written everywhere ...

As for the rest of us, if only just one judge had the courage to join the dissenting courageous wise judge in making his decision, many of us, including some of our understanding and intelligent liberal Muslim friends, would be celebrating a hell lot.

It could and would have been the best and happiest National Day celebration.

Yes, it basically comes down to love. In our Holy Bible, Saint Paul formerly Saul, a Jew who used to persecute many Jewish Christians wrote these wonderful verses to the Corinthians about Christian love:

Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. Love never gives up; and its faith, hope and patience never fail. Love lasts forever.

Well, in Malaysia, it looks like we also need lots of Lat, besides love, just for the cheering up.

Remember those days in in the early '60s when life was simpler then, and we had so many dreams for the future... Lat, though a Muslim Malay, gave us so much laughter and memories when he came on the Malaysian cartoon scene and his works got published in the '70s. Even the '70s censors (Yes, those despicable kill-joys) were probably laughing so hard over the cartoons that they allowed all the kissing, cheekiness, sexiness, political mocking and embarrassing kampung scenes, etc. to be exposed.

What about those zealous Muslim extremists in those days? I don't think there were too many of these crack-pots like Nik Aziz but if there were any, they were probably sulking like the Pharisees of old, awaiting the opportunity to entrap Christ, and either casting furtive looks now and then at the cartoons or laughing their heads off as well.

NOTE: The cartoon page with the pics is extracted from Lat. "One Christmas Eve." Berita Publishing Sdn. Bhd., 1977: 140.

I think I'll be forgiven for using this copyright extract as I've spent a lot of money purchasing most of Lat's works that were published by Berita Publishing Sdn. Bhd..