YOURSAY | From Timah to Tongkat Ali – are we so easily confused?

YOURSAY | 'Half of the products in the supermarket should change their names.'

PKR MP likens drinking Timah whiskey to 'drinking a Malay woman'

OCT: The whiskey maker’s stakeholders had invested lots of resources - time, money and effort - to develop, market and win awards.

It is not so simple and easy to rebrand a product once it has been established. The brand and image of the company will be greatly affected. Who is going to bear the loss of investment, opportunities, goodwill and trademark?

This is an international product made in Malaysia. The loss in sales in overseas markets will be too huge to bear. This forcing of the company to change its trademark and branding has a big impact on foreign investors.

Religious feelings shouldn't interfere with business investment and operations. Malaysia is scaring investors away from doing business in this country as there are no such rules in our basic laws.

Religious rules are made up of the feelings of certain parties which can be interpreted differently by different religious groups. So, when no clear guidelines are established for all to follow, it is impossible to comply.

The government cannot please the feelings of one group of religious people and hurt the investment and economy of the country. Malaysia will pay a high price if this is allowed to continue.

Vijay47: This is shameful. It is unbelievable. Once again, we see fanatics dictating the manner in which life in Malaysia is to be lived.

And both the government and opposition appear to be gladly feeding off on such extremism in the belief it would extend their popularity among the religious fringe. When it comes to religious matters, we seem to be reaching depths once thought impossible and now the norm.

I am not talking about that mythical beast called tolerance amid a multifaith society. This is more a question of basic intelligence where truth and reality does not gel with what a certain segment imagines it to be.

Looking at the name and picture that are now at the centre of this controversy, the first association any sane person would make is to tin, wondering also who the ‘Sikh’ man is. But it inspires sickness in others.

The crazies insist that the name, not even the full word, is an abbreviation related to some Islamic personality and the picture is that of a Muslim scholar.

We have now reached a milestone where any bearded person with a headdress is somehow offensive to certain Muslims to whom, like the Mad Hatter, everything is what they decide it to be.

What is terrifying is that not a single Muslim leader has dared to stand and condemn this increasingly sick attitude. PKR president Anwar Ibrahim, do you subscribe to this madness? “Don’t spook the Malays”, you say?

Soon, would we be allowed to cross our T’s? Today, it is Timah for Fatimah. Tomorrow, Tim would join the proscribed list and good sense would continue on that perilous trek to Timbuktu.

Pokokgetah: All this fuss because Timah sounds like the name of the Prophet’s daughter Fatimah? As someone has said, you would not call anyone you revere by a nickname or a pet name. This whole thing is simply ridiculous.

Here’s another example, and it concerns the name not of the Prophet’s daughter, but the Prophet himself. Many Muslims name their sons Muhammad after the Prophet.

It is not uncommon, especially in the West, this name gets shortened to “Mo”. Think Olympic long-distance runner gold medallist Mo Farah or Liverpool striker Mo Salah.

It’s a nice nickname for your favourite athlete. But using “Mo” for the Prophet himself is quite unthinkable!

So, if some businessperson markets a product branded “Mo”, he could well have Mo Farah or Mo Salah in mind. Or will that person be accused of having the Prophet in mind?

Proarte: Timah is Malay for tin. Captain Speedy had a beard and wore a cap, which is an authentic picture. The whiskey label gave a brief explanation regarding the name Timah and of the British captain (a British colonial officer who was involved in ending the Larut Wars in Perak).

Why then would anyone think of Prophet Muhammad's daughter when seeing a whiskey bottle called Timah? Wouldn't it be utterly disrespectful to call Fatimah 'Timah' if she is held in high reverence? No Malays would call the Prophet ‘Mat’?

If a whiskey brand is named Mat, would Malays become confused and think the liquor bottle was named after Prophet? Only those irrational and people of bad intent would think so.

Malays have a penchant for pet names by shortening names, for example, Ku Li, Pak Lah, Ku Nan, Tok Mat, etc. If Malays call Fatimah as Timah, that is their prerogative.

But to perversely insist that Timah is referring to the Prophet’s daughter when it means tin in the Malay language shows the downright ignorance of the Islamist and Malay supremacist troublemakers. They are insulting the intelligence of their race.

The real purpose of this synthetic controversy is to underscore Malay and Muslim 'ketuanan' (supremacy), giving them the right to interfere in non-Muslim affairs.

They can even dictate what names alcoholic beverages can have, even for the most imbecilic of reasons.

Headhunter: Aren't we getting confused by those confused lot? By their reckoning, half of the products in the supermarket should change their names.

MS: Maybe we are just being a bit unreasonable and harsh here.

Those concerned by the name and the image on the bottle (despite its obvious alcoholic content) are Malay politicians (like PKR MP Rusnah Aluai, Anwar and their brethren in PAS, Umno and Bersatu) who obviously know the character and values of the people they represent.

They are therefore naturally afraid that the smartest of Malays will flock by the thousands to drink whiskey only because they think Timah sounds Malay and Muslim and therefore halal.

They are not wrong to be concerned because they know their people better than non-Malays... and definitely better than Malaysiakini commentators.

These Malay politicians know that what is worse than corruption is having a drink on the sly. Which also explains why graft in its many forms does not "provoke" them as much as Timah.

• COMMENT | How is the manufacturer of Timah going to explain name change?

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