I read in today's The Sun newspaper that Kuala Lumpur City Hall is in the process of replacing all road signages to include directions in Jawi. This is in efforts to promote Islam Hadhari (civilisational Islam) and tourism. According to City Hall PWD director Siti Saiffur Mansor the move will help non-Muslims to know and learn Jawi and enable tourists from the Middle East to identify places in the city.
What crap!
Promoting Islam can be done in so many ways other than by spending millions on road signs. If the signs are costing between one and two thousand ringgit each as reported then one wonders whether the contract with the production company is above board and was it done through open tender. Malaysians are always wary when huge amounts are spent for no apparent reason than to generate kickbacks.
Islam can be promoted in so many other ways: through honest governance, good work ethics, integrity, etc. Jawi is a "dead" language in the everyday life of Malaysians. Even for the majority of Malays the daily working language is the Romanized version of Bahasa Melayu (Malay language). Furthermore, why the need to master Jawi to learn more about Islam Hadhari?
Jawi for tourists? I have come across road signs which include Jawi/Arabic within KL city centre. That should be sufficient. Visitors to Malaysia don't go into housing estates in search of tourist attractions. In especially communities with majority non-Malay/Muslim populations you can have road signs in Jawi or Mongolian or Urdhu - the people couldn't and wouldn't be bothered. So how is Islam Hadhari being promoted?
KL City Hall can't even get its act together in English and it wants to promote Jawi. I came across a sign near Hotel Istana which shows the direction to "Twin Tower". I can't imagine a twin tower. The error has come about because the way English is spoken - the lazy way - with no effort to pronounce ends of words. Take another example: "Brickfield" - it never was that from the colonial days - the correct, correct, correct identity should be Brickfields with an s. Well, I suppose the attitude is as long as "it sounds like it" it's okay-lah.
Now, coming back to the road signs in Jawi - please KL City Hall, that money can be better spent. But then again who the hell are we to comment. You City Council members know best, yah?
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