Ire

If there's one thing that makes me angry, it's people.

As is my regular Sunday afternoon, I've been browsing the electronic press and came across an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that informs me the Malaysian government is proposing to impose restrictions on women travelling alone outside the country.

The Malaysian ruling party is debating whether or not women should provide written consent from families or employers before being permitted to move outside the country's borders. Apparently there has been a significant number of criminal cases in which female Malaysian nationals have been duped into transporting illegal drugs and at present over one hundred women are lingering in foreign prisons.

The state news agency views this as a move to counteract criminal activity but I smell religious influence. I very much doubt that Malaysia, with a population of highly-educated nationals in a vibrant, dynamic and multi-ethnic society, has any further use for the stunted minds of officials stunted by misogynistic, God-fearing claptrap.

My grandmother, mother, sisters and female friends and colleagues are living proof that the chicks are equal to men in every way except their ability to remember birthdays and every celebration date I manage to forget. I find it incredulous that once again the evil that is religion pervades even further into a society that seemed secular not so very long ago. I was last in Malaysia in 1992 and retain vivid memories gorging on chicken satays in Ipoh and belting out Country and Western ditties in a karaoke bar somewhere in Sitiawan.

I loathe religion. I detest it because I've never seen it's positive side. Whether God exists or not is up to the individual and not the lawmaker. The Western Church may have given us some rather dab painting commissions and extravagant architecture that would have otherwise never seen the light of day, but for religion to continue to interfere with the rights of the individual is unacceptable and, in this day and age, deserving of two hard smacks to either side of the face.

Equally outraged but more eloquent in style are the words of Norhayati Kaprawi, a spokeswoman for Sisters in Islam. She is quoted as saying 'It is totally ridiculous and it's a totally regressive proposal with regards to women's right to movement'. I agree.

That written permission is going to halt the transportation of A-class drugs across transnational boundaries...

God, if you really existed you wouldn't have made the human race so stupid.

And if I were a Malaysian woman I'd be after someone's head.