AUGUST 8 — I welcome the decision by the Islamic Legal Consultative Committee in the Federal Territories to issue a ban on Pokemon Go. Too bad it only applies to Muslims because — hand on heart — I believe all Malaysians should stay away from the app.
Such “games” pose a genuine threat to the religious and moral sensibilities of the rakyat. There is nothing more destructive for the well-being of society than hordes of individuals pursuing perverted dragon-like characters who look like they’ve got serious anger management issues.
I downloaded the app and within minutes I felt my belief in God, being Chinese and eating chicken rice have as much significance as last month’s Facebook advertisements. I no longer gave a s*** about anything. All I wanted to do was run after a serenity-challenged rodent call Pikachu whose name at first made me think this was some ancient Peruvian pyramid climbing game.
I’ve since taken a month of pre-MC and my therapist tells me to seriously consider blindness as an anti-Pokemon tactic.
Saving our corporations and children
You know what the committee was concerned about most of all when they issued the fatwa on Pokemon? Our GDP. Our economy. Our businesses.
If we’re not careful, Pokemon will make corporate executives run out of boardrooms chasing tiny blue-winged monsters instead of working hard so that our country’s business reputation, our currency and our corporate high-teas can remain enviably top class.
Malaysia is a paragon of transparency and meritocracy, and some of our top stalwarts are great fund-raisers, too. I think every Internal Audit and Compliance department is simply wasting their time checking.
I mean, we’ve had a spotless record of zero wrong-doing by our leaders — the LAST thing we want is for our dynamic yuppies to go bat-s*** crazy chasing augmented-reality rodents next to the water-fountain.
If Pokemon takes residence in our corporate culture, soon we’ll have shady business deals and — gasp! — money politics (omg, the very thought of that!) happening because one Pokemon player (who happens to own half the city) needs game-tips from another player (who happens to own 20 companies).
Seriously. Malaysians are going to be playing Pokemon, then having illicit sex. They’ll be collecting Poke balls, then ramming their cars into senior citizens. They’ll be hoarding Pokemon candies and stardust, then insulting other races. They’ll be fighting in Pokemon gyms, then burning the national flag.
And what about our children?
Pokemon is the next worst thing to Harry Potter which, as we all know, transformed our Barbie— and Ken-loving girls and boys to Satan-worshipping witches and sorcerers overnight. I have never stopped praying for JK Rowling’s soul since the release of her first book — how dare this British woman flood our children’s minds with bulls***-stories of wands, wizardry and weird train stations?!
Can’t people like her tell that our kids have more than enough excitement watching RTM 1 and 2, listening to Friday and Sunday sermons, and basically doing nothing but sit in superbly ventilated walled-up rooms all day listening to highly engaging talks about algebra and Malacca forts? What’s wrong with her trying to mess with our young people’s imagination like that?
And things will be worse with Pokemon. We’ll have our children getting run down by cars because they were chasing demons. Our kids will have bogey-man nightmares about Jurassic gardens with gyrating micro-dinosaurs taunting them with suggestive looks and the temptation of scoring higher than their schoolmates.
Pokemon is legion — ‘We are many’
The people who proposed the fatwa have it right: Pokemon represents religious degradation at its lowest level. If the movie Conjuring was about spiritual violence, Pokemon Go is outright spiritual massacre. It’s genocide, I tell you.
If you need further proof of the diabolical character of the app, I’ll have you know that the word Pokemon comes from the French-Mandarin-Scandinavian word for “legion.” And, as every two-month Christian infant knows, “legion” means a truckload of demons. And just how many Pokemon demons are there to date? Answer: North of 700!
I rest my case. Pokemon is a bona-fide Luciferian conspiracy to debase the world.
First things first. I’m going to lodge a complaint to Nintendo for locating one of the PokeStops at the Bible Society of Malaysia.
The audacity!
What will happen to our precious Bible-reading and church-going members, now that a popular Scripture distributor has become the habitat of dastardly horned brat-demons! Cleanse that place with holy virtual water right now, dammit! This makes the raid by Jais in 2014 look like an inter-faith party!
It is no surprise, therefore, that phenomenon like Pokemon is at the root of all the evils in Malaysian society. The 1MDB scandal, child marriages, nepotism, cronyism, public shootings, racism and even why taxi-drivers attack Uber cars — that’s all because of Pokemon Go.
That’s right. The normal, the non-invasive and the non-irrational are deep characteristics of Malaysian society. It’s always been this way and 2016 is proof that we remain a model-nation for Asean.
May we never risk our unique form of eminence simply because debauched and deformed freaks are flashing their middle-fingers on our smartphones. May the darkest curse of God be on Pokemon.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
