Maria Hertogh aka Nadra bt Maarof: non-Muslim -> Muslim, and -> non-Muslim. A recipe for religious riots
A young non-Muslim baby girl is raised by a Muslim family and converted to Islam as a minor and renamed Nadra. When she is 13, her birth parents goes to court to get her back. The custody fight and the subsequent judgement in favour of her natural parents (read: non-Muslim parents) leads to racial and religious riots that kill 18 and injure 200.
Does that sound like yet another Malaysian religious conflict tugging at the coat-tails of Moorthy, Lina Joy, Subashini et al?
Well, it isn't. This happened almost 60 years ago in 1950s Malaya.
But the scenario does sound familiar these days, doesn't it? It really saddens me that we have not closed the racial and religious gap, despite going through thick and thin together all these years.
Anyway, a film is being made of Nadra's story. It'll certainly be interesting viewing... watching the past mimic the present.
Kind of like 'Back to the Future'.
3 comments:
I really hope that they tell the story right from the beginning when Che Aminah start to teach in Japan and that Maria Hertogh parents were of Indonesian and Scottish heritage and it started in Indonesia. What the family have gone thru during the Japanese occupation and how Maria Huberdina Hertogh was given away. The characters such as Mansoor, Karim Ghani, Arthur Locke and those who are involved are told truthfully and not as bias on one side as in some papers during that time. The events that have gone in the region of Southeast Asia to Europe... in which the coment of Asians being known as jungle people and not modern enough.... The reason why Maria Hertogh was asked to marry Mansoor at an age which is not legal and the reason why Maria Hertogh was not considered adopted even thou there are papers witness by Maria Hertogh family members due to Dutch Laws. During the time in which Indonesia was under dutch occupation. How her father was capture by the Japanese and was thought dead. How her family suffered and how Che Aminah had help them and gain permission to care for Maria Hertogh Aka Nadra. The violence in Singapore due to the verdict by the courts that the family have attended. How they travel from one country to the other, the press of different languages supporting different parties that had cause lots of misunderstanding between the truth and the fiction. The interviews of people involve and witness the event should also be included as these shows what can happen if stories were told as they were not suppose to be told. The death of Europeans and Asians trying to protect each others are to be told to show that there are those who care and understand what actually happen and innocent people are to be protected and not involved. Let it be told how many people have died and suffered due to misunderstanding and bias against each other. How reporters write the news and how people read it and translate it unproperly to other who do not know how to read and write. It is sad to know what Maria Huberdina Hertogh had gone thru at that age just to be with her love one. Imagine how many children had to suffer the same fate and to be with the wrong family or guardian. Imagine the suffering due to misunderstanding. Imagine how laws play a very big role in terms of custody. Imagine Nadra...................
is that woman in the newspaper article Maria Hertogh? the one in the black sleeveless....
All that wrangling for Bertha's or Natrah's body and soul. Well, what did she gain after she was taken back by her family? From what I gather, she told somebody she only tasted happiness during her childhood. If it was so beneficial for her to be back with her biological parents, the aftermath of that reunion spoke otherwise. Chik Aminah died a broken woman, chain-smoking to ease her pain of being separated from her Puteh, her nickname for Bertha. Bertha was spotted walking, perpetually frowning in town and not speaking to her mother so that it prompted a Dutch newspaper to ask whether they had done the right thing in forcing Bertha back to the Dutch side,Bertha attempting to murder her husband, her children's history of accidental/ negligent falls, Bertha asking, like Marilyn Monroe, "There is no God, is there? There is no heaven or hell, is there?", for being raised as a Muslim, she believed she is living in sin.How Bertha cried when she saw the opulence of her former Malay husband's life compared to the dingy one she had with her Dutch husband. Ooh people, what misery you heaped on poor Bertha alias Natrah till her last dying days, when she simply filled her time with work from dawn till dusk. May God have Mercy on her soul, may she have found her true religion before her death.
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