memories of joe-blogs

“when the people fear the government, that is tyranny. when the government fears the people, that is democracy.”
(quote from one of joe-blog‘s post)

on this day, exactly a year ago, i.e. 18 oct. 2003, the malaysian blogosphere reeled into shock when they learned of the passing away of a great fellow blogger, johan ismail of joe-blogs. it was so sudden that many of us were totally shocked. on 17 oct. 2003 early morning, he was still blogging (on the OIC subject). on 18 oct. 2003 morning, when i was online and, as usual, went to jeff ooi‘s blog, i was suddenly greeted by this shocking news. i had blog about it here on the day itself and here a week later after that fateful day. and you can read about it in jeff’s blog here and here, too where you’ll see so many comments from readers who had so much good words about joe.

i will always remember joe (as he was fondly known as) because for one thing, it was him (and jeff) that influence me to start a blog. and the other reason is i had never came across such an open minded, level headed, witty, interesting, muslim friend such as him. no, i’m not exaggerating. you will agree with me if you had read all his writings in his blog… and the comments/respond to comments he made. (i have the link to his blog on the right column.)

for example one of his latest post, entitiled ‘fear factor‘, he was rather pissed off when on TV, a part showing some people eating the ‘inside’ of a pig was censored off. many muslims would have agree on the censoring since they consider the pig as ‘haram’, but not joe, who had an open mind on this issue.

i also love one of his post entittled ‘my religion’, which was actually a respond to one commentator (a muslim) in his blog, who wrote “don’t play with my religion” when he was rather disturbed at joe talking about some topic regarding women and PAS.

oh and how can i forget the pictures joe had put up in his blog. (the pictures are all now gone from his blog). i remember the ‘doing the haka dance’ picture of man wearing the haka costume with something that shouldn’t be shown, shown! then there was this picture of a female MP in taiwan, fighthing with her colleagues in the parliament proceedings, so much so her blouse was ripped off and her left breast exposed! really!

i guess many of you ‘old’ (as oppose to new ok, not young!) bloggers would have remember joe’s famous exposure of suppandi from mediface (together with jeff and dinesh too). i did not exactly followed closely this mediface episode, but i know that in exposing suppandi, joe face lots of danger and even threats, but still he pesevere and continue to speak up. yes, he was very out-spoken and will touch on any subjects he felt he had a duty to speak up. once, a reader was rather aghast at his out-spokennes on govt. issues and said that “preferably some of your more controversial opinions on the govt should not be expressed”. it was then he came up with this excellent post entittled ‘culture of fear’. the quote you see right in the beginning was taken from ‘culture of fear’. he wanted us to speak up without fear when we know we are in the right, because that is democracy.

joe was indeed a talented young man who knows how to use his gift of writing . i missed his writings terribly. although i had never met the man face to face, but i felt i knew him well through his blog and personal emails. joe may be gone but memories of his writings will live on in me forever.

UPDATED: lone had also blog on this subject, click on ‘jogback’ to read. another blogger, maine, too remember him. maine had a newspaper article of the late joe’s, including a picture of him. click here.
UPDATED in oct. 2005: some links above are not working as joe’s posts had been removed. but you can go to joeblog gems to read on the posts ‘my religion’ and ‘culture of fear’.