Nurul's watershed idea for the nation

Steve Oh

The Malaysiakini report on Nurul Izzah Anwar's statement that there should be no compulsion in religion even for Malays is a watershed idea for the nation.

This poignant truth surpasses even the remarkable observation made by former Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on the country's "first rate infrastructure and third world mentality."

It shows that Malaysian leaders know what's wrong with their country but do they have the moral courage and political capability to right the wrongs?

I am sure Nurul Izzah and her political coalition will win many votes if she makes her suggestion a key policy in their political manifesto.

It will bring Malaysia in line with contemporary values of human rights because the Malays are still a bonded people, controlled by all sorts of rules and regulations that exempt other Malaysians.

This one-nation two-system method of governance is retrograde and reason why despite all the high-sounding political slogans about 1Malaysia, real unity remains elusive.

Control is a double-edged sword and the government has done harm to the image of Islam because to non-Muslims the double standards it practises in propagating Islam while restricting other religions, shows Muslims as weak in their beliefs and need cocooning from the world.

The Malay mind thus becomes like a licensed mind because the government and its religious authorities decide what they can and cannot believe and do.

For example, they cannot marry a non-Muslim without having their intended spouse convert to Islam. Such a practice is not seen in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country.

We have also seen Lina Joy, a Malay who had converted to Christianity, unable to have her conversion recognised. I know of others in similar circumstances who have faced persecution and Operation Lallang in 1987 saw several Malays unfairly jailed and beaten while in custody.

The politicians are not concerned about the welfare of the Malays or Islam but their political control over the Malays so that they can keep them as a fixed deposit.

With political control, the corrupt politicians are then able to plunder the nation and prove they are the real enemies of Islam, and fortunately more Malays are seeing the truth.

You only need to meet a Singaporean Malay to observe how myopic Malaysian Malays appear in comparison.

It seems pointless to send Malays on government scholarships to obtain PhDs in various fields when the Malay mind is still like the proverbial frog's under a tempurung (coconut shell).

Thus such a Malay mind is a closeted mind and this is often reflected in the sorts of ridiculous ideas we often hear or read about in the media when those sorts of leaders open their mouths and give us a peek into their minds.

Did not one even ludicrously suggest to vote for the DAP is a sin?

Sometime in the early 80s, I wrote a letter with a similar view as Nurul Izzah's that was published in the New Straits Times.

I opined that the Malays have a right to be exposed to various ideas including different religions and I still believe that when the Malay mind is liberated from government control, then the country may soon see the enlightenment that Anwar Ibrahim wrote about in his book 'The Asian Renaissance'.

Malays are not inferior to the Chinese or anyone but after 55 years of feudalistic control by their political overlords, the system of political largesse has resulted in a government-sanctioned policy of treating Malays as inferior and needing special treatment and the government continues to labour this perception.

States that practise religious or ideological control over citizens are like the communists that dictated what the people should believe. They failed miserably and their capitalism today can only succeed when the human spirit is free to soar.

We are told Malay graduates fare poorly in the queue for jobs in the private sector and the finger can be pointed at the government's failed policy of racial segregation and producing what the employers consider an inferior product.

Until meritocracy is practised the Malays will continue to suffer a bad image.

When we were in school the Malays in our class were always among the top students and ours was a top school in the country. But because of the government's subsequent policy of racial discrimination, sadly our alma mater has lost its former glory.

Today religion and ideology-repressed states are failed states and even China, the remaining major bastion of communism, no longer practises thought control and freedom of faith is upheld albeit religious persecution still happens within certain places.

Malaysians have seen that rapid Islamisation and religious zeal by the authorities have not produced a society that reflects the high moral values that Islam and all religions advocate.

Instead in Malaysia we see Muslims act against the teachings of their religion and even so-called religious leaders have allowed themselves to be used as political tools in a political agenda at the expense of Islam.

Is that not why corruption is rife and many Muslims are culpable of all sorts of crimes even the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu, linked to the incumbent political leadership?

The religion of force has not produced true believers and no matter what the religion, it becomes diluted and delusional when its adherents become nominal and have to play hypocrite to avoid persecution.

Even the enigmatic Dr Mahathir Mohamad had to concede that his Muslim brothers and sisters conform more to form than substance but his half-truths overlook that it was due to his Islamisation and failure to right the wrongs after 22 long years in the driver's seat, that is largely to blame.

If anything is deficient in the Malay mind blame it on a government that has fed the disease, not cure it.

Not long ago a Malay friend of mine died and was buried a Muslim though I know he had since stopped being a Muslim and was a strong follower of a strange foreign cult and he had not been tacit about his real beliefs and even tried to convert me.

Is it so difficult for those who claim they believe in the true religion to accept the hard truth? Is form more important than substance and face-saving more important than honouring the truth?

Pseudo-believers can be found in any religion and that is why no religion that takes its own teachings seriously advocates coercion though all religions have spread through proselytisation.

When religionists confuse submission with subscription they lose the plot. Forcing someone to submit to something is different from seeing someone subscribe to something out of willingness and conviction.

It results in the sort of silly actions by teachers who whip students for not obeying their enforced Islamic zeal in schools.

The forcing of non-Muslims to convert to Islam when they marry Muslims only creates a class of nominal Muslims.

The same can be said of forcing those who are born into Muslim families to be Muslims. Malays therefore are like 'religious slaves' if I may use the analogy.

They are born into religious and ideological bondage. They are often fed lies about other religions. Reading what some of their books describe of subjects that I know intimately is like reading horror fiction.

So when I hear enlightened Muslims like Nurul Izzah talk sense, I feel there is hope for the truth to be vindicated.

Anyone who is not free to think for himself or herself and has the freedom to adopt the religion of personal conscience and conviction is still a slave in reality. For this reason, religion becomes a farce.

Can anyone afford to entrust his or her eternal future to any political party?

It is reason why those Muslims who go to mosque every Friday and pray five times a day and fast at Ramadan still think it is okay to accept bribes in their jobs because it has been the practice for so long.

They are no different from the prostitute who has a shrine of Kuan Yin in her room while engaged in a sinful business.

The same hypocrisy can also be found among the practitioners of other religions because nominalism and hypocrisy go hand in hand and produce spiritual blindness and intellectual darkness.

Is that not why we find so many Muslims in high office guilty of corruption and sexual misconduct, not unlike those who do not believe in God or consider themselves religious?

At least the latter unlike the former are acting out their beliefs and can't be called hypocrites. Sometimes I respect the atheist more than the religious hypocrite. Nevertheless, God tells us the fool believes there is no God.

The liberation of the Malay mind will not only enhance the quality of Muslim faith but also enrich the Malay race as a people and community.

The government has been hypocritical in preaching about diversity but practising a system of racial and religious discrimination.

Add to it a policy of keeping the Malays in religious bondage and you have the ingredients for an incendiary society that can be ignited by the political conspirators as we saw in May 13, 1969.

Only this time we have bright and enlightened Malays who prevent history repeating itself.

I don't see the Chinese hung up about their religious and political diversity. The fact a Malay is defined as a follower of Islam defies logic, natural justice, and the fact race is not synonymous with religion. So were the pre-Muslim Hindu Malays not real Malays?

The doctrine of Ketuanan Melayu is really a misguided idea of nationalism, a subversion against nationhood, a political ploy and an idea bound to fail because it has no moral authority in contemporary society.

You cannot believe that European colonialism is morally repugnant when you replace it with your own local variety.

Fifty-five years of political feudalism as we have seen in Malaysia is enough for Malaysians to realise until they discard the status quo, they will never see radical change and remarkable progress as we see in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

Even Indonesia is outpacing Malaysia in its democratisation and economic progress.

The sooner the political cocoon is discarded the quicker we will see the Malay emerge as a beautiful butterfly instead of remaining in the suspended stranglehold of political ugliness.

There are many emancipated Malay minds and the hope of the Malays lies in their intellectual leadership, not those who exploit race and religion to advance their own perverted, selfish and greedy interests and still speak the language of deceit.

It is time Malaysians reject the idea that the government is the licensing board for intellectual freedom.

The Malays have to emancipate themselves and it is young leaders like Nurul Izzah who offer hope for them.

The archaic ideas and ways of the old political guard that has controlled the country for so long, is out of sync with the times and aspirations of contemporary Malaysians.

It is the corrupting ways of the old guard that is why Malaysia is unable to make real progress and falling further behind Singapore, because while Malaysia protects its corrupt police and politicians, Singapore prosecutes them, and they don't even have to factor in religion to act righteously.

We only need to look across the Causeway to realise that an honest and sincere respect for others is the way to build a successful nation.

It gave me great joy to listen to the public announcement in Tamil as I alighted from a train in Singapore's MRT station.

Singapore has no hang-ups about its colonial past or that promoting Malay, Tamil, English and even Japanese is less nationalistic among its majority Chinese leaders.

What is wrong with Malaysia begins in the Malay mindset because they control the government and its machinery.

It has affected even non-Malay minds of certain MCA and MIC leaders who have sold out their own people for the same reasons the Malay leaders have sold out theirs.

Watching them shadow box with their Umno comrades while their constituencies continue to suffer serious injustices gives credence to the notion of the Ugly Chinaman and the Ugly Indiaman.

They need to prove to the majority race that they can be relied on to put their own people in their place as long as they are recipients of political largesse.

Nurul Izzah offers hope for the nation because she thinks like a Malaysian and a Muslim coming to terms with the reality that God is not just the God of the Malays but everyone and that faith is not about clobbering others and cocooning oneself in ignorance and bigotry but engaging those who differ from us.

I have just spent more than two weeks in Taiwan and though this country has been colonised by various nations, it has no chip on its shoulder and is not xenophobic.

Its tourism slogan is ‘Taiwan the Heart of Asia' and I soon found out why, because its people are generous.

Malaysia claims it is Truly Asia but is it really?

How is it truly Asia? Or is it just another slick slogan? How Asian are you when you compel others to speak like you, dress like you and believe like you?

Fortunately it is the people themselves, the ordinary Malaysians who reflect the virtues of the country and its appeal to foreigners as a friendly and hospitable place.

The victims of this ugly political bigotry are the Malays themselves who in my purview are among the nicest people anywhere.

The same can't be said of some of their lying and conniving political leaders and that is why Nurul Izzah is a leader of the times and the future despite her youth.

Pak Lah hit the nail on the head with his 'first world infrastructure, third world mentality' comment and it is my hope that younger politicians like Nurul Izzah will be able to liberate the Malay mindset from its bondage to the political and religious status quo.

What Pak Lah could only diagnose, perhaps Nurul Izzah, her mom and dad in politics, and others who love their country will be able to cure.

The hope of Malaysians is in the hope that a new government will cure the sickness that sees the country bedevilled by the devils they know and want no more of.

There is a brave new world waiting for Malaysians but it is not in hanging on to the past and the present political leaders whose performance despite the fresh slogans, are banal at best, and who have yet to learn that slogans, spin and lies do not make a nation, least of all a great one.

If Malaysians want change they have to work hard for change and if a report that more than 20 percent of Malaysians are still not registered to vote, it is yet another challenge the opposition face to rouse them to act because every vote counts when the system is against you.

Senseless rage over anti-Islam film

Islamic Renaissance Front

The Islamic Renaissance Front views the recent murders and uproar over the film “Innocence of Muslims” with much sadness and bafflement.
All available facts suggest that “Innocence of Muslims” is not even a film. What is currently known about it was available in the widely circulated YouTube clip which ran for a total of some 13-odd minutes. What is worse, most critics are in agreement on the film’s utterly poor quality — cheap sets, mediocre actors, bad voice-overs and incomprehensible narrative — all of which explains why no one had even heard of the so-called film until Muslims decided to make a fuss about it.
Indeed, the added tragedy is not so much that the film is Islamophobic, which it clearly is, but that the unnecessary attention given to it by angry Muslims, eventually gave the film far more publicity than it deserves.
Why?
The question is why. What is behind the apparent trend of Muslim hypersensitivity? For the protests is just one occurrence out of countless others before, whereby masses of Muslims occupy public space to pressure some form of censure, punishment or banning of some product for insulting Islam. Rather than to reflect, negotiate or dialogue the tenor has often been to confront and suppress.
The most well-known case to date was the furore over Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses”. More recently there were the Danish cartoons. Even the rather well produced “The Message”, directed by Moustafa Akkad in 1976 with Anthony Quinn as the main actor, which did not portray the Prophet at all was deemed by many Muslims to be offensive. A Muslim group staged a siege against the Washington DC chapter of B’nai B’rith, threatening to blow up the building and its inhabitants under the false belief that Quinn portrayed the Prophet.
We now witnessed the needless deaths of dozens of innocent civilians as a result of violent protests that only reinforced the distorted image of Islam as a religion of violence and intolerance. It portrays the vicious face of a religion that was supposed to be a religion of peace and compassion.
The West? 
When one observes the discourse closely, one will find that what underlies the narrative is a sense of defeat and insecurity upon being overwhelmed by what is often broadly termed as “the West”. This sentiment is an obvious continuation of an earlier resentment against Western colonialism, which almost all Muslim-majority countries today experienced in one form or another. Daily life in the age of globalisation too has seen an increase of presence by Western products as well as political and cultural values. Geopolitically, the presence of Western military forces in Muslim countries is all too apparent and overwhelming.
All this has somehow been viewed by Muslims as a sign that Islam is left behind, in one way or another, as a civilisation. That in turn further reinforces the anxiety of powerlessness before fearful imaginations of a monolithic behemoth called “the West”. From there, everything Islamic is juxtaposed against it, giving rise to a mood of scepticism against anything and everything that comes from the so-called “West”.
Towards openness and dialogue
But the situation is not that simple. While there has been much decline in science and learning in the Muslim world, which is undeniably tied to a history of colonial exploitation, Muslims must learn to take responsibility for the course of their own progress. Thus, rather than to recoil in defensiveness against everything Western or offensive, there must be instead, an attitude of critical reflection and openness to ideas.
Progress requires freedom, for no genuine learning can proceed when power is imposed from without on what can be said and heard. To embrace this is not to embrace or justify Islamophobic or racist sentiments. It is rather to affirm that racist or Islamophobic sentiments are best dealt with through dialogue, learning and empathy rather than brute force or coercion.
Hate must be combated. Oppression must end. But Muslims will only fail themselves if they proceed in a stupor of insecurity and anger.
Islam is a religion of patience and compassion 
There is nothing in Islam that says hate must be combated with more hate. Recall, when the Prophet Muhammad was just beginning his mission, a woman placed faeces at his door in hatred of Islam. Muhammad endured the humiliation peacefully, neither choosing to retaliate in anger or violence, to exemplify that ethos of calm and compassion that defined the eventual success of Islam in Mecca.
Conservative Muslims tend to regard such instances as inevitable given that Muslims did not get in power until Medina, but they forget the historical fact that it was Muhammad’s exemplary character as a clear-headed leader in Mecca that compelled the Medinans to turn to him as an arbiter and leader for their fragmented city in the first place.
Calm and compassion needed in Malaysia too
Yesterday, thousands gathered outside Masjid Jamek Kampung Baru and the US Embassy to protest the “Innocence of Muslims”. Interestingly this saw members of the Islamist party (PAS) and the main ruling Malay party (Umno) marching for a similar cause for once, even prompting the Umno Youth chief to invite PAS to join the ruling coalition.
It is too early to say if this will lead to anything but it does reveal again an age-old fact about Malay politics, namely in how the vagueness of “Malay and Muslim unity” is used as a pretext to overlook other more concerned issues, such as socio-economic justice and multiracial solidarity. Emotions and passions reign ahead of clear-headed rationale and human values.
The Islamic Renaissance Front once again calls for all Muslims to focus on the central agenda of Islam and that is the end of oppression and the establishment of a just society whereby all citizens irrespective of race and creed are treated equally. Enough lives, time and effort have been wasted over this film. It is time to move on and wake up.
* This Islamic Renaissance Front statement carries the names of Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa, Ahmad Fuad Rahmad, Fadiah Nadwa Fikri, Rizqi Mukhriz and Ehsan Shahwahid.

Mahathir’s perverted logic: good material in,garbage out.

By: Sakmongkol AK 47

Dr Mahathir is living in fear nowadays. He has to forsake his restful days to help out UMNO. Which means that Najib is incapable of leading UMNO. That can only be the most rational deduction.

He is now the torch bearer for UMNO. UMNO must be rational he says and he says that while cavorting with the most irrational UMNO surrogate, Ibrahim Ali and Perkasa. UMNO members must now support Ibrahim Ali if UMNO leaders choose Ibrahim as candidate in GE13. UMNO members must be rational to accept a most irrational Malay candidate. That’s the inverse logic of Mahathir. Good material in, garbage put. We know Dr Mahathir- he does the opposite of what he says.

Mahathir is urging Malays to stand on their heads. Not good, too much blood rushing to the brain. Malays must now stand upright naturally. Rejecting UMNO and its ways, is the rational behavior. Supporting UMNO goes against the rational.

UMNO can get 2/3 majority if its members do not sabotage candidates chosen by the leadership. He is just confirming that despite having 3.2 million members, it hasn’t got leadership talent. Hence his UMNO is full of half past six leaders. He is saying that in advance because he knows that Najib will field many non-UMNO members as candidates in the next election. We wish him and Najib good luck. After leading UMNO and its successor party for so long, both don’t seem to understand the UMNO Malay mind.

I am beginning to think that what Daim once told me will become true. Come nomination day, UMNO is 70% fit to do battle. Come election date, it has lost 30% of the seats.

Mahathir’s motives behind his overarching and at times forceful articulation on behalf of UMNO are irrelevant to us. Malaysians must remind him that in 2004, Pak Lah got the biggest mandate in history with courtesy from Mahathir. People gave Pak Lah the biggest mandate, because they were celebrating the exit of Mahathir. It wasn’t because of Pak Lah who in 2008 then led UMNO/BN to its most disastrous outing. Let us now do a second celebration to give Najib and UMNO its most crushing defeat.

He faces the grim prospects of seeing his UMNO dispatched in the coming general elections. For 22 years, UMNO and he became one. So at stake is actually his legacy.

I will not dispute the opinion of many that Mahathir is the best PM we have ever had. Perhaps people are mesmerized by his vision of a grandiose Malaysia. He was swilling to back up his vision by embarking on the grandest of physical developments. During his term of office, Malaysians marveled at Putrajaya, Daya Bumi, PETRONAS Twin towers, KLIA and many other monumental developments. Malaysia was flooded with first world facilities unrivalled by many countries in south East Asia. In the Muslim world, Mahathir was hailed a hero especially by the despotic rulers in many Arab speaking world.

From Mahathir they have learnt one object lesson-people can be deceived an comforted into submission by giving them illusions of greatness.

Given those physical achievements how do we rate Mahathir? Since this is a season of idioms and allegories, I would to share with readers a story.

It’s about a rich and powerful person. Let us call him Dr X.  While endowed in those areas, Dr X is a sickly person. Not a single month passes without him contacting and developing some debilitating illnesses. He has gone to the best hospitals and private clinics but to no avail. So he made a covenant with Allah, that if during 3 months, he is free from any illness, he will bestow a gift of a dwelling or its equivalent to orphans. A promise to Allah is a solemn one and our subject in this story knows that.

After the vow and promise, Dr X was free from all form of sickness and illness. Still to reinforce his belief that this has indeed been a miracle from God, he extended the trial period to another month. Even after varying the original covenant, the Dr X did not contact any illness.

He is now convinced that this was indeed a benediction from God. So he now must honor his part of the covenant.

So he started an advertisement to offer one of his palatial properties in the city. He offers for sale a property worth RM30 million with enough rooms and compound to potentially house an orphanage. He offers to sell the property for the sum of RM500, 000. With the provision that whoever buys the property at RM 500,000 must also buy an old cabinet inside the house for RM29.5 million. Therefore there were actually 2 items for sale. The house and the old cabinet. He found one serious willing buyer who duly signed the necessary papers buying the house and the cabinet.

In his own ways, Dr X is a sufficiently religious person.  He hasn’t forgotten his covenant with God. He takes RM500, 000 and hands over the money to the trustees of an orphanage entrusting them to use the money to build an orphanage. Dr X has therefore fulfilled his promise to God. Having done that, he still makes RM 29.5 million.

It’s true – Mahathir has given so many things that Malaysians can be proud of. The value of all those is RM500, 000. Mahathir has taken RM29.5 million.

DR Mahathir is busy nowadays giving MPs and ADUNs from the various states pep talks. Presumably he has been telling the UMNO legislators the same advise. Be rational. But he must not forget- every UMNO legislative member who attended the meetings with Mahathir at the Perdana Foundation, think and believe that they are as winnable as Najib and Muhyidin are.