Getting a Mocking Bird to Raid a Church

Silence in Islamic capture is required behavior. It is the insistence of subjugation,a clean surrender to the power vested by religious belief inside a primitive appetite of the mighty religious jurists in a state that is conceived as legally co-extensive with the whole of human life.

Islamic law rules even what you eat, the manner you eat, how you transact and where you turn in prayer.

When officers of the Selangor religious department raided the Methodist Church in Damansara Utama in the night of Wednesday August 3 where a charity thanksgiving dinner was being held, the primitivism was recalled making the raid an act to protect the religion and to stop Christians from proselytizing the Muslims.

Twelve was the number of Muslims attending the dinner. Probably all were members or associates of the NGO, Harapan Komuniti, which, we are told, had organized the dinner to collect funds to help AIDS victims.

The Harapan Kommuniti is a partner of the Malaysian AIDS Council.

In the distresses that followed the nocturnal action of the religious authority the people were once again dismayed while Muslims, even leaders of the Islamic party, Pas, were divided once more, a patent reaction that has repeated itself over and over again like in a pavlovian experiment.

Islam is holistic according to this line of thought and the Islamic State, said the great Pakistani scholar and founder of the Jemaat-i- Islami, Mawlana Maududi, is coextensive with all of life.

Hence, the rulers of Islam must, as of a necessity, become authoritarian and therefore, making it difficult for the people to draw the line between good and bad laws.

Had Maududi lived he would have to explain the social breakdown in his country which is torn to shreds by sectarian conflicts between Muslims.

The Muslims, in the evolution of the Islamic State for which Pakistan was born, are crapped by the diversification of the monotheistic religion as it evolved into becoming a mass of conflicting sects to make cohesion, coherence and comprehensibility nearly an empirical impossibility.

The Islamic State is ‘the very antithesis of secular western democracy’, someone remarked.

The State is assigned to administer the Divine Law and therefore no Non-Muslim can be parked into policy-making, nor can Non-Muslims proselytize, and as Dhimmis they must pay the capitation tax (Jizya) and be confined to a class of non-citizen residents who have no vote.


Decolonization

It could have been worth something as a decolonization strategy like in the ideological conceptions of Jean Paul Sartre and Franz Fannon when Western colonization was receding after World War II.

But the great minds of the Existentialists had obviously failed to address the emotions involved in religion the fact Fannon was a psychiatrist notwithstanding.

The Islamic resurgence that had begun in the 60s went several ways but as we have witnessed, the most successful had come from the city of Qom, the seat of fundamental Shi’ah Islam which provided us with the foundational approaches of Imam Khomenie upon whose understanding of Islam Iran now stands.

In the early days of the religion there was Ali, the Prophet’s cousin, son-in-law and the last republican caliph.

His attempt to steer Islam into a universal humanistic religion and to regard all his subjects as ‘brothers in faith and brothers in kind’ was overtaken by the Umayyad dynasty which imposed discrimination including over non-Arab Muslim subjects (here).

The ideal religion had been overrun by the Arabs themselves.

Islamic history took a turn that led into a bewildering mix of glorious conquests, of stupendous civilizations which flowed along tracks of copious literary and scientific achievements, but with legal and judicial confusions.

Now Muslims react to American, European and Zionist hegemony with suicidal terror to stand a chance in the asymmetrical wars. The Americans hardly accept Obama's reforms, which are good, like the healthcare insurance. Obama promised an independent Palestinian state and that too would be disagreeable to them.

Panic seemed to have been struck in the government of Malaysia to cause it to pass a series of constitutional amendments pertaining to Islam in both, the federal and state constitutions. This began in 1988.

These laws gave wide and sinister powers to the Muslim authorities.

They denied the rights of citizens to apply to the civil courts in prayers for civil and constitutional justice.

The bunch of enactments passed in 1988, I had been told, were suggested by the “dangerous” passages former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, had installed in his political networks which involved several NGOs in Indonesia, America and Europe.

It included the think-tank of the German Christian Democratic Union - the Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung (KAS).

Anwar’s think-tank, Institut Kajian Dasar (Institute for Policy Research) was funded by KAS, which was the same body to later fund the Malaysian Inter-Faith Network (MIN) which became quickly viewed as anti-Islam.

The bases for the blanket security options had been sown from before the 1987 leadership crisis Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir, had had to face.

In 1988 the tussle in Umno had brought the backbone of the ruling coalition to fall dead on the bench of Justice Harun Hashim.

Mahathir won in 1987 by the wisp of his whiskers he failed to shave. He won by 43 votes. The challenger was Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

Following the fateful contest 10 of Razaleigh’s sympathizers filed complaints in court to declare the contest null and void.

The reason was about some illegal party branches.

That caused the judge to conclude some of the delegates who voted were illegal while at the same time some of the party divisions had also been illegal.

In his mind it had to roll into an avalanche that swept and buried the party as a whole – a kind of roller-coaster legal effect that should be written in the annals of Law in orange, to make it neither this nor that.

Anwar had risen from Umno Youth chief to Umno Vice-President in the 1987 party elections.

Meantime he had become close to B.J. Habibie of Indonesia and thence to Paul Wolfowitz, the American Neo-Cons leader who became one of the architects of the Iraq War.

In 1985 Wolfowitz was US ambassador to Indonesia.

Thus developed Anwar’s power-romances, which became known in Umno as “Super-Politics”, suggesting the network Anwar knitted through the Institut Kajian Dasar (IKD), his Muslim Youth Movement (ABIM), the Asia-Pacific chapter of the World Assembly of Muslim Youths (WAMY), the ABIM frontline in the Pas and ICMI, Habibie’s Muslim intellectuals outfit in Indonesia, had grown into an intercontinental giant.

Putting into focus the Christian think-tank, KAS, and adding to it the spread of Paul Wolfowitz’s connections to the already big-bodied Anwar, it would be rather easy to imagine the nervousness seizing the mighty Mahathir, the ruler of all he sat on.

Mahathir, with his sidekick from Kedah, Abdul Hamid Othman, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department presiding over JAKIM (the Islamic affairs wing of the department)swung into action with the bunch of “Islamic laws” of 1988.

These took most people by surprise and in the surprise many observers cautioned against using legislations to curtail one or another political rival.

Like the Emergency Ordinances (EO) which were passed to contain the Communist Insurrection of 1948, these laws fail to fall into disuse after the challenge had passed.

The EO was applied twice in the past months. The Islamic laws were used several more times than twice in the same measure of time.

It had even threatened the former Mufti of Perlis, Dr. Asri and his successor, Dr. Juanda. Dr. Asri was reported as a "terrorist" to the National Security Council while Dr. Juanda was called a "Wahabi". It was senseless, making Islam a mockery.

Dr. Asri had vied for the top post in Jakim. It's about a contest for resources.

There is disquiet as a result. People regard these actions as signaling a strong possibility that it is exactly what the government wants to do – i.e. apply emergency rule and the “Islamic laws” to sustain the Barisan Nasional (BN) in power against popular distastes.


Anwar


Anwar is back in the dock.

He is on a repeat performance of a sodomy charge and also a repeat performance in bed, i.e. of someone that looks like him and a Chinese doll, said to have been shown in 1999, which can make it a classic.

Will there be changes made to the relevant Islamic enactments if he were to be found guilty and removed (for the last time possibly) from posing a political challenge?

Anwar is only a political rival, not a Christian crusader in disguise or a Jew merchant from Venice.

He must have learned from his days in WAMY, which was based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the 22 Arab countries have to consult the US and the Europeans before they can decisively act in any significant matter of statecraft or diplomacy.

Europe lies merely across the Mediterranean from these states. The distance makes for fondness. Si, si!

There lies a critical difference in the political understandings and the political outlooks between Anwar and the remaining power contestants in Umno.

Razaleigh did not approve of using the Islamic enactments to act as political constraints to contain the Anwarites and the Pas.

But Razaleigh was already out of Umno in 1988.

Nothing stood in the way of the design.

Members of the BN in the legislatures voted for the enactments, like loyal disciples. So now we have to live with them.

New legislations were added to the basic body from time to time.

The passage cleared, the way power moves when the citizens cannot effectively protect themselves from government has always been to add claws and fangs to the simian.

We must listen to Maulana Maududi again and again. He wrote to say in an Islamic State no behavior can be regarded as personal and private.

The Tanzimat (Reform)

The Ottoman, which was the largest Muslim empire and lasting until 1925, came to confront industrial Europe that stumped its westward expansion after Budapest.

Admitting it was no match to the order and the power of the new industrial civilizations, the Ottoman, from 1835 to 1873, had conceived westernization and attempted serially to change its laws and legal system, reform its judiciary and its political system, following the French and German models.

The ulama rejected it.

That movement, known as Tanzimat (Reform), caught the interest of the sultan of Johor, Tunku Ibrahim Iskandar, who considered it in 1927. It would have made Malaysia a secular federation.

But it fizzled out. And so the story refuses to end.

In its stead on Aug. 3, 2011, a thanksgiving dinner held by an NGO administering to AIDS victims was raided on the suspicion the Christians were proselytizing.

The dinner was held in a Methodist church and it involved 12 Muslims in the gathering of more than 100.

What will happen to the 12?

How do unintelligible laws become useful in honoring a modern industrial nation….? Salaam! ----a.ghani ismail, 10, Aug. 2011

The Launch of Tengku Li's Amanah

Whether it's a bygone quest or it’s the last straw, the Amanah (Trust), an NGO forged over months of painstaking study for the best bulk of the popular protest in the killing of the mocking bird, is looking good.

It was five minutes late in the launching by the noble man, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, on July 22. It was a Friday, a day of prayers for Muslims and a day of hope for all Malaysian brothers and sisters.

The Angkatan Amanah Merdeka launching left us gaping with the question about what it will be when it’s time for the good wolves to huff and to puff to bring the whole corrupt house down.

It’s not anymore an existential question, like it had been with Hamlet asking his conscience ‘To be or not to be?’ as he walked down the endless steps of becoming.

The question having been answered by Tengku Li and his associates now begs for a clear remark about whether or not Ku Li, as he is better known, will one day take the Amanah out of the Barisan Nasional (BN) and surface it as a yellow submarine into the frontline of the Pakatan.

It is possible that the Amanah would be required to helm the Pakatan if Anwar Ibrahim ends up in jail again.

Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, is biting his finger nail in deciding when he will dissolve parliament. Some in the BN may be thinking of avoiding the general elections by calling an Emergency.

Umno and the BN is being battered everyday. They are almost sunk after destroying as many cherished institutions as can be counted without tears.

Said a former minister at the launching of Amanah, the government is misgoverning the economy into a mess of super-costly projects, high and still rising prices of food, of housing and of essential items.

It’s a cipher for certain regime change.

Following the daring showdown of right against might in the Bersih 2.0 through the streets of Kuala Lumpur on July 9, the BN can hardly be expected to let the cross-party new organization Ku Li is leading to exist.

It can be counted to pull out the required number of votes and force through a regime change.

That nearly happened in the 8 March 2008 general elections.

The Opposition had taken 51 percent of the total votes but fell short in the count for a majority in Parliament.

Of state governments the Pakatan took five but quickly lost Perak in a blur of sexual trysts and a case of poor leadership which together counted as a very high price to pay for moral misconduct and general inexperience.

The Amanah at the top is sexually safe and secure as a sum of leaders who have mostly been clobbered into good shape and others as social idealists of note like Tan Sri Simon Sipaun, 70, who had risen from a wasting village and taken by the Lord into Oxford University and became State Secretary of Sabah. Then he became the No. 2of SUHAKAM, the Human Rights Commission.

There’s Daniel Tajem, in-out-in of SNAP in Sarawak, who’s still living in a village among the people he represents politically and as a lawyer.

Former MCA president, the inspiring Ong Tee Keat, obviously towers as a man of conscience. He too is a beacon, like Razaleigh.

Given the ready pool of the morally injured among the people, it’s hard to miss a win with the group of leaders of the Amanah – a line-up of moral and ethical beacons that can, with freedom of speech, expression and assembly, light a path to the freedom from corruption, from collusion and from cronyism.

Other than former Minister, Tan Sri Kadir Sheikh Fadzir, 72 (one of his brothers had risen to the helm of the Umno Youth), there are Dato Subramaniam, formerly MIC deputy president and Ragunath Kesavan, former Bar Council president, with Bujang Ulis, Dr. Patau Rubis, Wilfred Bumburing and even a guy who has climbed Mt. Kinabalu more than 50 times, making the group into Pegasus, the constellation the ancients identified as the messenger or postmaster of the gods.

Therefore the powers will want Amanah blacked out.

Tengku Li said in his speech, “This morning can just be another interesting social event in the Malaysian landscape or it could be the start of something unprecedented that it could alter the course of our country’s future and direction.”

The room to move is calculated. It is limited.

The Tengku is aware some in Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR had blamed him for the failure of the September 16 lunge for power Anwar made.

As a result Anwar slumped, only to mount again in the re-run of a sodony charge, this time with the famous and invincible rectum of Saiful Bukhari, one of his aides.

In the Pas some are dismayed by the series of losses in recent by-elections. Nik Aziz Nik Mat is aging. Some who are equally disturbed by the rise of Mat Sabu as deputy president want Anwar as president with Hadi Awang replacing Nik Aziz as the Murshid ul-Am (General Guide).

Mat Sabu is not a religious scholar. Mat Sabu, as a carpet-bagger without any political base, is an obvious risk.

It’s about a simple thought for the culture of power, meaning Tengku Razaleigh could prove to become a torn in the Pas’ stronghold of Kelantan, which is also the Tengku’s home-ground. But Tengku Li is aiming for the center, the federal power.

The start of Amanah is a bit tough and hence the launching of Amanah passed in the media, including in the cyber portals, as a monumental whimper of a consortium which included more than a hundred corporate leaders who had come dressed in suits, many armed with blackberries, cameras and tablets to ensure a memory in digital-space of a reasoning for peace, for sanity, for a correction of systematic errors and for a return to development for the people.

This is the difference in Tengku Razaleigh’s touch. He brought leaders in the corporate sector to ground zero and to walk alongside the NGOs, intellectuals, workers, farmers, fishermen and the people at large, a final refinement of the Opposition that can make the Pakatan become the arm that will nail the coffin.


Elite Rule


There is a certain rule in Malaysia of the super-elite. It had arisen in the evolution of the New Economic Policy into a systematic dictatorship and which bastardized the whole of the policy while the civil service had become more and more the Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN) cadre outfit.

Former Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had said about 85 percent of projects meant for Bumiputras had been leaked and given to Non-Bumiputras, suggesting a system overwhelmed by graft and mutual gratifications.

After some high government officers had stunned the people by openly campaigning for the BN in recent by-elections, a broader-based participation became immensely necessary for the people to protect themselves from the power-elite.

‘The rich must help the poor and the successful must help the unfortunate,’ Tengku Razalegh recalled. It was what Tunku Abdul Rahman had said in his vision of a united and happy nation.

It’s not about nostalgia. It’s basic in the formula for peoples who must rise to protect themselves from the dementia affecting governments when power is assumed for the competitive accumulation of money and of wealth in the human search for grand opulence in the Order of Mammon.

Met Him? Know Him? Your fate and destiny are your simple choices. ----a. ghani ismail, 23 July, 2011

The Amanah website is at http://www.amanah.my/

Into the Dark After Power Becomes a Lark

Just when the general elections was said to be “around the corner”, in a sudden exclamation of terror 31 members of the revived Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) were intercepted and remanded on the mainland in Penang. The spaces of shock it caused were soon replaced with bewilderment.

Most of the 31 were poor Indians from the estates. There was a boy of 14 and a woman of 64. The party was taking a ride on the BERSIH 2.0 campaign for free and fair elections.

The only crime the group could have committed was about having with them T-shirts printed with images of outlawed former Communist leaders of Malaya – Chin Peng, Rashid Maidin, Abdullah C.D. and his wife, Suriani.

Power became a lark when these were alleged on June 26 to have been a band out to collect men and weapons to wage war against His Majesty, the King.

Seven days later police released six leaders of the band and immediately rearrested them under the Emergency Ordinance (EO). Police power became widely seen as a toy.

It was pre-elections noise, a ritual in Malaysia, this time grossly an over abuse of authority.

It was all about BERSIH 2.0, a loose coalition of 62 NGO’s that planned a rally for free and fair elections on July 9, which is today.

A Fairy Tale

Like in a fairy tale of ancient British tyrannical regimes, the Minister of Home Affairs, Hishamuddin Hussain, outlawed yellow attire and the people laughed, no longer worried the country was under serious threat.

With senior Cabinet Ministers and the Prime Minister himself acting out a poorly scripted game of deceit, the King decided to intervene on July 4 with an unprecedented royal edict.

For the people that settled the staged storm and BERSIH 2.0 leader, S. Ambiga, said she would call off the rally if that’s what the King wanted and the storm clouds parted to let through a wonderful ray of hope.

But His Majesty merely cautioned against BERSIH walking in the streets. The rally could be held in a stadium.

The King is the Sovereign and Sovereigns are the spirits of nations, so there was joy beaming in the faces of the people.

Yet the Minister of Home Affairs reminded the next day he had declared BERSIH outlaw on July 1, meaning the King, the symbol of the nation’s sovereignty, had acted in error – a disruption of the realm’s protocol and of a Royal edict, which was a certain disregard of the national virtues invested in the person of the King, His Royal Highness The Yang Di Pertuan Agong.

People were in gloom, like the affront was an omen of bad days to come. But what called for the vainglory?

It was mainly the prices in the bread and butter spread and of property, the latter a bubble that is knocking out a chunk of the middle class from the BN’s captive voters the ruling coalition cannot endure.

Then it is about sustainable corruption or of unimaginable high costs that continue to grow in the BN, the latest flair being that of the Minister of Tourism, Ng Yen Yen, who approved RM1.8 million for six Facebook pages of promotional writings.

Given the bulk of the overburden the Prime Minister has had to carry and his reluctance to remove the driftwoods from his Cabinet, it became popular to believe the ruling coalition, the BN, is going under in the 13th general elections scheduled for August or September.

But for panic there was no need. It’s a snap election the Prime Minister can choose to delay for a year or so.

And there are serious snags in the Opposition the people can clearly see.

After the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) has all but lost its registration through dirty play in the party elections and the mad internal struggles continue unabated, people have been suggesting Najib invite either the Pas or the DAP to join the BN and be done with the tensions and the uncertainties.

PM Najib teased the Islamic party, Pas, but he had made no offer.

As a result the Pas president, Haji Hadi Awang, flung the idea into a cesspool in his policy speech at the recent party general assembly and remarked afterwards the country under the BN is headed for bankruptcy and with a debt luggage that’s already 54 percent of the GDP she will be mistaken for Greece in a matter of months.

The BN is in big trouble for failing to manage the prices of food, fuel and every other essential item.

The prices of fish and meat have reached the unthinkable. Beef is now about RM22 per kilo, from RM10 about a year ago.

Cheese slices costing RM2.50 two years before is now more than RM9.

That’s the immediate challenge Najib should have sorted out but is failing. It is eroding the value of the Ringgit and eating into the people’s earnings and savings at one and the same time.

This is the “terror” in Malaysia.

Since more than 70 percent of workers in the country earn RM1500 or less per month, unless immediately checked and by using an emergency ordinance (EO) for it, the result of an extended hike of food prices as it is now will cause a massive pressure driving more and more people against the BN by the day.

The EO should have been recalled for this problem and not for the detention of the MP for Sungai Siput, Dr. Michael Jayakumar, and five other members of the almost defunct PSM that’s merely trying to remain extant, in the dark and the damp of rubber and oil palm estates.

Now it is the BN that’s a lark which is seen as frantic for having missed the cuckoo’s nest in the strange mix of cross-ardor rising from a poorly managed rapture of Saiful’s underside in Anwar Ibrahim’s second sodomy trial.

This had been followed against all counsel to the contrary by a video showing a man of remarkable likeness to Anwar enjoying a sumptuous Chinese cuisine, the man with a pot-belly belying the tale of betrayal between old friends.

The attempts to kill the Opposition Leader’s character frothed and failed again, a case of blameless sustained ineptitude since the money flowed, nevertheless.

It is likely it is the serial failures that’s forcing the BN to the corner and to continue with the comic strips and abuse of power, making it lose the favor of more and more people at each turning and tossing of the misconducts and misgovernment.

BERSIH 2.0 should be in rally today. The BN is rapidly losing the people’s faith each passing day of this sad episode in the noisy heats before the 13th general elections will be finally called.

Think of sunshine. To find joy, think of sunshine on the other end of the elections when we will have a Bill of Rights in Malaysia. When there’s the will the way will come. But who will promise us the Bill of Rights? Will you? ---a. ghani ismail, 9 July, 2011

A Springtide Into A Democracy of Faith?

Is it a springtide what happened at the Pas’ 57th general assembly and party supreme council elections?

Party president, Abdul Hadi Awang, after he summarily cast the suggested Unity Government with the Barisan Nasional (BN) into the cesspool in his policy speech on Friday June 3, he was greeted by a major change of the guards, leaving him and his ulama leadership substantially injured.

When observers pressed home the point that it had been a sweep of the progressive (“Erdogan”) grouping in the party which had the ulama (religious scholars) pressed against the wall, Hadi feebly resisted the popular perception.

He said all of the elected guards belonged to party supremo, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, and to himself, the duo held as the highlights of the ulama leaderhip that sprung the coup which ousted Asri Haji Muda from power in 1982 and is now quite clearly being wished out.

How shall the inroad of the progressives express itself in the party is a question that is already disturbing the Malay psyche that’s needing a point to regain coherence, cohesion and a collective perception of the recall in the Sino- and Indo-Malay stresses in this prodigal plural society British imperialism made as a lasting testimony of divide-and-rule.

Did Hadi Awang produce an answer to the racial and religious tensions that have already combusted twice in the past several years and causing the tensions to stretch stiff like hide dried in the sun?

Hadi had this time gone to great lengths to appease the DAP and other non-Muslims in his experimental tahaful siyasi (political alliance), reciting this verse from the Holy Qur’an,

"…those who have been driven from their homelands for no other reason than their saying. “Our Sustainer is God!” For, if God had not enabled people to defend themselves against one another, [all] monasteries and churches and synagogues and mosques - in [all of] which Gods name is abundantly extolled - would surely have been destroyed [before now]…" – Q. 22:40

It’s a well-chosen verse, of course.

But when he said this showed Islam acknowledges the plural society and provides for the freedom of beliefs, the scholar-president tripped on his toob and would not have been able to keep his posture if he had been confronted with his wanting different laws and separate judiciaries for the Muslims and for the others.

He wanted different taxes for the Muslims and for the non-Muslims as well.

Hadi had not the guts to wire his Islam to an all-inclusive party, nation and world-vision, something the younger among the progressives have grown into and are ready to live by.

While in neighboring Indonesia the Islamic Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) had openly dropped the Islamic State and become inclusive, the Pas under Hadi and Nik Aziz has merely provided non-Muslim members with a wing worth a handful of votes in the general assembly.

This could be a wracking experience in the Malay psyche, a disjointed remark in the historical evolution of a people that had been serially colonized and living within a political, economic and social compute they had no hand in its making.

Are the progressives in the party ready to take the high road into a cultural revolution of the kind that has made a quest for universal Islam in the sprawling island archipelago of Muslims, Hindus, Hindu-Buddhist, Christians, Taoists and animists?

It’s a sprawling archipelago much larger than Europe and keeping to a Unity in Diversity cast upon an idea of Tantular, the poet-saint of Jawa, a visionary of the distant past whose heritage it has been the life-blood and the breathing of this Indonesia, this marvel of island clusters of the Gods.

If Hadi has a problem with that, it should do him good to remind himself the Filipinos are mostly Christians but are all Malays, among whom was Sandokan, the swashbuckling buccaneer who is a legend in South America Kabir Bedi cast himself into on the wide screen several decades before.

How are we to resolve the division of a family by language, color and culture by the sectarian partitioning of a legalistic religion?

This legalism had divided the world into the Abode of Islam (Darul Islam) and the Abode of War (Darul Harb) while it maintained in its books that society must be seen stratified by gender, with men first and women a step below and followed by the slaves captured, bought and sold, and sometimes prostituted for a gain in the glitter of the gold on the dinar.

Is that at all Islam for this time?

Is that a recall of the human primeval condition fashioned by a God Who is Mercy and Compassion?

This is a statement of human ill, a medieval exposure to the nature of the wicked and the oppressive.

This warranted remark of the differences in time, of outlooks and values, of civilizations, is in the minds of the generations long liberated from the captivity of the religious mind, long severed from the writings on the papyri and long distanced from the superstitions imposed by clerics of one nature or of another, of the breeding by a mentality rendered null by substantial progresses of civilization.

Having failed to stump the progress of women, who are now in the Pas an array of blatantly successful professionals (how unbecoming!!), will you not consider to tolerate for the rest of us a simple confession of freedom of conscience, and not beat about the bush like in a medieval orgy of people in the lusty sensualism of satyrs and nymphs some Umno couples want to become?

There is an injurious growth in the Malay psyche, perhaps an abscess of faith issued from a standard refusal to admit Islam itself is an imperial system that has, since the 17th century, become the lordship in six extant monarchies in Riau-Lingga and the Malay Peninsular.

What these conjure is a simple but critical conflict in the Malay psyche.

The Malays, as Hindu-Buddhists, had developed among the largest empires in the world, leaving monumental structures like the Borobudur, Angkor Wat and Muara Takus.

The Muslims ruled over trading-states instead, like Malacca, or Brunei, and after many centuries they left as monumental structures and histories…..what?

What did they leave behind that were self-made, self-built, that were of self from self around which can be developed the pride and the historical mission for the existential sense to adhere by and become adhesive leading to a certain and formidable destiny?

How does Islam in the Malay world compare with Fatimid Egypt, or Ummayad Spain, or with Mughal India? Could the monumental have been the ulama? Like Nik Aziz and Abdul Hadi Awang?

And therefore, starting a new page of history, there was and is the revolt in Pas on June 3 that has caused an exuberant sense of hope and once again shall live in high expectation on the road to a new Malaysia. Will the progressives have the guts to do it, I wonder.

And with a 21 votes majority, how long can Mat Sabu withstand the backlash of the ulama when they decide to whip him and to boycott him is the question to ask.

What is happening in Pas is clearly another reflection of the Malays in social disintegration. Like Muhammad, the Prophet of the Arabs, going back to the root of the Semites in Abraham, the Malays have to do the same to regain the sense of social identity. It will mean going back to the Malay Way (here)or it would have to be going to an altogether new ideology, which will take time.

Islam, which is here no more than a rites of passage, is obviously ill-equipped to suggest a solution for the Malays and for Malaysia in this glorious geopolitical remaking of the world and the repeat contest of the Occident and the Orient.

Malaysia was Majapahit II, centered in Kelantan. This was about the most coherent ideological point of the Malay genesis. It was also the confluence of Malay culture and Islam. Will the Kelantan prince,Tengku Razaleigh, then step in to help?-----a. ghani ismail, 8 June, 2011

Ps. On June 8 the older ulama, Nik Aziz Nik Mat,was widely reported to boom again, this time saying it was Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and not Karpal Singh who ruined his attempt to apply the hudud laws in Kelantan and therefore, make the state he heads as Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) an Islamic State.

There goes the brief hope that Abdul Hadi Awang had meant to relief us of the hudud laws in his policy speech a few days ago. It's predictable, you see.

Changing Monsoons - Will Pas join BN?

Wrenched from the dreamscape of the old man into the stark reality of a streak of losses in the recent series of by-elections beginning with Galas in Kelantan and ending in Merlimau in Melaka, the Islamic party, Pas, must decide now whether to continue with the malfunctioning PKR and the DAP with its new outlook, or join the Barisan Nasional (BN) before the 13th General Elections.

The venerated Nik Aziz Nik Mat, after his foiled attempt to hoist his son-in-law, Ariffahmi, into the heights of Kelantan to succeed him as Menteri Besar (Chief Minister), confused party members everywhere.

Morale in the party buckled in misery.

It was behavior unbecoming of a stoic puritanical, his charisma, though only slightly injured because of his age (78), nevertheless cast him into the shadow of doubt, the injury generally reasoned as sourced in senility.

The man has been handsomely clean. The person is otherwise loaded with graceful sense of humor and political wit that have made him a rustic legend.

Until he skidded on the crest of power and his willful political ambition bloated and burst into the open last year, Nik Aziz has been an international figurine of the patriarch who had successfully mixed the traditional Islamic ideology with an astuteness that kept the Pas alive in a pact with the Democratic Action Party (DAP) that has recently taken to making it up with the Christian Right.

But now there is an intruder in the tested equation, an instant put-together vehicle of Anwar Ibrahim.

But the 11 year-old Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) has become some wonder.

After winning 31 seats in parliament in March 2008 it soon lost five of its lawmakers who jumped boat, citing as the reasons their disability to work with and to have faith in the party leadership, meaning Anwar and his lieutenant, Azmin Ali, formerly his confidential secretary.

Gross malpractices were alleged in the recent party elections.

Of the listed membership, which was supposed to have been more than 400,000, only about 40,000 cast their ballots, a record vanishing act the super illusionist, David Copperfield, should attempt to outdo to retain his stature in the world of magic.

In the wake of the frantic comedy a few top leaders of the Pas had agreed to talk it over with the Umno, no doubt as a safety measure to ensure the Malays will not lose all in what can be a political wind of change that may blow nobody any good.

It was something the old man, Nik Aziz, found critically adverse and he baulked publicly, then he let fly against the party president, the deputy president, the chief of the party’s council of scholars (ulama) of which he is a member, and the secretary-general to boot.

He had publicly bashed the highest echelon of the party’s policy-makers, declaring himself as the “ship’s captain”. He is the general guide (murshidul am) of the party.

When the comic tempest subsided, the combustible captain found he had grounded his ship.

But there was no mutiny.

The stoic who has been going in and out of intensive care has quite apparently become senile but was still needed for the Pas to keep Kelantan.

The Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, who had denied him the state’s oil royalty worth more than RM 120 million annually, obviously fueled the fire in the belly of the sage, prompting the wonderful displays of his tremendous temper.

In the wracking tensions inside the Pas, suddenly His Majesty, the Yang Dipertuan Agong (King) hosted a dinner bringing the leaders of the Pas and the Umno into the amicable ambience of the palace on 24 Dec 2010.

Mahameru (Mount Olympus) had taken notice and the winds were meant to change henceforth.

Even if nobody in the Pas or the Umno had been willing to tell what, in fact, had transpired in the august chamber of royal diplomacy, Malaysians, as a common display of political erudition, generally expected great shifts of the political bulks to happen at any time.

The options are a matter of simple arithmetic, like if the DAP with the solid Chinese support were to win 50 parliamentary seats in the next general elections, the PKR, which is left with 26 and the Pas with 23, cannot dream of outdoing the presently Christian-friendly social democrats to provide for a Muslim Prime Minister.

The winning number in parliament is 112. You can add on the numbers above for the Pas and PKR where you believe it can happen and then see if the equation will fit a formula for sustained stability in Malaysia.

Can the Pas become like the PKS (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera) of Indonesia and open its doors to everyone regardless of race and religion while pursuing Islam without the Shariah (Religous Law)?

It will probably become the largest political organization in Malaysia if it does that. But will it do it?

DAP

The DAP, which succeeded Singapore’s PAP, cannot be believed to have completely cut the umbilical.

When the PAP government in Singapore said Anwar was guilty of what he was charged in the sodomy trial, it raised doubt and caused a lot of people to demand Anwar deny the allegation by oath.

Singapore said Anwar had known it was a trap but chose to walk straight into it anyway, which was damning.

Yesterday the Pas’ council of scholars’ chief, Harun Taib, asked Anwar to dispel the doubt by oath.

The monsoon has swung around. It is clear the party is once again thinking of the options before it and the likelihood is it will sit in conference with Umno and decide to change the equations.

Has the stoical sage been tamed? Or has he himself finally given in to the doubt caused by the Singapore condemnation Anwar has not dispelled?

Anwar is obliged to take the oath. But it is entirely up to him.

Someone has written to say the denial by oath is all there is between him and power in Putrajaya.

While that may be an exaggerated view of the equation at present, Najib’s failure to arrest the bread-and-butter price-hikes and to moderate the property bubble will finally bring the regime change in a rush.

There will be a storm soon accompanying a world currency breakdown and the accompanying economic and political turmoil. If the economic mismanagement is allowed to run uncontrolled in Malaysia, all state governments can be expected to become bankrupt in 2012, including solvent Selangor and Penang.

It is up to Anwar to bring change. The other messiah, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (with Muhyiddin Yassin in a duo) is still in need of a little time to ready himself.

All Anwar is expected to utter in the Saiful Bukhari sodomy case is “By God (Wa’l-Lah), I did not do it.”

In the Eskay blue video allegation, it is simply “By God (Wa’l-Lah), the man in the sex-video is not me.”

Prostitution is allowed in the Holy Qur’an (Q.24:33) some Muslims argue and hence, this grand mastery of sex video-making by Eskay can be a source of lucrative income for those of such ilk.

The sex video, therefore, is not dynamite. But alas, indelible doubt over the Saiful sodomy event persists after Singapore successfully raised it by deliberate political and diplomatic deliverances.

So, will Anwar take the oath? He can simply do it before the Press at his residence, and be done.

Doubt, in cases such as this, must be eliminated and no matter what Maulana Yusof Qaradhawi may have said or may have to say to Anwar on this matter, the venerable scholar will agree the resident traditional ideology cannot be dispelled even by the peerless such as him.

Take the oath or it would be best for the Pas to decide joining the BN and avoid the confusion of a leader whose character and integrity violate the residing ideological nuances.

Who is Anwar playing the game for? What will be the naked reality in the next chapter of the Anwar Saga and what shall be the dream unchecked?

The Pas will be in its annual general meeting and electing a new crop of leaders in the first week of June. Then, pending Anwar's choice of action or inaction, the deliberations will settle in the Pas and in the Umno a decision in the reaches of the Malay collective conscience. ----a. ghani ismail, 24 May, 2011






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After Najib Is the two party system

The way of Prime Minister, Najib Tun Abdul Razak, forked following the grand slam of his nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim, in the forefront of Paradise Lost of Sarawak.

Only the DAP struck gold in the April 16 state–election, winning 12 from 15 seats the party contested. The Pas came home empty handed and the PKR won three from 49 contested.

But after Najib had chosen to invest in a bolder-than-stupid sex-video showing a make-belief Anwar whoop-whapping a Chinese belle in the bed of a cheap room of a spa, Najib’s forked path had nowhere to take him other than into a steep fall.

The resentment is overwhelming. He is unlikely to survive.

The stunning sex-show of a man who was cosmetically a close resemblance of Anwar and apparently event-managed and paid for by Datuk Shazryl Eskay Abdullah (Eskay) now wraps Najib in a gossamer that is bursting into a fury of the Malay and Malaysian traditional values like it happened in 1998-1999.

That extended event surrounded Dr M, the Jekyll with the special Hyde, after he saddled the society with an assortment of Anwar images on videos as a sodomite and in a dozen sexual embraces with women.

For that plunge into the bucket and his own display of hysterical comedy against Anwar he wanted the people to hate, Dr Mahathir and the Barisan Nasional (BN) lost 70percent of the Malay votes in the 1999 general elections.

Najib is repeating the 1998-1999 phenomena, only this time about 80 percent of the Chinese and 50 percent of the Indians are also certain to reject the BN for reasons of their own.

That will bring the BN to heel in a slosh of the hyper-privileged elite’s mega corruption the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) cannot otherwise reach, a case in point would well surround the One Malaysia [Free?] Email Najib suddenly rushed into the rump of the ETP or another of his alphabetical contrivances.

It’s about yet another crony company’s sumptuous dinner, people say.

As for Eskay, the physiotherapist, some say he could have a clutch of federal and state ministers compromised in bed as he had claimed he had led Anwar into. It could be a twist in the turnings of an extortionist the police should have investigated first.

But this Anwar sex-video he showed at the expensive Carcosa and which was finally scooped into a four-part triumphant display on YouTube, was of a male that nobody this writer knows or read has believed was Anwar Ibrahim.

The exceptions are a handful of Umno propagandists writing in a couple of mainstream “newspapers” and the dirty dozen of Umno bloggers whose job it is to convince their readers the fellow in the video, which was said to have been first shown in 1998, was, indeed, the foxy Anwar.

To make matters worse, some members of the police force have been reported to have publicly confirmed the dumb and naked figure of sexual transparency in the video is Anwar.

How come?

How can the lightly pot-bellied fellow with the sloppy chest of a couch-potato pass as Anwar?

Anwar was in 1998 the Deputy Prime Minister Mahathir did not want. Now he is the Opposition leader Najib and his wife, Rosmah, want undone.

He has been in the news for ages and people know him by his images. The man in the sex-video is not Anwar, they insist.

People say not even after a cosmetic surgery probably done on his face for fiteen tousand Malaysian dolaars at a downtown surgery in Bangkok can that man be Anwar Ibrahim.

Miiister, you want to remove bellicosity of fats round stomach and puppet booosum, can be done. Plus solders and fats over the ribs only fitty tousand Malaysian dolaars and discount five percent, also can.

That chap who contracted the job (Eskay?) did not spend the extra Malaysian dolaars and hence the “bellicosity of fats” (adipose fats) was clearly shown on YouTube - cuts of middle-aging beef that can hardly belong to the slim body of the fox whose stomach is too flat for him to tuck in without laboring his breathing.

The result is patently clear. It’s the return of the 1998-1999 phenomena Dr M has consistently denied as having been caused by him.

He repeatedly said the 70 percent skid of the Malay votes in 1999 had been caused by the Black Eye, meaning the terrible beating Anwar had endured in police custody in 1998, leaving a blackened eye that stayed on him until he was produced in court weeks later.

That was done by the former Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Rahim Noor, an abuse at the very height of the custodians of the law and of security, the event a chilling memory sending thousands to the streets to demand civil liberties in Malaysia, which is an early fragrance of Jasmine.

The Black Eye added to the total Opposition votes in 1999 but the bulk of the Malay votes that the Umno and BN lost in that election had been caused by the failed attempt to discredit and to humiliate Anwar, by Mahathir.

Jumanji

Now it is Jumanji, the supernatural game of the jungle that would bring to appear wild imaginations with every move you make.

With Najib at the helm and him failing to control the price rise of food and essential items while he dumps upon society a One Malaysia and a New Economic Model that have gone out of control like badly plotted novels, the way forward is forked and leading to his fall, making a repeat of the 1998-1999 reactions the only referent for social behavior of the sort in Malaysia.

Does that mean Umno and the BN will probably lose when Najib rings in the 13th general elections?

The answer is simple and it is positive.

No matter the fact the Pakatan is new and fumbling, the fact Najib, Rosmah, Hishamuddin, Mahathir and the Police are now incredible, and resented, will repeat the 1999 elections syndrome, this time causing the BN to finally lose.

Unless the members of the Pakatan were to spoil the progress of historical forces by sudden seizures to betray their friends and betray society as well for a handsome consideration or by sheer madness, the conclusion above is the only one to make.

However, BN fixed deposits in Sabah, Sarawak and some West Malaysian constituencies still remain, meaning the margin will be hairline.

As for the fear of the Chinese overwhelming the Malays because of the ethnic solidarity, them cannot gain a simple majority by themselves even if every Chinese majority were to fall to the DAP.

Nor can they gain a two-third majority in Parliament to change the constitution.

In other words, Malaysia is now poised to follow through the making of a two-party system, a chance nobody should miss. That is an essential part of needed progress. --- a. ghani ismail, 7 May, 2011.

Tinkerbell and Anwar's tendril - a story of uprightness that may be a lie

It’s the watch, mademoiselle, which would have scuttled the tale of the video-man, Eskey, and not the shape of the actor’s body, which are merely lumps of doubt like the sorts that get stuck in the throats of writers and journos in this kind of Malaysian gutter madness with a sex-video to show, yet again.

It’s the watch, mademoiselle, ‘watch’ as in chronograph, not like in ‘watching’ over and over again a blue video that, as it turns out now, could have been a professional take from a seedy joint on Phaholyothin Road in the anything-can-do shades of Bangkok.

Meester, you want cheap money? Malaysian dolaars … tirty Baht for Fitty Ringgit? Amerikan dolaars?....... You want Malaysian Paspor?

Written in a strip across a sneak teaser of the Anwar Video posted on YouTube on April 4 was the address of the probable source of the Eskay tape. It said ‘Phaholyothin Road Bangkok, Thailand 10400, Copyright 2011.’ The tape was not taken in a spa in Kuala Lumpur on March 20 or thereabouts as we were earlier told. It was instead taken from somewhere along ‘Phaholyothin Road Bangkok, Thailand 10400.’

With “the only available copy” surrendered to the police, the sneak show-time on YouTube forced the IGP, Ismail Omar, to quickly say the police did not upload the teaser on YouTube.

Who is playing who out then?

But does it matter that the police is not responsible?

In the rush of popular reactions over the sex-video caper that’s going from bad to worse by the day, people who make surveys have reported the majority of Malaysians blame the Umno and the Barisan Nasional (BN) for the lewd and filthy sex-politicking.

It’s a sure kindling of the people’s temper that will become converted into People’s Power yet again in an environment that has been on the boil over dictators, authoritarian regimes, bad governments and corrupt elites.

The thrust of the combat is now about moral legitimacy and not the cut-and-dry eventual vote-count by the force of “purchasing power parity”, which, in the stalled, immobile and tropically humidized social memories, the sensitization of crisp legal tenders slipped from hand to mouth can resuscitate the worst political garbage from natural rot to be recycled in a dump-yard of politics and diplomacy.

Anwar’s wife, Datuk Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, also reacted.

Looking drawn in the interview she gave at her home on April 5, a day before nominations in the Sarawak state elections, she could have stumped the agony of this filthy Umno politicking by producing the gold Omega watch Eskey said he retrieved from the prostitute who had taken it after fulfilling her role in the video.

Someone had asked Wan Azizah about the watch. She replied it is in her keeping. But why she did not produce it is somewhat of a let-down since that watch, if it is materialized, will trap Eskay.

Still the noose appears to be a living reality that’s haunting the threesome in the menage that may finally bring the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) to its ruin.

Does this mean the writer is convinced the stud in the Bangkok opera is not Anwar Ibrahim?

Someone said Eskey appeared like he was playing the role of a director of the show and it seemed to have been based on a clear sight of the movements in the video clip.

Others have said the actor was a carefully chosen Anwar-double but was simply too vigorous for the Opposition Leader who had a spinal injury.

The man in the video had a slight stomach spread and his chest was sloppy. People can hardly think of Anwar being like that.

Others noticed the prostitute patted her hair to be sure she sustained the hair-do, before the camera she knows is rolling.

Eskey is the central member of the trio, Datuk TKO, who screened the sex-video featuring a man with the likeness of Opposition Leader, Anwar Ibrahim, to a select group of journos in the costly Carcosa on March 21. This we already know.

The other two are former Malacca Chief Minister, Rahim Thamby Chik, and the Treasurer of Malay rights group, Perkasa, Shuib Lazim, who is also the Member of Parliament for Sungai Petani, Kedah. We already know this too.

But were the trio together in the joint along Phaholyothin Road in Bangkok and did they enjoy a snack in a klong, of salted wide-eyed Chinese-carp with the woman who could be a pretty ipoh-mali fish-monger, we would need police investigation to tell.

The caper is getting to be a lark. It’s the same as it was in 1998-1999 when the antagonist kept the allegations going on and on in the belief as Herr Goebel had, which is to keep repeating a lie until people believe it is true.

As the moral distresses warp the clime in Sarawak today (April 6), which is Nomination Day, Malaysian web-portals and some newspapers wrenched the people into another twist to the Anwar-Video rub-a-dub-dub following the tell-all press conference Wan Azizah held.

In a sentence, the meaning of all that she said is he, Anwar, needs Tinkerbell’s magic to put his tendril upright.

He has been disabled the past one year, she said. He has been going with his children for exercises and for therapy.

That means the “Anwar” in the video is not Anwar since that fellow had a different body shape and the real Anwar had not been able to perform sexually for about one year.

That’s a bombshell, of course.

But in an arena as evil as the one in which this combat is being fought, it will need the testimony of several medical specialists before it can explode and crush the rude and crude political quest to demolish the character of the rival by the practiced exertion of simple filth.

Is that planned as a follow-up?

It’s like the crap allegation against Anwar made by Saiful Bukhari in June, 2008.

The tough-looking young man who alleged Anwar Ibrahim forced him into a passive partnership in bed has been found to have had five DNA specimens in his rectum. It’s a miracle!

It is getting clearer by the day that this sort of sex-caper that has become a fetish of the Umno and BN is undermining the ruling coalition and depriving it of the moral legitimacy that is required to inspire the people to want to retain it as the governing party.

The BN is likely to lose in the 13th general elections. ----a. ghani ismail, 6 April, 2011