Busted Party Hot Over Sacred Cow

PAKATAN IS BECOMING WOEFULLY A BAD TASTE

Hot lips blowing flying kisses over a head of cattle in Shah Alam in psychedelic rays of sunshine on Friday 28 August– a brew of a Hindu temple, caning for drinking beer and the sudden leap of one PKR member, Radzi Salleh of Lunas, over to the Barisan Nasional (BN) in Kedah on August 23.

Now three others are rumored “missing”, meaning the Pas-led Pakatan Rakyat government in Kedah may have to call a snap state election to save its skin – gossamer-thin and serving no more than as a prophylactic to hide the non-performance since coming to power after the stupefying 8 March 2008 general elections.

Holy Cow! There’s really no need for the Police to exact a severe penalty over the Shah Alam ruse, nor any reason for paranoia.

What’s behind it is the death knell of the Pakatan in Kedah following the fall of the bugged pact in Perak. The position of the partnership in Selangor is also shaky.

If three other PKR elected members in Kedah officially swing, we would be seeing a clearance sale of the PKR in the state – all four crossing from the sick-bay to the glory of Hallelujah in a near repeat of the Perak sell-off. Pakatan would have 18 against BN’s 18, with one independent worth the moon.

It’s Anwar that’s gone all wrong with his September 16 (2008) misadventure of a calculation that was a bluff, leaving him and his party with a bill they can hardly pay for the trip that was merely a bad dream.

Anwar was reported to have confessed PKR is flawed and it is the weakest in the pact.

But some people find it is motley, showing up a legend of those types that were dragged from the trenches of the beaten.

Riding into the skirts of power they strut like crippled horsemen, making rather of a comic platoon of the wasted wherever they made their presence.

Some observers have asked whether Anwar is at all serious about making a bid for power, him to reach the pinnacle in Putrajaya with a bunch of slushy boys and big-butt sluts for the paradise his think-tank has devised for a third space of much fun?

Losing grip of the great dream to gain power over Malaysia after the paunchy win of 8 March 2008, members of the Pakatan-Pas leaderships are now seen to try for a racial polarization that will deny the 1Malaysia Vision.

While in the DAP it is about lancing Islam in the ribs, like Jesus had been lanced on Golotha, to those with a weakness for the Pas the game drags them into a historical curling, like the snake is swallowing its tail.

To the Malays the big fight that changed the course of history had been between Islam and Tantric Hindu-Buddhism in the 14th century, depicted in Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai (the annals of Pasai) which marked the beginning of Islam in Malacca with the conversion of Parameswara when he married the princess of Pasai in 1409.

In that Hikayat was Perumal, the Pasai Raja and bhairawa (God-King) who insisted his daughters become his concubines and when his son protected the girls from their father, Perumal ordered his son to drink poison, which the son did.

It’s by the tantric to deify the kings and princes that the Malays came to know Hinduism and Buddhism in Sumatera.

It is this kind of a man-God that first became Raja of Pagaruyung, the Minangkabau heartland where Adityawarman enthroned himself king and drew attention to himself as a bhairawa who killed hundreds of his subjects, drank their blood and ate of their flesh about which he had inscribed on a stone statue which is resting in the Jakarta Museum, under the staircase.

This history of the fight against mangled Malay humanity is what is clearly stirring once again in the country, presided as it were by the Cassius-like Great Guru of the Pas whose umbilical attachment to Anwar’s PKR and the DAP cannot be taken flippantly as a passing fancy that will bear nobody any intended malice.

Though early Majapahit had driven back Kublai Khan’s 12,000-strong army in East Jawa, the Malays had never fought against the Chinese until they were forced to retaliate Chinese excesses in the 1942-46 conflicts from Batu Pahat in Johor to Grik in Perak. (see Chia Boon Kheng, Red Star Over Malaya).

It is not with the Taoist or Buddhist Chinese that the historical racial combustions lie in Nusantara, but with Tantric Hindu-Buddhism.

That is why it is critical for the Malays to be told the bhairawa-period of Perumal of Pasai and Adityawarman of Pagaruyung has long gone and that the Hindu-Muslim crises in India are differently patented.

Indeed there is no reason to be recalling the primitive conflicts between Islam and Hinduism in the Malay World.

When the chips are down there really is no reason to be flogging the Sacred Cow. ---a. ghani ismail, 1 Sept. 2009

Whip Kartika Publicly On Malaysia Day?

Swarmed by a pious warrant of zealotry for more than a year because she drank beer at an hotel bar in the beachside of Cherating, Pahang, and after four court appearances, Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, now Peoples’ Princess, was slammed by the Syariah High Court in the state with a fine of RM5000 and six strokes of the cane.

The mother of two who emotionally slumped when she was told on Monday 24 July 2009 the caning was postponed because it was Ramadhan, said she has been treated like a football since the arrest on 11 Dec 2007 and now she would prefer to be publicly whipped rather than caned, a report said.

As the country awakens to the agony of a woman and mother from the lower middle-class who had lost her full-time job in a hospital because of the “religious crime”, the Mufti of Perak, Harussani Zakaria, and Pas president, Hadi Awang, presented the country with a classic apology for the Islamic law.

Said they, drinking any alcoholic beverage is a hudud crime, meaning it is an offence mentioned in the Holy Qur’an. The punishment, they said, is between 40 to 80 light strokes of the cane, the victim fully dressed and not bared to show her flesh.

If you wish to debate that law you can begin by saying nowhere in the Qur’an is there a mention of the punishment. Since it will be said it comes from the Hadis (Prophetic Tradition), it should be asked, is it really sourced from the Hadis or from the reported sayings of the prophet’s companions, i.e. Atsar and not Hadis?

But the two missed the point altogether. The simple point is the fact Kartika was fined RM5000 and has paid the money. Had she been any poorer she would have to spend three years in jail. Are those deals also a part of the hudud?

She lost her fulltime job because of the zealotry. Is that not enough to satisfy the appetite for power to do violence of this unkind sort?

If the appeal to mercy and compassion is not enough to appease the temper of the holy of the holies in the country, then we need the pure souls to categorically inform us whether or not it was true Muawiyah, when he was Caliph in Damascus, was reliably reported to have been drunk on several occasions as he read the sermon and then led the Friday congregational prayer?

Was it true or false that the illustrious Umar Bin al-Khattab was drunk at prayer in the prophet’s mosque in Medina and because of that event God Almighty inspired the verse saying ‘ do not approach prayer when you are drunk so that you may know what you are saying...’ (Q. 4:43)?

That cannot be serious admonition of an abominable crime, surely.

Hence, we need to ask how serious is the crime in having a few beers to ease the stresses and tensions of working in a commercial and industrial landscape with a recession to boot and without a war to fight like the Muslims in Medina in the time of the prophet?

What more, the Pas Selangor Commissioner, Hassan Ali, wants to train squads of Beer-Fighters in all mosques in Selangor to perform a search-and-destroy mission of the beverage from hops and malt. He should begin by removing all Muslim workers from the breweries in PJ.

Since by Islamic law one drop of an alcoholic beverage is as haram (prohibited) as a jug of it, Hassan Ali should ask himself how about Air Tapai (fermented glutinous rice)?

The alcoholic content in beer is between 2.5 to 3 percent proof while in Air Tapai it is between 12 to 16 percent proof.

Go to Chechnya and you'll find some of the mujahids (Muslim fighters) drink Vodka to keep themselves warm in winter. You need to experience frostbite before you condemn that!

So, do you really believe we ought to apply the Prohibition in Malaysia in the 21st century simply because it is in the Holy Qur'an?

People of my ilk are saying it is a paltry matter Hassan Ali has grabbed for his mission and mileage. It has been said he has done nothing since assuming office after the 8 March general elections last year.

He could have worked on Cooperatives to help the members of the Pasar Tani (Rural Market) and the Pasar Malam (Night Markets) who are losing cients in the recession instead of choosing to raid 7-Eleven outlets and remove the beer.

Islam we know is a religion of mercy. But the nature and quality of a religion can and will change given a change of its environment and the means of production in the community it is upheld.

Therefore, when the environment of A and the means of production in that environment changes, A will no longer be equal to A. Its nature and quality would have changed.

The gist is, Islam will have to change substantially for it to remain a religion of mercy in our commercial and industrial society, not to mention the time that has lapsed between Muhammad in Medinah and Kartika in Malaysia.

Peoples' Princess, Kartika, should have been counseled and not punished by a RM5000 fine, removed from her job, taken into custody for a week and whipped in the privacy of a prison’s courtyard by body-builders, like these



What chance does she have? Where’s the compassion? Is it lost in the new metropolitan and industrial environs against what the Quixotic is, in fact, furiously battling?

The people is swiftly mobilizing. It'll be people against the traditional and religious elite. ---a. ghani ismail, 26 August 2009

CANE KARTIKA AS PART OF MERDEKA CELEBRATIONS?

Sunk into the opening day of Ramadhan, the scheduled caning of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno for drinking beer has ruined whatever lasting enchantment Islam in Malaysia may have advanced since the Arab religion beached here sometime in the 14th century.

Kartika, 32, a mother of two, on a modeling tour in Pahang for a tourism stint drank three glasses of beer in the lounge of an hotel in Kuantan, Pahang, on Dec. 11, 2008.

She was suddenly pounced upon by a squad of Islamic moral-police and shot to fame for being the first woman in the country to be fined RM5000 and to be caned six strokes for the terrible misbehavior, the brewery quite clearly enhanced as among the worst enemies of Muslims in Malaysia.

She’s due to be detained in a prison for a week beginning Monday for the sentence to be meted in the elegant privacy of a prison hours before the country celebrates Independence Day on August 31st. The gutsy woman has been asking for the caning to be carried out in public.

Inside the sullen side of the first of Ramadhan while the otherwise cacophonous and virile opposition has fallen silent over the event, Marina Mahathir and Nuraina A. Samad took up the challenge and called people to read the Qur’an for the whole of the month in code, like this,

(Q.2:34)

Even if meanings may be sometimes elusive, the intent of this suggested campaign is clear.

Islam, the way it is in Malaysia, is apparently coded in an exclusive system that is meaningless to the outsider and a referendum to let the Malays freely choose their faiths would probably leave the established domain to a minority of clowns.

In a society that’s plural and already long industrial, religious Puritanism should begin and remain at home.

But the matter is neither Puritanism nor any genuine concern for social morality. It is rather a system of feudal social control extended into the 21st century from the 17th by virtue of the fact the mullahs have no commercial, industrial or developmental talent to revise the method they had used from the time Nuruddin ar-Raniri became the Shaikh ul-Islam in Aceh under Iskandar Thani.

In early 20th century, while in Indonesia Tjokroaminoto founded Sarekat Islam and turned it from a batik cooperative into a revolutionary anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement, the religious departments in this staunchly feudal compliance during colonial rule fought against the modernists or Kaum Muda responsible for the advancement of independence in the Malay world.

The result was an Islam that was crass, violent and as shallow as a bird-bathing pool.

In 1922, before the Comintern in discussing Pan-Islamism, the Indonesian Communist leader, Tan Malaka, stood up against the tide to say Pan-Islam in the Indonesian experience, was not the same as it was elsewhere.

More akin to the Caucasus where the Muslims had joined the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks to overthrow the Czar in 1917, Indonesian Muslims likewise should be treated exclusively, the numbers at that time showing 13,000 members of the Partai Komunis Indonesia against more than one million in Sarekat Islam.

At that same time in Malaya, the conservative ulama working for the religious departments that were directly under the respective rulers, were relentlessly exhibiting their powers of violence against any and all non-conformists. There would be no religious dissident allowed in Malaya.

This feudal power abuse, once threaded into the fabrics of state power, will obviously need more than a drill of Wingdings a month long or even yet another media blitz to retrain the power-appetite and traditional inclination.

It will need the youth and the people to directly aggress for reshaping the Constitution and the terms of references of the Islamic institutions. We have to go the way of Fazlur Rahman and Cak Noor - Islam ‘Yes!’, Islamic State ‘No!’.

Malays must have the right to choose their own faiths, to conduct their marriages at the civil registry and to set themselves free from the feudal catch-22 to escape the violations.

This sustained display of abuse is about Consciousness. The apparatus is a schematic form lost in the woods of historical materialism and never to enjoy a union of opposites like when the Raja (King) also becomes Rakyat (Subject) for the contrast to blend into a different substance in a synthesis and so the Malays and Malaysians can finally enjoy Liberty – in the 21st century that already is.

Yes, I would like Kartika to be caned in public too, as a part of the Merdeka Celebrations. We need to be sure she will not be brutalized and raped after the caning. Members of NGOs can help take her home to her family after the ordeal.

And this is her family


-----a. ghani ismail, 22 August, 2009











LAMENTATIONS OVER ENGLISH FOR MATHS AND SCIENCE

Has Parents Any Say In Our Education Policy?

Ghoulish in the way educational policies are crafted by politicians in Malaysia has dogged parents, teachers and children once again. This time, when after much ado a lot want the teaching of mathematics and science in English (PPSMI) to be continued with choices given to parents, the Cabinet reversed the policy in a flourish six years after the policy was begun.

A host of students were sent reeling, the three in the montage above representing many more this writer had met in the several weeks before the decision was announced.

Since the parents are divided about this and students who have learned mathematics, science and many more elective subjects in English want to continue with it, the Cabinet could have opted to let the parents make the choices.

There was a time when parents could apply to the school to teach a subject of their choice, needing only 15 parents to clinch the deal with the school. A posse should be quickly organized to search for that parents’ right in education. It must have run away.

The PPSMI policy reversal is not catastrophic as some may wish to suggest it is. But it clearly is a disappointing turn of policy for a lot of middle-class and urban families.

It should be noted this is not merely about teaching and learning of mathematics and science in English. Some elective industrial and vocational subjects are also taught in English, the reason stated being mainly because of the lack of supportive reading material in Bahasa Malaysia.

This is not about language learning, which the Ministry shall attempt to enhance and shall recruit more than 13,500 English Language and Literature teachers.

After that is understood, it remains rather of a big waste to relieve the society of a policy that had worked well in urban schools but not for schools in the rural, a matter of fact that applies for almost all subjects and for the whole of the teaching-learning process generally.

Gunnar Myrdal’s study of the rural-urban divide had made that clear.

Urban and rural performances in the learning process cannot be expected to be the same. The teaching-learning occur in different life-spaces, the same as between the better-endowed suburbs and the ghettoes, or with the inner-city schools.

After RM 4 billion have been invested in the venture over six years and every student I asked want to continue learning the subjects in English, the writer will have to register his own feeling of going south following the cast-away decision that need not have been as black-and-white as the Cabinet had decided.

It looks done, especially after it is clear very few teachers were trained to cover the need in the past five years.

But teachers can be trained if there’s the political will and with a mighty perhaps, enough parents can be brought to hold the pitch and ransom the Ministry to be accommodative and let those who want to continue with the subjects in English do so.

Former Prime Minister, Tun Pak Lah, declared the policy was a failure. It was not. It merely lagged in the rural, something we can find happening with subjects taught in Bahasa Malaysia and especially with mathematics and science.

Trouble brewed inside of the political nuances, which happened even in Proton, whence a whole chunk of valuable shares in Augusta were sold for One Euro or RM4.50, the same shares sold later for more than RM300 million.

Tun Pak Lah, as Prime Minister, also wrote off the Smart Schools project Tun Dr. Mahathir had started. Pak Lah merely said the money would be better spent to upgrade hundreds of schools.

We would not be facing the drastic decision had that been done satisfactorily during his tenure.

The three girls in the montage are from the first cluster of Smart Schools Mahathir had wanted to pursue, i.e. the Sekolah Seri Bintang (formerly Sekolah Bukit Bintang) located in Shamelin Garden, Cheras.

Asked, they replied they are from a Smart School (Sekolah Bistari) but when I followed through they said Smart Schools are schools where teaching and learning are electronic-aided.

Electronic-aided teaching-learning is less than 50 percent of what a Smart School should be and I suggested they get into the net and search for Smart School for a start.

When the concept is understood I told them they should get organized and aggress for a proper Smart School development. I had been a teacher, you see.

So the question should be asked as to whether or not we had been heading South in education because of the political blur and have we now done a leap South again?

Well, it’s about one and another policy and facility gone and we’ll need to wait to see if the new initiatives will show any better performances in our schools after 2012. --- a. ghani ismail, 11 July 2009

APA OBJEKTIF SYARIAT?

DARI ROMA PULANG KE LINTANG PUKANG –
Bicara mengenai usul Objektif Syariat Presiden Pas, Haji Hadi Awang



Kerana President Pas, Haji Abdul Hadi Awang, mempunyai dasar dan ukurannya ketika menegur Sisters-in-Islam (SIS) supaya berhati-hati dalam mengejar reformasi Syariat untuk memperjuangkan hak wanita dalam Islam, beliau terus dibalun sebagai seseorang yang menidakkan kebebasan berbicara mengenai agama dalam ruang awam (public domain).

Undang-undang dan pengadilan, sama ada Islam atau sekular, tentu sekali merupakan bidang pengkhususan yang tidak membolehkan orang sebarangan mengusul bicara mengenainya agar umum tidak akan kekeliruan. Ia terhad untuk mereka yang terpelajar dan/atau terlatih dalam bidangnya.

Namun, mereka yang tidak senang dengan Islam terus menerus menolak Syariat sebagai sesuatu sistem undang-undang dan pengadilan yang patut dilindungi daripada kritik dan tuntutan sombrono.

Mereka bersikap seolah-olah Islam dan Syariatnya adalah kolot dan boleh diperlakukan seperti sampah.

Ini adalah gejala dan gejala ini merupakan sesuatu yang kelahiran daripada tujuan Reformasi di Malaysia.

Syariat mengutarakan budi bahasa yang berlemah-lembut (rifq), berbahasa dengan manis dan meringangkan (husn al-khulq) dan supaya berihsan dalam segala perhubungan dan perbuatan.

Maka kita perlu menerangkan dulu segala sesuatu yang asas berkenaan dengan dasar dan perhitungan kita kenapa kita tidak mengharuskan perbicaraan sombrono mengenai Syariat.

Tidak ramai orang Islam di Malaysia mengetahui apakah Objektif Syariat (Maqasid al-Syariah) kerana subjek itu, walau telah diperkenalkan dalam Pengajian Islam di Universiti Malaya sejak awal tahun 1960an, ia kurang menjadi buah perbincangan.

Objektif Syariat adalah kebaikan (masalih atau benefits) yang menjadi tujuan undang-undang Islam.

Lima kebaikan yang utama dan yang menjadi asas (dharuriyat al-khamsa) yang oleh Haji Hadi diungkapkan dalam Ucapan Dasarnya pada Muktamar Pas ke 55 baru-baru ini, adalah rumusan Imam al-Ghazali.

Objektif

Al-Ghazali mengutarakan bahawa lima kebaikan yang asas ini, yakni iman, nyawa, akal, zuriat dan harta, adalah tujuan Syariat yang utama dan yang tidak boleh dileka-lekakan oleh sesebuah masyarakat Muslim.

Ringkasnya, objektif Syariat bertujuan membentang dan melindungi kebaikan masyarakat yang maksima (the greatest public good) dan Dharuriyyat al-khamsa adalah lima keperluan asas dalam cara hidup Islam.

Siasah dalam Islam, secara yang unggul, justeru, adalah untuk memperjuangkan objektif-objektif (maqasid) Shariat dan Maqasid al-Syariat diberi kepada tiga bahagian yang besar, yakni:

a) Lima yang Asas (Dharuriyat al-Khamsa) – lindungan dan kemajuan (i) keimanan, (ii) nyawa dan anggota tubuh, (iii) kemajuan akal (intelek), (iv) zuriat atau lineage, (v) harta (property).

b) Hajiyyat, atau segala pembangunan dan kemajuan komplimentari pada yang lima perkara tadi.

Umpamanya, mendirikan sekolah adalah tergolong dalam kategori Dharuriyyat, dan meningkatkan keselesesaan persekolahan dengan ada bilik darjah berhawa dingin dan beroleh semua alat elektronik pembantu pembelajaran adalah Hajiyyat.

c) Tahsiniyyat, atau perhiasan yang diingini. Bila sudah masyarakat dan Negara beroleh pembangunan dan kemajuan yang asas dan yang komplimentari barulah perbelanjaan dapat diperuntukkan supaya mewujudkan sekitaran yang lebih cantik dan selesa. Ini kategori Tahsiniyyat, atau perhiasan.

Maqasid al-Shariat, justeru, menjadi dasar untuk sebarang tindakan reformasi Syariat dan sekaligus menjadi jadual nilai masyarakat Islam untuk menyesuaikan diri dengan zaman.

Penerangan Asas

Yang di atas tadi hanyalah penerangan yang asas. Kita akan dapati nanti susunan al-Ghazali yang meletakkan dasar Maqasid al-Syariat yang pada lima perkara seperti yang tersebut di atas akan diubah secara yang menyeluruh oleh ibn Taimiyya.

Pendekatan ibn Taimiyya, yakni Bapa Reformasi Islam, itulah diteruskan sampai sekarang oleh mujtahid Yusuf al-Qaradhawi.

Maqasid al-Syariah bukan satu undang-undang Islam atau sesuatu dasar yang berkuatkuasa sebagai satu undang-undang. Ia hanyalah satu perutusan yang diterima oleh umat Islam sebagai dasar dalam Usul Fiqh dan laku sebagai satu asas untuk segala perbicaraan berkaitan undang-undang Islam, atau mengenai Syariat secara umum.

Saya percaya itu sajalah yang menjadi maksud Haji Hadi Awang, yakni untuk mengutarakan pada masyarakat supaya menghurmati objektif-objektif Syariat bila melangkah untuk mengejar perubahan atau pembaharuan Syariat.

Apakah Maqasid al-Shariah ini berguna, atau masih laku dalam masyarakat di Malaysia yang sudah menjadi industrial dan berkotaraya, justeru, merupakan perkara-perkara yang bolehlah dibangkitkan dalam perbincangan.

Yang kurang disenangi hanya sikap acuh-tak-acuh sebilangan orang Islam dan warga Malaysia maupun yang terus bersikap bermusuhan seolah-olah mereka hendak menghapuskan Islam yang mereka pandang sebagai satu kepercayaan yang sudah jauh ketinggalan zaman.

Apakah mereka telah beroleh satu cara hidup yang istimewa? Di mana letak contoh budaya, tamadun dan cara hidup itu?

Satu garis retak yang sudah lama menanti belah telah membentuk konflik terbuka. Yang belum dapat dapat dipastikan adalah apa mungkin SIS akan membuka langkah supaya bertarung dalam gelanggang usul figh ini. ----a.ghani ismail, 1 July, 2009

PAS' MOON IS SPLIT!

PAS PATRIMONY SPAT - THE SPLITTING OF THE MOON


The moon is split. It’s the clout of aging what’s hit the party, not the suggested Unity Government which is a non-issue, the tantrum this time going so far as to tell the deputy president, Nasharuddin Mat Isa, to resign as MP of Bachok, Kelantan, and get lost from Pas altogether, a wounding that will be hard to plaster.

Nasharuddin is from Negeri Sembilan and therefore a guest of Nik Aziz, 78, the Kelantan Pas chief and Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) who is also the murshidul am (spiritual leader) of the party.

The irascible stoical savant insists he is the captain of the ship and wants Nasharuddin cast overboard, opening a way for mutiny.

Will the ship sink this time? Or is the event only a splitting of the moon deliberately designed to issue an anticipated conflict to remove the distressing distortion of the power hierarchy in Pas?

For how can the party continue if there’s a sustained usurpation of the president’s power and authority?

The party has an elected president and a murshidul am or spiritual guide who is chosen by the Dewan Ulama (Council of Scholars) from an elected group of 15.

He can only be removed by two-thirds of his peers in the Council and therefore, can be a scary figure of power should he also become a state leader and chief executive like Nik Aziz Nik Mat in Kelantan.

Complaints about Nik Aziz performing against the party’s resolutions had consistently surfaced from months after he became Menteri Besar in 1990.

The difficulties arose from the personality, the positions he held and the poorly defined role and authority of the murshidul am – reasons enough to cause gaping holes to appear in the ship’s belly.

Then there’s the fact that Kelantan, which has been the host and fortress of Pas all through the party’s history, is losing the special status and privileges.

Pas, after the sudden surge into national stature in 1999, is now standing with more than one million members from about 60,000 before 1999. That expansion can only be described as an explosion.

While from the early days the party had rooted in Kelantan and expanded merely to the predominantly Malay states of the peninsular, the Pas has now become national and is only requiring to seed in Sabah to contest Umno as a whole.

Temper, personality and character of the leadership must change to accept the new membership profile which has outgrown the old rural and religious-school restrictions.

Pas now embraces an impressive stack of scholars, professional and technocrats.

Resulting from Nik Aziz’s remarkable outburst is a certain gloom. While he is widely respected as a party elder and as a symbol of Islamic stoicism (zuhud), the man is ledged in the patriarchal splendor only because of his appeal to moribund values.

The times have changed. So has the country that has long outgrown the rural dominance and is now having to deal with living in sprawling metropolises revealing hysterics of the industrial society that are unknown in all of Islamic history.

Nik Aziz Nik Mat is still seriously encased in his rural habits and he must reevaluate his own effectiveness, especially in trying to secure for Kelantan her special status as a state that’s central in Pas.

Kelantan cannot remain the center of gravity if Pas is to expand and contest Umno nationally.

For weeks after the 55th Pas general assembly (muktamar) whence the president, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, had delivered an inspiring policy speech, the murshidul am simply derailed the whole of the speech by publicly stomping the party president, the deputy president and the secretary-general.

The “Captain’s” anchorman and oarsmen had lost in the recent party elections. Nik Aziz must be feeling that his days too are numbered.

For him there’s no escape. He must immediately prepare for his retirement if the Pas is to remain a credible alternative to Umno or as an effective partner in a Unity Government.

Hadi’s idea of the Unity Government was only a suggested means to overcome the political distresses that had arisen from the 8 March 2008 general elections.

It is no more than a loose suggestion many regard as a good idea. ----a. ghani ismail, 20 June, 2009

PETRA AND DIN ABUSE CYBER CIVILITY

EVERY DOG MAY HAVE ITS DAY BUT SOME MAY BE GOING MAD
Or

IS RUSDI MUSTAPHA PASQUALE?



Less than a week after I wrote to say a lot of people have had enough of the frantic indiscipline in the rank-and-file of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), we have Rocky Bru writing today to tell us what well-known fugitive, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, and the new-fellow-on-the blog, Din Marican, had done to journalist, Rusdi Mustapha, who works for Najib Tun Razak. Rocky Bru described it as “something rotten”

The duo, both closely associated with Anwar Ibrahim, have been flexing their muscles often for nothing, this time alleging Rusdi Mustapha is an anonymous blogger who calls himself Pasquale and who is pro-Najib

Din Marican, quite completely ignorant of the person he is after, billed Rusdi as being Najib’s new spinner, when Rusdi has, in fact, been working for Najib personally for many years. He posted a picture of Rusdi with Rocky Bru (Ahirudin Attan), meaning he wants to take on Rocky for coming to Rusdi’s aid.

Rocky is the president of the Journalists’ Club. Who is this very daring Din Marican?
Will he not get himself torn to pieces as a rot should he want to war?

Raja Petra we all know. Big Dog, in his blog, described Raja Petra as a cyber-anarchist now turning to cyber-terrorism after Raja Petra posted on his blog, Malaysia Today, a picture of Rusdi with his wife and only daughter, thus attracting hate-mail aimed at the family.

It signals a new means of intimidation in the cyber issued by the Anwar camp, a warfare for what we have still to wait to know since this is altogether unexpected and unbecoming of civilized society, but apparently not in the Civil Society Anwar proposes to hoist in Malaysia.

Big Dog, as we know, is a former political secretary and a lawyer. Raja Petra, whatever he has been, is now a self-made fugitive, and Big Dog reminded him nobody had exploited the news about what happened to his son.

But the war is on and it is quite clearly uneven. The weights are certainly against Petra and Din.

It is rather of an inane development which will finally leave their master and mutual friend, Anwar Ibrahim, mired in the self-defeating comic, head down. Anwar is already sinking. The Pas has apparently taken enough of him and his “roughnecks” who seemed to deliberately want to sanctify vulgarity in the New Malaysia.

But who is Din Marican, the suddenly-appearing-maestro-of-some-sort in Anwar Ibrahim’s office?

Why has he returned from a posting in Vietnam several years before? Does anybody know? Can Anwar tell us why if someone were to ask him in parliament?

The writer doesn’t know much about Din Marican other than what he has written of himself in his blog. He was a year my senior in college. He did not luster. I listed his blog in mine and took it out after what he has done to Rusdi today.

Rusdi Mustapha is, of course, a long time journalist who had been with The Star, The NST and then with the Sun before working for Najib in a personal capacity. He was not attached to Najib’s official staff. I do not know if he is now included in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Rusdi is married to a Canadian and has a grown daughter. He lived before in Melawati and is known to all his friends as a very helpful, low-keyed, honest-to-goodness person who cannot be having any of the “great political acumen and charm” of the “big” fellows like Raja Petra and Din Marican who appear to have no qualms about stabbing people in the belly or in the back, even some who took them as friends.

Many are calling their style budaya samseng – “hood culture”, something rather stinking in the PKR and for which it is fast losing popular support, including a hefty chunk of the sympathies for it in the Pas.

After the stunts in Penang on the way to the Penanti by-election I wrote to say the Pas and Dap should “eat” into the PKR. Several days after, the Pas, at its annual general assembly, apparently gave notice the party will want to do exactly that.

Now the duo popped up like rotting sour-sops. The question they must ask themselves is whether or not they and their family members can withstand public scrutiny and cyber-splash. Can they? Isn’t there any vulnerability they may wish to secure?

Raja Petra has quickly posted an apology but said his daughter was threatened. Who threatened her? Rusdi Mustapha? Are you serious?

How about Din Marican? Who is he? What has he ever become to want to war with us?

We are probably going to hear a lot about this Johnny-come-lately and I wonder whether he will want to remain in the country or he will also flee like Raja Petra. LEAVE WIVES AND CHILDREN OUT OF YOUR SLIME. Now Din, go!.--- a.ghani ismail, 9 June 2009.