“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”
“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace,
for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
Malaysia's shame - One-way ticket to paradise by Commander (Rtd) S THAYAPARAN, formerly of the Royal Malaysian Navy
Friday, February 17, 2012
COMMENT As I write this, only God knows the fate of the young Saudi journalist who made a pit stop to freedom here in Malaysia but was returned to his homeland from which he sought refuge. So far only a few, among them DAP's Charles Santiago, MP for Klang, and PKR vice-president N Surendran, have worked up the courage to speak out. PAS has made murmurs of their hopes that Hamza Kashgari will get a "fair trial" in Saudi Arabia. I would rather PAS remain totally silent than issue such drivel because at least their silence would mean one less thing Umno and them have in common.
Of the charge of blasphemy, a snippet from that wily Persian scholar, Jalaluddin Rumi, comes to mind:
We speak of God who is hidden Describing the indescribable. You philosophise, I only criticise Another refutes us both.
The middle ground is an Umno mine-strewn battlefield, where principle or foolhardy combatants end up pondering their miscalculations in the Kamunting afterlife after an explosive public lynching. This is a war of attrition and if you're a Pakatan Rakyat supporter how many can you afford to lose? In this propaganda war, what issues, National Feedlot Corporation, for example, are you willing to sacrifice, when protestations based on human rights, freedom of speech and human dignity are portrayed as attacks against Islam and the Malay community, thereby gaining coverage in the mainstream press?
Hisham's demur explanations Home Minister Hishammuddin Onn's rather demur explanations of an understanding with Saudi Arabia and "charges' that is best determined by the administrators of Mecca, hints of the fears of both Umno and the House of Saud that the only real martyrs are accidental ones. Who knows what an impetuous young man who in a fit of anger (or hope) articulated the yearnings of thousands of Muslims who seek a way out from the shackles that some regimes impose on them under the cloak of piety, could inspire?
If Umno is wary of entering the octagon in this issue, so is Pakatan. PAS and PKR already in a political life and death struggle with the state for the soul of the Malay community, each side reshaping Islam to fit their narrative of solidarity no doubt are wary of entering into a public feud which would put their Islamic credentials on the line. The last time this happened was the fracas over the use of the word ‘Allah' and the only party that benefited was the DAP - in Sarawak.
The DAP, on the other hand, is having trouble of its own. Its Chinese credentials although not in any significant danger, is coming under attack from BN's component parties and the MCA has never had a problem asking the DAP to make a principled stand even though such motivations seem to elude the MCA. It doesn't help the situation that the DAP has been aggressively courting the Malay/Muslim vote. An issue like this which is easily twisted in the hands of the various outsourced ideological thugs in Umno's employ, is an IED (improvised explosive device), which could blow up in the faces of all involved.
This is more than just a simple matter of Malaysia being a safe haven for "wanted men". Bear in mind at this moment, the state wants to retrieve the bodies of Malaysian-born terrorists that have murdered people on foreign soil. This is the country where Hishammuddin eulogised Noordin Mohammad Top's death as "a life is a life" and "we could have rehabilitated him". And what is Kashgari's life worth? And rehabilitating him would not have been a problem since he recanted what he wrote and was running away in mortal fear.
The joke is on Kashgari
The treatment of Kashgari mirrors the treatment of many of the country's dissidents who ironically are now in a position to speak out against this injustice but who so far have chosen to remain silent. Kashgari was detained against his will. He was denied access to his legal representatives. Does this sound familiar? And if we can grant asylum to thousand of Indonesians, Filipinos and Burmese and make them constitutional Malays, why not protect a young Muslim journalist who in a fit of misguided (in a Muslim context) passion, tweeted his feelings about his religion and later recanted?
In a world of religious extremism, isn't this sort of Muslim that we want in this country or at the very least, usher him out of this country as a symbolic gesture of the moderate Islamic stance this country and this prime minister professes to adhere to. As the de facto law minister concedes, the judiciary was compromised by the executive during Dr Mahathir Mohamad's tenure. Of course, we have been reassured that successive prime ministers have had very little influence on the judiciary. You will forgive me for not taking you on your word, Nazri Abdul Aziz.
I have no idea if the injunction is a fig leaf measure to assure Malaysians of the integrity of our judicial system just as the acquittal of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim was meant to demonstrate that anyone can get a fair trail here. I do know that Hishammuddin's denial of any such injunction reeks of the usual sandiwara that manifests whenever a spotlight is shone on contentious issues such as these.
The whole wretched affair is the usual shadow play, which most citizens have come to expect and even joke about. Except this time, the joke is on Kashgari, a foreigner who just doesn't get it and the punch line will most probably be his execution.
Pakatan must speak up
How Pakatan handles this as a political alternative to the BN will show us the kind of foreign policy Malaysia will have if ever the opposition coalition sweeps into power. Will Pakatan have an "understanding" with Saudi Arabia and so-called "wanted" men and women who have done nothing but express their feelings for a strain of Islam which is practiced there but not here be expatriated back to their home countries in the dead of the night?
Will the non-Muslim members of this alternative front who see fit to raise questions on the impropriety of Muslim groups here dictating how Muslim should behave on Valentine's Day, remain silent, in the face of international pressure? Is this the alternative to BN that we are pinning our hopes on? Even though I've painted a bleak realpolitik picture, if Pakatan which prides itself on being the only moderate force in this country does not speak up, the only real losers would be its supporters - both Muslim and non-Muslim.
This is time, and this is definitely the issue, for PAS and PKR to demonstrate their moderate Islamic credentials. And this is an issue where the DAP has to establish itself as a vocal partner when it comes to questions involving the role of Islam in the domestic and international scenes. If this issue is ignored or we pretend it does not matter, we will always live in the shadow of a state which would not hesitate to use Islam as a weapon against any its views as compromising its hold over the country or if Pakatan ever comes into power, they will be subservient to extremist groups who will realise their lack of resolve translates into weakness.
I sincerely hope that Pakatan reveals a depth of character which they claim they have and issue a unified response to the federal government, whose act of extraditing this young innocent man to possible death, is unacceptable for a country and government which claims to be a moderate voice in the turbulent sea of radical Muslim regimes.
If Pakatan does not discover its backbone quickly and instead chooses to remain silent, not wanting this issue to be another obstacle to their path to Putrajaya, all they would have done is to remind the rabid minority that in the end they will always be cowed and slaves to political expediency and not proponents of justice. Malaysiakini.
Despising Israel the way Israel is despised in much of the Arab world is all about anti-Semitism. And most anti-Semitism anywhere in the world has its origins in envy.
There are two kinds of Arabs in this world. Those who hate Jews, and those who don’t. And in my life, I have met more of the former than the latter. I am not proud to say that. Arabs will not like me for admitting it. But it is true. And it is something I wish the Obama administration understood. It is something Americans should know as the “Arab Spring” enters its second year.
I didn’t know much about any of this as a Lebanese kid growing up in New Jersey. But I found out about it when I wrote my first pro-Israel column for my college paper as a young student journalist. I defended Israel on some point I’ve long forgotten, but what I’ll never forget is the backlash I received from fellow Arabs. Some were Americans, others were students from Arab countries, many of whom I counted as friends.
First came the letters to the editor, then the personal insults. It was as if I’d broken a secret code I didn’t know existed. Some secret blood oath, which goes something like this: Arabs don’t speak unkindly of Arabs in public, or kindly about Israel. The backlash stunned me. I pondered the pounding I had taken, and floundered a bit. I even thought for a short time of writing something negative about Israel the next time I had a chance, just to balance things out and reestablish my Arab bona fides.
One friend accused me of being a self-hating Arab. He explained to me that I was exploiting my ancestry to ingratiate myself with white America and the Jews who controlled white America. I explained to him that I was white. And that I was an American. And that I didn’t believe that Jews controlled America. The Jewish men I knew had a hard enough time controlling their own families! But nothing I said helped relieve the tension, not even my stab at humor.
I also explained that many of my Jewish friends did not like my column. Most were liberals from New York or northern New Jersey who assumed I was with them on the politics of the Middle East, that I was in agreement with the governing thesis that drives most Arabs and liberal Jews: that it is Israel that is the problem in the region, not the Palestinians, and not the Arab world itself.
I also explained to him that I was mostly Lebanese, but also part German and part Italian, and that I was raised by parents who didn’t much care for the whole notion of hyphenated America. They taught me to think for myself, and have the courage to challenge authority. Even theirs, if I could make the case. The fact is, Arabs don’t all look alike or think alike. But we are often pushed into a kind of groupthink, a kind of self-censorship that hinders our development and our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
We are not a universal group. But some of us believe in a simple universal truth: that every Arab deserves to live in freedom, wherever he or she might call home. Some of us want Arab countries to be more like America and Israel, places where the individual can flourish. Say those words to many Arabs and they are shocked and angered. Soon, words like imperialist are thrown about, and the subject turns to Israel. Always, it seems, it turns to Israel.
Why the anger when I hint that America and Israel might have something to teach the Arab world? I thought about it for the longest time, and only recently stumbled upon the answer. It is all about Arab self-doubt. It is all tied to a profound lack of cultural self-confidence, and a deep-seated fear that maybe, just maybe, Arabs won’t be very good at the self-governance thing. That Arab nations won’t be capable of building democratic cultures that engender the flourishing of human freedom, and that these nations won’t have the ability to tap the God-given talents of their people the way Americans and Israelis do.
That maybe, just maybe, the Arab world will never measure up to America or Israel. Better, goes the logic, to cling to anger over the plight of the Palestinians. Better to cling to international policy disputes and to a deep-seated hatred of Israel. Better to play the role of victim, and the role of self-righteous critic, than to do the hard work of lifting up the conditions of your people.
David and Goliath. Few haven't heard of the small boy who legend says brought down Goliath the giant with a slingshot. Join National Geographic as they investigate the meaning behind an artefact that lends the story a historical foundation. Then follow a trail of evidence that may provide tantalising proof of the lives of King David and Solomon. A 47 minute documentary.
PETALING JAYA (Herald Malaysia): The proposed healthcare reforms under the 1Care for 1Malaysia transformation plan is nothing more than a move to enrich private companies, says a health activist. Dr T Jayabalan, the Citizens Healthcare Coalition spokesman, told a press conference that the government had long been flirting with the prospect of plunging its hand into the services sector and was now pushing ahead in the outsourcing of health services.
He reminded the media of the outsourcing of Malaysia Airlines System’s (MAS) catering system in which a private company made a killing. “It’s very clear that at the end of the day it is all about outsourcing,” Jayabalan said. “There has been no consultation with the public except with pharmacists and selected segments of doctors.”
“Its outsourcing vehicle is the Social Health Insurance (SHI) scheme. I find it fantastic that they use the word ‘social’ when there is nothing social about the scheme.” Under the 1Care, healthcare will be provided by a single entity and each household would be required to contribute almost 10 per cent of gross household income for the SHI which only covers basic healthcare expense.
All clinics and hospitals will be incorporated into an umbrella of 1Care facilities and access to specialist healthcare will have to be through primary healthcare providers who will act as gate-keepers. A National Healthcare Financing Authority will be set up to take charge of 1Care. The coalition expects that this authority will likely be turned into a government-linked company.
According to Jayabalan, the doctors who were consulted over the 1Care were forced to sign a pledge to keep the information confidential. But a few, who disagreed with the plan, had stepped forward to furnish him with the details. “Hushing up the scheme’s details is unacceptable,” Jayabalan stated. “Healthcare is a social issue which affects the country’s progress and productivity.”
No thought for public welfare
The coalition views 1Care as a thinly veiled attempt by the government to turn yet another public services sector into a business without a thought for the people’s welfare. “We have already lost the education sector and we cannot afford to lose the healthcare sector,” he said. “The biggest issue now is that the government wants to transfer part of the cost to the people in what it calls cost-sharing.”
“This is the language of the World Bank which has always promoted the removal of subsidies. And the government’s claim that it is illequipped to bear the cost of healthcare doesn’t hold water as it doesn’t fork out much anyway.” Jayabalan also pointed out an alarming discrepancy in the Health Minister’s words and actions pertaining to 1Care. He said that despite the ministry assuring the public that the plan was only at the conceptual stage, it has already begun nationwide roadshows to promote the plan.
“I daresay that it is already at the final stages of implementation,” he said. “The government is also separating the pharmacists and doctors and this tactic of division is the best way to push a plan through.” But he still believed that it is not too late for citizens to push back (the plan), especially with the general election around the corner. Noting that 1Care could be an unpopular move, he said that the government might backtrack if the dissent was strong enough.
Jayabalan also rattled off a list of alternatives to these proposed healthcare reforms. The first is to retain the current healthcare system with reforms aimed at improving public healthcare as well as increasing government funding for this sector. “The government could include the pooling of risks… with the poor being subsidised by the rich,” he said. “But the country will be headed for disaster if we dispense the current system for an American one.” -- By Stephanie Sta Maria, FMT Hat tip: Catholic Herald
Persian Shiite anti-Semitism is deep-seated and points to genocideBy Andrew Bostom
Reza Khalili (pseudonym), a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has reported the latest restatement of the Iranian Shiite theocracy’s Jew-annihilationist jihadism:
Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”
The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.Putatively (and perversely), these genocidal pronouncements are a “response” to Israel’s own planned efforts to thwart Iran’s longstanding, repeatedly expressed desire to destroy the Jewish state and “Zionists” (i.e., non-dhimmi Jews) in general. Shiite Iran’s obsessive calls for the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews are driven by a deeply rooted theological Islamic anti-Semitism.
Past as Prologue
The Mujtahids [authoritative interpreters of Islamic law] and Mulla are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.
The Persianophilic scholar E. G. Browne wrote those words in the 1920s about the entire pre-Pahlavi period of Shiite theocratic rule, from the ascension of the first Safavid shah, Ismail I, at the outset of the 16th century through Reza Shah Pahlavi’s installation in 1925, at the end of the Qajar dynasty. These Shiite clerics emphasized the notion of the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews in particular, but also of Christians, Zoroastrians, and others, as the cornerstone of relations toward non-Muslims. The impact of this najis conception was already apparent to European visitors to Persia during the reign of Ismail I. The Portuguese traveler Tome Pires observed (between 1512 and 1515) that “Sheikh Ismail . . . never spares the life of any Jew,” while another European travelogue notes “the great hatred [Ismail I] bears against the Jews.”
The writings and career of Mohammad Baqer al-Majlisi elucidate the imposition of Islamic law (Sharia) on non-Muslims in Shiite Iran. Al-Majlisi (d. 1699) was perhaps the most influential cleric of the Safavid Shiite theocracy in Persia. For six years at the end of the 17th century, he functioned as the de facto ruler of Iran, making him the Ayatollah Khomeini of his era. By design, he wrote many works in Persian to disseminate key aspects of the Shia ethos among ordinary persons. In his Persian treatise “Lightning Bolts Against the Jews,” Al-Majlisi describes the standard humiliating requisites for non-Muslims living under sharia, first and foremost the blood-ransom jizya, or poll-tax, based on Koran 9:29.
He then enumerates six other restrictions relating to worship, housing, dress, transportation, and weapons, before outlining the unique Shiite impurity or najis regulations. It is these latter najis prohibitions which lead anthropology professor Laurence Loeb — who studied and lived within the Jewish community of Southern Iran in the early 1970s — to observe, “Fear of pollution by Jews led to great excesses and peculiar behavior by Muslims.” According to Al-Majlisi:
And, that they should not enter the pool while a Muslim is bathing at the public baths . . . If something can be purified, such as clothes, if they are dry, they can be accepted, they are clean. But if they [the dhimmis] had come into contact with those cloths in moisture they should be rinsed with water after being obtained. . . . It would also be better if the ruler of the Muslims would establish that all infidels could not move out of their homes on days when it rains or snows because they would make Muslims impure.
The dehumanizing character of these popularized “impurity” regulations fomented recurring Muslim anti-Jewish violence, including pogroms and forced conversions throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, which rendered areas of Iran Judenrein — free of Jews. For example, the preeminent modern historian of Iranian Jewry, Walter Fischel, provides these observations based on the 19th-century narrative of Rabbi David d’Beth Hillel and additional eyewitness accounts:
Due to the persecution [by] their Moslem neighbors, many once flourishing communities entirely disappeared. Maragha, for example, ceased to be the seat of a Jewish community around 1800, when the Jews were driven out. . . . Similarly, Tabriz, where over 50 Jewish families are supposed to have lived, became Judenrein towards the end of the 18th century through similar circumstances. The peak of the forced elimination of Jewish communities occurred under Shah Mahmud (1834‒48), during whose rule the Jewish population in Meshed, in eastern Persia, was forcibly converted, an event which not only remained unchallenged by Persian authorities, but also remained unknown and unnoticed by European Jews. National Review
In Saudi Arabia — where religious persecution is a virtue and tolerance, a vice— praying as a Christian, even in the privacy of a home, is treated as a felony offence. And, notwithstanding the Koranic injunction against compulsion in Islam, Christians held in Saudi prisons for practicing their faith can be pressured to convert to Islam. These religious-freedom violations are playing out right now in the Saudi Kingdom.
On December 15, 35 Ethiopian Christians working in Saudi Arabia were arrested and detained by the kingdom’s religious police for holding just such a private prayer gathering in Jeddah. The official charge is that they were “mixing with the opposite sex” — a crime for unrelated people in that Salafi-influenced country. But the real reason is that they were praying as Christians. The six men and 29 women had held their evangelical weekly prayer meeting on the day of arrest.
A Christian leader from Saudi Arabia explained: “The Saudi officials are accusing the Christians of committing the crime of mixing of sexes because if they charge them with meeting for practicing Christianity, they will come under pressure from the international human-rights organizations as well as Western countries. In fact, when an employer of one of the detainees asked for the reason for their employee’s arrest, the Saudi official told him that it was for practicing Christianity.”
Saudi officials strip-searched all the women and subjected them to an abusive body-cavity search, and assaulted the men. In a remarkable prison interview with the Voice of America’s Amharic-language service, one of the women, who contracted an infection from the search, attested: “We are traumatized by the strip search. They treated us like dogs because of our Christian faith. While talking about me during a recent visit to the prison medical center, I overheard a nurse telling a doctor ‘if she dies, we will put her in a trash bin.’”
More than a month after their arrest, they remain in Jeddah’s Briman prison. One of the prisoners spoke to International Christian Concern (ICC), the nondenominational human-rights group that first broke the story about the arrest: “A high-ranking security official insulted us, saying, ‘You are non-believers and animals.’ He also said, ‘You are pro-Jews and supporters of America.’ We then responded, ‘We love everyone. Our God tells us to love everyone.’”
On February 7, Saudi officials ushered a Muslim preacher into their jail cell. A woman prisoner described what happened in a phone interview with ICC: “The Muslim preacher vilified Christianity, denigrated the Bible, and told us that Islam is the only true religion. The preacher told us to convert to Islam. When the preacher asked us, we didn’t deny our Christian faith. I was so offended with her false teachings that I left the meeting.”
Of Saudi Arabia’s 6 or 7 million foreign workers, 1 million or more are Christians. Some of them have resided there for 30 years, but they are prohibited from having churches. The Saudi government maintains that they are allowed to worship privately in their houses but, as the U.S. State Department delicately put it, “this right was not always respected in practice and is not defined in law.” In other words, not content with the banning of public churches, police hunt out and punish Christians praying together privately. The only exceptions are ones hidden deep within Western walled compounds.
In 2006, after years of listing it among the world’s worst religious persecutors, the State Department undertook a new diplomatic initiative with Saudi Arabia on religious freedom. It resulted in a publicized (at least in the United States) “confirmation” by the Saudis that they would allow private worship in house churches, and rein in the religious police, among other things. In high-level meetings in Saudi Arabia last year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was told repeatedly that this is the policy.
It is amply clear that this is not so.
As the State Department bluntly reported in 2008: “Mutawwa’in [religious police] continued to conduct raids of private non-Muslim religious gatherings. There were also charges of harassment, abuse, and killings at the hands of the mutawwa’in. . . . These incidents caused many non-Muslims to worship in fear of, and in such a manner as to avoid discovery by, the police and mutawwa’in.”
One of the cases that has come to light in that tightly controlled country involved over 150 Filipino Catholics, who were detained in October 2010 for taking part in an underground Mass. Twelve of them, including a Catholic priest, were reportedly charged with proselytizing, and conditionally released into the custody of their employers. The Philippines’ embassy in Riyadh confirmed that it had arranged a kafala — a type of bail bond — to obtain their temporary release.
Another, in January 2011, saw the arrest of two Indian Christians, Yohan Nese and Vasantha Sekhar Vara, when religious police raided a private residence where the two were part of a prayer group. The religious police interrogated and allegedly physically abused the two men. They spent more than six months in detention, before being deported.
On February 12, 2011, Eyob Mussie, an Eritrean in his early 30s, was arrested for proselytizing. After psychiatric tests confirmed Mussie’s sanity, there were reports that he would receive the death penalty. He was eventually deported.
The Saudi practices of arresting, detaining, and abusing Christians for practicing their faith and pressing them in jail to renounce Christianity must be brought into the open. U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook should directly intervene on behalf of the imprisoned Ethiopian Christians. All concerned individuals should call the Saudi Arabian Embassy (202-342-3800), or sign this petition asking for their release.
“We want to go back to our country and worship freely,” one of the Ethiopian Christian prisoners pleaded on the phone yesterday. “Why don’t they release us?”
Good question.
— Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Jonathan Racho is regional manager for Africa and South Asia at International Christian Concern, a Christian human-rights organization.
Global Persecution of Christians, It’s a truth the West must stop ignoring By Conrad Black
Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians. A comprehensive Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted in 131 countries containing 70 percent of the world’s population, out of 197 countries in the world (if Palestine, Taiwan, South Sudan, and the Vatican are included). Best estimates are that about 200 million Christians are in communities where they are persecuted. There is not the slightest question of the scale and barbarity of this persecution, and a little of it is adequately publicized. But this highlights the second half of the atrocity: the passivity and blasé indifference of most of the West’s media and governments.
It is not generally appreciated that over 100,000 Christians a year are murdered because of their faith. Because Christianity is, by a wide margin, the world’s largest religion, the leading religion in the traditionally most advanced areas of the world, and, despite its many fissures, the best organized, largely because of the relatively tight and authoritarian structure of the Roman Catholic Church, the West is not accustomed to thinking of Christians as a minority, much less a persecuted one.
The ratings of offending countries always put North Korea as the worst, followed by Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the Maldives, Yemen, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Laos, Pakistan, Sudan, and, farther back but still prominently odious, Libya, Syria, Oman, Egypt, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority, Vietnam, Cuba, and China. While there is no shortage of incidents in India, where there is serious religious friction between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs as well, most offending countries are Islamic or Communist.
The reluctance of the leading predominantly Christian countries to speak out against these outrages is remarkable. Many of the delinquent countries are ostensible allies such as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Oman, Egypt, and Kuwait. Obviously, some countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, etc.) are in too chaotic a condition to be expected to maintain religious liberties, but Saudi Arabia is a tightly controlled state that in many respects cooperates closely with the United States. It is a joint government of the royal House of Saud with the leadership of the extremist Wahhabi Islamist sect, and while the Saudi government is a functioning ally, especially against any extension of Iranian influence among Shiites in Sunni-led countries such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia also pays for 95 percent of externally financed Islamist institutions across the Muslim world. And these are overwhelmingly fundamentalist and virulently hostile to the West and to all non-Islamic religions. Official Saudi media regularly condemn and incite violence against Christians and Jews.
The recent Muslim attacks on Egypt’s Christian Copts caused the military to intervene against the Christians, killing dozens of them, which action the military government then blamed on the “inexperience” of the soldiers involved. (Unlimited experience is not required to foretell the consequences of firing automatic weapons and rifles at unarmed demonstrators at point-blank range.)
Many of the outrages are perpetrated by groups the West is conditioned to thinking of as minorities, especially Muslims in general. But the response of the Western secular leaders to these monstrous events has been achingly slow. British prime minister David Cameron did recently promise that there would be no British aid to countries that mistreated religious minorities. But it has become almost a cliché for shabby leaders of underdeveloped countries to attack Christian minorities. Zimbabwe under the infamous Robert Mugabe is one of the latest regimes routinely to attack Christian institutions because of Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Evangelical criticism of the violence and corruption of his governing ZANU party. South Sudan was the scene of perhaps the vilest and most widespread abuse, as the Muslim Sudanese government killed approximately a million South Sudanese Christians and animists over the last decade or so. (Unfortunately, tribalism in South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has partly replaced the oppression of the Muslim north.) The Palestinians, despite their generations-old and very effective portrayal of themselves as a dispossessed and brutally abused minority, discriminate scandalously against Christians, even though the local Roman Catholic authority for many years, Michael Sabah, was obsequiously deferential to the terrorist Arafat regime. And the anti-Christian violence in Nigeria has flared up dangerously, though in that country the Christians are almost as numerous as, and more prosperous than, the Muslims, and the frictions are largely on tribal, geographic, and economic as well as sectarian lines.
CAIR’s Crusade against The Third Jihad by Clifford D. May
Zuhdi Jasser is a physician, a U.S. Navy veteran, an American patriot, and a Muslim who does not hold with those who preach that Islam commands its followers to take part in a war against unbelievers.
The Third Jihad, a documentary film that Jasser narrated, takes a hard look at those Muslims who are waging this war — both with bombs and by stealthier means. The film had been among the educational materials used to train New York City police officers dealing with terrorism. Then, last month, the New York Timeswent on what one might call a crusade against the movie, publishing a series of articles branding it a “hate-filled film about Muslims” and calling on Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to “apologize for the film . . . and make clear that his department does not tolerate such noxious and dangerous stereotyping.”
In the first of its stories, the Times charges that the film “casts a broad shadow over American Muslims.” That ignores the unambiguous statement with which the documentary opens: “This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are radical.”
The story quotes Jasser as saying in the film: “This is the true agenda of Islam in America.” But what Jasser actually said in the film is that jihad is “the true agenda of much of the Muslim leadership here in America.”
Jasser has long argued — and he’s hardly alone in this — that the leaders of some of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations that claim to represent American Muslims are not as moderate as they’d have you believe. Prominent among such organizations is CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which appears to have been the driving force behind the coverage in the Times and in the Village Voice before that. The Times quotes CAIR spokesmen saying how outraged and offended they are by the film.
The Times chooses not to inform readers that CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-financing trial in the U.S. to date, the 2007 U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation et al. The Times neglects to report that the FBIhas broken all ties with CAIR. The Times also does not mention that last year CAIR’s national organization lost its status as a tax-deductible charity after it failed to file required annual reports detailing revenues for three consecutive years as required by law. (The Times has raised pointed questions about funding for The Third Jihad. Why no interest in where CAIR’s money comes from?)
The paper never bothered to interview Jasser. Nor did the Times quote Robert Jackson, the only Muslim on the New York City Council, who told other reporters that while he “initially thought from reading about [the film] that it cast a negative image on all Muslims . . . it does not. It focuses on the extreme Muslims that are trying to hurt other people.” The Times turned down an op-ed by former secretary of homeland security Tom Ridge and former CIA director (and current chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) Jim Woolsey defending the film. National Review
BBC Video: Groomed for Sex - Pakistani Rape-Gangs in the UK
(Kitman TV) For well over a decade the Government, the media and top police officials hid a sickening trend happening in our country! For whatever reason they failed to tell us about it or take decisive action on Muslim sex grooming gangs of mainly Pakistani descent. And let them openly operate their disgusting and sickening crimes in our towns and cities. Girls as young as 11 have and are still being groomed and then sexually abused by these gangs. Is political correctness and the fear of upsetting the Muslim population worth more than the safety of our children? Watch this 57 minute documentary. What do you expect from the members of an intolerant society and a failed state? Hypocrisy and double standards.
The slaying of our sacred cows by S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy
COMMENT I have been reading with cynical amusement the comments section on the Malaysiakini reports regarding Prime Minister Najib Razak's sincere appeal to the "Hindu" community to trust the BN government. Najib is being mocked for asking for the trust of the "Hindus" but I suspect readers may have misunderstood our honourable PM. He is merely applying the same standards as he would on his own community, seeing as how there are so many Indonesian, Filipinos and Burmese, he assumes that all Indians are Hindus as are all these constitutionally created Malay-Muslims. So I take no offense.
Before The Obedient Wives Club become the fashionable object of public scorn, the MIC - the oldest political party in Malaysia - had already staked a claim to that title. And for the past 30 or so years, who can claim that it has not served its lord and master (Umno) with the utmost diligence. One only has to conjure up the well-documented image of MP P Kamalanathan kissing the hand of DPM Muhyiddin Yassin (in a Malay wife like fashion) to understand the depth of the MIC's commitment to the institution of Umno matrimony.
The MIC or CashMoneyBrothers as I like to refer to them (to understand this reference, readers are encouraged to watch the overwrought movie, New Jack City) has no doubt played a major role in the dismal situation of the Indian community, but the reality is, Indians themselves are also to blame for their misfortune. Voting members of the Indian community (generally poor and disenfranchised) voted for the MIC and the BN believing the propaganda that MIC spewed because the reality for them was much worse. Better to vote in hope then not at all. The bourgeois class either abstained from voting out of disinterest in the thug politics of the MIC or a general apathy towards the political process.
This of course did not preclude them from embracing indulgent Indian "cultural" societies or attending glittery Indian society events, both of which had the grubby handprints of the MIC. What Hindraf managed to do, and do really well, was to wake up an apathetic Indian middle class to the plight of their less fortunate brethren. It is ironic, since this Western educated section of the Indian electorate who for so long felt alienated from the political process now feels estrangement from the general Indian population because of the rhetoric of P Uthayakumar which vacillates from sublime race-baiting to the downright bizarre.
The fact that the movement is a hodge-podge of Indian intellectuals and working-class foot soldiers is a reminder of the class divisions which is endemic in the Indian community. What is it with Indians and blame shifting? Didn't S Samy Vellu right here in Malaysiakiniblame the failures of MIC and the problems of the community he was supposed to represent on former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad? So much for Indian brotherhood.
Politics of temples and Tamil schools
The Indian community like their Malay sibling suffers from the same religious enthrallment. However, unlike the Malays, who have a state-subsidised religion, the Indian community has to pay for their religious fervour in the forms of temples and themselves. The moneyed class provides some of the funds (as does the state) but more often then not, it is the poor who fork out exorbitant sums for these impressive structures which serves no purpose but to bilk the most vulnerable members of the community of their hard-earned money.
The priest caste which is in substance a mercantile class is sourced form India and Sri Lanka who lord it over a subservient Indian population all the while living in conditions far beyond the means of the average devotee. Of course, the MIC is part of this process but who do we blame but ourselves for the millions of ringgit spent on "poojas" and accoutrements of piety when such money could have been used for purposes far more practical and beneficial to the community then the worship of a thousand Gods?
Hindus may mock the overt consumerism of their born-again Christian brothers and sisters but have they taken a good hard look at how temples recycle the flowers, fruits and various other religious paraphernalia? It's big business and these so-called men of god know how to make a profit. They are the modern Pharisees. Do they not see the sacrilege of wasting milk when washing idols, when there is poverty all around them? The temple issue and it's always revolves around temples has become the focus point of the "Indian" issue and has been used by the MIC to demonstrate its influence in the government or the lack of opposition influence, when it comes to matters pertaining to the Indian community.
How much money spent over the years, raised from the ignorant Indian masses for the construction of temples which then become contentious issues in the ongoing race debate? The MIC did not force us to give them money, we willingly handed it over to them. Umno had nothing to do with this. And if there is a level of ignorance amongst the general Indian population, then the finger must surely be pointed at the Indian school system. No doubt the MIC is to blame for this sad state of affairs but just as the MCA together with the DAP can rightly claim a part of the tremendous success of the Chinese school system, the bulk of the credit should go to the Chinese community as a whole as the blame for the state of Tamil schools to the Indian community.
Can Indian schools boast the same level of academic achievement as Chinese schools? Can Indian schools boast the same level of discipline in its student population as Chinese schools? And if these schools are transmitting some sort of "Indian culture", something that I believe is in the purview of parents not a school system, what kind of culture is being transmitted looking at the level of crime, gender inequality and subservience to religious figures plaguing the Indian community? I am very well aware of the systemic racism that is inflicted upon the non-Malays but let us acknowledged at the very least, that the discrimination faced by a certain disenfranchised segment of our (Indian) community is perpetuated by the still simmering caste divisions.
Take a page from MP Jeyakumar
In Sungai Siput, Dr Michael D Jeyakumar (below) was fast becoming the patron saint of his own lost cause. The best thing that has happened to the Indian community besides the spurt of Hindraf-inspired activism is the fall of the long-time MIC despot at the hands of this humble country doctor in the 2008 general elections. The PSM stalwart symbolises everything that is admirable about politics in this country (and there is precious little which is admirable) and these few brief words does the man and his cause a great injustice.
I hope to elaborate on why I think politicians like him are the way forward for a new generation of Malaysians in a future piece. I know many Pakatan Indian representatives in PKR and DAP. They are honourable people but what I fear is that old habits die hard, especially when they get so much political mileage and the Indian reps in Pakatan will be forced to voice the same old concerns for the community as the MIC did.
Furthermore, some of my Indian friends, those from the middle class have expressed concern that Indian problems would shift from a race-based perspective to a class-based one. I don't have a problem with this except that experience has shown that any class-based discourse concerns itself with the problems faced by the middle class and not the poorer members of society.
Perhaps we can take a page from MP Jeyakumar who when asked how he intends to serve the Indian community after his win over Samy Vellu, replied, "I am here to serve all members of the community, not only the Indians." So yes, I am arguing that Indian activists should abandon the struggle for Indian schools and the creation of more temples and disregard this absurd notion that ‘Indian interests" is best exemplified by the two.
I'll go further, until we get to a place where the Indian community has recovered from their own ignorance and the machinations of the MIC, we should halt construction of temples and only support high performing Indian schools or those with potential. The student populations of most Indians schools should be integrated into mainstream national schools.
This in no way means that we should not protest against efforts to demolish existing temples or any other non-Muslim religious structures. Najib is correct in asking for the trust of the "Hindu" (Indian) voting public because for the past 30 years Umno-BN has known exactly what they want. However, he has no interests or desire in discovering or fulfilling what the Malaysian public - be they Orang Asli, Malays, Chinese, Indians, Sabahans and Sarawakians - really need. Malaysiakini.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali:The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World
Thursday, February 09, 2012
From one end of the muslim world to the other, Christians are being murdered for their faith. We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.
The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.
The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia”—a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.
But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.
At least 24 Coptic Christians were killed in Cairo during clashes with the Egyptian Army on Oct. 9., Thomas Hartwell / Redux
From blasphemy laws to brutal murders to bombings to mutilations and the burning of holy sites, Christians in so many nations live in fear. In Nigeria many have suffered all of these forms of persecution. The nation has the largest Christian minority (40 percent) in proportion to its population (160 million) of any majority-Muslim country. For years, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria have lived on the edge of civil war. Islamist radicals provoke much if not most of the tension. The newest such organization is an outfit that calls itself Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sacrilege.” Its aim is to establish Sharia in Nigeria. To this end it has stated that it will kill all Christians in the country.
In the month of January 2012 alone, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011 its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They use guns, gasoline bombs, and even machetes, shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) while launching attacks on unsuspecting citizens. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, policemen, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication.
The Christophobia that has plagued Sudan for years takes a very different form. The authoritarian government of the Sunni Muslim north of the country has for decades tormented Christian and animist minorities in the south. What has often been described as a civil war is in practice the Sudanese government’s sustained persecution of religious minorities. This persecution culminated in the infamous genocide in Darfur that began in 2003. Even though Sudan’s Muslim president, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which charged him with three counts of genocide, and despite the euphoria that greeted the semi-independence he grant-ed to South Sudan in July of last year, the violence has not ended. In South Kordofan, Christians are still subject-ed to aerial bombardment, targeted killings, the kidnap-ping of children, and other atrocities. Reports from the United Nations indicate that between 53,000 and 75,000 innocent civilians have been displaced from their resi-dences and that houses and buildings have been looted and destroyed. Continued here........
The fiddlers on Anwar's roof by S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy
The "pro Jewish" sentiments attributed to Anwar Ibrahim by the rabid right-wing state sponsored Malay press, "independent" non-governmental organisations and various personalities is further evidence that Umno, with the complicity of its non-Malay component parties, is determined to destroy the middle ground currently occupied by PAS and PKR.
Notice how the word "pro-Jewish", stripped of context and nuance, is bandied about conjuring up images of Anwar and by extension those who support him (read: non-Malays) as agents of a nebulous Jewish entity determined to undermine Malay solidarity and enthrall the ‘ummah' (Muslim population).
Police reports are filed, inflammatory speeches are made about how this most vital of issues will be brought to the attention of members of parliament, who no doubt will be shocked - shocked that such forms of extremism are professed by a man the state has accused of being a sodomite.
NONEOf course, Anwar's "links" to biased Western politicians and media will be disseminated as further evidence that the opposition leader is in cahoots with well, everyone. Note to Umno spin-doctors - trotting out Dr Chandra Muzzafar to assassinate Anwar's character and lend credibility to their arguments, may play well to the faithful but does nothing but remind right-thinking citizens that Anwar and Pakatan Rakyat should be more circumspect in their choices of future political allies.
However what is ignored in this narrative is the further Islamisation or more accurately Arabisation of the political and social landscape that Umno seems determinedly to pursue. It is the greatest of ironies that Anwar was himself part of the state mechanism that facilitated this shift many years ago as an activist in the Islamic youth group Abim (although in those days Abim had a more antagonistic relationship with the powers-that-be) and then in his various cabinet roles.
The resurgent opposition leader has expressed remorse for his past acts as a reconciliatory move to his non-Malay supporters and to solidify his international reputation as a "moderate" Muslim leader. The biggest threat he poses is his perceived ability to harness the disparate ideological forces that comprises Pakatan and occupy the middle ground that BN has supposedly occupied for decades, but in reality merely paid lip service to.
Long creep of Arabisation
The anti-Semitic rhetoric coming from agents of the state serves two purposes. The first, to demonise Anwar in the eyes of the Muslim population here and abroad, the latter which he is fairly popular with. The second is an example of what I argued in 'Manufacturing of a fear culture', which is to estrange the Muslim population from the rest of their fellow citizens. Non-Malays politicians and journalists have to tread extremely carefully on this issue lest they be portrayed as anti-Islam.
Besides promulgating a culture of fear, the determined attempts of conflating complex humanitarian issues like the Palestinian Occupation with Islamic ones further alienates non-Muslim/non-Malay members of the public. Their views of Islam already coloured by the numerous "Islamic" provocations on their own religions and cultures and witnessing the level of anti-Semiticism dominating the public discourse (which they are excluded from) from high-ranking officials merely reinforces these negatives perceptions of both Islam and the Palestinian Occupation.
With the decades long creep of Arabisation into the Malaysian public and private spheres, anti-Semitism is already embedded in the system except now with the advances of communication technology, this unsavoury aspect of the regime's tacit support of these elements is well-documented. Consider the hate speech of Muslim convert Ridhuan Tee Abdullah, a lecturer at the National Defence University, who has taken anti-Semiticism to a new level by comparing his Chinese brothers and sisters to the most obscene stereotype of Jews, pleading special knowledge about their community since he was a ‘kafir' (like them) before embracing Islam.
This is a so-called Muslim intellectual who teaches young Malay officers of their duties and responsibilities (amongst other things) to their country. Add the likes of the two Alis - Ibrahim and Hasan - and what you get is a willing audience of hate-mongers within the Malay community who probably don't understand that the rhetoric is merely for propagandistic purposes to maintain control and not an invitation for violence.
With the yearly influx of thousands of returning students from the madrasahs and universities in the Middle East, not to mention the indoctrination that happens in the hundreds of unregistered (read: unmonitored) religious schools in this country (sympathetic to the brand of Islam imported from the Middle East), what you get is a conflux of simmering Islamic fundamentalism who view the discourse wafting from Umno as examples of either a lack of Muslim solidarity (in the case of Anwar) or an invitation to express their religious convictions through violent means.
Whenever acts of extremism are perpetrated by members of a so-called moderate community, the soul-searching question often asked is "how did such an individual come to be in a society like ours". In our case, we only have to read the newspapers or be cognisant of the coddling of extremist views to understand how an individual like Nordin Mat Top came to exist.
The gentle reminder of Home Minister Hishammuddin Onn, of Nordin's execution, "a life is a life" and how the state could have "rehabilitated" him, is merely a reminder of the mendacity of Umno when it comes to its role in the creation of the environment that sustains the like of a mass murderer like Top.
Hamas or Fatah?
Coupled with the anti-Semitism is the astounding level of ignorance of the general Malay population especially amongst the university-educated ones on the nature and participants of the Palestinian Occupation. All of them view the occupation as purely a Muslim problem, ignoring the thousand of Christians who have killed and died for the struggle.
Christian voices like the late George Habash are unknown to them. It is always, "Western liberal morality" that conspire to keep the Palestinians down, and by extension Islam, all the while forgetting passionate polemical voices like the slain Irish Catholic, Margaret Hassan, whose work in the Palestinian refugee camps reminds us of the humanitarian aspect of the conflict.
And let us not forget of the internal bickering between the Hamas and Fatah fractions that have seeped into the non-governmental organisations under the umbrella organisation which handles all the humanitarian aid involving the Palestinian Occupation here in Malaysia.
Local Muslim NGOs are left pondering who to support - Fatah or Hamas - all the while aid which is supposed to elevate the horrible conditions the Palestinians are living under becomes the prize for the internal squabbling in the Palestinian Authority. In a multi-racial/ethnic country like Malaysia, which prides itself on being on the moderate Muslim path, the middle ground means having a nuanced domestic and foreign policy opinion on the Palestinian conflict.
What is not needed are the likes of Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin leading protests against that dreaded Devil America where he loudly proclaims that he and others would go fight for the Palestinians in Gaza. Would they send the newly-enhanced Rela members? If the state continues its attacks on the middle ground using issues like these against Anwar and his Pakatan members, it will inadvertently let the genie out of the bottle with regards to Islamic extremism.
For some time now, they have managed to contain the extremist elements in the country; however the rhetoric from members of its own party or proxy groups (whose aim is not to radicalise the population but to maintain Umno hegemony) will make it harder for them to constrain these forces.
The non-Malay component parties of BN complicity in creating such a situation weather by their silence or cheerleading, is more damaging then their presence in white ang pow events. Anwar and Pakatan should do their utmost in never relinquishing the middle-ground because this would have disastrous consequence for Malaysia. The shape of things to come will be determined by the integrity that Pakatan displays when dealing with emotionally-charged issues such as these.
So, they should thread cautiously but with the agenda of never leaving the field to the bigots and anti-Semites. Malaysiakini
Bill Clinton slams Yasser Arafat for Rejecting Peace - The Palestinians do not want peace
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
In 2000, Bill Clinton proposed a two-state peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israelis agreed--accepting enormous concessions on territory, security, and Jerusalem. Tragically, the Palestinian Authority--led by Yasser Arafat--rejected the offer and launched the Second Intifada.
Anonymous_4031: PM Najib Razak tells the Chinese folk to be "moderate" on Chap Goh Mei. Dear PM, you are barking up the wrong tree. The Chinese, just like the Indians, have been moderate for 50-odd years. You should tell Utusan Malaysia, your Umno mouthpiece, to be moderate. You should tell Perkasa, a racist NGO, to be moderate. You should tell your Malay principals in schools to be moderate.
You should tell your civil servants, who are Umno-leaning, to be moderate. You should tell your police and the FRU to be moderate; and not use tear gas and water cannons as they did in 2007 and also on June 9, 2011, to disperse the Bersih marchers. You should tell your MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission) officers to be moderate in their interrogation of Teoh Beng Hock-like witnesses.
Come on, PM, you should also tell yourself to be moderate; and not threaten people with "even if our bodies are crushed and our lives lost, we must defend Putrajaya at all costs."
Trumpet Call: How does Najib define 'moderation'? If 'moderation' means allowing and tacitly supporting the ultra-racist stand of Perkasa, then keep moderation to yourself. We don't want it. If 'moderation' means tolerating the excesses and abuse of power for personal gain, then stuff it, because we hate it to our core.
If 'moderation' means cheating at the polls, depriving the Chinese and Indians of scholarships, and robbing the poor natives in Sabah and Sarawak of their land rights, then Najib, keep the rhetoric to yourself. We know that all this is just election talk. Once the GE is over, should you win, moderation is thrown out of the window and more excesses, more abuse of power and more marginalisation of the non-Malays will take place. We cannot take this hypocrisy for another five more years.
Onyourtoes: The PM's address to the Chinese to be moderates? Look, PM, obviously you have picked the wrong crowd to address, or perhaps you should have looked at your own credential and credibility before addressing this issue. Since when were Chinese in general extremists? What did they fight for which could be deemed as extreme. Did they ever fight for things that were not stated in the constitution? Did they fight for exclusivity? Did they fight for a status to be more equal than others in this country? Fighting for equality and a rightful place (like other Malaysians) under the Malaysian sun is not extremism.
KSN: Najib, you said all races will benefit from your transformation programmes. Why did you have to say that? Because you know that the policies so far implemented did not benefit the other races and it is an admission on your part, right, Najib? Now tell the other races why they should believe you now when the other races were left out intentionally and knowingly for 30 over years? Malaysiakini
The GE13 will be the dirtiest ever in the history of Malaysia as BN/UMNO fights for dear life and its gravy train. Please send this again to all your friends before polling day to remind them of what to do to ensure as fair polling as possible. The Voter Agent training recently conducted at the PJ Civic Centre brought to the fore some very critical issues which every voter ought to know. These are as follows:
1. As soon as you enter the polling station, you will be ushered to Kerani 1, who will check your personal identity against your NRIC.
He/she will then read out your name, NRIC number and the Siri/Bilangan number in accordance to the list provided by the Election Commission (SPR).
2. Once all that is verified, Kerani 1 will pass your NRIC to the next officer, Kerani 2.
3. Here, Kerani 2 will hand you a ‘Kertas Undi,’ which is identified by its Serial Number.
As a voter, please know your rights. You have the constitutional right under our Election Laws to NOT accept the ‘Kertas Undi’ that the officer assigns to you. You CAN and should ask for a different ‘Kertas Undi’ from a different book.
To do that, just say to the officer, “Encik (or Cik), saya minta Kertas Undi dari buku lain atau dari bawah.” Translated, that is, “Sir (or Madam), I like to request a different ballot paper from a different book or from below.”
This must be done so that the voter CANNOT be identified via the SPR’s master list. It will take just ONE voter to upset the whole sequence, which will eventually affect the SPR’s master list for that voting centre. The aim of doing this is to SAFEGUARD every voter’s identity. No one has the right to know how you want to vote.
4. Once your ‘Kertas Undi’ is issued to you, just stand there and do NOT leave immediately. Instead please CHECK BOTH SIDES of the ballot paper in order to ensure that there are NO pencil markings or any other form of suspicious markings on it.
If there are, REJECT the ballot paper issued to you and instead request for these markings to be either erased to your satisfaction or for you to be issued with a new ‘Kertas Undi.’ Also do NOT accept any loose-lying ‘Kertas Undi,’ which may have been strewn about because it was rejected by someone else earlier. ALWAYS ask for a fresh ballot paper from the book.
An alternative, as suggested by certain other people via email, is to bring along your own eraser so that when you see any pencil marks, you can rub them off completely yourself.
5. Kerani 2 will then hand the ‘Kertas Undi’ to the next officer, Kerani 3.
Kerani 3 carries a seal, which will be used to stamp your ‘Kertas Undi.’ PLEASE watch carefully that the officer stamps your ballot paper FULLY and CLEARLY. After that, see that it is folded into two before the ballot paper is handed over to you.
6. You can now proceed to the voting booth.
7. At the booth, please ensure that the ballot paper has only your ONE marking of a single X.
If for whatever reason, suspicious or otherwise, you overlooked some pencil marks of numbers or markings on the front or back of the ballot paper (ie other than your own mark), please ERASE those markings completely. REMEMBER, these markings can and will render your ballot spoilt – so be extra cautious.
The most careful approach is to check your ‘Kertas Undi’ thoroughly before you accept it from the officer. REMEMBER to check it in front of the relevant officer so that if you have to reject it, he is right in front of you.
8. Do not be afraid or cower in fear when you have to express your objections because there are representatives from the various participating political parties who will be there to observe the whole voting process and they are there to assist you as and when you need.
As mentioned earlier, PLEASE bring along your own pencil ERASER. It is VITAL that we get this information across to as many people as possible. It is this kind of information that BN/UMNO does not want others to know. They thrive on public ignorance so that they can do whatever they feel like brazenly.
One way to stop them is to send this information to as many of your friends as possible so that everyone, on voting day, knows exactly what to do, knows his/her constitutional voting rights and is aware of. Print this out and keep it safely. When Voting Day finally arrives, it will be handy for you to access and read again.
Another humiliating defeat for the combined Arab Armies, where puny Israel inflicts a bloody nose on the Arabs. It started with the Syrians digging to deprive water from the sea of Galilee, which was the main source of water for Israel. Watch this 49 minute video documentary.
A 59 minute documentary on the Arab Israeli conflict, where the Israelis inflict defeat upon defeat on the Arabs with audacity and at will. A tiny Israel against the many Arab Armies equipped by the Russians.
The fracturing of the Malay community by S THAYAPARAN, Commander (Rtd) Royal Malaysian Navy
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
COMMENT Umno's interaction with "multiracial parties" has so far been with Anwar Ibrahim's PKR - ostensibly a multiracial party but for the most part, an organisation filled with ship-jumping Umno rejects - and the Islamic PAS, often used as a bogeyman by Umno to keep the non-Muslims in line.
That Umno considers PKR a threat to its power has more to do with the fact that it was always perceived to be the third moderate way of the Malay polity and not for any multiracial reasons. Umno is fighting a battle on two fronts, against vocal liberal Malay voices of PKR and the more religious tones from PAS.
In both these cases, the fight for the Malay soul is confined within the Malay community and the non-Malays have been collateral damage in the ongoing shadow war that will determine the fate of this country. So it should come as no surprise that Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin (left) is concerned over the possible influx of moderate Malay voices into the routinely demonised DAP.
If more Malays enter this political party, the Malay vote will be further fractured into a diverse range of political aspirations that don't neatly fit in the bigoted ethnocentric agenda of the ruling Umno regime. If the point of the Umno game is to limit the choices of the Malay population then any attempt to provide avenues for different forms of political expressions is a threat to the natural order of their reality.
There can be no plurality of voices when it comes to expressing Islam. Anything which is a threat to Malay unity, which should be read as Umno hegemony, should be shot down in a hail of racial, religious or cultural bullets.
Unfolding DAP dilemma
Just as Umno fears the breaking away of Malays form the three manufactured roads made available to them, the DAP should take into consideration that with an influx of Malay members into their party, they are finally achieving a possible majoritarian mandate. This is a rather ominous possibility considering the multicultural demographic of this country.
The political landscape would also change, since it is now possible for the DAP to achieve a certain degree of influence without the need of its coalition partners. The reality is that the Malays (constitutionally created or otherwise) are the largest demographic and in the end, it is the Malay vote - either in unison with a coalition or by themselves - which will determine the form of governance this country will have.
dap convention shah alam 080112 nga kulasegaranAny successful multiracial party which is reflective of the aspirations of this multicultural demographic would have to comprise a sizeable Malay voting base. This is an axiom that is rarely acknowledged by opposition parties for various political reasons. A fractured Malay community free from the vicious grip of Umno is exactly what this political landscape needs and the possible influx of Malay members into the DAP should be encouraged but carefully watched.
If the DAP is truly to be a multiracial party (and I have argued that it is many times) then the reality is that it should prepare itself (if it is not doing so already) for a time when it becomes a Malay-dominated party or rather for a time when it becomes so successful in attracting Malay membership because of its ideological perspective, that the racial make-up of the party changes.
We speak the language of race
The possibility of Malays dominating this venerable party no doubt fills the hearts of non-Malays with dread and rightly so. Of course, we conflate the aspirations of the Umnoputras and the larger Malay community. But when we understand how non-Malays have been marginalised not only from the political process but also education opportunities and other social programmes, our voices stifled by the system, is it any wonder that we view the Malay community, which has benefitted the most from the ruling Umno regime, as detrimental to the liberties we are desperately fighting for?
We, of course, forget that when it comes to the social policies of Umno, everything is smoke and mirrors, be it the gilded cages that they use to ensnare the urban Malay population or the stagnating Felda settlements that house the disenfranchised rural Malay population kept going with promises of fortune from the taxes of the much-maligned non-Malays.
dap conference shah alam 080112 aspan aliasMalays who join the DAP should be fully aware that they are not only bound to whatever Islamic principles they hold true but also to the egalitarian principles of the party. This should not be a difficult proposition since there is nothing in the political agenda of the DAP which is at odds with core Islamic values or any other religion, for that matter.
And since the language of race is the only way this country has communicated for so long there will no doubt be communal problems within a large multiracial party that is dominated by Malays, just like there is in the PKR, where non-Malays have felt they have been excluded from the political decision-making process within the party.
The inconvenient truth
However, what the DAP has going for it is a long history of political opposition within a fairly secular framework, unlike say the Islamic PAS. It is a polyglot of class-based interest that has felt the shift in political fortunes over many years of fierce just opposition unlike say the fairly recent PKR, which is dominated by the personality of one man and the baggage of an Umno mindset of most of its members.
malay bloggers join dap 080112 03This would mean that non-Malay communal interests (which the DAP has rightly championed over the years) would have to be replaced by a broader Malaysian perspective, one that encompasses the rights and aspirations of all communities. This should not be a problem because the core philosophies of the DAP already embraces such a concept of Malaysia-ness.
It would however be an uncomfortable situation for the non-Malays and Malays because this would mean that the Malays would have to abide by the egalitarian principles established by the DAP, principles that are in conflict with long cherished state sanctioned racialist policies and the non-Malays would have to live with the fact that DAP would no longer be perceived by the larger Malay electorate as a Chinese (mostly) based entity because the Malays would probably have a big influence on how the party is run.
As long as all members are faithful to the ideals and constitution of the party, then any short-term tensions would subside in the long run and this country would be better for it. This perhaps is the only measure of success that really means anything when it comes to the reality of political life here in Malaysia.
That is to say that an influential political party would have the memberships of a sizeable fraction of the Malay population, able to attract votes based on not only its coalition relationships with other "Malay-based" parties but on its own.
This is an inconvenient truth about an end game that most observers wish to ignore.
A new kind of mindset
We have been stuck in this mindset that a ruling coalition of race-based parties is the future of this country despite the fact that the past 50-odd years of a post-Merdeka landscape has proven that this formula for ruling this country has had a deleterious effect on the citizens of this country. If we continue down this road of race-based parties or rather parties closely associated with race, then we will stagnate politically and the minorities in this country will never truly be a part of the political process.
We will continue claiming little victories and slide deeper into a possible racial clash between the Malays brought upon by the machinations of a corrupt federal government. What needs to be done right now is a concerted effort not only by the DAP but also PKR into establishing multiracial parties in substance rather than form and be cognisant of the fact that Malays would naturally make sizeable voting blocks of such parties but not necessarily lead these political organisations.
hadi awang, anwar ibrahim, lim kit siang, pakatan leadersWhat the DAP offers is an alternative to both the personality-driven PKR and the Islamic PAS, with its democratic socialist roots the anchor for a new kind of mindset that hopefully will take root first amongst the urban Malays and then the rural communities.
The DAP will then truly become a multiracial party reflective of the demographic of this country.
The DAP has said that no member of its party will ever have aspirations to the office of prime minister and perhaps this could be starting point where Malays who join this party acknowledged this dubious concept of ‘Kepimpinan Melayu' put forward by the honourable gentleman from Rembau and constrain their aspirations for the highest office in the land until the day any member of their party, regardless of race, can occupy that seat.
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