Withdraw lost in accident pronouncement, MH370 kin tell Putrajaya

by Pathma Subramaniam and Mayuri Mei Lin

Malay Mail Online

January 31, 2015 06:47 am

SUBANG JAYA, Jan 30 — The families of the crew and passengers of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 demanded tonight the federal government rescind its public declaration that all 239 people on board the missing plane have died in an accident.

Frustrated that the families were not first consulted before the announcement was made by the Department of Civil Aviation’s yesterday, they demanded any declaration be withheld until the search is officially concluded.

“It would be a better idea for them to withdraw the declaration given that the search has not been concluded,” said Grace Subathirai, the daughter of Anne Daisy, one of the passengers.

Some 10 representatives of families of the crew and passengers on the ill-fated flight present at a late-night news conference here said the DCA’s announcement yesterday was a shock.

“It hasn’t been a year, the search isn’t complete… I and every other person, who had friend or family member or loved on board… will hold on to hope because it is not humanly possible to accept that the people you love the most in this world are gone without a shred of proof,” said Grace.

“We don’t want their condolences. We want evidence… we expected the government to care just a little bit more,” she said, holding back tears.

The husband of MH370 flight attendant Christine Fong, who only wanted to be know as Lee, reminded the Malaysian government that it had promised to keep the search in the southern Indian Ocean going until the jetliner is located.

“They made the announcement just so that MAS can claim its insurance. That’s not fair to us, we need evidence,” said Lee, alluding to the ongoing privatisation of the cash-strapped national carrier.

American Sarah Bajc, the partner of passenger Phillip Wood, also chided the government for making a premature announcement on the fate of the Beijing-bound airplane, insisting there was still no evidence the red-eye flight that departed the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8 last year had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

The families also refused to accept that the declaration was made to speed up the compensation process.

Jacquita Gonzales, the wife of in-flight supervisor Patrick Gonzales, said the announcement may be legally expedient but gave no closure to the families emotionally.

“Closure, legally maybe. But what about our feelings, to close that way?” she asked.

The government has said it is committed to continuing the search for MH370.

DCA’s flight operations assistant director Captain Mior Nor Badrishah Mohamad expressed confidence earlier today that the current search area for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean is the right place.

He told reporters at a technical briefing that searchers have covered so far one-third of the 60,000 sq km search area off Perth, Australia, and that they expect to complete the underwater search area by May.

But retired Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who led Australia’s response to MH370 and downed flight MH17 in Ukraine, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday that it was possible that the missing plane might never be found in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 January 2015, 8:12 am and is filed under
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IGP Khalid lucky there is no  IPCMC  as recommended by Dzaiddin Police Royal Commission of Inquiry or he would be the first IGP to be the subject of complaint of police misconduct…

The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar is lucky that there is no  Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) as recommended by the Dzaiddin Police Royal Commission of Inquiry a decade ago or he would be the first IGP to be the subject of complaint of police misconduct for refusing to investigate as to why two elite policemen murdered in cold blood with C4 explosives a defenceless Mongolian woman, who they did not know  or had never met before.

I am really astounded by the lame excuse Khalid has given for not launching a thorough and wide-ranging inquiry to ascertain why two police commandos Chief Inspector  Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar of the elite police squad, the Special Action Unit (UTK),   tasked with protecting people’s lives, had murdered in cold blood defenceless Altantuya Shaariibuu now that their murder trial had ended with their conviction and death sentence.

Could it be that the No. 1 Policeman is just not interested in finding out why two members of the police elite corps, instead of upholding the law, became the most heinous law breakers, even abusing their special position in the police force  to secure C4 explosives to do their dastardly deed, so that there could be no such recurrence?

I find any IGP who is indifferent as to the motive for the murderous deed by the two elite policeman most inexplicable and extraordinary, for it is tantamount to a serious dereliction of duty as the No. 1 policeman in the country.

If the IPCMC is in operation today, I have no doubt that complaints would have been lodged against him for gross police misconduct for  not investigating or wanting to know what could be the motive for the cold-blooded murder using C4 explosives of defenceless Altantuya.

Yes, the courts did not establish the motive for the murder of Altantuya. I do not want here to  go into the subject of why the motive for Altantuya’s murder  was avoided like a plague, by both the prosecution, defence and the judiciary, but the fact is that both the murderers were elite policemen who had turned “rogue”.  What made them turn “rogue” and what actions have the police taken to ensure that there can no such “rogue” recurrences like the  Azila and Sirul cases in the elite police corps?

If Azila and Sirul were not policemen, let alone elite policemen, and if the courts for reasons of their own have decided on Altantuya’s murder case without addressing the subject of motive, Khalid may be right in pleading that it was not the police’s role to question the prosecutor or courts for not delving into the motive during the hearing process.

But Azila and Sirul were elite policemen, and it is a serious dereliction duty on Khalid’s part as IGP in not protecting the integrity of the police force by launching a full investigation as to how two elite policemen could be suborned, whether by money or other considerations, in betraying their oath of office as elite policemen.

I do not buy Khalid’s excuse that the Courts have exonerated the police of dereliction of duty  in Altantunya’s murder by Azila and Sirul, for the courts had never done such a thing.

I challenge Khalid to quote chapter and verse from any one of the judicial decisions where the courts have absolved the police of dereliction of duty in Altantuya’s murder!

The jury is out on this issue, whether the police had been guilty of dereliction of duty in Altantuya’s murder, and the best forum for adjudicating it  will be  Parliamentary Committee on Altantuya Murder case which I proposed yesterday, to inquire into all unresolved public interest questions on the Altantunya case.

Khalid’s statement has strengthened the case for a full inquiry into the unresolved public interest questions on the Altantuya murder case, including whether there had been a dereliction of duty on the part of the police.

Neither the IGP nor the police should be the judge of this question.

Is the IGP prepared to submit the police to a full inquiry by a Parliamentary Committee on all unresolved public interest issues on the Altantuya Murder Case?

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 February 2015, 5:22 pm and is filed under
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Iranian film on prophet Muhammad set for premiere

Saeed Kamali Dehghan

Guardian

30 January 2015

Majid Majidi’s Tehran-backed production telling the story of Muhammad’s early years to be shown at Iran’s Fajr international film festival

As controversy swirls on how the prophet Muhammad is depicted, a multimillion-dollar biopic about his youth – Iran’s most expensive and lavish film to date – is set to premiere on Sunday.

Tehran’s Fajr international film festival, which coincides with the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, is scheduled to show the country’s own version of how Islam’s most revered figure lived. To protect the prophet’s dignity, the film will be shown out of competition.

Iran has been a vocal critic of the prophet’s portrayal in the west, recently expressing strong condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo cover cartoon in the aftermath of the deadly attacks in Paris, which depicted Muhammad weeping and holding up a sign reading Je Suis Charlie.

The film, to be originally released as Muhammad, Messenger of God in the festival’s opening ceremony, is made by Majid Majidi, a leading pro-establishment Iranian director who has worked for more than five years – with a great deal of secrecy – to produce what is only the second big-budget feature ever made about the prophet. The first film was Moustapha Akkad’s 1976 The Message, starring Anthony Quinn, which sparked controversy despite not showing the prophet on screen to avoid hurting Muslim sensitivities.

Majidi has had his own doubts about Akkad’s biopic, which he said failed to do justice to Muhammad’s life by showing “only Jihad and war” and also because “the image of Islam in that film is the image of a sword”.

Majidi’s state-sponsored film, which is the first part of an ambitious trilogy about the prophet’s life, tells the story of Muhammad from his birth through the age of 12, ending with his first visit to Sham (Syria) where Bahira, a Christian monk, is believed to have predicted he would one day become a prophet.

Iran is bracing for a large international release in March, at least in the English and Arabic world.

Muhammad’s face will not be shown on screen and the Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the three-time Oscar-winner for masterpieces such as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, has worked on various combinations of light and darkness to make religious depictions in the film possible.

But the biggest issue will likely be that it is produced by Shia Iran. Compared to Sunnis, Shia Iranians have a relatively relaxed attitude towards visualising religious figures, which has been the subject of controversies in the past.

Majidi held a press conference this month in which he tried to assuage fears of a backlash, saying he had consulted both Shia and Sunni scholars from across the Muslim world before making the film.

“We chose a period of his life about which there is no difference between different Shia and Sunni scholars and groups,” he said. “We made this film with the view of bringing unity [to] the Muslim world.”

Majidi said his goal was to present the right image of Islam to the world. “The world’s perception of Islam today does not match with the beauties of Islam.”

However, the film has not been able to escape controversy. Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, one of the world’s top Sunni authorities, has asked Iran not to show the film, while Qatar announced a rival plan for a film about the prophet, with a budget of $1bn (£660m) and backed by likes of the Lord of the Rings producer Barrie Osborne.

When the news came out in 2012 about the Iranian film, Al-Azhar said in a statement: “We demand that Iran refrain from releasing the movie, so that an undistorted image of the prophet can be preserved in the minds of Muslims. We call upon all film-makers to respect religions and prophets.”

In response, Majidi has said: “I am aware of their concerns, we have our own sensitivities about religious figures and I wonder why they are criticising it before actually seeing it.”

He added: “While there are 250 films on Jesus Christ, 120 films on Moses, 80 about the other prophets and 40 films on Buddha, there is only The Message on the life of prophet Muhammad. Unfortunately, we fail to introduce our prophet to the western world. In this case enemies will remain enemies.”

Majidi may receive a hard time abroad for his film, but at least he can be confident about its reception at home. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the ultimate authority in the country, is backing the film’s production, meaning that the Iranian media will have little room to criticise the film publicly.

Majidi’s film is financed by Bonyad Mostazafan, Iran’s foundation of the oppressed, which is a charitable entity under Khamenei’s authority. In October 2012, Khamenei made an unusual visit to the film’s location in the south of Tehran, near the holy city of Qom, where giant replicas of sixth-century Saudi Arabian cities Mecca and Medina were built. Other parts of the film were shot in South Africa after India refused to allow filming there.

Within Iran’s largely home-based film industry, Majidi’s project was produced in an ambitious scale with a budget reported to be around $30m. Besides Storaro, who is said to have brought his own crew from Italy, other international figures on the film include the Oscar-winning Scott E Anderson, who has worked on visual effects, and the Iranian-born British singer Sami Yusuf, who has contributed to its score.

Storaro has said that he accepted to collaborate with Majidi after being assured that the film aimed to unite people of different faiths. “They explained that their goal was to have an international audience understand the story of the prophet Muhammad and the meaning of the Qu’ran,” he said, according to the US magazine MovieMaker. “I asked if the movie would divide or unite people of different religions. They said their goal was to unite people of different faiths. It’s a story about the dignity of human beings.”

Majidi’s other works include the 1997’s drama Children of Heaven, which became the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award. His 2008 film The Song of Sparrows won a Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival.

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PAS Kelantan State Government should establish public inquiry into the handling of the 2014 Floods Catastrophe to find out the weaknesses, lapses and failures so that the state will be better prepared to face future flood disasters

In the floods disaster last year which hit the East Coast States, Kelantan faced the worst floods catastrophe within living memory in Malaysia.

Tonight’s  launch  of Gabungan Impian Kelantan comprising at present of 39 NGOs and political groups is the upshot of the 2014 Floods which saw the rise of the NGOs (non-government organizations) and NGIs (non-government individuals), both in Kelantan and elsewhere in Malaysia,  who played a most sterling role in the floods catastrophe to come to the aid of the flood victims where the government failed in all three phases of a disaster management – response, relief and reconstruction.

It was  not possible to avoid the  2014 floods catastrophe, but the damage could have been minimized as not to lead to the loss of 25 lives, creating a million floods victims with quarter of million flood evacuees, and causing billions of ringgit of damages if there had been better floods management preparedness and plans in all three phases of response, relief and reconstruction.

Furthermore I shudder to think of the damages and sufferings the people in Kelantan and other East Coast States had to undergo if NGOs and NGIs had not risen up to come to the aid of the stricken and stranded flood victims which the government had not been able to help, not for one day but for several days at a stretch, leaving the flood victims without food, water, shelter, electricity or communications.

This was why I had consistently called for the declaration of an emergency to centralize all resources whether assets or personnel, particularly military and police,  to as to provide the quickest aid to the most needy as the first step of an adequate response to the worst floods catastrophe within living memory and why subsequently I also called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the causes and weaknesses, lapses and failures  revealed by the floods catastrophe in terms of disaster management preparedness and planning.

If the Federal Government is not prepared to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 2014 Floods, I would suggest that the PAS Kelantan State Government establish a public inquiry into the handling of the 2014 Floods Catastrophe to find out and document the weaknesses, lapses and failures  so that the state will be better prepared to face future flood disasters – where NGOs and NGIs could recount their experiences and  “horrors” which should an object lesson to ensure that such defects and unpreparedness do not  recur in future.

It is useless and even laughable for the National Security Council (NSC) for instance to look for excuses for its weaknesses, lapses and failures in the 2014 floods by claiming that the Kelantan floods was like Japan’s 2011 tsunami.

There is just no comparison between the two.

The 2014 Kelantan floods were undoubtedly the worst in living memory in Malaysia, but it is totally ludicrous to compare it to the triple disasters of the 9.0 earthquake of March 11, 2011 in Japan off Tohoku, which generated a tsunami that swept away everything in its path and caused a nuclear disaster with the meltdown of Fukushima and other nuclear plants.

The triple catastrophes caused 15,889 deaths, 6,152 injured and 2,601 people missing across twenty prefectures, as well as over 127,290 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 272,788 buildings “half-collapsed” and another 747,989 buildings partially damaged.

The main tremor split highways, flattened buildings and ignited fires all over the northeastern Pacific coast. The ensuing tsunami wiped out entire villages.

As many as 4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.5 million without water.

The World Bank estimated economic cost of the triple disasters in Japan in March 2011 as US$235 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in world history.

Although the 2014 floods catastrophe in Kelantan and the East Coast were  undoubtedly the worst floods catastrophe within living memory in Malaysia, causing 25 deaths, a million flood victims, a quarter-of-million evacuees and billions of ringgit of losses, including the reduction of a few kampongs like Manek Urai, Kampong Manjur and Kampung Karangan in Kuala Krai into Ground Zero, they were no comparison to the triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdown  apocalypses in Japan in March 2011.

Federal Government officials should stop comparing the 2014 Floods with the triple catastrophes of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan in 2011, for this will only undermine their credibility and whatever case they are putting up.

Instead of looking for excuses by making the false and ludicrous claim that Malaysia had not done too badly, as the recent floods catastrophe was like Japan’s 2011 apocalypse of triple earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophes, Malaysian leaders should wake up from their complacency and comfort zone and learn from the lessons, mistakes and failures of Disaster Management in all three phases of response, relief and reconstruction in the 2014 Floods Catastrophe.

Both the Federal and State Governments should acknowledge the great contributions played by the NGOs and NGIs who had provided invaluable and irreplaceable service to the flood victims at their greatest hour of need when the government system of relief, aid and support had just collapsed together with the collapse of the  government chain of command and communications.

There can be no dispute that if not for the sterling and self-less contributions of the NGOs and NGIs, regardless of race, religion and region, to come the aid of the needy in the Floods 2014, the damage and sufferings of the flood victims would be immensely greater.

The Gabungan Impian Kelantan, with Datuk Ambiga Sreenivasan and National Laureate Pak Samad Said as the chief spokespersons, Datuk Husam Musa as the Chief Executive, with the support of 39 NGOs and political groups, is poised to blaze the path for a greater role by the civil society in the decision-making process about the future of the country,

The DAP Impian Kelantan team involved with Gabungan Impian Kelantan are:

Ketua – DAP National Organising Secretary  Anthony Loke MP.

Members: DAP National Vice Chairperson Teresa Kok MP;

DAP  Director of Political Education Liew Chin Tong MP;

DAP Asst National Organising Secretary: Vincent Wu;

Young Syefura (Rara); and

Dr. Tajuddin Shaffee (Kedah).

Impian Kelantan is born out of the two convictions: Firstly, Malaysia cannot be progressive and prosperous if Kelantan continues to be poor and backward in infrastructure development.

Kelantan’s GDP per capita is less than one-third of Malaysia’s GDP per capita – in fact less than one-seventh  of Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur’s GDP per capita. This is completely unacceptable.

Secondly, that the people and state of Kelantan are entitled to the right to development compared to other states and not to be relegated as Malaysia’s poorest state.

IMPIAN KELANTAN is an integral part of IMPIAN MALAYSIA, as IMPIAN MALAYSIA cannot achieve its goal of an united, harmonious, progressive, prosperous and competitive Malaysia unless IMPIAN KELANTAN  of a developed state, in both spiritual and developmental sense, are also achieved through the principle of “All for One, and One for All”.

(Speech at the launching of Gabungan Impian Kelantan in Kota Bharu on Saturday, 31st January 2015 at 11 pm)

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 February 2015, 3:03 pm and is filed under
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With UMNO’s Kangkong Professors running riot with their illiterate interpretation of national developments, Malaysia’s university ranking can only plunge further south without hope of restoring our former world-class university status

UMNO’s Kangkong Professors have been running riot with their illiterate interpretation of national developments, and the most recent example is the Bernama report yesterday entitled  “Local Council Elections Contravene Constitution, An Attempt To Create Autonomy: Analysts – by Erda Khursyiah Basir”.

It quoted Kankong Professor (1), Universiti Utara Malaysia’s Dean of the College of Legal, Government and International Studies, Asso Prof Dr. Ahmad Martadha Mohamad and Kangkong Professor (2), Universiti Utara Malaysia senior lecturer in Political and International Studies, Md Shukri Shuib, to ground the allegations that the “DAP’s endeavour to hold local elections in Penang” is seen as “an attempt to challenge the Federal Constitution” and “turn the Pearl of the Orient into an autonomous states” which  “only serve to shatter racial unity and adversely impact nation-building efforts”.

It is sad and tragic that the Dean of the College of Legal, Government and International Studies of a local public university does not understand the Federal Constitution or he would not say such a nonsense about the DAP challenging the Federal Constitution for holding the view that local government elections should be restored 50 years after suspension in 1965, at the time on the ground of threat of Indonesian Confrontation.

Can the Kankong Professor who holds the exalted position of Dean of College of Legal, Government and International Studies explain how the DAP’s position that local government elections should be restored, which  the then Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman had promised would be done once Indonesian Confrontation ended?

It is to be noted that the Athi Nahappan Royal Commission of Inquiry which was formed after the 1965 suspension of local government elections to inquire into the workings of local authorities and make recommendations about their future, made  the specific recommendation that local government elections should be held.

This was what the Athi Nahappan Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) Report  said about a nominated local government system:

“Nominated advisers cannot effectively voice the interests of the ratepayers because they are not answerable to them. Nomination is no real substitute for elective representation.  If anything, nomination is an anachronism and a relic of colonialism. It is antithetic to democracy.”: (Athi Nahappan 1968: 99)

Will the Kangkong Professor from UUM say that the Athi Nahappan RCI report was “an attempt to challenge the Federal Constitution?”

And how is the restoration of local government elections an attempt to “turn the Pearl of the Orient into an autonomous state”? Is the UUM Kangkong professor suggesting that Penang was an “autonomous state” from 1957 to 1965 when local government elections was suspended?

I really the pity the undergraduates taking courses under such a Kangkong Professor who clearly has minimal understanding of the Federal Constitution, Government and International Affairs!

Then we have Kangkong Professor 2, who made the wild allegation that the attempt to restore local government elections was “an attempt to shatter racial unity” which will adversely impact nation-building efforts.

Does he know what he is talking about?

These are people who claim that restoration of local government elections would only involve city folk and the Chinese and the rural folks and Malays would not be affected, resulting in racial polarization.

These are real kangkong professors for they don’t even follow  the latest news, discussions and trends, whether the printed word or on the social media!

Could the UMNO Kangkong Professors dispute  that the restoration of local government elections, under the present arrangement, would involve 148 local government authorities, 90 per cent of which have Malay majorities of over 50% of the population, while only two per cent or three of the 148 local authorities have Chinese majorities, leaving a balance of 13 with plurality of races – seven of which are Chinese dominant and six Malay dominant?

With these facts and figures, these Kangkong Professors are demonstrating that they do not have a shred of intellectual honesty and integrity by continuing to claim that restoration of local government elections would only involve city folks and the Chinese and not the rural folks and the Malays?

There are a total of 12 local authorities in Kelantan, ranging from the lowest of 92% Malays in Kuala Krai to the highest of 99.7% Malays in Dabong.

Terengganu has seven local authorities, ranging from the lowest of 95.2% Malays in Kemaman to the highest of 99.7% Malays in Setiu.

Are these UMNO Kangkong Professors seriously suggesting that “city folks and the Chinese” will be the only ones involved in the restoration of local government elections for Kelantan and Terengganu, when they are overwhelmingly Malays, ranging from 92% to 99.7% in the 12 local authorities in Kelantan and from  95.2% to 99.7% for the seven local authorities in Terengganu?

The UMNO Kangkong Professors may think that they can continue to deceive the rakyat with lies and distortions to serve their political masters, but I have greater confidence in the ability of the rakyat in the information age to sift truth and facts  from lies and falsehoods.

I am not so much concerned about the ability of the UMNO Kangkong Professors to mislead the rakyat with their lies and distortions.

My concern is that with the rapid multiplication of these UMNO Kangkong professors and their illiterate interpretation of national developments, Malaysia’s university rankings can only plunge further south without hope of restoring  our former world-class university status.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 February 2015, 7:19 pm and is filed under
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DAP’s Impian Kelantan to pay flood victims to rebuild own homes

by Eileen Ng

The Malaysian Insider

2 February 2015

Flood victims in the east coast state of Kelantan, who lost their homes in last year’s floods, will get help rebuilding their houses and receive a wage if they do the work themselves under DAP’s Impian Kelantan programme.

The Pakatan Rakyat component party is collaborating with 39 local non-governmental organisations to identify and build new homes for more than 30,000 people displaced by the floods late last year, which were the worst to hit the peninsula.

Villagers will be given a sum of money for picking up tools to build their own homes as a way to boost their income, especially since many had lost their livelihoods in the agricultural and farming sector, said DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke Siew Fook.

The money will come from funds the party raised from the public late last year to assist flood victims.

“We have already identified some of the villagers and have started work in rebuilding their homes.

“We are also giving them money or hiring them as carpenters to add to their income. Most of them were rubber smallholders and they cannot tap rubber now because the floods have destroyed the trees,” Loke, who is leading the programme, told The Malaysian Insider.

DAP’s collaboration with the local NGOs was launched as Gabungan Impian Kelantan in the state capital of Kota Baru on Saturday night.

This project is similar to other social initiatives under the opposition party’s Impian Malaysia projects.

Among the NGOs are Yayasan Darul Hijrah, Cakna UT, Royalti Kelantan, KB Care, Persatuan Anak Kelantan Darul Naim di Selangor dan Kuala Lumpur (Persada) and Unit Amal Kelantan.

These NGOs will be in charge of identifying the villages, or kampung, and people who need help in rebuilding flood-damaged homes.

Loke said about 80 houses in a village in Gua Musang have been identified as needing repairs. To date, four houses have been rebuilt while works are ongoing for the rest.

The floods in the peninsula last December were among the worst ever to hit the country.

The deluge affected five states – Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Perak and Johor – and at its height, more than 250,000 were displaced.

Although flood waters had subsided, recovery, which is ongoing, is going to take months with many having lost their homes and belongings.

The disaster saw Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak cut short his holiday to return to the country to take charge of recovery efforts after pictures of him playing golf with US President Barack Obama in Hawaii went viral.

In its recently revised budget, Putrajaya allocated more than RM8.9 billion for flood-recovery efforts, of which RM500 million has been distributed as initial allocation for repairs and restoration works and welfare programmes for flood victims.

Another RM800 million was allocated to repair and rebuild basic infrastructures like schools, roads, bridges and hospitals.

Various DAP leaders, including the party’s national adviser Lim Kit Siang had also gone to Kelantan during the floods to help distribute aid.

Other DAP members in the Impian Kelantan team are party national vice-chairman and Seputeh MP Teresa Kok, director of political education and Kluang MP Liew Chin Tong, assistant national organising secretary Vincent Wu, Young Syefura and Dr Tajuddin Shafee.

In a separate statement yesterday, Lim said the party launched Impian Kelatan because it was convinced that Malaysia’s overall prosperity and progressiveness could not be truly achieved if the state remained poor and backward in infrastructure.

Kelantan’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is less than one-third of Malaysia’s GDP per capita and less than one-seventh of Kuala Lumpur’s GDP per capita, Lim said, and it was only right that the state’s people received their due share of development and progress.

The Impian Kelantan project is similar to the DAP’s Impian Sarawak and Sabah initiative, where the party works conducts basic infrastructure projects such as building roads and providing piped water supply and electricity. – February 2, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 February 2015, 10:02 am and is filed under
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Don’t allow extremists to tear the country apart

– Salleh Said Keruak

The Malaysian Insider

1 February 2015

Umno Supreme Council Member Puad Zarkashi has urged the Home Ministry and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to investigate the masterminds behind Free Malaysia Today, The Malaysian Insider and MalaysiaKini, which he said are fuelling an internal crisis in Umno.

Batu Kawan Umno vice-chairman, Datuk Khairuddin Abu Hassan, responded to this by saying, “Ow! Stop tickling me, Puad Zarkashi. No one can split Umno if the party has leaders of quality, particularly those who champion the people”.

Khairuddin added that any crisis in Umno could only be because of a weak party leadership.

This public debate between Puad and Khairuddin is just one more of many that have cropped up of late. It appears like the opposition need not do anything any more. All they need to do is to sit back and allow the Umno leaders to slander each other.

There are many issues more important than fighting one other. In Penang, 33 Indians were detained on allegations that they were planning to start a riot during the Thaipusam celebrations.

This is very alarming and is a matter that should not be taken lightly. Any riot in Penang will very quickly spread to the rest of Malaysia and without laws such as the ISA that allow for pre-emptive detention the authorities would be hard-pressed to act until it is too late.

Chinese-Muslim preacher Ridhuan Tee is also not helping with his fiery and very inflammatory statements. This just raises the sentiments of the people even further and fuels the hatred that already exists between some Malays and non-Malays.

Religion is a very dangerous weapon to use and once conflict is triggered it is very difficult to stop it.

Take the religious conflict in Serbia and Bosnia as one example. That was a conflict that started 500 years ago during the time of the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans and it never went away.

It just simmered below the surface for hundreds of years until it exploded with a great loss of life.

If the Umno leaders are so preoccupied with fighting each other they will lose focus of the more important issues. And the more important issue is national reconciliation and tolerance and to not drag Malaysia to the brink of a civil war.

In fact, it may even be time for Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat to sit down and discuss how they can mutually work towards promoting national unity.

This is something that is greatly needed and should not be neglected for the sake of internal party squabbles or inter-party rivalry.

I am just grateful that the people of Sabah and Sarawak and more level-headed than those from West Malaysia and it is right that people like Ridhuan Tee are banned from coming to East Malaysia. – sskeruak.blogspot.com, February 1, 2015.

* Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak is the Sabah State Assembly Speaker.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 February 2015, 7:24 am and is filed under
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Roundtable Conference  of concerned MPs, NGOs and NGIs  to outline the contours of Parliamentary Inquiry into Altantunya Murder or alternatives before Parliament reconvenes on March 9 being considered by the DAP Legal Bureau

I have received positive and favourable response to the suggestion for an all-party Parliamentary Committee to inquire  into the many unresolved  but important and critical  public interest questions on the  Altantunya Shaariibu Murder Case, despite the end of the Altantuya murder trial and the conviction of two elite policemen Chief Inspector  Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar of the Special Action Unit (UTK) for the murder  and their death sentence.

Many however are not sanguine that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Najib and his Cabinet would agree to the proposal for an all-party Parliamentary Committee into the Altantuya Murder, even if the parliamentary committee is headed by a Barisan Nasional MP.

Najib and his Cabinet has a month before Parliament reconvenes on March 9 to decide whether to endorse the establishment of an all-party Parliamentary Committee on Altantunya Murder.

If the Najib Government is not prepared to agree to a Parliamentary Committee or any other form of public investigation into the Altantunya Murder, then the alternatives will have to be explored, including a hybrid of a Parliamentary-Civil Society Inquiry Committee comprising MPs from both the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat  and the civil society (both NGOs and NGIs) who believe that good conscience, national interests and our international reputation for justice, the rule of law and good governance demand that the answers to the many outstanding public interest questions about the Altantuya Murder case must be ascertained.

With the victim a Mongolian and one of the convicted murderers Sirul Azhar Umar holding out in Australia refusing to return to the death row in the  country, the inquiry into the unresolved public interest issues in the Altantuya Murder Case will become an international one.

A key witness in any such inquiry will be Abdul Razak Baginda, who was acquitted of the charge of abetment in the murder of Altantuya without his defence being called.

Will he volunteer to fully co-operate with such an inquiry, to establish beyond a shadow of doubt his recent assertion in The Malaysian Insider  that  Altantuyna’s death was “just a straightforward murder case” and to vindicate his  shocking statement: “Only the two policemen know. Rogue police do kill people, like in so many remand cases.”

Were Azila and Sirul “rogue policemen”?

How did two police elite commandos become “rogue policemen”?

Is it really true that only Azila and Sirul know why Altantuya was murdered?

In his exclusive interview with The Malaysian Insider last Thursday, Razak said the Altantunya murder case had gone to the point of being extremely ridiculous.

He said: “The situation has become quite ridiculous in terms of the speculations. It is much of the same speculation but now, more twisted because we have reached the end of a long legal process.”

He said that if Altantunya’s death is  just treated as a murder and do not politicize it, then it is a straightforward murder case.

Is Razak prepared to co-operate with an inquiry to de-politicise the Mongolian death and  straighten out the twists and turns of the Altantuya murder case?

Razak had insisted that the two policemen had acted on their own accord when committing the murder, adding that “this was determined by the court”.

Razak should not be so naïve as to believe that the courts have concluded that there was no motive in the murder of Altantunya, only that there was no need to go into the question of motives to find Azila and Sirul guilty of Altantuya’s murder.

The question of the motive for  Altantuya’s murder remain very much an open question, and the subject will not be closed unless there is a full and thorough inquiry specifically on the subject – which an inquiry, whether Parliamentary or a hybrid of parliamentary-civil society inquiry may be able to do.

I have asked the DAP Legal Bureau, headed by the DAP MP for Puchong, Gobind Singh Deo to be responsible for preparing a case for Parliamentary inquiry into the Altantuya Murder, and to list out the outstanding public interest issues which should be pursued.

Former Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of legal affairs and judicial reform, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, in his recent article “Many questions remain on Altantuya murder” has  canvassed some of these outstanding public interest questions which must be answered if there is going to be , “closure to this gruesome and senseless murder”, including:

•	why she was killed in the first place;

•	was she killed by Azilah and Sirul under the instruction of somebody else;

•	Was  the offer of RM100,000 to Sirul (going by Sirul’s own admission)  true, and who made the offer;

•	Why were there changes to the prosecutors and the High Court judge hearing the case;

•	Why private investigator P Balasubramaniam (or PI Bala) and his family were asked to leave the country;

•	How did Federal Court judge Suryadi Halim Omar know that  Prime Minister Najib’s former aide-de-camp DSP Musa Safri never instructed Azilah on how to assist Razak Baginda, that Azilah was merely told to meet with Razak;

•	Why the Attorney-General chose not to call Musa to testify during the trial.

A Roundtable Conference involving all concerned Malaysians before Parliament reconvenes on March 9 to outline the contours of such an inquiry is being  studied by Gobind and the DAP Legal Bureau.

Will Razak undertake to give full co-operation to any such Roundtable Conference and inquiry into the Altantuya Murder case, so that only truth, and nothing but the truth, could be known about the heinous murder by two elite policemen?

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 February 2015, 12:38 pm and is filed under
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Same old racial mindset in 1Malaysia

COMMENTARY BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

2 February 2015

We have celebrated 51 years as Malaysians but to some people, we are still in the racial silos of Malay, Chinese, Indian and Others. And with that come all the stereotypes of each race.

Mind you, this racial mindset still persists despite Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia campaign to bring all Malaysians together after the fractious 2008 polls where Barisan Nasional (BN) saw its majority evaporate to less than the customary two-thirds in the federal parliament.

1Malaysia has been hardly heard of since BN’s further losses in 2013 and there is a good reason for that: Najib’s colleagues in his hand-picked Cabinet have not much regard for it.

Take the latest volley from Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who wrote in his Facebook account that the Malays should boycott Chinese businesses, singling out the Old Town White Coffee franchise because of its alleged DAP links.

The minister has stood by his statement, telling The Malaysian Insider that it was directed at Chinese businesses whom he said were “reluctant” to lower their prices.

“I am referring to Chinese traders who are reluctant to reduce the prices of goods even though the price of petrol has come down.

“What I want to emphasise is for people not to depend solely on the government to ensure the prices of goods come down because as consumers, they can use their power to pressure businesses,” he said.

In his Facebook post, Ismail singled out the Old Town White Coffee chain owned by the Ipoh-based OldTown Bhd, saying Perak DAP chairman Datuk Ngeh Khoo Ham owned shares in the company.

“Malays are still refusing to boycott (Old Town White Coffee), what more when its owner is said to be the DAP Ngeh family of Perak who are known to be anti-Islam.

“As long as the Malays don’t change, the Chinese will take the opportunity to oppress the Malays,” said Ismail.

Really, Mr Minister? Businessmen single out people based on race? Is that what you are saying? Is everything in this country based on racial profiling, then?

Are people rewarded or oppressed on the basis of race? Is that the message you want to give to the rest of the world?

Your statement, Mr Minister, plumbs new lows even by the low standards of the Cabinet that leads this country. It tells us why 1Malaysia never took off. How can it if the prime minister’s handpicked men do not believe in it and use race to provoke a business boycott?

Your attitude further divides the country at a time when Malaysia needs even more unity to face a gloomy world economy.

Your attitude gives another reason for people to stop supporting BN as the ruling coalition.

Your attitude just shows that you are a poor excuse for a Malaysian, let alone a minister.

The only silver lining about people like you is that it can hopefully unite Malaysians against this racial mindset and racism plaguing Malaysia. – February 2, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 February 2015, 5:19 pm and is filed under
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Why Secularism Is Compatible with the Quran and Sunnah — And an ‘Islamic State’ Is Not

Akbar Ganji

Dissident Iranian journalist; Intl. Press Association World Press Freedom Hero

World Post

01/27/2015

Introduction

Extremist Islamic groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra Front in Syria, have transformed the holy Quran into a manifesto for war, terrorism and bloodshed. These groups use the most modern weaponry and technology, and their crimes have created worldwide concerns. Their goal is to return the Islamic world to the medieval age.

At the same time, the corrupt dictatorial Arab regimes in the Middle East, particularly the Arab nations of the Persian Gulf, have transformed the democratic Arab Spring into a sectarian war between the Shiites and Sunnis, in order to prevent democracy from taking roots in their own nations.

Simultaneous with such developments, a Western-made “industry” called Islamophobia not only presents the Holy Quran as the manifesto of fundamentalist warmongers (that claim to represent Islam) and their rigid interpretation of its teachings, it also reduces Islam to its skewed “interpretations.” This reductionist approach has been popular among the Orientalists. The approach also claims that formation of an Islamic government is a necessary condition for a society to be Islamic.

As I will argue in this essay, these claims are false.

Islam and secularism are completely compatible. What I call “secular Islam” is thus the best antidote for Islamic terrorism. “Secular Islam” means that the collection of beliefs, moral values and teachings which comprise Islam do not confer on Muslims a mission to form a government or state. The idea of establishing an Islamic state based on the Quran and the Sunnah is incorrect, as neither presents a model for such a state.

Definitions: The State, Secularism And Islam

In his book, Philosophical Investigations, the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein states that words have no meaning other than their “applications.” Thus, to prevent any confusion, we must first define what we mean by the key concepts that are employed here.

The state is an organized structure that is impersonal, has well-defined boundaries, rules a specific population and has the exclusive right to use legitimate violence. Paul Dragos Aligica, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, puts it this way:

The state is an organization monopolizing the legitimate use of force or claiming a monopoly on the use of coercion in a given geographic area and over a political entity, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. Recognition of the state by other states, and thus its ability to enter into international agreements, is often considered a crucial element of its nature.

The term secularism has been defined in three distinct ways. One is atheism. Karl Marx, French sociologist Emile Durkheim and German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber believed that, through functional differentiation, scientific knowledge and de-mystification, the world moves toward atheism and disbelieving in God. Their view has, of course, turned out to be false.

Secularism has also been believed to mean limiting religion to the private domain. This is impossible, because religion is not like special clothes that we can set aside as soon as we leave home. Such eminent sociologists as Robert Bellah, Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas and José Casanova believe that the presence of religion in the public domain is useful and desirable. But explaining and justifying any claim in the public domain must be done by resorting to reasoning, not religious texts and holy people.

The third meaning of secularism, and the one that we use in this article, is separation of church and state, or religion from government — not atheism or elimination of religion from the public discourse.

By Islam we mean its text (the Holy Quran) and the Sunnah (the speeches and conduct of Prophet Muhammad, although some Shiites such as the Twelvers also consider the Sunnah of their 12 Imams as well). Although Islam has firm positions regarding justice and oppression, it does not have any model for an “Islamic State.” It is left to Muslims to run their societies based on their collective wisdom and consultation.

A secular Muslim is thus someone who not only believes in the separation of religion from the state, but also believes that such a separation is compatible with Islam.

Based on the Quran, the Sunnah, and religious texts, my argument is that a union between Islam and secularism is possible and justifiable. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Quranic teachings and the Sunnah in order to justify their “Islamic State” are not credible if one actually examines these texts.

Medieval Times Vs. The Modern Era

One important fact is often overlooked. In medieval times, especially in the 7th century in the Arabian Peninsula, state/government, as we recognize them today, did not exist. Societies of those eras were tribal, sparsely populated and simple. There was tribal authority, but it was due to patronage and family relations, not the existence of a government which, as we understand it today, did not exist. The processes of social division of labor, work and its bureaucratization, and consolidation of power give rise to an organized, non-personal entity called government that possesses specific boundaries, population, etc. In his book,
Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D .990-1990
, Charles Tilly states that up until the 10th century “nothing like a centralized national state existed anywhere in Europe.” Similarly, Bernard Lewis in his
What Went Wrong
argues that in the medieval times governments did not have borders but civilian centers. The British political theorist David Held and many sociologists have supported such assertions about formation of government. Perry Anderson, the British historian also believes that the phenomenon of modern governments or states began in the 16th century.

In his book
Theories of the State
, Andrew Vincent argues that government is a relatively recent phenomenon that goes back only to the 16th century. If Europe did not have governments up until the 16th century, how can one expect Medina — the town in the Arabian Peninsula with a small population in which Prophet Muhammad lived — to have had a government? The Arabian Peninsula did not have a government for the same reason that it did not have representative democracy, and respect for human rights and feminism — because the people had not yet founded them.

The Quran And Islamic State

Another important, but overlooked point is that in the Prophet Muhammad era (the 7th century) there was no such thing as a “society.” What existed was ummah, a community of Muslim masses. As German sociologist and philosopher Ferdinand Tönnies put it, the medieval “societies” must be considered as “Gemeinschaft” (German word for community), to be distinguished from modern societies that are called “Gesellschaft” (German word for society).The audience of the Prophet and the Quran were the believers that made up the ummah. The jurisprudence or Sharia were also for the ummah and not for the modern societies or era. Society is the invention of the modern era.

Prophet Muhammad led the people in a simple tribal framework. The era was a tribal one with a small population, not the type of modern societies we have now. Hence, there is no teaching in the Quran on how to form an Islamic government after the death of the Prophet. Even if there are verses in the Quran, they would all be subject to various interpretations. The Quran is explicit in not specifying any successor to the Prophet.

In his book,
al-Osmanieh
, Muslim scholar Haroon Abdolsalaam Mohammad Jahiz says that “We have scrutinized the Quran, from beginning to end, and there is no verse or incontrovertibly explicit passage, and not even a verse to be found which may be construed upon reflection as proving the view on the Imamat” [succession of the Prophet’s progeny as Shiites believe].

The Quran orders the Prophet to address the collective problems of the people through consultation with them: “Consult them in the affairs” (al-e-Imran 159). Interpreting this verse of Quran in his book, Tafsir Kashaf, Abolghasem Mahmoud-ibn Khwarizmi Zamakhshari, also known as Jar Allah Zamakhashri Mo’tazeli, the medieval Iranian Muslim scholar, states that the consulting that the Quran ordered includes everything except those affairs that are related to God’s revelations to the Prophet. In Tafsir-e Mafaatih ol-Ghayb (also known as Tafsir al-Kabir, or the Great Commentary), Iranian Muslim scholar and philosopher Imam Fakhruddin Razi (1149-1210) proposes that although the Prophet was wiser than all the people, the world always has many problems, and it is quite possible that in many cases the people know better. He then quoted the Prophet himself: “You know your life’s affairs and I know your religious affairs.” Zamakhshari also quotes the Prophet saying, “Those who consult with and seek advice from others find the best path.” And, the Quran says, “They [the believers] employ consultations among themselves” (ash-Shura 38).

What Does The Sunnah Say?

After the Prophet passed away, his followers chose, through the elite, Abu Bakr As-Siddiq as their ruler, which is why the Sunnis believe that electing the ruler must be done by the elite . Muslim scholar Qazi Abduljabbar Mo’tazeli (who lived about a thousand years ago), said, “The elite, as the people who signed on the Imamat, consult other Muslims” (al-Moqni) and, “Make sure that everyone has been consented upon.”

The Twelver Shiites believe that, through the Prophet, God chose Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, to succeed him. He is the Shiites’ first Imam, and they believe that his children Hassan and Hussein and their descendants were the next eleven Imams who were all sinless and had divine power. Throughout history such claims have been rejected by a majority of Muslims.

The Quran states explicitly that God sent the prophets so that the people would not have any arguments against Him [regarding lack of knowledge]. In other words, the people need only the prophets and their own wisdom. The Quran states, “Messengers [Prophets] were as bearers of glad tidings [for the believers] as well as warners [for the disbelievers] in order that mankind should not have argument against Allah after sending the messengers” (Surat An-Nisa’).

If after sending the prophets the people had still needed other arguments, the Quran would have emphasized that God sent both the prophets and the Shiites’ Imams, so as the people could not have had any argument against Him [for lack of knowledge], but the Quran has mentioned only the prophets (Surahs Taha (verse 134) and al-Israa (15)).

What Does ‘Authentic’ Shi’ism Say?

The current Shiite-Sunni confrontation has nothing to do with what the close companions and supporters of the Prophet did. The rift was born much later. Ali, the Shiites’ first Imam and the Sunnis’ fourth Caliph after the Prophet, praised the three Caliphs before him, who are revered by the Sunnis. He also attributed his own rule and those of the other three Caliphs to the people’s selection and consent, not God or the Prophet. Thus, the issue of electing a ruler is addressed by the people, not by God or the Prophet.

To prove their claim regarding Ali, Shiites invoke what the Prophet said, “Whoever considers me as the master, should do the same with Ali,” during the Ghadeer Khumm. The Sunni claim that the Prophet did not mean “master,” but meant, “Whoever likes and respects me, should do the same with Ali,” where the Prophet supposedly announced to the people that his son-in-law would be his successor, and all those who believed in him should also believe in Imam Ali. But, one cannot find any credible historical document or evidence that Imam Ali himself invoked Ghadeer Khumm in order to justify his rule. In Nahj al-Balagha, the most famous collection of sermons, letters, and narrations attributed to him, Imam Ali attributes the legitimacy of the rules of the three Caliphs before him, namely, Abu Bakr, Umar ibn Khattab, and Uthman ibn Affan, to allegiance of the people with them. In other words, he confirms what the Sunnis claim about the successors to the Prophet. He states in (Nahj al-Balagha, letter 6):

blockquote> Verily, those who pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman have also pledged allegiance to me on the same basis that they swore allegiance to them. He who was present cannot choose another Caliph, and he who was absent has no right to reject; consultation is confined to the Muhajirun [immigrants from Mecca to Medina] and the Ansar [close supporters and companions of the Prophet]. If they agree on an individual and take him to be their Imam, it will be deemed to please Allah.

A person who was supposedly appointed by God could not have spoken in that manner because, otherwise, he would have disobeyed God. Ali also states (ibid. sermon 205, p. 239):

   By Allah, I had no desire for the Caliphate, nor any need to rule, but you made me to accept it and burdened me with its consequent duties.

If God had appointed Ali as the caliph, he would have been neither reluctant nor would he have made any reference to people electing him to be his ruler. Did Prophet Muhammad ever tell the people that they had selected him? No, he did not. If God and Prophet Muhammad had chosen Imam Ali, there would have been no room for his reluctance. Ali talks about people’s huge wave of support for him and his reluctance to accept it (ibid. sermons 135 and 137):

 You [the people] ran towards me shouting, ‘Allegiance, allegiance, allegiance,’ like female camels advancing their calves. I held back my hand, you pulled it towards yourselves. I drew back my hand but you dragged it.

How was it possible that God and the Prophet had chosen Ali, but even after people had turned to him, he tried to turn them down, saying (ibid. sermon 93, p. 85):

Leave me and seek someone else… If you leave me, I am one like you, and will listen to and obey whomsoever you put in charge of your affairs. I am better for you as a counselor than as your chief.

Imam Ali accepted Umar as his son-in-law, allowing him to marry his daughter, Umm Kulthum. He named his children after the caliphs before him and called them “Abu Bakr ibn Ali,” “Umar ibn Ali,” and “Uthman ibn Ali.” If they had violated his God-given rights and rules, Ali would not have behaved that way. He said, “Abu Bakr assumed leadership with goodwill and reigned with justice,” and, “Umar undertook the charge of leadership, was well-behaved and auspicious and pious.” He considered the rules of Abu Bakr and Umar as “good and just” and said, “Their deeds were laudable and they ruled over the Ummah justly.”

Ali believed that election of Abu Bakr and Umar were “worthy choices” (History of Al-Tabari, volume 3, p. 550):

 After the Prophet manifested whatever he was commanded to and conveyed the messages of His Lord, Allah the Glorified, took his soul, may Allah’s greetings and blessings be upon him.Then, Muslims elected two eminent successors to him and the two ruled in compliance with the Quran and Sunnah, adopted his model and did not deviate from it. Allah, then, took their souls, May Allah be satisfied with them.

Regarding Umar, Ali said (Nahj al-Balagha, sermon 228, p. 262):

 May Allah reward Umar who straightened the deviated, cured the disease, abandoned mischief and established the Sunnah. He departed [from this world] with untarnished clothes and little shortcomings. He achieved good of this world and remained safe from its evils. He offered obeyed Allah and feared Him as He deserved.

If Imam Ali had been chosen by God and the Prophet as the successor, and Abu Bakr and Umar had violated God’s and the Prophet’s will and had usurped his rights, would he had spoken about them like the above?

The historic Ghadeer Khumm event took place a few months before the Prophet passed away. How was it possible that the Prophet’s best and closest supporters, whom the Quran has repeatedly praised, violated his explicit and clear order regarding Ali as his successor? And, if they had, would Ali have judged them so positively?

When the dissidents staged an uprising against Uthman and surrendered his home, they asked Imam Ali to speak to him as their envoy. He went to Uthman and told him (ibid., sermon 164, pp. 167 and 168):

 The people are behind me and they have made me an arbiter between you and themselves; but by Allah, I do not know what to say to you. I know nothing [about this matter] that you do not know, nor can I lead you to any matter of which you are not aware. You certainly know what we know; we have not come to know anything before you that we could tell you; nor did we learn anything in secret that we should convey to you. You have seen as we have seen and you have heard as we have. You sat in the company of the Prophet of Allah as we did. Abu Bakr and Umar were no more responsible for acting righteously than you, since you were closer than both of them to the Prophet of Allah through kinship, and you also hold relationship to him by marriage, which they did not hold.

Thus, Imam Ali considered Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman as legitimate, not usurpers. Uthman was being toppled, and was not in a position of power that would compel the Imam to praise him and, most importantly, appoint his beloved sons, Hassan and Hussein, as Uthman’s protectors. In Nahj al-Balagha he presents himself as someone who liked Uthman. He wrote that A’isha [the Prophet’s wife], Talha and Zubair [two prominent companions of the Prophet] were the main provocateurs against Uthman, adding that people were satisfied with his election [as Uthman’s successor] (ibid., letter 1, p. 271):

 I am appraising you of what befell Uthman so [correctly] that its hearing may be like its seeing: People criticized him, and I was the only man from amongst the Muhajirun who asked him to seek satisfying the Muslims most and to offend them the least. As for Talha and as Zubair, their lightest step about him was hard and their softest voice was strong. A’isha too was in a rage with him [Uthman]. Consequently, a group overpowered him and killed him. Then, people pledged allegiance to me, not by force or compulsion, but obediently and out of free will.

Ali’s rationale is that of one who had been elected by the people (expressed through the pledge of allegiance by the tribal leaders), not someone chosen by God. He states (ibid., letter 7, p. 275):

Caliphate is allegiance only once. It is not open to reconsideration, nor is there any scope for fresh proceedings of elections. He who remains out of it is fussy [seeking faults], and he who is ambivalent upon it is a hypocrite.

In letter 28 of Nahj al-Balagha (pp. 292 and 293) to Muawiyah, the second Caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty, Ali explains to him why he is qualified to rule the Muslims. He mentions his obedience to God and the fact that he is a relative of the Prophet, saying, “No one was closer to the Prophet than me.” But, he never claims that he had been appointed by the Prophet as his successor. Clearly, if that had had happened, Imam Ali would not have forgotten it. In the same letter he emphasized that when the uprising against Uthman began, he did everything he could to help Uthman. In sermon 67 (ibid., p. 52), Ali supports the arguments of Muhajirun against the Ansar, but still emphasizes that he was the closest person to the Prophet. In his letter to Talha and Zubair, Ali’s entire argument is that he was elected by the people, not by God and the Prophet (ibid., letter 54, pp. 341 and 342):

    I did not pursue the people till they approached me, and I did not ask them to pledge their allegiance to me till they themselves did so; and both of you were among those who approached me and swore allegiance to me. Certainly, the people did not swear allegiance to me due to any force exerted on them or for any reward given to them. If you two pledged your allegiance to me obediently, come back and offer repentance to Allah soon, but if you swore allegiance to me reluctantly, you have certainly given me a reason for action by pretending obedience and concealing your disobedience. By my life, you were not more entitled than other Muhajirun to conceal and hide the matter. Your refusing allegiance before entering into it would have been easier than getting out of it after having accepted it.

We see that, (a) Ali makes no mentions of having been appointed by the Prophet as his successor; (b) he speaks about declaring allegiance by free will; (c) he does not condemn non-allegiance to him, by swearing to it and then breaking it, and (d) if he had been chosen by God to rule, there would have been no need for any argument.

Note: Ali was elected by the people, but the Shiites generally believe that he was chosen by God, and that is the part that this article is critiquing.

The Umayyad And Abbasid Dynasties

So far, we resorted to religious texts, such as the Quran and Nahj al-Balagha, and we critiqued and rejected the notion of a divine and Islamic government. But, one can also critique the notion of an “Islamic government” from a historical perspective. Some have referred to the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties as the “Islamic empires,” but what does that mean? Ibn Khaldun, renowned Muslim historian, has described the process of transformation of the caliphate to monarchy. At the end of chapter 25 of his book, the Muqaddamih: an Introduction to History, he considers religion as the steward of “people’s otherworldly affairs…Whereas political laws govern the expediencies of this world.” Such a definition and distinction is necessarily a kind of secularism, particularly because Ibn Khaldun speaks about “religious politics” as opposed to “secular politics.” In chapter 26 of his book he reasons that running the collective lives of the human being is possible without religion and prophets, and has also been experienced. In chapter 30 of his book, Ibn Khaldun critiques the Shiites’ claim that the imamat is one of the principal pillars of Islam and states that governance is “a public expediency that has been left to the views of the people.” Chapter 28 of his book is entirely about the transformation of caliphate to monarchy. Ibn Khaldun writes that while the four original caliphs considered religion in their rules, the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties transformed the caliphate to “absolute monarchy” and were after enriching themselves, conquering the world, concentrating more powers in their hands and lasciviousness. Ibn Khaldun did not mean that the two dynasties formed Islamic governments, rather he was comparing them with the kings of his own era.

The Shiites, Khawarij and Mu’tazila viewed the Umayyad as corrupt, usurpatory, and apostate. As Duncan Black McDonald states in his book,
Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory
, even the “Murjites — a group of early Muslims that believed that only God has the authority to judge who is a true Muslim and who is not — did not deny the corrupt nature of the Umayyad kings, but they also believed that because the people had pledged their allegiance to the Umayyad, obeying them was a religious duty; only apostasy would necessitate uprising against them.

In his book,
al-Milal wa al-Nihal,
 the influential Iranian historian of Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdul Karim Shahrestani writes that, “The Suleimanieh branch of Zeidieh, the Mu’tazila, [both Shiite groups] and the followers of hadith and Sunnah believe that it is not necessary for the Imam [ruler] to be a religious scholar, “because emaamat is not a religious affair that we need in order to understand God and His unitary nature. It would suffice for him to have access to religious scholars that can address his religious issues. What is necessary for him is having strong thoughts and correct insight into analyzing what is happening.”

As already mentioned, Ibn Khaldun analyzed the process of transformation of the caliphate to absolute monarchy. In his book,
Arab Political Reason
, Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, the Moroccan critic and professor of philosophy and Islamic thoughts (1936-2010) explains clearly that the basis for selecting the four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali was tribal interests, not beliefs, whereas Islam’s message is having faith in God and rejection of tribalism. Thus, Abed al-Jabi also did not consider the rules of the caliphs as Islamic government. He also showed that right after the death of the Prophet the tribal wars, which had stopped during the Prophet, began again. The tribes were used as a criterion for choosing the ruler, as well as tribal discriminating against others. That is who Ali was isolated.

God Is Not A Head Of State

The concept of electing a ruler by the elite has been expanded in the modern era. Just as everyone can cast a vote in Western societies, Muslims in Islamic countries (although the people of the Arab nations of the Persian Gulf do not yet have such a right) have gradually gained the right to vote. Thus, what does it mean to run a nation by an Islamic government? Running a nation requires four ingredients:

The first is management
, which consists of knowledge and skills. Knowledge is the result of natural and experimental sciences. Skills come about as a result of practice. None of these has anything to do with religion and Islam.

The second is planning
, which is done by knowledge and science. No religion, including Islam, has anything to offer to its adherents about planning.

The third is societal and moral values
. Although all religions, including Islam, support moral precepts, they are in fact independent of religion and do not rely on it. Muslim scholars refer to values as the “rational autonomies.” Good and bad, just and unjust, and other values provide an independent base for assessing all the actions and reactions by the people. Justice is not religious; it is religion that must be just. Peace is not a religious affair; it is religion that must defend peace. Freedom (of thought, expression and behavior) is not religious; religion must recognize freedom. Development is not a religious affair; it is religion that must defend development. Being a good human being is not a religious teaching; although religions also recognize the dignity of the people. If a religion does not respect the people, it will not receive respect from them.

The fourth is the Fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] or Sharia
. The only aspect of any religion, including Islam, which has anything to do with managing a society, is its jurisprudence, which in modern society is referred to as the laws. But, they are not necessarily religious or Islamic for the following reasons: (a) they include laws concerning worship and provisions that have nothing to do with religion and have nothing to do with running a society; (b) 99 percent of non-worshiping laws are of ratifying type, i.e. they are the product of the culture and lore of the people of the Arabian Peninsula before the Prophet. The mission of the Prophet was not to destroy the infrastructure of the society, including its culture. He modified many of the existing laws and then ratified them. They had evolved among the Arab people before and during the Prophet’s era, not by God or Muhammad. Just as the Prophet ratified the traditions and common laws of his time, Muslims of the modern era also ratify the current traditions and common laws for running a nation, namely, democracy, respect for human rights, and pluralism. Neither the Prophet ratifying the common laws of his time, nor modern Muslims doing the same about the current common laws and traditions make them Islamic. (c) Religious jurisprudence is not the law; claiming otherwise is unjustified.

Based on all these arguments above, I am confident to state that “Islamic government” is not an acceptable idea, because Islam lacks the aforementioned four main resources and ingredients for an Islamic government. Thus, for example, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and ISIS cannot be considered as Islamic governments. This is not because, for example, they are not democratic states, but because Islam itself does not have any prescription for a government. Thus, secularism is completely compatible with Islam and Muslims. In other words, “Islam is secular,” as it has never presented any model for governance, and has left it to the Muslims to run their societies based on their collective wisdom and consultation.

Muslims are, of course, free to espouse what they believe in the society, but to make their beliefs the laws of the land, there is no way other than collective consent of the people. Making abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment, etc., legal or illegal is a function of the collective discussion and wisdom and cannot be ruled in or out by invoking the Quran or the Sunnah, even if there is an explicit law in Islam for such issues. Thus, if, for example, Muslims are opposed to abortion, they must explain their rational and moral reasons and convince the public.

Conclusion: The Strategy To Confront The Islamic Extremists

Given these facts, what is the best strategy to confront Islamic radicals, such as the Islamic State? In my opinion, the eight pillars of an effective strategy are as follows.

First
, the corrupt dictatorial regimes in Islamic countries that are supported by the West give rise to Islamic groups as an alternative. Ending discrimination, setting up the democratic process and respecting the fundamental human rights of the citizens must be the focus of the opposition to such regimes. Ethnic, gender and religious discrimination represent the most important social background for the growth of the fundamentalist terrorists.

Second,
 confronting the Islamic extremist groups that supposedly want to establish an “Islamic Caliphate” cannot be done by military means only, because defeating them militarily does not put an end to the claim that it is the Muslims’ duty to set up an Islamic government. This is evident everyday as more recruits join ISIS despite the protracted military campaign against them. Islamist groups are even more radical today than when the U.S. first invaded Afghanistan after 9/11.

At the same time, one must demonstrate to 1.5 billion moderate Muslims that the interpretations of the Qur’anic teachings and the Prophet’s Sunnah (tradition) by the Islamic extremists are pathetically wrong, so that one can prevent, for example, the European, American, Canadian and Australian Muslims from joining the terrorist groups. It has been estimated that over 12,000 of such Muslims are fighting alongside the terrorist groups.

Third,
 it must be emphasized that the claim that there is such a thing as Islamic government is baseless. The Quran and Sunnah have not obliged Muslims to establish such a chimera as the Islamic government, but have taught them to use wisdom, justice, consultation, and innate human dignity to organize their collective lives and their society. Similar to all other religions, Islam does not have provisions for forming a state, particularly modern states as we understand them now. Religious government is an absurd notion, and if a government is formed under Islamic banner, it will only serve the interests of a special group of the people, not an entire Islamic society. Thus, if Muslims form a government, it will be a secular, not a religious one.

Fourth
, the reductionist approach to Islam can be deadly, as it will only increase the power of the conservative and reactionary clerics. It also transforms the kind and forgiving God to a warmongering king that constantly issues orders for more bloodshed. As the Iranian Muslim theologian and jurist Muhammad al-Ghazali put it, scientific religious laws are for materialistic issues; they do not represent true religion.

Fifth,
 we must keep in mind that we have many versions of liberalism, Marxism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Islamic fundamentalism is only one version of Islam. There are other versions of Islam that are based on enlightened and moral interpretation of the Islamic teachings and the Prophet’s traditions, adjusting itself to be compatible with democracy, human rights, freedom, and pluralism. and views everyone, regardless of religion, ethnicity and gender, as free and equal citizens.

The defenders of this version of Islam view al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the al-Nusra Front, Boko Haram and similar groups as the most important threat to Muslims and true Islam.

Sixth,
 it must be emphasized that true secularism is not opposed to religion, and a secular democratic state will not only eliminate ethnic and religious discrimination, such as pitting Shiites against Sunnis, but will also create the conditions for the religious people to practice their beliefs free of the government. The regimes that claim to be based on religion have, in fact, transformed religion to something akin to governmental orders and intervene in the moral relation between the pious people and their God. At the same time though, “fundamentalist secularism” also intervenes in people’s religion because it is anti-religion. A true secular democracy only separates religion from governance.

Seventh,
 the West must not approach the Islamic world in a way that is threatening to Muslims, giving them feeling of humiliation, discrimination, and threat of military attacks. This has often been done by the support that the West has provided to the corrupt dictatorial regimes in the Islamic world. Such support has always been a prime factor in the attraction of some Muslims to radical groups.

Eighth,
 it is morally unjustifiable if a religious, ethnic or gender-based minority is systematically discriminated against while their beliefs are mocked by those invoking “freedom of expression.” As an example, consider the plight of Muslims in France that represent about 10 percent of the population.

As the French Premier Manuel Valls acknowledged, there is a sort of “apartheid” in France with respect to its Muslim community.

Liberal Jewish American philosopher Jason Stanley distinguishes mocking the Prophet of the majority — the Christ — and that of the minority — Prophet Muhammad and correctly rejects the latter. The only “fruit” of such mocking and insults is a deepening rift between Muslims and the West and the growth of Islamic terrorist groups.

Instead of widening the fissures, we must move toward healing, mutual understanding and respect. Within the Islamic world, that starts with embracing secularism.

This article was translated by Ali N. Babaei.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 February 2015, 8:51 am and is filed under
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Why silence from IGP on Minister Ismail when Khalid would have tweeted directive to police to investigate DAP or PR leaders under Sedition Act if they had expressed similar racist sentiments?

If a PAS or PKR leader had called on Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses to lower prices or a DAP leader had called on non-Malay customers to boycott Malay businesses to lower prices, the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar would have immediately  tweeted directive to his police officers to investigate the DAP or PR leaders

under Sedition Act or a whole host of other laws.

Why then the unusual silence from the Inspector-General of Police when the Minister of Agriculture and  Agro-based Industries, Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob called on Malays to boycott Chinese businesses to lower prices?

Has Khalid’s twitter account broken down or is Bukit Aman  suffering from a breakdown of internet access?

This itself highlights the double-standards which the IGP had been conducting himself, doing a great disservice to the professionalism and integrity of the overwhelming majority of dedicated  men and women in blue who had conscientiously and diligently carried out their duties to uphold the law without fear or favour.

I hope that within minutes of this statement going out, we will see Khalid in twitter action!

It is simply shocking and outrageous that a Minister of a 1Malaysia government could be so callous, insensitive and  racist as to openly and unashamedly  call for a boycott by the Malay consumers against Chinese businesses, purportedly to force the lowering of prices.

This disgusting episode bears out the concern expressed by the Yang di Pertuan Agong two weeks ago that he had never been more concerned about race and religious relations in the country since ascending to the throne 57 years ago in 1958 – a year after the country’s independence.

The Yang di Pertuan Agong had said: “I have been on the throne for 57 years. Even though I have witnessed many incidents, I have never been this worried about race and religious relations, which are becoming brittle.”

The Yang di Pertuan Agong has  hit the nail on the head. Never before in the past 58 years have a Minister behaved in  so irresponsible, reckless  and racist a fashion as to call for a boycott along racial lines such as  urging the Malay consumers to boycott the Chinese businesses.

If a past Minister had done what Ismail did under the first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein Onn, he would have been sacked on the spot immediately after the expression of such racist sentiments, for it would be conclusive proof of his total unsuitability to continue as a Cabinet Minister in a plural society.

I think such a Minister would have been sacked by Tun Dr. Mahathir  during his 22 years of premiership although Mahathir  may now look for excuses to come to Ismail’s defence  or rescue.

Under Tun Abdulah’s premiership, there would have been no place for such a rank racist in the Cabinet.

What is the position of Datuk Seri Najib Razak, the sixth Prime Minister, to such a rabid racialist in the Cabinet?

How long would Ismail continue to be a Minister and would Najib and others  come to Ismail’s defence and rescue?

The issue is no more Ismail but what type of a Cabinet and government Malaysians have in the year 2015.

Compounding his sin of rank racialism is Ismail’s dishonesty in resorting to lies and falsehoods to incite racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension in the country.

Ismail had  singled out the Old Town White Coffee chain owned by OldTown Bhd, saying Perak DAP chairman Datuk Ngeh Khoo Ham owned shares in the company.

Ismail said: “Malays are still refusing to boycott (Old Town White Coffee) what more when its owner is said to be the DAP Ngeh family of Perak who are known to be anti-Islam.

“As long as the Malays don’t change, the Chinese will take the opportunity to oppress the Malays.”

Ismail had committed three sins in two short sentences: firstly, fanning racialism and hatred  in inciting Malays to boycott the Chinese businesses; secondly, spreading the lie that Old Town Bhd is owned by “DAP Ngeh family”; and thirdly, fanning religious hatred, conflict and tensions by  spreading the false accusation that  DAP leaders are “known to be anti-Islam”.

I have just spoken to DAP MP for Bruas, Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham and he told me that he had twittered his denial two or three times previously  that he  or his family owns a single sen of share in the Old Town Bhd, but Ismail had just ignored Ngeh’s earlier denials so as to  pump racial and religious vitriol and poison to create a tsunami in Malaysia’s multi-racial and multi-religious waters.

If Ismail does not resign or is not sacked by the Prime Minister on Wednesday, right-thinking Malaysians regardless of race, religion or region would expect all the other Ministers to make an issue of Ismail’s suitability to continue as Minister.

This is not an issue of UMNO or BN, nor is it an issue of Malay, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Ibans, or Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs.

The issue is whether a rabid racialist who could openly call for a confrontation of races, i.e.  Malay consumers boycott Chinese businesses, is qualified to continue as a Minister  of government of a plural nation and whether all other Ministers, whether UMNO, MCA, Gerakan, the Sabah and Sarawak BN parties, are prepared to be identified with Ismail  by continuing to serve in the same Cabinet.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 February 2015, 4:12 pm and is filed under
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Mutual friends: secularism and Islam

Brian Whitaker

Guardian

14 April 2009

The Middle East will only be convinced by Islamic arguments for a secular state

On the first page of his book, Islam and the Secular State, Abdullahi an-Na’im writes: “In order to be a Muslim by conviction and free choice, which is the only way one can be a Muslim, I need a secular state.”

He explains that he is not advocating a secular society but a state which is neutral with regard to religion – a state whose institutions “neither favour nor disfavour any religious doctrine or principle”, a state that has no enforcing role in religious matters.

The object of state neutrality, an-Na’im says, is to facilitate “the possibility of religious piety out of honest conviction” and allow individuals in their communities the freedom “to accept, object to, or modify any view of religious doctrine or principle”. States that take sides in such matters become an obstacle to religious freedom.

To some readers, this may be little more than a statement of the obvious. But to many Muslims, especially in countries where the state poses as a “defender of Islam” and an enforcer of “Islamic values”, it is not only an unfamiliar argument but one that sounds dangerously mad, even heretical.

Last week, in an article for Cif, I discussed the shutting-down of debate about Islamic secularism in most of the Arab countries and posed the question: how can it be re-opened? I’d now like to suggest an answer.

The idea of states enforcing correct “Islamic” behaviour is based on a presumption that such behaviour can be clearly and indisputably defined. But we have only to look at an issue such as female circumcision, where scholarly opinions range from saying it is obligatory to forbidden, to see that this is anything but the case.

In practice, the “Islam” they are seeking to enforce is nothing more than the prevailing local orthodoxy – modified, where necessary, to suit the political needs of the regime. Conveniently, this allows them to invoke religion to justify all manner of abuses that cannot be defended by rational argument.

In 2000 Saudi Arabia, which is probably the world leader in institutionalised discrimination, signed up to the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) but added a reservation saying it did not consider itself bound by any part of the convention that conflicts with “the norms of Islamic law”. In effect, it was claiming the right to choose which bits of the treaty, if any, it would implement. As Denmark noted in an objection at the time, the Saudis’ references to the provisions of Islamic law were “of unlimited scope and undefined character”.

Abuses of power are often dressed in a religious gloss which helps to win acceptance from Muslims but doesn’t stand up to much serious scrutiny. Saudi Arabia, besides its achievements in the field of discrimination, also has the most comprehensive system of internet censorship in the Middle East and it cites verses from the Qur’an in support of this practice. The passage it quotes is about resisting sexual temptation and the verses (12: 33-34) imply that God will protect those who seek His help. If this has any relevance to internet use its point, surely, is that the temptations of the internet are a matter for users to sort out between themselves and God. So there is no reason for the state to become involved – unless the Saudi authorities are saying they don’t trust God to do His job properly.

The central illusion here is that states can determine the one “true” voice of Islam, regardless of the diversity of Islamic thought through the ages, and also have the right to impose it on the public.

The question “How do they know their version is correct?” is what starts to undermine this edifice. Of course, they don’t really know but they have power on their side, and might is right. The need here is not to categorically refute their religious arguments but to neutralise them by pointing out that other interpretations are possible. In that way a space is created where people can confront the underlying moral issues themselves and feel free enough to make their own choices.

To begin the process of separating states from religion, secularists have to be prepared to engage with religious arguments – something they are often reluctant to do. Human rights activists, for example (even those in Muslim countries) often fail to address the religious dimension, with the result that their arguments cut little ice among the public. Kecia Ali writes:

    For the vast majority of Muslims worldwide – not only extremists or conservatives, but also those who consider themselves moderate or progressive – determining whether a particular belief or practice is acceptable largely hinges on deciding whether or not it is legitimately “Islamic”.

Increasingly, feminists and others in Muslim countries are finding that if they want to make headway they have to present their case in terms that people can perceive as compatible with Islam. That means studying the scripture and exploring its various interpretations. Once the possibility of multiple “Islamic” interpretations is acknowledged, rational debate can begin.

Official discrimination against the Baha’is in Egypt is one example of a problem that cannot be tackled though secular arguments alone, because of the claims that it is sanctioned by Islam.

“One scholar after another, one government official after another, would insist that under Islam only three religions are allowed – Islam, Christianity and Judaism,” Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights recalled when I spoke to him about this in Cairo last summer. He continued:

 When we started doing research we realised there is no basis in the Qur’an or the Sunna to support their claim that Muslims may only coexist with “people of the book” – and we started saying so.

    I was once in a televised debate with the former president of al-Azhar university who was one of the chief jurists of the Islamic Religious Council and we were talking about the Baha’i faith. He started stating the usual position that Islam only allows adherents to the three Abrahamic religions. So I challenged him on this and said: “What’s your evidence?”

    I think he was stunned … I cited all the evidence about how the Prophet Muhammad in Madina never discriminated between people of the Book and others who adhered to other faiths – like the Zoroastrians, for example. He couldn’t argue with my evidence because my evidence came not from fringe opinions but from major books that are selectively avoided by scholars because they don’t give them the cover they want for their bigotry.

    So immediately he shifted. He said: “Yes, but they [the Baha’is] have their headquarters in Haifa in Israel and they work against the fabric of our society, their presence is against national unity,” etc.

Once the religious cover has been blown or neutralised, the way is open for a reasoned debate based on facts and logic rather than what someone in authority claims to have been told by God.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 3 February 2015, 6:20 am and is filed under
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