Strange case of Home Minister writing a letter to FBI vouching for the integrity of an alleged gambling kingpin has become “curiouser and curiouser”

The strange case of the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi writing a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) vouching for the integrity of an alleged gambling kingpin has become “curiouser and  curiouser”.

In the first place, it is curious and must be the first case of a Home Minister of any country writing a letter to the FBI to vouch for the integrity of a person  detained by FBI allegedly for being a gambling kingpin.

Secondly, it is curious that the Home Minister is writing to correct a mistake in the report by the Malaysian Police to the FBI about Paul Pauh.  If there was such a “mistake”, why didn’t the Police themselves write to the FBI to  correct the mistake.

The third and fourth curious aspects are  whether the police agreed that it had made a mistake in its report to FBI about Paul Pauh and whether the police knew and agreed to the Home Minister writing to the FBI on the matter.

The fifth and sixth curious aspects are  the nature of the “national security matters” which Puah had assisted the Malaysian government in the past and whether the police were privy to this information.

The seventh curious aspect is whether the Home Minister had acted unilaterally and arbitrarily without the knowledge and consent  or against the advice of the Police in writing the letter vouching for the integrity of the alleged gambling kingpin as appears to be the case from the subtle statement of the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar which veers from making any comment on the veracity of the Home Minister’s letter.

The eighth curious aspect is the latest development in Nevada District Court in Las Vegas where the Home Minister’s letter to the FBI was withdrawn after Putrajaya objected to it being used for the defence of the alleged gambling kingpin.

The Home Minister’s to the FBI dated December 18, 2014 was clearly in defence of Phua and yet the latest twist of the Las Vegas gambling trial is that the Home Minister’s letter should not be used in an open court proceeding in defence of Phua.

Who objected? Was it Zahid,  the Police, the Attorney-General’s Chambers or Foreign Ministry?

The ninth curious aspect is whether the Police, to use Zahid’s words in his letter to the FBI, “eager” for Phua to return to Malaysia to help the government on “projects affecting our national security”.?

It is clear the both national, police and the Home Minister’s reputation and credibility  have been gravely undermined and besmirched in the case involving the alleged gambling kingpin.

The Home Minister  cannot stay silent any longer on this issue as Malaysians are entitled to a true and unvarnished version of these curious sets of events which bring no good whatsoever to Malaysia’s international standing and repute.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 5 January 2015, 5:26 pm and is filed under
Crime
,
Police
,
Zahid
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Worst floods in Kelantan, confirms NSC

By Aizyl Azlee

Malay Mail Online

January 5, 2015

KOTA BARU, Jan 5 — The National Security Council (NSC) confirmed the massive flood that hit Kelantan was the worst in the history of the state.

Its secretary Datuk Mohamed Thajudeen Abdul Wahab said water levels of the recent floods superseded the floods of 1967.

According to the council’s report, the water level of Sungai Kelantan at Tambatan DiRaja, which has a danger level of 25 metres, reached 34.17 metres last month compared to 29.70 metres in 2004 and 33.61 metres in 1967.

The levels at Tangga Krai, which has a danger level of 5 metres, reached 7.03 metres compared to 6.70 metres in 2004 and 6.22 metres in 1967.

Thajudeen said the council identified two main reasons for the unprecedented magnitude.

“One is the changing climatic patterns and the adverse weather effects. Second,  could be the result of uncontrolled land management and the swelling number of trees and exploitation of land resources,” he said.

Thajudeen explained that disaster management is handled at three levels—district, state and federal.

“The front-liners will raise these matters to the state level if it is beyond their capacity, and it will then be brought up to the federal level if it is beyond the state’s capacity,” he said.

“In this case, the district office and the members of their own disaster committees were having their own problems. They were flood victims themselves.

“With the severity of the floods, there was no electricity and limited communication.”

According to Thajudeen, the council organised annual meetings before the monsoon season to strengthen standard operating procedures (SOP).

“Under the instruction of Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, we also prepared the SOP for extreme disasters,” he said.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think the SOP was fully adopted or applied in Kelantan because the teams in Terengganu, Johor, even Kedah, were well managed despite severe flooding.

“Based on our last post-mortem, we did increase the number of evacuation centres this year.

“But we did not have that problem in Pahang, Johor or Perak. The evacuation centres that we increased were able to cope and manage the large number of evacuees.”

Thajudeen explained flooding at evacuation centres in Kelantan had also made matters worse and evacuees from these centres had to be transported to other centres which were already accommodating more evacuees than its designated capacity.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 5 January 2015, 8:31 am and is filed under
Kelantan
,
NaturaL disaster
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


DOE limits controversial Johor Straits housing project over environmental concerns

BY JAHABAR SADIQ, EDITOR

The Malaysian Insider

5 January 2015

China developer Country Gardens Holdings can only develop less than 1,000 acres (405ha) or a quarter of its controversial 1,600 hectares Forest City project in the Johor Straits under new limits set by the Department of Environment (DOE).

The Malaysian Insider has learnt that the DOE has verbally informed Country Garden Pacificview Sdn Bhd (CGP), a joint-venture unit of Country Gardens Holdings Co Ltd,  of the new limits after complaints from locals and the Singapore government over reclamation works in the narrow waterway between Malaysia and the island state.

“The DOE has decided to limit the project to the first phase and wait for a few years to see the impact before looking at future phases,” a source told The Malaysian Insider.

“The DOE is expected to send an official letter about its decision soon to relevant parties,” he added.

Country Gardens Holdings is China’s seventh-largest property developer with a market capitalisation of HK$63 billion as of December 31, 2014. Its financial revenue for the financial year ended June 30, 2014, was HK$38.3 billion with HK$5.5 billion nett profit.

Another source said Malaysian environmental authorities made their decision after Singapore presented videos and documentary proof of continued reclamation works for the ambitious China-Malaysia joint-venture project.

It is understood that the evidence was presented at the last Malaysia-Singapore Joint Commission on Environment (MSJCE) which met last month.

Singapore had raised the issue of reclamation works near its sea border as it had effects on its coastal areas. The reclamation works had also affected Malaysia’s nearby key transhipment hub, the Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP).

Last September, the Johor government said it wanted Country Garden Pacificview (CGP) Sdn Bhd, the developer of Forest City, to comply with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before developing the project at Tanjung Kupang, Gelang Patah.

Johor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin had said it was important to ensure issues such as environment were given full attention and regulations were adhered to.

“We hope the developer complies with the requirement to submit an EIA report, which is very important for us to ensure all concerns, including from the environmental aspects, are given attention,” he said in Johor Baru.

A public dialogue on Forest City’s Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) turned chaotic on September 2, 2014, when the developer was confronted with all kind of enquiries from the residents in Kampung Pok affected by the project.

They expressed dissatisfaction for not being consulted before the implementation of the project, which involved the construction of a 1,600-hectare man-made island, which was seen as polluting the environment and jeopardising the area’s marine ecology.

The developers had reportedly voluntarily stopped sea reclamation to build the island, which was 30% completed, on June 15, 2014, although there was no official DOE notice.

The Forest City project, which has gross development value (GDV) estimated at RM600 billion on reclaimed land, is a joint venture between KPRJ, a Johor state government owned subsidiary and Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd.

Country Gardens first entered Malaysia in 2011 in a joint-venture with Mayland Group to develop two parcels of land in Semenyih and Rawang.

The China developer ventured into Johor in 2012 when it acquired 22 hectares of waterfront and in Danga Bay for nearly RM1 billion. It launched Phase One of the Danga Pay project in 2013 where over 1,500 units were snapped up in three days.

It launched Phase Two of the Danga Bay project in 2014 which has sold over 6,000 units to date. Danga Bay is part of Malaysia’s ambitious Iskandar Region corridor to develop the southern state as the Shenzhen to Singapore. – January 5, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 6 January 2015, 3:30 am and is filed under
environment
,
Johor Bahru
,
Johore
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


PM gets a lesson in transparency

Amin Khairuddin| January 5, 2015

Free Malaysia Today

Blogger Shahbudin says Najib shouldn’t have acted like someone with something to hide.

KUALA LUMPUR: Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak would have saved himself a lot of embarrassment if he had been open about his recent movements instead of behaving like a thief, Umno critic Shahbudin Husin writes in his latest blog entry.

Continuing with his series of caustic blog entries that comment on Najib’s unannounced Hawaiian holiday and the mystery of what happened to the private government jet after he cut short the golfing vacation, Shahbudin says it is odd that the Prime Minister apparently did not count on the Internet’s power to turn any Tom, Dick or Harry into a reporter when he himself has often spoken about that power.

He says the one lesson Najib must learn from the episode is that he, as a prime minister and very public figure, has to be transparent about everything in these times of instant information and open communication.

“If he had not left for his Hawaiian Christmas holiday in secret and had instead released information that he would be playing golf with Barack Obama, no one would have really cared when the picture of him golfing with the American President became widely distributed,” he writes.

“If he had returned in the same aircraft that took him to Hawaii when the flood situation had become frantic, no one would have really bothered to trace the whereabouts of the official plane.”

The official explanation that the jet had encountered technical problems came only after a lot of questions had been raised, Shahbudin points out. But the explanation, he adds, became meaningless when a check with FlightRadar24.com showed that the jet had been moving around the American continent. “In fact,” he says, “it burned the public’s desire to find out who was using it.”

Shahbudin also refers to Najib’s decision to go to Bangkok last Friday for a meeting with his Thai counterpart, saying he should have not gone there secretly as well. It was because he made the trip stealthily that people saw a coincidence in the jet being in Bangkok at the time, he says. “But just as he went to Hawaii in stealth, he went to Thailand like one making a rendezvous with a sweetheart but afraid of being found out by his wife.”

If Najib had informed the public that he would be reuniting with his family after meeting the Thai PM, Shahbudin says, “no one would be interested in his trip and in taking a picture of his wife shopping in Bangkok.”

Shahbudin says it’s strange that Najib, who is active in social media, still seems to think that media power lies with Utusan Malaysia, Berita Harian and government-controlled television stations.

He ends his posting with this parting shot: “As the Prime Minister, act like a real prime minister, not like a thief who runs and hide.”

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 6 January 2015, 3:38 am and is filed under
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Bracing for another ‘adik tsunami’

Terence Fernandez

The Malaysian Insider

7 January 2015

The end of the school term in November usually marked the beginning of an annual pilgrimage for all the items on the ground floor of our teachers’ quarters unit in Kuala Krai, Kelantan.

It was when we would start moving our furniture, electrical items and other valuables to the top floor of our home. After that laborious work, which usually took two days, we would make a dash for it to my grandmother’s house in Tapah, Perak, to celebrate Christmas.

A quick exit from Kelantan was necessary to avoid road closures and dangerous driving conditions because of the annual floods.

There were years when we decided to tempt Mother Nature and stayed put. Some years we were lucky, as the waters did not enter the house, other years we were not so lucky, like one Christmas Eve when our living room started flooding while my mother was busy preparing Christmas dinner in the kitchen.

In any case, we considered ourselves lucky as the waters usually stopped three steps shy of entering the top floor. There was also Mrs Bala who lived in a bungalow on a hill behind our house which would be our refuge until the waters receded.

Fed up with the annual ritual, my parents bought a house in another part of town – paying a premium as this was a “flood-free” area.

Well, it was flood-free for the last 23 years until last December when the entire ground floor was inundated. The family were in Kuala Lumpur, hence there was no one to salvage our belongings, including a piano and my father’s 1978 classic Toyota Celica.

But most heart-wrenching was the almost complete loss of 45 years of family photographs.

But as I prepare to make another trip this weekend to clean our family home, I count my blessings – at least I have a house to wash! Not a single home of the 400 houses in Manek Urai was left unscathed. Half were washed away.

Our previous home at the quarters was completely engulfed by the rising waters – only the roof could be seen.

A lot has been said about the floods in the east coast, where many still think it is just an annual occurrence. There have been enough reports and pictures published to indicate that it is not the usual monsoon.

There have been accusations against TNB for opening the Pergau Dam that sent millions of litres of water into the lowlands – without warning.

Survivors give an account of “air jernih” (clear water) coming towards them. I can give credence to their claims as while washing our house we encountered crystal clear water trapped in pots and crockery – not the usual muddy waters.

Deforestation, especially in Lojing and parts of Gua Musang, must be singled out as probable cause.

In this instance, both the state and federal government have failed the people. Who should be taken to task for not evacuating the people from low-lying areas earlier? Why was the Pergau Dam emptied without warning? Any dam engineer would be able to calculate the rainfall against the capacity of the dam to give a timeline of when to open the floodgates – hence being able to give ample time for people to flee.

The omission of the federal government in declaring an emergency has rendered Kuala Krai, for instance, a ghost town. Apart from two choppers landing with aid at the District Office, and scant number of soldiers, there is no semblance of anyone in charge.

Why did the multi-million ringgit flood mitigation plan developed in the 1990s fail us this time?

No ramps have been built over damaged roads in Kuala Krai and Manek Urai. It took us an hour to traverse a 1km road, which had partly caved in, because of the absence of such ramps.

Why did the Fire Department or Army Engineering Corps not pump water from the river to help wash the town, so businesses could operate again? The long-term economy of the town is going to be impacted as all businesses in the town centre are at a standstill, save for a hardware store selling water pumps and jet sprays salvaged from the flood.

Where were the clean water stations that the army is able and supposed to set up within hours of waters receding to provide drinking water to the people?

Kuala Krai was in complete darkness until Monday. One miserable patrol car was seen patrolling the town as several shopkeepers spent the night in front of their shops to safeguard their belongings drying outside.

One should not buy the excuse of “this is the annual monsoon, deal with it” any more. No floods have caused this much misery and loss in our country’s history.

Shaking our heads and shrugging our shoulders in despair without thinking of a solution just mean we will not be prepared for another “adik tsunami”, as the locals have named the worst flood in history. – January 7, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 7 January 2015, 12:56 pm and is filed under
Kelantan
,
NaturaL disaster
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Calls for strict audit that government had spent RM800 million on flood victims as Kelantan entitled to ask where the money had gone as it  should get RM500 – RM600 million as the worst flood-stricken state

Today, accompanied by the former Bersih co-chairman and patron of Negara-Ku, Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, DAP MPs Anthony Loke (Seremban), Liew Chin Tong (Kluang), DAP State Assembly members Lee Chin Chen (Ketari- Pahang), Wong May Ing (Pantai Remis) and DAP and social activists in four FWDs, with a container of essential supplies for Manek Urai, I made my third flood victims relief mission to Kelantan.

We left Kuala Lumpur at 5 am, first stop at Bentong for breakfast, arriving in Gua Musang before 10 am, where we were given a briefing by DAP and PAS Gua Musang leaders on the floods devastation in Gua Musang beginning on Winter Solstice (Dongzhi festival) on Dec. 22, 2014.

Gua Musang, which literally means “Cave of the Civet”, is the largest of the 10 districts in Kelantan and  Gua Musang town had  never experienced serious flooding before.

It therefore took the  people in Gua Musang by complete surprise when Gua Musang, together with Kuala Krai (another district which had never suffered serious flooding before)  became  the two worst flood-stricken areas in the December 2014 floods catastrophe.

When we visited Gua Musang town, the people were busy valiantly trying to clean up their houses, shops and inns – a puny effort compared to the enormous ravages caused by the floods.

It was two weeks since Gua Musang had been stricken by the unprecedented floods catastrophe, with water as high as 10 to 12 ft, submerging the whole town but Gua Musang still looked forlorn and desolate.

From the slow pace of recovery that I saw in Gua Musang, the Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yaakob may be right when he said that Kelantan will need at least six months to fully recover from the devastation of the worst floods that hit the state in the past few weeks.

But six months to recover from the devastation of the floods catastrophe is too long and will impose great problems and grave burdens on the flood victims in Kelantan.

This is why there must be a total change of mindset of the Federal, state and local authorities to ensure that this recovery period is slashed from “at least six months” to two months, and why a declaration of state of emergency to centralize and mobilise all available resources to help the floods victims in Gua Musang and other parts of Kelantan to start  life anew after the devastation of the floods is urgent and imperative.

During the worst of the floods catastrophe, an emergency is needed to save lives. In the post-flood scenario, an emergency is needed to restore living and ensure livelihood – to help the flood victims rebuild life and business anew in the shortest possible time.

From Gua Musang, we left for Manek Urai where the container of essential supplies was down-loaded at the PAS Manek Urai Relief Centre, and we met up with the PAS MP for Kuala Krai, Dr. Mohd Hatta Ramli, PAS Vice President and Kelantan State Assemblyman for Salor Datuk  Husam Musa and former Kelantan Assembly Speaker and Kota Bharu MP, Dato’ Wan Abdul Rahim Wan Abdullah.

It is Ground Zero in Manek Urai, where the devastation of the floods catastrophe was most bleak and desolate as if there had been a tsunami or the aftermath of  a war zone.

We visited Kg Manjor, where only 15 out of 220 houses survived the floods catastrophe, and a living testimony of the power and might of Mother Nature when it expressed its fury at the despoliation of the environment.

Everywhere we saw houses destroyed after being flung about like toys by angry floods, with a chair left on a roof as evidence of the height of the waters, and vehicles thrown around, some atop another vehicle while others somersaulted.

The villagers of Kg Manjor were lucky to be able to flee to higher ground, where  they spent five nights and days until the floods subsided – without water, food, power  or contact for the first two days!

There were other Ground Zero devastating damages from the floods catastrophe, like Manek Urai Lama, Kg Karangan, Kg Laloh, Kg Dabong, Kg Kemubu.

I am not aware that any Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister, had visited any of these Ground Zero zones of the floods catastrophe in Kuala Krai.

My visit to Ground Zero zones has reinforced my view that an emergency must be declared to help the flood-stricken victims to rebuild and start life anew, that the 150,000 in the armed forces should be mobilized to help a million flood victims to start life anew, not only to provide security and  prevent the outbreak of diseases post-floods, but to help restore essential utilities like safe water and electricity, erect temporary shelter for the flood victims and to allow them to start life anew in shortest possible time.

I am shocked that the Deputy Finance Minister, Datuk Ahmad Maslan announced yesterday that the government had so far spent about RM800 million through the National Security Council to help victims in states affected by floods in the provision of food supply, logistics and cleaning houses of victims.

As Kelantan is the worst flood-stricken state in the floods catastrophe, the bulk of the  expenditure, say RM 500 million – RM600 million, should have been spent in the state.

But where has this vast sum of money gone to as no one in Kelantan would feel that the Federal Government had spent RM500 million to RM600 million in Kelantan in the past two weeks of the floods catastrophe to help flood victims.

I have visited Kota Bharu three times, been in Kuala Krai twice, even in the Ground Zero zones  of Manek Urai as well as  Gua Musang, and I definitely do not feel or sense that RM500 million to RM600 million had been spent in Kelantan in relief efforts for the flood victims.

Let Maslan reveal out of this RM800 million, how much had been spent in Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and Perak – so far the worst flood-hit states.

There should be strict audit of the so-called RM800 million already spent to help flood victims, and the other expenditures still to be made, to ensure that there is no hanky-panky whatsoever.

No money should be spared to help the flood victims, but not a sen should be wasted.

All government expenditures spent in the floods catastrophe must directly benefit the flood victims and not the “floods” barons, entrepreneurs or  cronies.

For a start, let the Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin announce that every student affected by the floods catastrophe will be provided free two sets of school uniforms, text books, exercise books, and all other necessary school supplies, which will be evidence of such expenditures directly benefitting the flood victims and not some chimerical figure of RM800 million said to be spent on flood victims but without them being the direct beneficiaries.

There should be no rigid requirement for student to wear school uniform at least for the first month of school for the flood-stricken areas, until every student have been supplied with two sets of free school uniforms.

On Sunday night, I sent an email to the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak on my five-point action plan on the floods catastrophe which have caused 23 dead, evacuation of a quarter of million people, with a million people adversely affected by the floods, and losses running into billions of ringgit.

I also asked for an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister before the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, as Malaysians expect the Cabinet to make important decisions on the floods catastrophe especially with Ministers on vacation abroad and the Cabinet had not met for 20 days – including during the worst periods of the December 2014  floods catastrophe.

As the Prime Minister is suffering from E Coli after floods visits, I am not pressing for a meeting with Najib before the Cabinet meeting tomorrow.

I wish him speedy recovery to be able to chair the Cabinet meeting tomorrow to ensure that the Ministers can take collective decisions on the five-point action plan which I had outlined to him in my email, namely:

(1) the declaration of a state of emergency for the flood-stricken states;

(2) the formation of a BN-PR Joint Action Council on Floods Catastrophe;

(3) Convening of a Special Parliament this month on the Floods Catastrophe which can also discuss the deferment of the implementation of GST so as not to add further burdens on the flood victims;

(4) Doubling of the RM500 million allocation for relief of flood victims to RM1 billion to enable every flood victim whose livelihood/business had been wiped out by the floods catastrophe to apply for interest free loans, ranging from RM1,000 to RM250,l000 to start life and business anew, and

(5) Establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the weaknesses and failures of the Floods Disaster Preparations Plans to provide relief and help to the flood victims of the current floods catastrophe.

I hope the Cabinet tomorrow will have good news for the million flood victims, especially those in the worst-hit areas like Gua Musang and Kuala Krai in Kelantan and Temerloh and Mentakab in Pahang.

In fact, it would be a good idea if the Cabinet tomrrow makes it compulsory for every Minister, including the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, to visit Ground Zero areas in Manek Urai, in particular “devastation” areas like Kg Manjor and Kg Maneki Urai Lama, for such visits will make Ministers not only more knowledgeable but more humble and committed to ensure that mega flood relief expenditures directly benefit the flood victims and not the “flood” barons, entrepreneurs cronies.

(Media Conference Statement at Pengkalan Chepa Airport, Kota Bharu on Tuesday, January 6, 2014 at 5 pm)

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 7 January 2015, 6:56 am and is filed under
Kelantan
,
Najib Razak
,
NaturaL disaster
,
Parliament
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


I am Muslim, and I am Malaysian: The story behind the #Iam26 petition

— Tariq Ismail

The Malay Mail Online

January 6, 2015

JANUARY 6 — This is a call to Malay Muslims. This is a call to Malaysians.

For centuries since the Malaccan Empire to modern times, the Malays have lived and worked with other races. Our culture has been a melting pot of Chinese, Indian, Arabic and Indonesian and this is what makes Malays unique to the world.

Age old adats are still practised today and one Malay adat stands out above the rest — RESPECT. It has been ingrained within us since childhood to respect our elders, our neighbours and each other. But before we begin to respect one another we must first respect ourselves.

I grew up a spoilt brat within my own four walls as a result of my upbringing. I went to the best schools that were afforded to me and my lingua franca whilst growing up was English and Malay. But what held me together, and I thank both my parents and late grandmother Toh Puan Norashikin for this, was religion.

Without going into too much detail of how my religion was taught to me back then, there is one fundamental core that I subscribe to and which I wish to share with everyone — both Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Apart from Quranic reading, I was always taught by the ustaz that Allah is supreme, the Quran is His word and only He judges. It is to Him we ultimately return to.

It is thus, that when Lyanna Khairuddin approached me with a petition to support the G25 I began to reflect back on what it means to be a Muslim. Here was a science lecturer who wanted to know more about Islam but was scared to ask due to the venom and hate that surrounds Islam today and much of it emanating from those who claim to defend Islam. She asked the same question that I have pondered myself every day for a year — Why is Islam perceived in such a negative manner by so many – including those defenders of Islam?

My being a Muslim and my own beliefs aside, I live in Malaysia. I was born here, my children were born here and it is here that we will live our lives out and, ultimately, die.

It is therefore in my personal interest as well as the interest of every Malaysian that Malaysia should remain peaceful, free from ethnic tensions and prosper.

In order to do so, we must become an inclusive society and anything that drives any divisions between Malaysians of different ethnicities or religions MUST be avoided.

Whatever one’s personal feelings may be, I feel it is imperative that all Malaysians cast aside any tendency to vent those feelings in a manner that may offend or threaten other Malaysians.

Insensitive statements by politicians, NGOs, illegal demonstrations, even irresponsible Facebook posts and teh tarik talk are all things that damage our nation and thereby hurts us ALL, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. It is only a question of degree.

We must realise that we are partners; brothers & sisters; and that we are all in the same boat together.

We are one and what hurts any part of us hurts us all collectively and instead of engaging in speech and activity which hurts us, we should resume the task of nation building and we need to build on each other’s strengths while recognising each other’s weaknesses.

Above all, we need to recognise that by focussing on the negatives, we compromise our unity and risk our nation being reduced to a shambles — to the detriment of us all.

The very real threat that racial and/or religious disunity will bring about the downfall of our nation is not new, nor is it newly discovered. Our founding fathers and the Reid Commission were well aware of the dangers that the newly-born Malaya would self- destruct if we failed to unite and safeguards against this danger were hard-wired into our Constitution.

I believe that this was the motivation behind the recent call by the 25 eminent Malays for discourse and clarity regarding the position of Syariah Law with regard to the Civil Law and the Constitution. It is a call for collective preservation in order that we may all live together harmoniously.

It is in this spirit that I, Tariq Ismail, promise to defend any Muslim’s right to practice Islam as he or she sees fit, and Insya Allah I WILL fight anyone who forces anybody else to practice it any other way.

By the same token, I will fight for the same right of every Malaysian to practice their own religion, within the bounds of the Federal Constitution and the Rule of Law.

It is for this reason that I support the Iam#26 Petition and why every Malaysian Muslim needs to do so. We need to know clearly what and where the boundaries are.

If we don’t find clarity in this situation, the resulting confusion will result in a lot of acrimony and, heaven forbid nauzubillah, strife between not only our different ethnicities, but also between Muslim brother & sister against Muslim brother & sister.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 7 January 2015, 7:38 am and is filed under
Malaysian Dream
,
nation building
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


If Najib can succumb to E.coli, flood victims surely at risk, says Dyana Sofya

Malay Mail Online

January 6, 2015

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 6 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak contracted E.coli food poisoning spending just a few days in flooded areas, signalling just  how easily an epidemic could break out from the flooding disaster, DAP’s Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud said today.

The political secretary to DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang pointed out that victims of one of the worst floods to hit Malaysia in decades have spent weeks in high-risk conditions — with little sanitation and limited access to clean water and medicine.

“The water may have subsided and those who still have homes may have returned to them, but there is now an urgent need to take steps to prevent an epidemic from breaking out,” Dyana Sofya said in a statement.

“It is almost a certainty that thousands of victims, both adults, children and elderly alike, are currently exposed to contaminated floodwater and have not been eating nutritional food. With their morale and immune system at their worst, they are certainly at risk,” she added.

Dyana Sofya said both federal and state governments need to come up with a transparent and inclusive plan to manage the post-flood situation now that waters have subsided and people have begun returning home after major floods struck the east coast last month.

The Prime Minister’s Office announced yesterday that Najib was fighting an E.coli infection, believed to be food poisoning, after visiting flood-affected areas.

E.coli or the Escherichia coli (E.coli) is a bacteria that is widely found in the human intestine. Certain strains can cause mild to severe food poisoning symptoms. Infection can happen if water or food contaminated by human or animal feces is consumed.

Najib made several trips to areas devastated by the floods on December 27, including Kelantan, which is among the states worst hit in the disaster that saw almost 250,000 people evacuated from their homes at one point.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 7 January 2015, 9:18 pm and is filed under
Health
,
Kelantan
,
NaturaL disaster
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Pentagon: We’re gaining on ISIS

By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent

January 7, 2015

Pentagon: ISIS momentum stalled but threat remains

Washington (CNN)—It’s not yet “mission accomplished,” but the Pentagon may be edging closer to its goal of stopping ISIS.

“We very much see ISIL largely in a defensive posture inside Iraq, that whatever momentum they had been enjoying has been halted, has been blunted. That has stayed steady over the last couple of weeks,” said Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby.

Briefing reporters on Tuesday, Kirby said the change is occurring mainly in Iraq for now.

“We know we have destroyed hundreds and hundreds of vehicles, artillery positions, checkpoints. We know that we have killed hundreds of their forces,” he said, though he could not say specifically how many had been killed. “We don’t have the ability to count every nose that we schwack.”

For months, ISIS moved with lightning speed across northern and western Iraq, taking the town of Mosul, moving into Fallujah and Ramadi in al Anbar province. But for the last two to three weeks, ISIS has not taken significant new ground, the U.S. says. Instead ISIS has had to go on defense, trying to hold on to what it has.

“They are having trouble paying their fighters, they are having trouble governing, they don’t have the leaders to actually govern the spaces they have attacked and taken over,” says CNN military analyst retired Lt. General Mark Hertling.

But there are many caveats.

A U.S. intelligence official tells CNN that ISIS’ “core capabilities remain fundamentally unchanged.”

The official notes that while the group has suffered battlefield losses, it’s mainly mid-level fighters and “it’s likely most have been replaced.”

Additionally, the group is still using a huge safe haven area in Syria “from which to train, plan and conduct attacks. The group can freely funnel men and material between Iraq and Syria.”

And, the official added, “It’s the wealthiest terrorist group in the history of terrorism. They’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars, plenty of recruits and a slick propaganda machine that continues to generate more of both.”

That said, both the U.S. intelligence community and the military agree that the coalition has blunted ISIS’ momentum.

“The rate at which the group was taking territory has decreased. The group has lost turf in Iraq, although its footprint in Syria remains the same,” the official said.

Also, ISIS is losing popularity with some of the population under its control.

“The group is struggling to provide services in some areas, and some tribes have turned against [them],” the official said.

Also, possibly slowing down is the number of new foreign fighters traveling to Iraq and Syria, according to a senior U.S. official. The U.S. believes about 150 people from the U.S. have traveled, or attempted to travel, to the region to fight — part of the 3,000 westerners from 90 countries.

But with ISIS still able to launch attacks at places like al Asad airbase where 320 Marines are located, an urgent effort is underway there and at other bases to train Iraqi units. The U.S. now plans to sell Iraq 175 M1A1 Abrams battle tanks and 1,000 HMVEEs for nearly $3 billion. It’s sending 250 MRAP mine-resistant vehicles and 10,000 M-16 rifles. All of this aimed at getting Iraqi forces not just trained, but armed and willing to fight ISIS in order to take their country back.

For the first time, the Pentagon revealed it’s investigating several allegations of potential civilian casualties caused by airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. Outside monitoring groups claim hundreds of civilians may have been killed in such strikes.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 7 January 2015, 8:19 pm and is filed under
Islamic state
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Cabinet meeting yesterday a great disappointment as it did not address anyone of the five central issues I had highlighted in my email to Najib – in particular on emergency; Special Parliament and RCI on Flood Disaster Management Preparedness

The Cabinet yesterday, the first in three weeks  since the worst floods catastrophe in living memory which has claimed at least 23 lives, evacuated a quarter of a million flood victim to relief centres, affected over a million people and caused losses to the tune of billions of ringgit, is a great disappointment and letdown.

It  failed to address anyone of the five central issues of the floods catastrophe I had highlighted in my email to the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak on  Sunday, in particular on the declaration of a state of emergency to more efficiently and swiftly deal with the post-flood challenges and dangers, the convening of a Special Parliament and a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Floods Disaster Management Preparedness, apart from setting up a Barisan Nasional-Pakatan Rakyat Flood Action Council and the allocation of RM500 million as interest-free loans to the flood victims to start life and business anew, ranging from RM1,000 to RM250,000 loans.

When Deputy Prime Minister and the Chairman of the National Security Council, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was in Kelantan on Tuesday to chair the Kelantan post-flood co-ordination plan committee, he said the damage to public properties amounted to RM932.4 million, but the damage data reported by the various ministries and government agencies in the following cases have already exceeded RM1.6 billion, viz:

(i)	Damaged school properties in Kelantan and other states – RM500 million;

(ii)	Repair of damaged roads and slopes – RM434 million;

(iii)	Repair of damaged railway stations and tracks – RM250 million;

(iv)	Ministry of Local Government clean-up operations only in Kelantan: RM200 million;

(v)	Ministry of Health repair to hospitals and clinics – RM270 million

(vi)	Repair of damaged police stations –  RM15 million.

Not all Ministries and government agencies have announced their damage assessments  and the above are not the final estimates of the of repair needed to  restore to the position pre-flood situation.

As the Health Minister, Datuk Dr. S. Subramaniam said yesterday, the estimated  RM270 million bill to repair the damage caused by floods in the east coast to hospitals and clinics are expected to rise once more when the feedback is compiled from all the relevant agencies, and he is even talking about the government having to spend up to RM1 billion for overall repair works by his Ministry.

Are we looking at a RM5 billion or RM10 billion bill by  the Federal government for damages caused by the worst  floods catastrophe in living memory in Malaysia?

If this is the public Federal government bill, what about the damages suffered by the private sector and the million flood victims?

What boggles the imagination however is the RM800 million which the Deputy Finance Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan said on Monday as having been spent already by the Federal Government so far “through the National Security Council (NSC) to help victims in states affected by floods” for the provision of food supply, logistics and cleaning house of victims.

Malaysians find this figure of RM800 million having been spent so far “for the provision of food supply, logistics and cleaning house of flood victims” completely unbelievable, as neither the flood victims nor the NGO members active in flood relief work in the past three weeks would vouch that the Federal Government, through the NSC, had spent even half or quarter of the RM800 million which Mazlan claimed as having been spent already for the flood victims.

When on Tuesday together with Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasam and MPs Anthony Loke and Liew Chin Tong, I  visited Gua Musang and Kuala Krai, including the Ground Zero zones of Manek Urai, Manjor, Karangan, Laloh, Dabong and Kemubu, no cleaning up was possible as there was neither water nor electricity for the devastated areas two weeks after the flood catastrophe.

At its height, the floods catastrophe caused an evacuation of nearly a quarter of million people in the various relief centres. There were seven days when the number of flood evacuees exceeded 100,000 people, from 26th December to 1st January 2015, viz:

Dec. 26 – 119,596;

Dec. 27 – 156,035;

Dec. 28 – 169,020;

Dec. 29 – 225,370;

Dec. 30 – 246,232;

Dec. 31 – 167,573;

Jan. 1   –   110,891.

But this is not the largest number of flood evacuees in the nation’s history, as shown by the following chart for the earlier floods:

Flood Damage and evacuees for Selected Floods in Peninsular Malaysia

Flood Event

Damage

Death

Evacuees

Year

Place

RM (million)

1967

Kelantan

78.4

38

320,000

1967

Perak

60.8

0

280,000

1967

Terengganu

15.8

17

78,000

1971

Pahang

37.7

24

153,000

1971

KL

34.3

24

NA

1988

Kelantan

29.8

19

36,800

There were 678,000 flood evacuees in the 1971 floods in the  three states of Kelantan, Perak and Trengganu. How much did the Federal government spend in 1971, when Najib’s father Tun Razak was the Prime Minister, for the “provision of food supply, logistics and cleaning houses of flood victims”?

Did any Minister question in the Cabinet yesterday the scandalous claim by Mazlan that RM800 million had already been spent by the Federal Government for the “provision of food supply, logistics and cleaning houses of flood victims”?

Did any Minister specially made the point that  no money should be spared to help the flood victims but not a sen should be wasted or abused, and that all eyes would be on the post-flood catastrophe to ensure that there would be no hanky panky in the disbursement of the multi-billion ringgit public funds making it a model of integrity in the multi-billion ringgit national disaster relief and rebuilding operation – cautioning that the worst flood catastrophe should not be followed by another catastrophe of a  multi-billion ringgit rip-off by “flood disaster”  barons, entrepreneurs or cronies?

But then, which Minister would dare to insist or even to remind on the importance of strict integrity in the disbursement of the multi-billion ringgit floods catastrophe relief and rebuilding operation, as the Finance Minister is none other than the Prime Minister and to raise any question might seem to be doubting the integrity of the Prime Minister?

Did any Minister raise in Cabinet the outrageous and insufferable statement by the Minister for Agriculture and Agro-based Industry， Datuk Seri Ismail Yaakob that it was “impossible” for the government to deliver flood aid to each household, that the government could only deliver aid to flood victims through village chiefs but cannot “control what happens” at the lower level?

This is completely unacceptable, as a responsible and efficient government must be able to ensure that government aid reaches every flood victim, who are not made to  suffer the further victimisation of being discriminated against by the village chief, whether for political, religious or whatever reason.

Or did any Cabinet Minister ask the Muhyiddin why the Floods Disaster Management Preparations and Plans were so shockingly  inadequate, particularly why the National Security Council under his chairmanship had not been serious in preparing for the floods catastrophe, as he had chaired only one NSC meeting  before the floods for whole year of 2014, and that some 12 months ago on January 3, 2014!

Clearly, there is an urgent need for a total revamp of NSC. Was this discussed at the Cabinet meeting yesterday?

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 8 January 2015, 1:16 pm and is filed under
Kelantan
,
Najib Razak
,
NaturaL disaster
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Fears grow over fallout from Petrobras corruption scandal

Samantha Pearson in São Paulo

Financial Times

January 7, 2015

Fears are growing over the systemic impact of the corruption scandal at Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil producer, as one of the construction firms linked to the allegations edges closer to default and the country’s credit rating comes under pressure.

OAS, which is building the world’s third-largest dam and revamping São Paulo’s international airport, has missed two debt payments over the past week after the scandal restricted its access to funding, forcing it to preserve cash to pay for operations.

Analysts said that similar difficulties across Brazil’s construction and oil industries could have knock-on effects on the world’s second-largest emerging market economy, especially if Petrobras itself cannot regain access to capital markets.

“The risk is that the government would have to provide financial support to Petrobras in the event of an acceleration of debt,” Mauro Leos, Moody’s sovereign analyst for Brazil, told the Financial Times. Such a scenario “could lead to a credit event”, affecting Brazil’s sovereign credit rating, he added.

The warning comes as President Dilma Rousseff is battling to protect Brazil’s coveted investment grade rating with a series of market-friendly measures — efforts that could be obscured by the prospect of bailing out Petrobras, Mr Leos said.

With more than $139bn in total debt, Petrobras ranks as the world’s most indebted oil producer, but it retains an investment grade credit rating.

In November police arrested almost 30 executives from Petrobras and Brazil’s largest construction firms, including the head of OAS, for their alleged involvement in a multibillion-dollar kickback scheme — the largest in Brazil’s history. They are accused of conspiring to inflate the value of Petrobras contracts by up to 3 per cent to pay bribes and funnel cash to the ruling Workers Party (PT) and its allies.

Petrobras has said that it is co-operating with the authorities, while OAS declined to comment on its alleged involvement. After missing a $16m interest payment on Friday, OAS failed to pay R$100m ($37m) in principal and interest on local bonds on Monday, leading rating agencies to predict a default by the company. OAS, which had R$6bn in net debt by the end of the third quarter, said that it is preparing a restructuring plan and intends to sell assets to increase liquidity.

“I see some other names facing the same lack of liquidity and difficulty accessing lines of credit,” said Marcelo Lima, a fixed income trading manager at INTL FCStone in São Paulo. “OAS missing the payments also makes it even harder for any other company to access the foreign market,” he said.

Late last month Petrobras froze payments to OAS and 22 other contractors linked to the investigation.

If Petrobras loses its investment grade rating that could also have a “snowball effect” on companies with links to the oil firm, said Carlos Gribel, head of fixed income at Andbanc Brokerage in Miami.

Petrobras has yet to release its third-quarter results, preventing it from accessing capital markets and prompting concerns that it could be declared in technical default, possibly forcing the early repayment of debts.

However, late on Tuesday Petrobras said that an unidentified group of creditors had agreed to accept its unaudited rather audited statements, which are set to be released by the end of this month.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 8 January 2015, 4:24 am and is filed under
Corruption
,
Finance
,
Oil
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Purging misogyny from Malaysian politics

By Syerleena Abdul Rashid

Malaysiakini

Jan 7, 2015

DAP made Malaysian history last month, by setting a minimum 30 percent women’s quota at the  central executive committee (CEC) level. Many regard this as a positive step that will encourage more women to participate in politics, especially at decision-making levels.

 Wanita DAP chief Chong Eng aptly described it as “an important step to begin paving the way for more women leaders, and thus policies that are reflective of women’s interests”.

Sadly, both PKR and PAS are still lagging in terms of women representation in politics. Even though PKR amended its constitution in 2009, which included a 30 percent quota for women representation at all levels, the party has yet to achieve this.

 Meanwhile according to PAS’ Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud, PAS’ men leaders and part of the women leaders “are not ready to impose such a quota” – even if this was the wish of the party’s women’s wing.

 Such reports are upsetting, but change is not impossible. The role of women in local politics must be given greater emphasis, and this can only been done by changing the mindset of our society.

 I concur with Wanita PKR chief Zuraida Kamaruddin’s statement that although the party – and to an extent, the Pakatan Rakyat coalition – has successfully attracted numerous capable women, unfortunately, quite a number of women are still somewhat reluctant to “step up” and take on leadership roles.

Female politicians easier targets

 Gender discrimination is a definite problem that has kept a lot of capable women away from politics.

 In general, female politicians are easier targets when it comes to smear campaigns and negative stereotypes. Unfortunately, we still live in a deep rooted patriarchal system that curtails a woman’s mobility and freedom, where some – both men and women – still feel that men are better suited emotionally and ‘genetically’ for politics.

 We have also seen the ugly side of internalised sexism, where women single out and belittle other women through organisations that struggle to maintain patriarchal beliefs.

 The notion that women are ‘alone’ and have no support from society can be demoralising. The obstacles Malaysian women face – whilst trying to purge the repulsiveness of misogyny – can be daunting and discouraging at times, some Malaysians even go as far as dismissing women’s rights as something frivolous and not worth fighting for.

 Given that women make up more than half of the Malaysian population, there is a great necessity to ensure that women are presented the same opportunities for leadership as men, and are also allowed to serve without fear of intimidation and discrimination.

 Our biggest challenge right now is addressing the factors that deter women from seeking or accepting a career in politics and challenging the patriarchal system; women and young girls are capable of achieving greatness, and are more than capable to compete with men as equals.

 We need to inspire, encourage and implant ideas that will enable them to see themselves as future leaders, not just playing second fiddle or merely complimenting the ‘masculine form’.

SYERLEENA ABDUL RASHID is  Bukit Bendera Wanita DAP political education director and Bukit Bendera DAP Socialist Youth secretary.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 8 January 2015, 9:57 am and is filed under
DAP
,
women
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Was Zahid’s infamous letter to FBI discussed at Cabinet yesterday – more likely not, as all Ministers who stay in glass houses have learnt not to throw stones

Was the Home Minister’s infamous letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), vouching for the integrity of an alleged Malaysian gambling kingpin Paul Phua standing trial in Las Vegas, Nevada in direct contradiction to the police’s earlier communication with FBI, discussed at the Cabinet meeting yesterday？

It should be if the Ministers care for the interests and international reputation of the country and if the Malaysian system of governance had undergone a national transformation, upholding the principles of accountability and good governance.

 After all, Ministers like ordinary Malaysians must be piqued to know why Zahid’s letter was withdrawn in the Nevada District Court in Las Vegas after Putrajaya objected to it being used in Paul Puah’s defence.

Zahid’s letter was clearly in defence of Phua. Who objected to it being used in open court proceedings? Zahid, the Attorney-General, the Police or the Prime Minister himself?

Could it be that Malaysian Ministers are a special batch of politicians who, like the traditional three monkeys, have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, and mouth that speaks not – who are completely uninterested as to what other Ministers are doing or saying, though they are bound by  the principle of collective Ministerial responsibility?

I doubt that Zahid’s infamous letter to the FBI ever made it to the Cabinet yesterday, or the Malaysian public would have been told of the Cabinet decision on the issue.

Our Ministers are really a special breed of people, all of whom stay in glass houses and have learnt not to throw stones!

No Minister would want to know or ask in Cabinet why the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak went off on vacation in Hawaii when  those in the East Coast were warned to expect the worst floods in decades, or where the government VIP jet went  to when Najib cut short his Hawaii vacation and rushed home in a commercial jet to personally take the lead in the floods mitigation and relief operations, although media reported that the aircraft took off from Honolulu to Los Angeles then Indianapolis, where it remained for six days until Dec 31, 2014, when it took off for Los Angeles, followed by New York, London, Dubai, Bangkok and finally arriving in Kuala Lumpur International Airport on January 4.

No Minister wanted to know about the atrocious Floods Disaster Management Preparations resulting in 23 dead, evacuation of a quarter of a million flood victims with over a million people affected by the foods, the death of 23 people and losses to the tune of billions of ringgit or why the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin only chaired one meeting of the National Security Council in 2014, and that was some 12 months ago on Januarry 3, 2014 although the Floods Catastrophe 2014-2015 is Malaysia’s worst floods in living memory?

At the Cabinet yesterday, which had not met for three weeks throughout the worst floods catastrophe in living memory, the Chief Secretary Tan Sri Ali Hamsa was directed to determine the roles and responsibilities of ministries and agencies in the aftermath of the massive floods that hit the several states.

This meant that the directive issued by the Prime Minister on Dec. 28 to Cabinet Ministers who were on vacation overseas ordering them to return home immediately to assist in the flood rescue and relief operations  was a dead letter, and the Prime Minister had to wait until yesterday to direct the Chief Secretary to “determine the roles and responsibilities” of the Ministers in the aftermath of the floods catastrophe.

Why issue a directive if the Prime Minister could not enforce it, and had to wait until the scheduled Cabinet meeting 10 days later on January 7 for the Chief Secretary to determine the allocation of the post-flood responsibilities of the Ministers?

How many Ministers complied with Najib’s directive and cut short their vacation overseas to return to their duties earlier than scheduled? How many Ministers simpli defied  or ignored Najib’s directive, completed their vacation overseas and took their leisure time to return to their Ministerial duties?

Of course, all these information are top state secrets under the Official Secrets Act and extra reasons why Ministers mind their own business, oblivious of the  principle of the collective responsibility of Ministers to avoid raising “embarrassing” issues affecting other Ministers in the Cabinet.

The proverb “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones” would be the guiding principle of all Ministers in the Malaysian Cabinet.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 8 January 2015, 5:57 pm and is filed under
Najib Razak
,
Police
,
Zahid
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


After the Charlie Hebdo attack, we must resist the clash-of-civilisations narrative

Homa Khaleeli

Guardian

7 January 2015

Terrorism feeds on society’s fears – and the relentless questioning of Muslims’ loyalty plays into its hands

It’s hard to admit to a reaction other than sadness to the murder of 12 people, especially when it takes place in a city that feels so close by. The images of sprawling bodies and masked assailants on familiar-looking streets gives the tragedy an extra edge of horror.

Yet in the moments after the news broke about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, I found it impossible to ignore a sinking feeling: the recognition that we were being pulled further into a cycle of distrust and division.

It grew as I read through the responses online. The straightforward reaction from far-right extremists was the hashtag #killallmuslims, which would have been easy to ignore as empty words if it hadn’t reminded me of the firebombing of mosques after the Lee Rigby murder.

Less violent but still divisive was the way the attack was depicted as a battle between Islam and freedom of speech, or between Muslims and satire – a clash-of-civilisations argument that splits the world neatly into “them” and “us”, by ignoring the staggering death toll of terrorist attacks abroad (most recently the massacre of schoolchildren in Pakistan).

Then came the seemingly reasonable calls, which always seem to accompany such atrocities, for Muslims to condemn the attack. While this demand may sound inoffensive, it implies that all Muslims, not just extremists, are implicated or secretly agree with all attacks undertaken by people in the name of religion anywhere in the world, unless we explicitly state otherwise.

It is easy to assume that terrorism works only if demands are met: if a magazine is closed down, if political changes are made. But terrorism also feeds itself by exploiting our society’s fears and fissures.

Outright Islamophobic attacks and the subtler but relentless questioning of the loyalty of Muslims create feelings of alienation that are all too easy for extremist organisations to use for their gain. In the rush to show terrorists they can’t win, solidarity and unity should not be trampled underfoot.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 6:31 pm and is filed under
Islam
,
Islamic state
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Call on Najib to reconsider a RCI into the 2014-2015 floods catastrophe as any investigation which excludes inquiry into  the failures of National Security Council in making proper Floods Disaster Relief, Mitigation and Management Preparedness will only perpetuate denial syndrome and cover-up complex

The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said yesterday that Malaysian experts will be engaged by the Government to determine the cause of recent floods and how to mitigate them in future.

The Star report
“Experts to be engaged to check floods”
 quoted Najib as saying yesterday  at the official launch of Menara Razak at Universiti Tecknologi Malaysia (UTM): “The issue has been raised in the Cabinet and we have decided we must know the factors that cause the disaster.”

Najib said the Government believed there was sufficient local expertise to conduct the relevant studies.

He said: “We want our experts to guide the Government on what needs to be done both in terms of mitigation as well as sustainable development”.

I find Najib’s announcement most disappointing.

While I welcome an investigation into the worst flood disaster in living memory, the exclusion of the inquiry into the failures of the National Security Council (NSC) in making proper Floods Disaster Relief, Mitigation and Management Preparedness will only perpetuate the government’s denial syndrome and cover-up complex.

This is why I had been pressing for a high-powered and wide-ranging Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the 2014-2015 Floods Catastrophe and the Floods Disaster Management Preparedness, particularly whether there had been a “complete breakdown” or what extent of breakdown of the NSC chain of command and communications in the worst floods catastrophe in living memory.

All the local experts can be sub-poenaed by the RCI to determine the causes of the floods catastrophe, and to propose the most effective mitigation measures in the context of sustainable development but these experts on their own would not have the weight or authority to examine the weaknesses of the NSC, in particular why the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who is Chairman of the NSC, only had only one NSC meeting for one whole year before the floods catastrophe – and that was some 12 months earlier on Jan 3, 2014!

I would urge the Prime Minister to reconsider the decision not to set up a RCI into the worst floods catastrophe within living memory, as this tantamounts to a serious dereliction of duty if the Federal government fails to set up a RCI in view of the severity, scale and scope of the 2014-2015 floods catastrophe, which covered nine states, claimed 23 lives, evacuated a quarter of a million victims, affected millions of people and caused billions of ringgit of losses to the people and public coffers.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 5:24 pm and is filed under
Kelantan
,
Najib Razak
,
NaturaL disaster
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Charlie Hebdo: The ‘them and us’ narrative is a dangerous downward spiral

Nesrine Malik

Guardian

January 8, 2015

It may suit cynical politicians to push the ‘clash of civilisations’ line, but such polarised thinking is simplistic and can be deadly

It has already started – the talk of a clash of civilisations. After the horrific Paris attack in which 12 people were killed, there is a palpable sense of a Europe on the edge, teetering between righteous anger and tense restraint. Many of the subsequent reactions have fallen along the predictable lines of reasserting the difference between “us” and “them”.

But the Paris attack was not yet another front in the “clash of civilisations”. The term civilisation in itself is meaningless in this context. What civilisation do the terrorists represent? It is understandable that, on the face of it, the attack highlights the perpetrators’ and the victims’ starkly opposed values, one barbaric and silencing, and the other enlightened and freedom loving.

But this is a false dichotomy. It omits a far more uncomfortable and complicated truth about racial tension in France, immigration, and how Muslims are settling in an increasingly secular Europe where the resurgence of rightwing parties has further racialised religion.

In the past few weeks we have seen anti-Muslim demonstrations in Germany, attacks on mosques in Sweden and, over the past few years, several isolated attacks on Muslims in a cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals. In this context, it is impossible to reduce the Charlie Hebdo tragedy to anything as simple as two cultures clashing over the sanctity of a prophet.

This is not to suggest that any attacks of such a nature are ever justified. There are no grey areas, no matter how offensive Hebdo could be, no matter how particularly offensive to Muslims the magazine was in the eyes of some. But this is nothing as sophisticated as an attack on secular values of freedom of speech. Whether it is offensive cartoons or films or blasphemy, these are merely totems around which the insecure and unhinged wrap their causes. Which is not to say that this has nothing to do with religion. There is far too much cowardice and equivocation when it comes to such issues, which certainly give ideological and moral succour to the most violent in Muslim communities all over the world.

It is, however, important to not keep repeating the same mistakes, trying to trace the perpetrators to some certain origin. They have none. They belong to no single community or country or mosque. There is no viper’s nest that can be burned down, and with it the problem. That way lies the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan, where non-state actors such as al-Qaida were conflated with states and regimes, resulting in the killing of millions of innocents, and further fuelling a race to the bottom of hate.

Some would say this is not the time for what might seem like academic nuance, that it is a time for mobilisation and drawing the battle lines, reasserting the important values that are under assault. But with these understandable impulses come tribalism, broad-brushstroke thinking and entrenchment. And with those come cynical politicians capitalising on fear and a media intent on fuelling polarities.

It is certainly not the time to issue rallying cries, and to ventriloquise on behalf of terrorists that speak for no one, something Juan Cole has called “sharpening the contradictions”. It is not the time for “I told you sos” and point scoring or for bombarding people with the most offensive of cartoons to make a racist point under the moral guise of freedom of speech. This only enhances the separation of two communities under siege, brought there by individuals that represent neither.

The victims of the attack are not only French journalists, but also French Muslims, one of whom died in the attack, and the rest who have not condoned it but will nevertheless feel the backlash.

To engage in war talk – about a Muslim threat that needs to be combated by an aggressive reassertion of whatever composite identity of liberal values one believes is under attack – is to give in to the reductionism demanded by terrorists.

Whether it is Islamic State (Isis), al-Qaida or lone actors, they will use religiously focused grievances as a vehicle for political, personal and mental maladies. Don’t buy it. The way to honour the dead and find a way out of what seems like a depressingly inevitable downward spiral would be to resist the polar narrative altogether. It will not only heal painful rifts, it might even save lives.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 6:13 pm and is filed under
Islam
,
Islamic state
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Charlie Hebdo: We cannot let the Paris murderers define Islam

Ed Husain

Guardian

January 7, 2015

Today’s fanatics are blind to the compassion and care in the prophet’s life. Their ignorance must be tackled head on

The killing of journalists in Paris on Wednesday was not only an attack on France but also an assault on Islam and the very freedoms that allow 30 million Muslims to prosper in the west.

Free speech is not a western concept: it is a universal craving of the human soul. The gunmen ran away shouting that they were “avenging the prophet Muhammad”. How dare they? We cannot let the murderers define Islam.

In seventh-century Mecca, it was the prophet Muhammad who fought for free speech to proclaim one God as the creator of life and worthy of worship. The city’s pagans were his violent persecutors.

Today Muslims live freely in every European country because of the very freedoms that the terrorists struck at. Without the freedom to blaspheme and believe, Muslims would be seen as heretics and would be unable to flourish as faith communities in the west. The pogroms and wars of religion in Europe’s history bear testament to European life without freedom.

Islam and Muslims are secure in the west because of freedom of speech, conscience, press and religion. To attack those freedoms is to attack Islam’s existence. The dangerous ignorance of the extremists is not limited to their failure to understand the west. They do not know the prophet for whom they claim to kill.

Unable to observe Islam freely in Mecca, the prophet migrated to Medina. There his first act was to build a mosque, the most sacred structure for a believer. An Arab man entered the mosque and urinated in front of the prophet with no care for the sanctity of the mosque. How did the prophet respond to this deepest of insults to Islam and himself? He cleaned the mosque, stopped Muslims from expelling the man and explained the inviolability of a place of worship.

There are many such lessons of compassion, kindness and care in the life of the prophet that are airbrushed by today’s fanatics. The bigotry of the Salafi jihadis can only be challenged and eventually uprooted by educating them on the prophet of Islam described in the Qur’an “as a mercy to the worlds”.

Many in the world today would be rightly asking “where is this mercy?” For what we see is beheadings, wars and suicide bombings in the name of religion. Sadly, we will continue to witness such evil unless we address the motivations of the Salafi jihadist killers. They kill in the name of religion; we cannot respond by citing the virtues of Darwin, secularism and materialism. The only language these radicals understand is that of religion. It is by mustering the best of religion that we defeat the worst of it.

The murders in Paris are not an isolated incident but part of a global trend of young Muslims disenchanted with the modern world, finding consolation in the theology and ideology of literalist sharia, killing, vengeance, punishment, domination and imposing their worldview as state law. Al-Qaida, Isis, Somalia’s al-Shabaab and others are only manifestations of this mindset.

There is a raging battle of ideas within Islam across the world today. The extremism, terrorism and sectarian warfare is an overspill of this intra-faith theological conflict. The vast majority of the victims of terrorists are Muslims because the intolerance of the zealot targets fellow Muslims first. In Pakistan alone, more than 40,000 Muslims have lost their lives to terrorism since 2001. The violence reaches the west only occasionally.

When the attacks of 9/11 shook the United States, American Muslims rallied around their government, mosques flew the stars and stripes, and the American president visited a mosque from which to say Islam and Muslims stood beside America. In Britain the government, media and Muslim citizens used the language of religion to delegitimise violence.

France has excellent relations with Muslim nations including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia – and millions of French Muslims who could help marshal the language of religion to isolate and defeat Salafi extremists by countering their arguments.

This is a battle of messages and counter-messages – the jihadis call for a caliphate, intolerance, death and wanton destruction. We call for life, pluralism, openness and freedom of religion, conscience and security.

The sharia has higher aims that are fully in line with the modern world. Radicals are in urgent need of re-education on Islam. We have the weight of 1,400 years of Muslim history behind us, the vast majority of Muslim scholars and the bulk of the global Muslim population.

The prominent French-speaking Muslim theologian Shaikh Abdullah bin Bayyah often says that if there is a house on fire, everybody works towards putting out the fire. You don’t ask why is this or that person carrying the bucket of water. The house of Islam is on fire. The water needs to be carried by everybody, regardless of race or religion.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 6:22 pm and is filed under
Islam
,
Islamic state
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Do  Umno/BN want  Malaysia to slide down the  slippery slope to be a failed state by appointing an UMNO stooge to be Chairman of MCMC?

For nine days since the beginning of the year, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has been without a head, as the former Chairman Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi had been informed that his contract which expired on Dec. 31, 2014 would not be renewed.

Utusan Malaysia editor Zulkifli Jalil said in a commentary that Sharil’s contract was not renewed because MCMC under his watch had given free reign to those who had allegedly incited racial hatred, thereby failing in its role as a regulator.

Probably Sharil should have acted firmly against those who had exploited the cyberspace and misused and abused the social media with lies and falsehoods to  incite racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension.

And top of the list of those guilty of such transgressions on the Internet in the past few years when Sharil was Chairman of MCMC would be the UMNO mouthpiece, Utusan Malaysia and the army of UMNO cybertroopers, who had no qualms or compunctions in disseminating lies and falsehoods on the Internet  to incite racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension.

But Utusan Malaysia, the UMNO hardliners  and cybertroopers would have squealed the loudest if Sharil had acted professionally and impartially against Utusan Malaysia and the UMNO cybertroopers who were the chief culprits in the misuse and abuse of social media to incite racial and religious hatred in keeping with their larger ulterior objective to conjure imaginary fears, threats, bogeys and enemies that the Malays and Islam are under siege and only UMNO could save them.

What Utusan Malaysia and the UMNO hardliners and cybertroopers wanted was for MCMC to harass and victimise pro-Pakatan Rakyat websites while leaving the pro-UMNO websites alone, although it were the latter who were most  guilty of the inflammatory and incendiary lies and falsehoods on the Internet to polarise racial and religious situation in the country.

I am not happy with Sharil as MCMC Chairman as he had not been firm enough with Utusan Malaysia, UMNO hardliners and cybertroopers when they abused the social media with their racist and religious venom and hatred.

The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the Communications and Multimedia Minister, Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek would have to decide whether UMNO/BN want Malaysia to slide down the slippery slope to be a failed state by appointing an UMNO stooge to be Chairman of MCMC, who would not only be subservient to the Prime Minister and the responsible Minister concerned, but who will have to be servile to Utusan Malaysia and UMNO vested interests – turning the MCMC into an UCMC, i.e. from Malaysian Multi-media and Communications Commission into an UMNO Multimedia and Communications Commission.

The position of MCMC Chairman is also much coveted due to its influence on the lucrative award for communications tower contracts that are to be built in rural areas.

In the second quarter of this year, the MCMC will award the contract for 600 towers to be built in rural areas. The contract for the first 400 towers came up to around RM900 million (US$252 million). The next phase will cost more than RM1.3 billion (US$360 million).

Will the appointment of an UMNO stooge as Chairman of MCMC open the floodgates for the parcelling out of the RM2.2 billion cash-rich opportunities among the UMNO cronies – which will drive Malaysia’s ranking in the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index to a new low in the  coming years?

If the two above-mentioned factors are  the key considerations for the non-renewal of Sharil’s contract as Chairman of MCMC, then Malaysia can forget about the country developing into a major global centre and hub for communications and multimedia information and content services or promoting a civil society where information-based services will provide the basis of continuing enhancement to quality of work and life, for we will be well on our way to be a failed state.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 2:47 pm and is filed under
IT
,
UMNO
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Liberty and laughter will live on

Simon Schama

Financial Times

January 7, 2015

It was a bloody attempt to wipe away a smile. But they will never kill satire, writes Simon Schama

The murder of satire is no laughing matter. The horrifying carnage at Charlie Hebdo is a reminder, if ever we needed it, that irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom. I suppose it is some sort of backhanded compliment that the monsters behind the slaughter are so fearful of the lance of mirth that the only voice they have to muffle it is the sound of bullets. Magazines such as Charlie Hebdo are in the business of taking liberties, even outrageous ones, but they exist so that we never take the gift of disrespect for granted.

Liberty and laughter have been twinned in the European tradition for more than three centuries and have together proclaimed as precious the right to ridicule. Graphic satire first arose as a weapon in the atrocious and prolonged religious wars that divided Catholics and Protestants.

For Protestants the printing press was the answer to the imagery of the Roman church by which, as they saw it, heretics and sceptics were brought to book. So they invented an anti-iconography in which popes were turned into fantastic monsters, and kings into ministers of slaughter. The Dutch, who invented the illustrated news gazette in the middle of the 17th century, saw themselves as the victims of religious fury. Their graphic counter-attack began with popular illustrated histories of their rebellion against the Spanish monarchy — with the Duke of Alba their favourite bogeyman. It broadened into a regular weapon of partisan polemics inside the Republic as well as against foreign threats to “Holland’s Freedom”.

The first great modern graphic satirist was Romeyn de Hooghe, enlisted by William III at the end of the 17th century in his relentless war to the death with Louis XIV. De Hooghe obliged with sprawling cartoons representing the wars against the French monarch and his allies as a battle between liberty and religious despotism. The satirists again saw themselves leading the cavalry charge against the bigots. And it was in the interests of the Protestant states to let them off the leash.

The golden age of no-holds-barred graphic satire in the 18th century arose on the tomb of religious warfare. But it was also made possible, in Britain especially, by the space opened when no one political force or institution could command a monopoly of power. Though the Whigs — grandees — dominated government for much of the century, it was never to the total exclusion of opposition, and as with all oligarchies, factions arose, each of which turned to the caricaturists to puncture the pretensions of their enemies, expose their hypocrisies, and bring down the mighty in a gale of scornful hilarity.

Thus it fell to the British to reinvent politics as comedy, and they went at it, on stage and in print, with a ferocious energy that has never been surpassed. Even now in the US, the enemy of democracy — after the poison of money — is reverence; with satire penned into the safe fold of late night television.

But in the great age of graphic attack politics there was nowhere to run to and no great institution or person was safe from the barbs of comedy. The Church of England; dissenters such as the Methodists; the Bank of England; leading politicians and the royal family itself were all fair game.

Satire became the oxygen of politics, ventilating healthy howls of derision in coffee houses and taverns where caricatures circulated every day and every week. James Gillray, the greatest of all the caricaturists, was in such demand that Hannah Humphrey, his publisher, would rent out entire albums of his choicest items for a night’s or a weekend’s entertainment. Good fun was to be had by all perusing images: a grossly bloated Prince of Wales recovering from a night’s dissipation; William Pitt, prime minister, as a toadstool growing out of a dunghill; or a cartoon of Queen Charlotte, pendulous breasts nakedly exposed, holding at bay the prime minister and the Lord Chancellor.

Gillray was arrested only once — for a cartoon of politicians kissing the bottom of a royal newborn — and never imprisoned. Whatever the liberties he took, no harm befell him. The great tradition of ridicule passed to heirs in Britain, then to America and Europe: to Daumier and Cruikshank; the begetters of Krokodil and Private Eye, Spitting Image and Canard Enchainé as well as Charlie Hebdo.

Yesterday there was a bloody attempt to wipe the smile from our faces. But though the self-righteous have killed the satirists they will never annihilate satire itself. Just the opposite. From now on, Charlie Hebdo will be the rallying point for all those who cherish life and laughter over the death-cult of sanctimonious gloom. So we owe it to the fallen to remind ourselves amid the blood, grief and rage, that just because the unhinged perpetrators are murderers does not mean they are also not clowns.

The writer is an FT contributing editor

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 5:35 am and is filed under
Islam
,
Islamic state
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Malay leaders with their one-track minds

By Mariam Mokhtar

Malaysiakini

Jan 5, 2015

Many Malay leaders only know how to play one note, ‘C’. They should find people who are able to teach them how to use other notes when making intellectual melodies. The tunes these Malay leaders play constantly harp on the Chinese, Christians, communists, children in child custody cases, and compassion.

Decades of indoctrination have damaged the mindsets of many Malays. The process can be undone, but the work has to start now.

If you want to see how jittery some of those in authority are, look at the manner in which the Ipoh City Council (MBI) reacted to the mural which Lithuanian painter and graffiti artist Ernest Zacharevic painted on the wall of an Ipoh shoplot. His painting showed an old man drinking coffee, but to some Malays, the painting resembled Chin Peng, the deceased secretary-general of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).

Sinar Harian reported that the MBI would hold talks with Zacharevic to alter the painting. Some Ipoh residents made allegations of a subtle effort to reintroduce communism to Malaysians. Sense finally prevailed, and the MBI did not make any changes to the painting, but why did they entertain bigots in the first place?

Perak NGO Front chairperson Mohd Salleh Mohd Khan made the absurd suggestion that the owner of the building should be questioned, “so that everything is made clear”.

The violence of the CPM still haunts many Malaysians, but what appears to escape the minds of many Malays, is that their own government is deeply indebted to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Our leaders love it when leaders of the hottest economy on earth want to cultivate their friendship. Mao Zedong’s great leap forward into communism has now been followed by a greater leap in the pursuit of profit.

Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) central committee member Rani Rasiah reported in 2011 that every year, representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba attend the Umno general assembly in Kuala Lumpur. Bilateral ties between Malaysia and Cuba were arranged by Mukhriz Mahathir, president of the Friends of Cuba Association in Malaysia.

The PRC owns big chunks of Malaysia and has invested heavily in our economy. One political pundit alleges that at a recent sale of luxury apartments in Shanghai, the purchase also included a complimentary apartment in Johor Baru.

The monorail in Malacca was built by a firm from the PRC, and despite breaking down, former menteri besar Mohd Ali Rustam kept pouring hundreds of millions of ringgit into the monorail project, which can’t even travel along the few kilometres of track.

In 2013, HELP University conferred an honorary doctorate on North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un. His people were delighted. Did the Malay NGOs who worry about the coffee-drinking grandfather complain about the possible influence on Malaysians, by the North Koreans who are sent to study here?

The PRC buys large amounts of our raw materials. China dolls have been accused of taking away the attentions of Malaysian men, who then neglect their responsibilities to their own families.

Tourist arrivals from the PRC were affected by the disappearance of MH370, and our Tourism Ministry was alarmed. When the PRC navy performed drills on the James Shoal islands, some 80km from the Sarawak coastline off Bintulu, our head of the armed forces dismissed these concerns.

Why make a fuss?

Did the Malay NGOs complain about the subtle ‘invasion’ of the PRC? Why make a fuss about the image of an elderly gentleman on a wall?

Muslim extremists complain that the Chinese-led People’s Action Party (PAP) of Singapore are trying to take over Malaysia, but why keep silent about the sand being smuggled from Malaysia for Singapore’s land reclamation projects? Malaysia is literally being moved to build Singapore.

In Selangor and Penang, Umno Baru, their supporters, and extremist Malay and Muslim NGOs, all blame Christians for wanting to insult Islam or to install a Christian MB in the two states. Allegations of the conversion of Malays to Christianity have been made, but none of these irresponsible politicians have produced any evidence of these “Christian Malays”. Did ordinary Malays ever wonder why these allegations only surface in opposition-held states?

Just before the Bersih 2.0 rally in July 2011, 31 PSM members were arrested by the police. They were accused of staging a coup d’état and plotting to overthrow the Agong. The police evidence included T-shirts bearing the image of Che Guevara and independence fighters such as Rashid Maidin and Abdullah CD.

Inspector-general of police (IGP) Khalid Abu Bakar (left) refused to do his duty and arrest Muslim convert Mohamad Ridhuan Abdullah who had kidnapped his child after the High Court granted custody of their daughter to his wife, M Indira Ghandi, in 2010. Malaysians are justified in feeling that they cannot depend on the courts to dispense justice.

Last December, the Court of Appeal ruled that the IGP cannot be compelled to recover Indira’s six-year-old daughter. If it had been Ridhuan who had won custody of his daughter, many Malaysians believe that the IGP would have speedily arrested Indira.

Malay leaders with a one-track mind are easily spooked by words which begin with ‘C’. They help to spread panic and defeatism amongst the Malay community. It is hoped that in 2015, thinking Malays like those in the Eminent 25, will help create a fairer society in Malaysia.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO).

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 6:56 am and is filed under
Mariam Mokhtar
,
Police
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Paris Attack Underscores a Deeper Malaise

Geopolitical Diary

Stratfor Global Intelligence

January 8, 2015

Wednesday’s deadly attack against a French satirical publication has the potential to upset relations between European states and their Muslim citizenries. The strategic intent behind such attacks is precisely to sow this kind of crisis, as well as to influence French policy and recruit more jihadists. Even though Islamist extremism is, at its core, an intra-Muslim conflict, such incidents will draw in non-Muslims, exacerbating matters.

Three suspected Islamist militants attacked the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with high-powered assault rifles, killing 12 people. Among the dead are the editor and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier, who was on a hit list appearing in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine for “insulting the Prophet Mohammed.” Eyewitness said they heard the attackers shouting, “We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed,” and chanting, “God is Great” in Arabic. This is the third such attack in a Western country in less than three months. The Paris incident involves perpetrators who displayed sophisticated small arms and small unit training.

Whether or not these attacks are the handiwork of self-motivated grassroots jihadists and cells or of individuals tied to international jihadist entities, such incidents aggravate tense relations between the Western and Muslim worlds. This is all the more significant in Europe, where states are experiencing the rise of right-wing nationalism and Muslim communities have long experienced disaffection. The jihadist objective is to get the states to crack down harder on Muslim communities in order to further their narrative that the West is waging war on Islam and Muslims.

While Western states go to great lengths to demonstrate that no such clash of civilizations is occurring, right-wing forces engage in rhetoric that reinforces these fears among many common Muslims across the world. More important, there is a longstanding conflict of values — particularly freedom of expression, which is cherished in the West but seen by many Muslims as a license for sacrilege. Though the vast majority of Muslims will not engage in violence in response to speech deemed as blasphemous, there are many who will. In Pakistan, the blasphemy law has been a subject of huge controversy. Many Pakistani citizens have been murdered by their fellow countrymen for speech or behavior deemed objectionable. At the root of this problem is the extreme discomfort many Muslims have with free expression, although this attitude is not universal. The person of the Prophet Mohammed is all the more sensitive because the traditional view is that he cannot be depicted pictorially, let alone in a satirical manner.

Ultimately, this is an intra-Muslim struggle for power and control wrapped in a debate over what it means to be a Muslim in today’s world and what the boundaries of justifiable action are. Defining those factors is one tool that can be used to gain power; attacks against the West and its interests, meant to force Westerners to pull out of Muslim lands or to attack Muslims and enforce the jihadist narrative, are another. This issue undermines efforts by moderate and progressive Muslims to advance the notion of freedoms based on an Islamic ethos.

The ongoing intra-Muslim debate gives extremists ample ideological and, by extension, geopolitical space to exploit. The jihadist enterprise deliberately targets non-Muslims, in particular the West, in part as a means to gain ground within the Muslim milieu. This strategy also sucks the Western world into what is essentially a Muslim civil war in order to tackle the security threats posed by Islamist militant actors.

However, Western involvement in this internal debate will not help defeat extremism or ease relations between Muslims and the West. The end of jihadism will come only when Muslims defeat their own deviants on the ideological battleground.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 5:13 am and is filed under
Islam
,
Islamic state
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Reforming Islam – Where change comes from

Erasmus

Economist

Jan 7th 2015

WHEN news came of today’s appalling terrorist attack in Paris, I was in the middle of drafting an Erasmus post with some thoughts on the question: can we expect Islam to undergo its own version of the Reformation, or to produce its own Martin Luther? The subject is addressed, in quite an intelligent way, in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, an American journal, and it is a topical one because various modern figures, from the Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen to Egypt’s military ruler Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have been described, however improbably, as Muslim answers to Martin Luther.

Today’s ghastly events in France make the question even more pressing, because some people will undoubtedly say: this is proof, if proof were needed, that Islam is incorrigibly and by its very nature violent, intolerant and incapable of accepting the liberal ideal of free speech. And if that view gains traction, many Muslims will in turn conclude that in the face of such unremitting hostility, there is no point in even trying to explain their faith to others or seeking accommodation with their neighbours.  So the stakes are very high.

Nick Danforth, the Foreign Policy writer, does a decent job of deconstructing the “Luther” question and showing how posing it reflects a linear, Anglo-Protestant view of history. According to this view there is a single-file march towards secular modernity, with reforming Protestants out in front, Catholics being dragged along a bit reluctantly, and Muslims far behind. “For most of American history, it would have been self-evident to the majority of American Protestants that the celebrated separation of church and state in the United States became possible because the Protestant Reformation tamed the Vatican in the 16th century.” You don’t have to be a Protestant to argue for this sort of view; you could say, as many do, that the Reformation’s real merit was that it reduced the importance of religion in general, and ushered in a more rational world. In fact, the article counter-argues, every religion has it own trajectory and its own way of negotiating the boundary between revealed truth and changing reality; it’s not helpful to imagine a single track along which people travel at different speeds.

Here are some of my own thoughts on the subject. They have to do not with the merits, attractiveness or truth-claims of any religion, but with the way that religions in general work.

Martin Luther raised his voice against the abuse of clerical power by the Catholic authorities of his time: the ways in which sacraments (in other words, rituals which require a priest) were manipulated for cynical or venal purposes, doctrines were distorted, and ordinary people denied the opportunity to seek religious truth for themselves. He spoke with the authority of a well trained Catholic monk, versed in the Bible and in early church history. He wasn’t rejecting all religious authority, or the idea of a sacrament as a ritual in which God was present; if he had taken that uncompromising view, he probably wouldn’t have found many followers.

In my experience, Muslims’ first response to Luther’s protests is usually something like: the abuses that he addressed are never likely to arise in Islam, because Islam has no equivalent of sacraments or priests who come between man and God and monopolise certain rituals. Islam has imams or prayer leaders, but no bishops or father-confessors.  (Shia Islam does have a tradition of powerful clerics, but the power they now enjoy in Iran is, arguably, a historical aberration.)

At the same time, many Muslims would stress that the “reform” or “renewal” of their religion, in the sense of cutting away unwanted accretions and getting back to Islam’s original inspiration, has been a recurring theme in their history; and they would probably agree that some reform is badly needed now. But it’s worth stressing that in neither Christianity, Islam, Judaism nor any other major religion can “reform” be equated with moderation or emollience. A stripped-down, minimalist religion can be more violent and intolerant than an elaborate one; just ask Oliver Cromwell or the Pakistani Taliban.

At this point, many non-Muslims might say, “we don’t really care whether Islam is elaborate or stripped-down, we only care whether its followers can be persuaded to renounce terrorism, beheadings, and the pursuit of political power.” Well, passionate arguments against all these things are being heard within the world of Islam, although they get less publicity than the violent voices. Look, for example, at the personally courageous stance of Hamza Yusuf, an American-born scholar with a wide following in the Islamic heart-land, in denunciation of Islamic State, its aims and methods. In recent weeks some 300,000 people have used the internet to hear him condemn, in rigorously Islamic terms, the claim of IS to be authentic representatives of the Sunni creed. His voice comes from deep inside scholarly, traditional Islam, just as Luther’s came from deep inside sacramental, episcopal Christianity—and many people are listening.

Islam will not be scolded, scorned or aerially bombed into reforming by outsiders; it is deeply immune to external pressure. But it can and will change from within, as the founding texts and traditions are reread and refracted by successive generations. Nobody can predict which way that change will go—and there is not just one, single historical path along which it will or won’t progress.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 9 January 2015, 5:50 am and is filed under
Islam
,
Islamic state
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.