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Thursday, February 19, 2015

How We Are Becoming Stupid - Just Like Pakistan

Image result for Malaysia negara IslamImage result for betul ke?

This is the second "Islamic country" comparison with Malaysia. I already spoke about Turkey taking baby steps into the Club of Doom. 

I have explained how Turkey is repeating the same mistakes that we in Malaysia made since 1983 ie when Anwar Ibrahim was absorbed into the government.

Much earlier than that beginning in the 1970s, Pakistan also made the same mistake - of introducing religious legislation, religious courts and the "islami-cessation" of knowledge. 

Pakistan is now firmly on its way into the Club of Doom. I have been saying this for years. Here is similar testimony by a Pakistani writer. 

A bit long but please read it because this is exactly what is going to happen to Malaysia - if all of you (yes folks all of you) dont wake up. 

I have interspersed my own comments in blue.


Nadeem F. Paracha Feb 05, 2015
 
For decades Pakistani intelligentsia have been insisting on the importance of changing the country’s national narrative (to better fight the social aspects of Pakistan’s war against religious extremism).  

(OSTB : In Malaysia our 'cari makan' intelligentsia generally have no intelligence. Exempted are the 25 Eminent Malays who have bravely stepped forward. I really salute them.  The Malay intelligentsia  sad to say, is quite non existent. Even those who drink kopi O.)

They are correct in suggesting that the more militant ogres now at war with the state of Pakistan are armed expressions and projections of a rather myopic national narrative.

This narrative is the result of 

i. whatever that was concocted in the name of a national ideology many years ago 
ii. and then proliferated through school text books 
iii. state-owned media 
iv. until it infected the political, constitutional and social mind-set of Pakistani polity as a whole.

(OSTB : Doesn't this sound similar to Malaysia? Since 1983, Malaysia has gone down exactly the same path. Religion and extremism infected our schools, universities, the civil service and our national "ideology". The 'penerapan nilai-nilai Islam' got hijacked by the extremists. The cari makan intelligentsia just floated along and watched.)

Today, it is largely being blamed for seeding a non-organic ideology - a dogma that has contributed the most in Pakistan in terms of faith-based violence and the ever-increasing episodes of bigotry.

(OSTB : "Non organic ideology" means it is not native to Pakistan. This is referring to the arabisation and the 'salafi'-sation or wahhabi-sation of Pakistan. Exactly the same thing is happening to Malaysia. Unfortunately the Malays are asleep, perhaps having dreams of being arabs).

The paradox

Pakistan had come into being in 1947 on the back of what its founders called the Two Nation Theory.

The Theory was culled from the 19th Century writings of modernist Muslim reformers in India who, after the collapse of the Muslim Empire in South Asia, began to explain the region’s Muslims as a separate political and cultural entity (especially compared to the Hindu majority of India).

However, when the country’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, navigated the Movement towards finally reaching its main goal of carving out a separate Muslim homeland in South Asia, he was soon faced with an awkward fact: There were almost as many Muslims (if not more) in India than there were in the newly created Muslim-majority country of Pakistan.

Islam during the Pakistan Movement was largely used as a cultural card to furnish and flex the Muslims’ separate nationhood claims. It was never used as a theological roadmap to construct an Islamic State in Pakistan.


(OSTB : Never play the religion card, never play the race card. They WILL backfire. They will burn your house down. This is what is happening in Pakistan. To justify Pakistan breaking away from India, Jinnah played the religion card. Jinnah never wanted Pakistan to be a theocracy. Pakistan is not yet a theocracy. Its just that the people have become religion crazy. Just like in Malaysia. We are not a theocracy. But our people are becoming religion crazy.)  


In his August 11 speech Jinnah clearly declared that in Pakistan the state will have nothing to do with the matters of the faith and Pakistan was supposed to become a democratic Muslim-majority nation-state.

He went on to add:

‘Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time (in Pakistan), Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense – because that is the personal faith of each individual – but in the political sense as citizens of the State.’

(OSTB : That was  Jinnah's dream. Unfortunately he was day dreaming. Never play with religion. Now its too late. Jinnah's dream is now becoming Pakistan's nightmare.  

The same thing will happen in Malaysia. From 'Penerapan Nilai-Nilai Islam' it has now become 'wishing Merry Xmas is haram', (tapi Happy Deepavali ok), Mat Skodeng enforcers peeping at couples, Maidam enforcers in Terengganu, Wan Saiful Wan Jan's mother almost arrested by religious enforcers, shariah index by that moron, "rogol wanita yang tak tutup aurat" by that tok guru and all sorts of crap. It always starts as 'penerapan nilai-nilai' but quickly develops into something else.)
Jinnah died in 1948 leaving behind a huge leadership vacuum.   

The slogan of Islam might have worked to pull together the Muslim minority (consisting of various ethnicities and sects) of India during the Pakistan Movement, but there was no guarantee that it would be able to do the same in a country where the same Muslims had now become an overwhelming majority.

Ideally a system and constitution advocating democracy should have been worked out to facilitate and streamline the political and cultural participation of all ethnicities, sects and ‘minority religions’ in the nation-building process.

But this wasn’t done. Political and cultural expressions of ethnicity were immediately treated as being threats to the unity of the nation.

(OSTB :  This was exactly the case in Malaysia. Even before Independence, the  spirit of the multi racial, multi cultural, multi religious Alliance party was the only way forward for Malaysia. 

The PMIP (Pan Malaysian Islamic Party) which later became PAS broke away from UMNO because they refused to share power with the Chinese and Indians.  

The DAP was pro Chinese from Day 1. The party never used Malay and I think hardly sang the Negara Ku.  I hope they have improved now. 

Against this amount of racial sentiment, the Alliance which later became the Barisan Nasional was the embodiment of peaceful multi-culturalism and peaceful co-existence.  Any one could attend anyone's Christmas Party and feel relaxed. That was then. 

After 1983, the rise of the Wahabi and Salafi influece in Malaysia through Anwar Ibrahim and his gang, the reactionary rise of extremist religion in PAS (to counter Anwar Ibrahim and the rise of the 'Islamic" fringe within UMNO) the religious creep into the Civil Service, the Armed Forces, the academia etc has taken the entire country of Malaysia down the road of religious extremism. We are doomed. All this has already happened in Pakistan. History repeats itself. 


Prime Minister Liquat Ali Khan, was, willing to continue to use Islam selectively to maintain the cherished unity of the Muslim majority of Pakistan.

But the question was what kind of Islam?

To men like Liaquat Ali Khan (Pakistan’s first Prime Minister), Islam in Pakistan was to make all ethnicities and sectarian differences secondary compared to the precepts of Pakistani nationhood.

But what exactly was this nationhood about?

A part of the answer first came from a man who during the Pakistan Movement had actually denounced Jinnah!

Islamic scholar and chief of the Jamat-e-Islami (JI), Abul Ala Maududi, was a well-read and prolific journalist and author.  To Maududi the Muslim societies were to be ‘Islamized’ from below (through aggressive evangelism) so that they could be prepared for Islamic laws imposed from above (the state).

Another problem Maududi had with Pakistan was that he considered the new country to be in a state of jahiliya.
Just a year and a half after Jinnah had described Pakistan to be a Muslim-majority country where religion and state would be largely separate, the Resolution now declared Pakistan to be ‘an Islamic entity’.

(OSTB : This is exactly what has happened to Malaysia. Our Federal Constitution only states that Islam shall be the religion of the Federation.  

'Article 3 (1)  :  Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation.'

The first part of this Article    "Islam is the religion of the Federation.." does not really mean anything.  You can argue till the cows come home about what this really means.

I think Article 3 (1)  was intentionally put into our Federal Constitution by the Mat Salleh colonials to create endless arguments in the future.  (Yes I can be a conspiracy theorist as well).

What is the meaning of 'religion of the Federation'?  A Federation cannot have a religion. Only the citizenry can have a religion.  

Plus the words "official religion" do not appear.   Why? Why did they forget to mention "official religion"?

If 'official religion' is mentioned, then in official ceremonies (installation of the King,  installation of Sultans etc) Muslim prayers and ceremonies may be followed to 'officiate' such occassions. 

Like the Queen of England shall be the Head of the Anglican Church. So when the Queen or King of England is installed they are blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury Mr Rowan Atkinson. It does not say that "Christianity shall be the religion of the United Kingdom."  

If you are wondering what is the purpose of my saying this, well our colonials were British. So maybe that was the "spirit of the Constitution" that our colonials had in mind when they "helped" us draft Article 3 (1) of our Federal Constitution. Takkan they wanted us to follow a system different from their own. No need to think outside the box here.

So the phrase "'religion of the Federation" really does not mean anything. 

Not anymore though.  Now it seems that Malaysia is already an Islamic  theocracy. Why? Because of the same Article 3 (1). 

This is exactly what happened in Pakistan. They never intended to become an "Islamic State". Just a state for majority Muslims. But as I said before you cannot become 10% pregnant. Either you are pregnant or you are not. There is no such thing as "play-play" pregnant. 

There was uproar among the country’s Hindu and Christian sections (called ‘minorities’). Their leaders accused the government of ignoring Jinnah’s original vision and submitting to the dictates of his ‘detractors’.

The government might have thought that it had successfully defined the finer points of Pakistani nationhood through the Resolution, but the truth was things in this context got even more complex.

In 1953 vicious riots erupted in Lahore against the Ahmadiyya community when JI and another fundamentalist party, the Majlis-e-Ahrar, demanded that the community be declared heretical and non-Muslim.

The tensions between the Ahmadiyya and other sects culminated into violence (mostly against the Ahmadiyya) because now the religious parties pointed out that the 1949 Objectives Resolution hinted at the excommunication of heretical sects.

OSTB : Does this sound familiar? In Malaysia the religious authorities have started persecuting shias, ahmadiyas (they have a mosque in Selayang) plus anyone else they do not agree with. 82 year old writers have been arrested just for saying things. Their words are deemed "dangerous". 

There has even been a suggestion by no less than a Minister that our Federal Constitution be amended to include the phrase 'Ahlul Sunnah Wal Jamaah'.  Wow! What a leap? Of faith indeed. Before 1983 and the advent of salafi wahhabism we did not have any of this in Malaysia.



The religious parties, especially the Jamat-i-Islami (JI), largely focused their opposition against secular policies, accusing 'them' of undermining the role of Islam in Pakistan.

The term ‘Pakistan Ideology’ (Nazariya-e-Pakistan) was nowhere in the founders’ speeches during the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

It was in 1962 that one for the first time heard the term Nazariya-e-Pakistan. 

It is largely believed that it was first used by JI and some members of the dissident Muslim League-Council members who suggested that the Pakistan Ideology should be squarely based on policies constructed through the dictates of religious laws and should strive to turn Pakistan into becoming an Islamic State because it was on the basis of Islam that the country had separated from the rest of India.

The debate about what kind of a vision drove Jinnah to demand a separate Muslim country and what should constitute Pakistani culture and nationhood reached a crescendo in the late 1960s when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto formed the socialist Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

To the JI the story of Pakistan began not during the Pakistan Movement, but with the invasion of Sindh by Arab commander, Muhammad bin Qasim, in the 8th Century CE who defeated the region’s Hindu ruler, Raja Dahir.

OSTB : The same thing is happening in Malaysia. History is being rewritten here as well. Just like in Pakistan. There has been a suggestion that the Malays are a lost tribe from Arabia.  I think Ridhuan Tee Abdullah could be a  lost Chinese. A book has been written which suggests that Mani Purindan was a keturunan 'Syed' from Gujerat and ultimately descended from Arabia. These are all preludes to the 'Islami-cessation' of a local, national identity.

In 1968, JI’s founder and Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, described the leftist, liberal political organizations, cultural outfits, educational institutions, media and government as eroding Pakistan’s ‘Islamic character.’

JI made its concept of Nazariya-e-Pakistan one of the main planks of the party’s election manifesto. During the 1970 election campaign, JI appealed to the voters to defeat the left and ethnic-nationalist parties because they were a threat to Islam and to Nazariya-e-Pakistan.

OSTB : Exactly what PAS has done with who-doed. Now the gomen which is afraid of losing the elections, says they dont mind if PAS floats the who-doed in Parliament. This happened in Pakistan in 1970. 

Bhutto’s party, the PPP, that had swept the 1970 elections in former West Pakistan’s two largest provinces – Punjab and Sindh – on a socialist manifesto, formed the government at the centre after the violent separation of East Pakistan in 1971.

Though the Bhutto regime was populist, socialist and largely secular, in 1973 it managed to get a consensus from all the parties in the National Assembly to unveil a new constitution that reintroduced Pakistan as an Islamic Republic.

Bhutto's capitulation to the demands of the religious parties to declare the Ahamadiyya community as a non-Muslim minority was at least one symptom of Bhutto’s rightward drift.

By the 1977 election, the PPP had all but eliminated the word socialism from its manifesto

within a matter of five years  the PPP became a ..populist expression of Political Islam.

Bhutto sensed Islamic revival across the Muslim world after the 1973 Arab-Israel War. 
  • oil-rich Arab monarchies enjoyed a sudden rise in profits
  • oil-producing Arab states effectively influence Muslim regimes
  • Saudi Arabia had hardly played a role in the matters of Pakistan before 1973. 
  • after 1973 Bhutto’s Pakistan began to court oil-rich Saudi monarchy
  • money came with a condition. The Saudi monarchy was a passionate proponent of a rather puritanical strand of Islam. 
  • After 1973 Saudi Arabia began to pump in huge amounts of money into Muslim countries, and kick-start an intellectual and political exercise to ‘Islamise’ governments and societies according to Saudi interpretation of the faith.
  • From 1973 onwards a huge amount of Petro Dollars began to be disbursed and distributed among Muslim academics, intellectuals, governments and religious leaders and clerics (hence the cari makan intelligentsia).
  • What began to emerge from this exercise was a Political Islam that was anti-socialism/communism, anti-Zionism and anti-liberalism, but (curiously) at the same time it was pro-West, pro-business, pro-monarchy and with a healthy bank balance!

OSTB : So again it was the Arab oil money of 1973 that began to corrupt Pakistan. The same thing would happen in Malaysia about this time. The Saudis began funding the dakwah movements in Malaysia.  Finally by 1983 their mission would be accomplished. The cancer has been spreading in Malaysia since then.

Since by now the ‘Pakistan Ideology’ that was developing under Bhutto had begun to place Pakistan’s historical roots in lands from where Arab horsemen had invaded India in the 8th Century, it was decided that the Arabic language too should be adopted and taught in schools.

OSTB : Sounds familiar? The same thing is happening in Malaysia. Arabic is now being taught in schools in Malaysia. It is a useless language for modern survival. Only the religious people want arabic. It is easier to learn English. Unforunately the Malays prefer to learn arabic. Just like Pakistan in the early 1970s. The Pakistanis have been learning Arabic for 40 years. Their country is still going down the drain. Singapore has been learning English for 50 years. They are now the world's wealthiest nation.


The final cut

But till about 1975 the Pakistan society and government had remained largely pluralistic. But the façade collapsed in 1977.
in December 1976, a nine-party alliance of religious and anti-Bhutto parties united under the umbrella of the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA).

And it was only when the PNA used the words ‘Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (The Prophet’s System) as its main slogan that it became apparent that the Bhutto regime’s ..had actually ended up providing his opponents the space and idea to use Islam as an electoral tool
OSTB : Its all about politics. This is now happening here. Only thing different is UMNO is hanging itself using its own rope. The shariah index, the secret meetings with PAS leaders, the electoral pacts with PAS (in Selangor after the elections) and UMNO's possible dallying with PAS AFTER the next GE (if UMNO does not win enough seats) will all require appeasing the devil. It is a slippery slope that the country is perched upon. 

The word Islam outnumbered the word socialism in the PPP’s new manifesto and for the first time religion became the focal point of debate and discussion during an election in Pakistan.

OSTB : Very soon Ustazah Rosmah is going to appear on the stage. Just wait and see.
 
The ironic aspect was that when the PNA and the protesters began to use Islamic symbolism and slogans, these were taken from what the Bhutto regime had begun to induct into school text books and governmental lingo.

OSTB : The same thing in Malaysia. It is not PAS which "islamised" the school text books or the history books. 

It was not PAS that islamised the civil service, the doa pagi, ceramah pagi, petang dan malam and all the religious stuff. 

It was the UMNO gomen. Under the influence of the Crown Prince of Kajang Prison.

It was not PAS which 'islamised' all the university campuses, the sekolah asrama penuh and the teachers training colleges. 


It was the UMNO gomen. Under the influence of the Crown Prince of Kajang Prison.

It was not PAS which forced all school girls, university students and even Policewomen to cover their heads. 

It was the UMNO gomen. Under the influence of the Crown Prince of Kajang Prison.

Even after the guy was kicked out, the cancer that he planted in the country has begun to grow. 

Now the Malays and the country are entering the Club of Doom, and UMNO will still lose more and more seats.   

But since both PNA and PPP were going on and on about Islam without ever bothering to explain exactly how they were planning to turn a religion based on moral and social codes into a functioning political and economic system, this eyewash was addressed by another eyewash.

In April 1977, the Bhutto regime met with some main leaders of the PNA (belonging to the JI, Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) and Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP)) and agreed to make Friday the weekly holiday instead of Sunday (as was the case in Saudi Arabia). He also agreed to ban the consumption and sale of alcoholic beverages (to Muslims) and close down all nightclubs and bars.

OSTB : Alamak !! Sebiji serupa. Now in Malaysia the Sunday weekend has been changed to Friday as well in quite a few States. In Kelantan all businesses must close for two hours on Friday. In Terengganu all malls must close during Friday prayers. Very soon other states might follow suit. Why not all businesses close for the five daily prayers? Saudi Arabia style.

In July 1977, General Zia toppled Bhutto's regime in a military coup and promptly arrested him. Gen Zia took PNA’s Nizam-e-Mustafa rhetoric and turned it into a draconian theological project..Zia began a programme to enforce Nizam-e-Mustafa. 

he did not only make it a part of school textbooks, he also began to actually express it through draconian laws which he described as being ‘Islamic.’

Law after law based on a particular and orthodox understanding of Islam was rolled out

Zia immediately got down to radically transforming Pakistan as a theocratic entity.

Zia banned (in the media and school text books) Jinnah’s speech in which he clearly described Pakistan as a non-theocratic Muslim-majority state.

To spread fear Zia began to order the public floggings of student leaders, troublesome journalists and petty thieves and then explained these acts as being part of the ‘Islamisation of Pakistan.’
Nevertheless, no civilian government after Zia has dared to alter or expunge the laws planted in the Constitution by the Zia regime. The fear of being declared ‘anti-Islam’ and ‘anti-Pakistan Ideology’ overrides the will to neutralise these laws.

OSTB : The same thing happened in Malaysia. 

Sometime in the 70s, we passed the Syariah Criminal Enactments, applicable to Muslims. We are finding out now that these criminal enactments are causing havoc in the country. Mainly because there are now two penal systems operating in the country.  

I just found out yesterday that there was a study done on the effects of the Syariah Criminal Enactments (by the AG's Chambers I think). The recommendation was to abolish the entire Syariah Criminal Enactments. 

Of course it was never carried out. Just like in Pakistan the gomen was afraid. It had become a political issue.

Another example is Terengganu. PAS won Terengganu in 1999. The PAS passed the Terengganu Hudud. Then in 2004 the BN won Terengganu back again. 

Did the BN take any steps to abolish PAS Hudud in Terengganu? I dont think so. The PAS hudud bill still exists as it was passed by PAS.

My name is Pakistan, and I’m not an Arab!
today this ideology has become a stone around Pakistan's neck and no one quite knows how to take it off.

OSTB : Exactly the same in Malaysia. If Terengganu says that malls must close during the Friday prayers or that the ma'idam squads will arrest unrelated Muslim boys and girls riding motorbikes, who is going to be brave enough to reverse such "laws" in the future?  

The net effect is the country becomes quite lawless. Just like Pakistan. The real laws, the secular laws that are Islamic because they are based on justice, logic, common sense and science are  pushed aside by the semi literate ones. Instead half baked laws that are  all sectarian based (mazhab based) that never had any currency at any time in history have been given prominence.

Unabashed attacks on schools, shrines, markets and mosques by an anarchic breed of religious fanatics have been haunting Pakistan for the last one decade or so. 

such attacks are due to the radical mutation of the many faith-based experiments that took place in Pakistan 

OSTB : We are seeing this in Malaysia as well. There were direct attacks against churches and the Batu Caves temple (by Al Maunah). A nun was attacked and killed by an unknown assailant. Then there was that demolition of a surau just because some Buddhist tourists had a meditation sesson in the empty surau. The latest was a protest against the building of a hindu temple in Klang. 

It is the Muslims who must put a check on this type of behaviour.  If you dont, bye bye sanity.  Mental asylums here they come.

Yesterday I had lunch with someone who asked me how many jihadis from Malaysia had joined ISIS so far. I said less than 100 had been arrested.  My friend said 'As long as the number is less than the total number of inmates in our mental asylums then its ok.'  It was a serious joke.

The faulty anchor it then used to hold itself in the turbulent waters has now been rusting for a long time and no amount of paint can stop its erosion. A new anchor is needed to hold Pakistan’s early promise of being a dynamic state and nation.

We have to be Pakistanis first.

OSTB : We have to be Malaysians first. This question would be irrelevant 200 years ago. But we now have a different history and we will have a different future. We cannot change history and our future is going to be multicultural. We have to be Malaysians first. Not Arabs. 

We are a nation defined by our own unique cultural borders. We are a separate Muslim reality and can’t be compared to those of the Middle Eastern and African Muslim communities (just as they can’t be with us). And they don’t.

OSTB : Repeat we are not Arabs. Sampai bila pun we cannot be arabs. Period. 

We have had our own historical, political and cultural trajectories quite unlike those of the Muslim communities elsewhere.

We must look within to find our collective genius that is still rooted in the traditions and history of the land that we stand upon and not in the oil fields and palaces of Arabia.

We are a unique nation. Let’s celebrate this, instead of being confused by it.

OSTB :The same applies in Malaysia.

Conclusion : You need an iron hand that is unfair, unjust and stupid to implement a system that is unfair, unjust and stupid. 

Such an iron hand does not allow questioning or criticism. That is why such a system cannot be from Allah or the Rasul. It cannot be Islam.

That is why such systems cause the societies that uphold these evil systems to just implode in ignorance, cruelty, violence and stupidity.

The question is :  is it fun to be stupid?

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