Cahaya's Rants

MALACCA: Bloggers who smear politicians’ names and incite racial sentiments should be punished severely, said Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam.

“Irresponsible statements and lies by bloggers cannot be tolerated,” he said yesterday.

Mohd Ali was responding to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s statement on Tuesday that webmasters and web journalists were not above the law.

Source: The Star

This is one of the main problems with politicians in Malaysia. Why can’t politicians who feel their names have been smeared or defamed, use the courts and sue for damages from whomever have defamed them? Instead they want to use laws like the Sedition Act, or the Internal Security Act and lock up bloggers for good.

There are no laws that I know of that politicians can use against bloggers who publish their writings on the internet. The current laws regulating publications do not include publications on the internet. That is why the general Sedition Act or Internal Security Act has been brandished about by the politicians.

The government of Malaysia is at it again.  Malaysian Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, said that the government is going to act on blogs that they consider are belittling Islam or the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

Raja Petra Kamaruding, who runs the website Malaysia Today was questioned for eight hours yesterday following a report logded against him by the Information chief of the Malay dominated party, UMNO.

Malaysia Today has been on the spotlight recently because of exposés written by Raja Petra about certain high ranking politicians, and also the inflammatory comments posted by  readers of the site.

As a regular reader of the site, I find that Malaysia Today is rare in that it allows unmoderated comments, and regular participants know what regular posters are like.  Everyone is equally offended on the site, and no particular group is more offended than the others.

The comments/opinions/sentiments expressed on the site are genuine, and to pretend otherwise is to ignore the simmering frustrations that are felt by many people.  Even though the government prefers that such sentiments (against corruption, race preferences, limitations of religious liberties etc) are not expressed openly, for the sake of maintaining the appearance of racial and religious harmony, sooner or later something is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  And by then, it could be too late, and God forbid, lead to another May 13 incident.

Malaysia can try to clamp down on bloggers or to shut down any dissenting voices, but with the existence of a  borderless internet, I don’t know how successful the government would be.  Just how many bloggers can they arrest or detain at any one time?  Just think of the image Malaysia will get if ever the government decides to act on their threat. A democratic, moderate Muslim country?  My foot!

It all starts with one simple sentence, spoken almost in a whisper, but which has a thunderous effect.A female police officer deployed in Tehran’s latest moral crackdown tells a woman that her manto (overcoat) is too short and infringes Iranian Islamic dress rules. “Azizam (my dear), good afternoon, if possible could we have a friendly chat, please allow us to have a small chat,” the officer, a graduate of Tehran’s police academy, tells the young woman.

“My dear there is a problem with your manto. Please do not wear this kind of manto. Please wear a longer manto from now on.”

Some are just let go there, but others are escorted to waiting minibuses with dark black tinted window panes and labelled “Guidance Patrol.”

A girl in a short white manto whose long hair was tumbling out the front of her headscarf is taken by the police to one of the minibuses on Vanak Square in central Tehran — an unexpected and unhappy end to her shopping trip.

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Look at how the young woman is dressed. Does that look like vice to you? If Iran is an example of how Islamic law is practised, Malaysia better not ask to be an Islamic state! Can you see all the Malay girls in their tight outfits but wearing their “tudungs” being rounded up by the moral police?

Is it any wonder that young people in societies like those in Iran and Saudi Arabia feel like they are being caged? Sooner or later they rebel, and one way of rebelling is the use of illegal drugs.

If you care to browse around the internet there are plenty of sexy home made (I mean x- rated!) videos of young people from Middle-Eastern countries. The moral police can arrest young people for breaking the dress code, but there are other ways that they can get around the moral police.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has her share of admirers and detractors. When she claimed that there was no such thing as Islamophobia, Avi Lewis, host of On the Map (a Canadian TV program) just couldn’t let that go unchallenged. He had her as guest on his TV program.

I had never heard of Avi Lewis before this but based on this one show with Hirsi Ali, all I can say is that he exhibits the kind of condescension, smugness, and moral superiority over Americans or Americanism that plague many Canadians. He was simply incredulous when Hirsi Ali said that “America is the best place to be in”. He just couldn’t believe that someone like Hirsi Ali would say that, and he even had the audacity to ask her if there “was a school where they taught you all these cliches”! At the beginning of the program he even called Hirsi Ali a born-again American Booster.

Throughout the interview it is obvious what Avi Lewis thinks of American society. He claims that the evangelicals who have “ascended the highest ranks of power” are imposing conservative and social values, “drawn and justified from the Bible”, on the people every single day. That is so laughable!

I am glad that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is no dummy. She was not afraid to tell Lewis that he was exaggerating when he makes ridiculous claims such as “homophobia is rampant”, “they shoot abortion doctors”, “North American Muslims feel under seige”, and American democracy is completely broken “because of a couple of stolen elections” in America.

I like the part at the end, where Hirsi Ali told Lewis that because he grew up in freedom therefore he could spit on freedom, but she had lived in countries that had no democracies and therefore knew what it meant to grow up in countries that didn’t have freedom. Because of that freedom, despite the problems that Americans have, she still believes that “America is the best nation in the world”. Good for her!

Still on the subject of this interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dennis Prager has an interesting commentary on Avi Lewis’ comments about America. You can watch the 2 part audio/video here and here. I agree with Prager’s assessment of Lewis -”intellectually shallow when compared to his guest”.

The deputy Prime Minister’s statement of “Malaysia is an Islamic state and not a secular one” has sparked a furore in Malaysia.

And like the proverbial ostrich that likes to stick its head in the sand, the authorities in Malaysia have told the media to stop reporting on the issue because it causes “tension”. Yeah, that’s the way to block debate on a very controversial and sensitive issue!

The issue ought to be brought up front and center because the people of Malaysia deserve to put to rest once and for all any doubt regarding the rights and guarantees of Malaysians as laid out in the constitution. Is Malaysia an Islamic state or is it a secular one? Are the federal laws supreme or do the sharia laws trump the federal laws? What exactly does freedom of worship mean as per the constitution?

I concur with Bishop Paul Tan, the Chairman of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, that the term “Islamic state” is an unacceptable one. The growing Islamization of Malaysia is a legitimate cause for concern for Malaysians. Recent cases where Islamic laws have been cited by the civil courts for declining to hear inter-religious disputes have caused great concerns to the non-Muslim population.

Many Malaysians are aware the reason the deputy Prime Minister made the statement is purely political, still Malaysians need to be assured that the federal laws and not sharia laws are supreme in the land.

When the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak joined the Malay Federation to form Malaysia in 1963, they did not join an Islamic state! There!

Malaysia is an Islamic state and not a secular one says the deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak. The basis for his claims is that Islam is the official religion of the country and that Malaysia has always been driven by the fundamentals of Islam.

Yeah, like now I am really, really assured by his statement! Is it any wonder that the non-Muslim minority groups in Malaysia are feeling more marginalized and discriminated by the policies of the government?

The bulldozing of a church built by an indigenous group in Kelantan is a prime example of the intolerance of the government towards non-Muslims despite the guarantee of freedom of worship in the constitution.

In government jobs, Malay Muslims are preferred over other ethnic groups. The same is said to be true of admissions to the local public universities.

The government is blind and deaf towards the grievances of the non-Muslim population. Every time the subject is raised the government insists that Malaysia respects the rights and the freedom of worship of the other ethnic minority groups.

Yeah, tell that to Lina Joy who cannot practise her right to choose her religion, and the Hindus whose temples were demolished by the authorities!