Kazim The Crazy Cleric That Preaches Hate

By Mariam Mokhtar

If you are asked to watch the clip called “Ustaz Kazim Elias kutuk Cina India?” (Kazim the Cleric condemns the Chinese and Indians?) on YouTube, don’t bother.

It is a waste of 11 minutes and far from being inspirational or motivating, the clip was clearly an incitement to violence and every Malay/Muslim should be ashamed of Kazim. Come to think of it, the Malays who were listening to this mad mullah preach, should have walked out of the congregation.

Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak goes around the nation trying to sell us his 1Malaysia slogan. So if the Chinese and Indians are prepared to accept this unity concept, why has Najib not been able to reach out to Malays like Kazim the cleric?

Kazim is not the only one who is deaf to Najib’s slogan for there are others, like Ibrahim Ali and Najib’s own deputy, Muhyididin Yassin, who are averse to Najib’s 1Malaysia dream.

So why bother with 1Malaysia then? Why do Malays like Kazim escape censure but the non-Malays, who use less inflammatory speech get punished? Why the mixed messages from the government? Why the double-standards? It is obvious that Najib and his Cabinet do not take racism and extremism seriously.

Perhaps the only time Najib and his merry men will take racism seriously, will be when colourful characters like Namewee (Wee Meng Chee) make more videos about racism.

Mohammad Kazim Elias Al Hafiz, is the chairman of the Pusat Pendidiakan Al Barakah, a religious educational establishment which is located in Kampung Manjoi, Ipoh, in Perak.

It is baffling that Kazim has not been hauled up for sedition.

In the clip, he denigrates both the Chinese and Indians, and reproaches these two communities for taking advantage of the Malays, rebukes them for their constant disagreements with the ketuanan issue and for enslaving the Malays – because ‘they (the Chinese and Indians) have never tasted what is like to be ‘slaves’’.

He also says that these two races are lucky to live in a land which is free of conflict.

But the puzzling thing is that Kazim was invited to preach on one of the naval ships.

He described how the bunk beds were cramped and how the sailors had to live onboard ship for three months when they are at sea.

Obviously this cleric has no idea what it is like to be in the service. Perhaps he imagines that every sailor would have the stateroom on a cruise liner and 70 virgins to nurse him every night.

He described the hardships a sailor or soldier in the jungle has to go through, as if the service personnel had been totally unprepared for those privations.

Kazim then makes unfair comparisons with the Chinese who are able to go drinking and to the disco, whilst the ‘poor Malay’ has to suffer in the jungles or on the high seas, in defence of his country; to provide the peace and tranquility enjoyed by the Chinese and Indians.

But his most damning statement was to say that the navy, army and police are composed solely of Malays, that they were prepared to sacrifice life and limb, whilst the non-Malays enjoyed the good life.

Following this description, he then asks: “Who is the master and the slave here?” and “How dare they tell us that they do not want ‘Ketuanan Melayu’”.

Is Kazim so ignorant that he does not realise that it is his government’s policies that have turned the non-Malays from the services?

He asks if we find any Chinese or Indians in the services. He informs us that there are few Indians in the army but that many Indians are criminals.

He tells us that the Malays have been too tolerant, giving the non-Malays land and titles. The rest of his speech is littered with more racist comments.

Why did Kazim not mention the endemic corruption that is crippling the country?

Why did he fail to mention the rempit culture of the Malay youth? He may have condemned the Chinese for going to bars at night, but he did not breathe a word about Malay teenagers who hang out, until the early hours of the morning, in the mamak stalls.

Why did he not condemn the government ministers and ‘elite Malays’ who drink heavily at the casinos of London and Monaco?

Why did Kazim not talk about the deaths caused by the moral police, when raiding hotels and homes?

He forgot about the numbers of sexual assaults on Malay children by older Malay men. He failed to mention the high levels of incest and the illegitimate children borne by unmarried Malay women.

He did not talk about the wives who contracted HIV-AIDS from their husbands who practise unsafe sex with other women, including prostitutes.

And he failed to talk about irresponsible Malay men who marry several women simply because they had got bored with their latest ‘young’ wife, or consider that a wife is too old once she has hit twenty.

The high drug use by Malays is another scourge on the community that he failed to address.

What Kazim talked about, his incitement to violence, is criminal. But the worse crime is that our religious authorities and the police, have failed to censure him for his seditious and inflammatory remarks.