Race supremacists making a meal of the Star

by uppercaise

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Ketuanan Melayu and its partner Ketuanan Islam are trying to make a meal of The Star’s Dining Out supplement having featured pork dishes while running a cover story on Ramadan Delights. Typically, it is being viewed as un-Islamic and the Star labelled as an un-Islamic paper.

Calling it “un-Islamic” makes it sound like the Star is against Islam, a convenient way of putting pressure on the paper, its staff, its publisher and its chief editor.

But which paper is not un-Islamic?

The Star is un-Islamic? So are the New Straits Times, the Utusan Malaysia, Sinar Harapan and every other mass circulation newspaper in the country. None of them are Islamic publications.

Memo to Home Ministry: Have you labelled all newspapers as being un-Islamic?

Why single out the Star? Because it is a convenient target:

• it is the only non-vernacular newspaper that is not owned by Umno
• it is run by editors and journalists of various faiths
• the chief editor, Wong Chun Wai, is a practising Christian who has openly written about his faith and defended it
• the paper does not place priority on furthering a Malays First agenda
• it also makes a lot of money and has high visibility on the stock exchange.

The recent attacks have been coordinated by Perkasa, the rabid Malays First movement that was spawned by Mahathir (I Am Not A Racist) Mohamad, and led by that political buffoon Ibrahim (mass comm grad) Ali.

It is no surprise, looking back on Mahathir Mohamad’s long antagonism towards the Star from the early days of his ascendancy to Umno power, his urging the New Straits Times to kill the Star and his urging tycoon Vincent Tan to start the Sun and knock down the Star.

This week’s attacks on the Star come in the context of the longstanding anti-Christian campaigns, the most notable of which recently were the claims of a so-called plot to turn Malaysia into a Christian country; the recent raid on a Protestant church because of claims of proselytising to 12 Muslims present at a thanksgiving dinner for an AIDS fundraising event; and the move by the Penang government to urge mosques not to broadcast prayers and sermons after the pre-dawn azan.

It must also be viewed in the context of non-Muslim schoolchildren having been reprimanded for eating in the school canteen during the month of Ramadan, supposedly for not showing respect for the fasting month.

The Star’s Dining Out supplement is a victim of such a thinking: that all Malaysians must conform to Islamic practices, whether or not you are a Muslim. It has been a longstanding campaign, supported by politicians in both Umno and PAS, to Islamicise the whole country and enforce public displays of Islamic supremacy such as by excessive use of loudspeakers at mosques for sermons and prayers and not just the azan.

It is Ketuanan Melayau and its partner Ketuanan Islam at work: to force non-Muslims (and thus mostly non-Malay people) into subservience and into conformity with Islamic practices.

Foremost among their stooges have been the Home Ministry and its Publications Division, and the minister, Hishammuddin bin Tun Hussein Onn, a man who saw no harm in wielding a keris to further his path to Umno power; who saw no harm in politicians making a public display of a deliberate insult to Hindus; and who took little or no action against the constant Christian-baiting and race-baiting by Utusan Malaysia (an Umno newspaper).

So the question comes to mind:

Is there anything Islamic about the race supremacists of Perkasa and the taxpayer-funded KDN or the taxpayer-funded Minister of the taxpayer-funded federation?