Part 1 - Culture Of Peace Versus Cultured Yogurt

The PM has spoken about inculcating a culture of peace. Here is the news :

• Najib: Time for world to inculcate a culture of peace
• time to discard eye for an eye  
• extinguish evils, intolerance, prejudice, ignorance, selfishness, compel violence
• culture of peace most critical to the society.
• make a new beginning, in a culture of peace,"  
• values, attitudes and ways of life based on principles of freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity and respect for diversity, dialogue and understanding.

That is really saying it quite strongly.  Those are very powerful words. I really hope the Prime Minister meant what he said. Most importantly he said it at the preliminaries to the UMNO General Assembly.  

The Prime Minister wants to extinguish the evils of intolerance, prejudice, ignorance and selfishness that compel violence.  Since he was speaking to UMNO, obviously he wants UMNO  to embrace the principles of freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity and respect for diversity, dialogue and understanding.

I think UMNO has advanced a long way towards upholding such principles in this country. From 1955 UMNO has spearheaded power sharing with the immigrant minorities in this country. UMNO also agreed to over a million people being given citizenship "by operation of Law" which they knew would reduce their majority in democratic elections. 

It was the first time in the history of the world where a political party which overwhelmingly represented a community (the Malays)  agreed to decrease its own status quo - for most certainly there was no assurance that the minority communities would support or should support UMNO forever. 

And then with the admission of Singapore into the Federation, most certainly the Malays would no more be numerically superior.  Now why would a ultra-racist, 'ketuanan Melayu' political party like UMNO would want to do a dumb thing like that?

Even until today the seven million Chinese in Malaysia plus the five million Chinese in Singapore can match about 75% of the Malay population in the country (which nowadays includes counting all the bumiputras together, also the 'keturunan Pakistan', the Arab and now Bangla, Pak Iran, Rohingya, Afghanistan, Nigeria Islam, ALL the mamaks in Penang, Kedah, Melaka and Sri Menanti plus all the KIMMA members, and all sorts of others who are citizens of the country).

So it was not intolerance, selfishness and disrespect for diversity that led UMNO to behave in such a manner. Here is a legitimate question : given a second chance to do it again,  do you think UMNO would be justified to go through the same process?  You give your own honest answer ok? 

That was in the past. We have to move forward and look to the future.  The PM's words are therefore more relevant than ever.  And the PM's words are more relevant now to UMNO than ever before.

I believe that over the years there has been a Talibanisation of UMNO. This problem began with the influx of Anwar Ibrahim and his ABIM dunggus into UMNO in 1983.  They brought with them a very sick and very satanic culture of intolerance, prejudice, ignorance, selfishness, disrespect for diversity, anti-dialogue and anti understanding. I must qualify this statement by referring to the ABIM at that time, in the 80s and into the 90s. Maybe the braders have changed for the better since then. Many of their leaders have since abandoned ABIM completely. 

These are the dunggus who started introducing all sorts of really stupid religious rules which were unheard of before. Many of you who read this may not remember when Anwar Ibrahim was first made the Minister of Youth and Sports in 1983 (29 years ago - were you born then?). The Ministry of Sports said that Muslim football players must cover their knees when playing football. This was very uncomfortable especially when some football players had to wear track bottoms to football games. Soon there was a strike among football players in the Malaysian FA League. They refused to play football wearing track bottoms. The Ministry had to flip flop and the football players went back to wearing regular shorts. 

That was the beginning of stupidity in this country - with the entry of Anwar Ibrahim and the ABIM morons at that time.   

It was also after that time that we started to have religious persecution in this country. I cannot recall a single case where Shiahs were arrested or prosecuted in Malaysia in the 1960s, 1970s or early 1980s.  

The religious prosecutions in this country began after the mid 1980s, when Anwar Ibrahim and his cohorts were ascending the ladders of power. They were everywhere - in the schools, universities, in Bank Negara, the Ministry of Defense - name it, the ABIM dunggus were there.  And they thoroughly infiltrated UMNO with their monkey religious ideas.

Kassim Ahmad's book was banned in the 80s - after the Gomen was fully infiltrated by the pro-ABIMers.  In 1995 when Anwar Ibrahim appeared unstoppable,  the Gomen banned Othman Ali's Malay translation of the Quran which was called Bacaan. Until today it remains a far, far superior Malay translation of the Quran than anything this country has produced. Not only that but there were also attempts to prosecute OIthman Ali for producing his translation. Folks, any society that prosecutes people for writing books (especially a translation of the Quran) is a sick society. A very sick society. To all you ABIM stalwarts who are still crawling around out there - bacul lah brader. Awak tak tahu nak jawab jadi awak guna kuasa untuk haram buku orang.   

The problem is the religious cancer they have spread may still be floating around. UMNO too must be careful. If UMNO is not careful, religion can also be UMNO's undoing. Once upon a time, there was talk of creating a Dewan Ulamak in UMNO.  May Allah save us. Even the PAS is now realising that their version of religion is quite hopeless. So the PAS is changing. Negara kebajikan, negara tak kebajikan, hudud hot, hudud cold are all indications that they are  confused. 

A yogurt is also cultured. But we dont need the culture of yogurts. We have to inculcate a culture of peace in this country - now more than ever.