Jamal and Syed Saddiq - two sides of the same coin

The only difference is Jamal uses a sledgehammer and Syed uses the pen.

“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but in the very least you need a beer.”

― Frank Zappa

Jamal Md Yunos’ “mabuk” behaviour of smashing boxes of beer bottles outside the Selangor State Secretariat (SUK) building in Shah Alam and Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman’s online petition “Hapus Budaya Pesta Arak di Malaysia” (Destroy Beer Festival Culture in Malaysia) are the same.

The only difference is the former is the kind of thuggery that we are used to and the latter the kind of bourgeois online activism that extremists engage in when they do not want to get their hands dirty like the leader of the red shirts.

The same kind of bigoted reasoning that Sungai Besar Umno chief Jamal (photo) and his ilk use is right there on the online petition, that amongst other reasons, a beer festival would lead to a “gay” carnival. How dumb. It is like saying because people drink in private establishments, this would lead to “gay” private establishments. I hate to break it to these nut jobs, but the two are mutually exclusive.

Jamal meanwhile continues his ‘screw you’ approach to the security apparatus of the state. He has no problems leaving a mess in a public space because he has the backing of the Umno state, which is making a public mess all over the country. His type of easy Islamic extremism entails bullying the non-Malay/non-Muslim communities, all the while enjoying the blessing of the state, instead of fighting other Muslims on foreign soil attempting to establish an Islamic caliphate.

Mind you, his action of smashing beer bottles in a supposedly Muslim majority area is demonstrative of the hypocrisy of Muslims like him. Imagine if a non-Malay had engaged in that type of behaviour, the Malay residents would be up in arms that (1) a non-Malay was disrespectful, and (2) that alcohol has stained their holy Malay/Muslim ground. In this case, Jamal engaged in “haram” behaviour by handling alcohol, stained "Malay" land, and he and his gang of thugs left other timid Malays to clean up the mess they had created.

When he is finally arrested, he whinges that this is "going too far". Unlike the late DAP aide Teoh Beng Hock (the most famous example of a political operative killed in custody), Indians and other Malays charged with various offences, he does not have to worry about death or violence in custody. Those people were not privileged like Jamal. They had no backing from anyone.

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid says he disavows Jamal’s behavior but he has never been sanctioned by Umno. No punishment means no disavowment. Umno approves of his behaviour. To Jamal, this is all part of the myth-making process.

While Jamal has been vilified – and rightly so – Syed Saddiq (photo) has been blubbering on press conferences about how he was giving up Oxford for the people of Malaysia and that he has been threatened with exposure of “sensitive” photographs and warning of retaliation if his family is attacked.

The fact that Syed Saddiq has his admirers – who I am told are legion – is mind boggling. I still have not figured out what exactly is the appeal of this young man. He is the youth leader of a race-based party, a mainstream “Umno Muslim” and seems obsessed with his self-image to the point that his dramas overshadow the so-called agenda of his political party.

The online petition of this particular Muslim cabal attempts to portray their objection to Oktoberfest as something in line with “Malaysian culture” but it is really an attempt to impose Islamic culture and curtail secular rights in the hopes that by doing such, it bolsters Bersatu’s Islamic credentials.

The petition endorsed by this so-called moderate young Oxford-bound Muslim also played the religious extremist game by attempting to homogenise Muslim opinion and coerce all Muslims into supporting this ban - "Muslims no matter their political stand should be united and steadfast on the issue. Harmony and unity between races can be built without liquor festivals."

Read that line again. Armada Youth is saying that Muslims no matter their political stand should be united in this issue. In other words, Syed Saddiq and Jamal as Muslims should be united in this issue – which they are – the only difference is that Jamal uses a sledgehammer and Syed uses the pen.

There’s a storm coming

Siti Kassim (photo), the activist who seems to be one of the few Muslims that rational people should support, but who gets no real support for her work, rightly wondered when politicians are going to start thinking like Malaysians.

And that is the key. What do demagogues and political wannabes like Jamal and Syed Saddiq really think? They do not think of Malaysians as individuals but rather as racial groups with a pecking order, and the top of the totem pole is, of course, Islam and the “Malay” race.

People continue to think that this is a non-issue but really it is the shape of things to come. Jamal is aligned to the opposition in the state and here he is engaging in acts of violence against the elected state government on an issue that he is on the same page with as his supposed political enemy. What do you think this portends?

Each believes that his race and religion are the conduits to political power and the only difference is that Syed Saddiq spends a great deal of time also courting the non-Malay vote which means he has to resort to all sorts of deceptions which seems to be working on people who should be rejecting this kind of Islamic extremism.

Not long ago I gave my two sen to this young so-called Malay moderate – “Separating Islam from politics, especially in the younger Malay demographic, is crucial if we are to have a ‘post-Umno’ era that the opposition is touting in the run-up to the next general elections. Oppositional political parties in their own way are pandering to the Malay/Muslim demographic using the same old tools that Umno uses to maintain its dominion over the Malay polity.”

These people do not understand. There is a storm coming and soon these Muslims who oppress non-Muslims will learn what real Islamic state violence is.

We all will.

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.- Mkini