To stop Anwar, PN will slay sacred cows

 

"Not DAP only. Whoever is kafir (infidel) and against Islam. As long as DAP is against this, then this is the way (being labelled as kafir harbi)."

- Pahang mufti Abdul Rahman Osman said in 2016

"The harbi are arrogant. What should we do? If it was me, I would have slaughtered many. It's true. Same with all of you, right? However, (we don't) because of laws in this country."

– Actor Zul Huzaimy, who has since apologised and claimed his speech was taken out of context,

Readers have been emailing and texting me, asking me what I thought of the hypocrisy of Pakatan Harapan attempting to hook up with BN after the savage pre-election rhetoric, especially “a vote for BN, is a vote for Zahid” dogma.

While I acknowledge the hypocrisy, what is far more dangerous, is the prospect of Perikatan Nasional-PAS coming into power.

What is far more dangerous than the hypocrisy of working with BN-Umno, are our religious, economic and social freedoms, being taken away by PN-PAS.

What is far more dangerous than the hypocrisy are Malaysians, especially in the peninsula at the mercy of religious extremists and bigots who will use the majoritarian rule to further erode the already failing democratic and secular safeguards of this country.

There is a reason why I opened this piece with the above quotes. It is to remind everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, that the fringe elements of religious and racial bigotry in this country are the defining characteristics of PN-PAS.

Leaders from PN will surely publically disavow such statements but the reality is that the extreme ideas of this country have become so normalised and the economic and political structure crafted by Umno so debilitating to the average rakyat, that these ideas are dismissed by people who voted for PN-PAS because they believed they were voting for change.

I have repeated this ad nauseam in articles running up to the election that this election was a choice between religious extremism and a flawed democracy.

Pakatan Harapan chief Anwar Ibrahim

I also repeated ad nauseam the strategies of PAS and how the post-election milieu would be defined by religious instability.

I always warned that Abdul Hadi Awang and PAS were the existential threat facing this country and that recovering from a kleptocracy was far easier than recovering from a theocracy.

So, yes I have no problem with Anwar Ibrahim attempting to find allies with anyone, as long as PN and PAS are thwarted.

Now, I am not being flippant when I say this. People voted for PN-PAS and this is what we are dealing with.

There is a difference between majoritarian imperatives and democratic imperatives and what we are dealing with here, especially as non-Muslims/non-Malays is the prospect of PAS-PN further destroying the country with crude majoritarian tactics and plunging everyone into a black hole of religious delirium, all the while the elites from PN-PAS will be slurping from the diminished gravy train.

Ignoring a royal plea

And to stop Anwar, PN and PAS are willing to slay sacred cows of Malay/Muslim institutions because as I have argued before, these are the agendas of the deep Islamic state and the religious industrial complex.

Remember how the royal institutions were the apogee of Malayness and we were told that Harapan especially the DAP were always attempting to defy this institution.

Well Muhyiddin Yassin, the desperado, is doing just that by ignoring a royal plea for a unity government.

What this does, is normalise the rejection of royal advice in the PN base. Muhyiddin is telling the PN base that no matter what the royal institution advises, the feelings of the base take precedence.

Ordinarily, this would be something I could get behind, but in this context, what this does is further ideas that racial and religious superiority is no longer tempered by an institution we were told is for all Malaysians but in reality, was used as a cudgel against the opposition.

This is why PAS for instance defies royalty when it comes to the Bon Odori festival.

May 13 was another sacred cow, in the sense that the social contract was predicated on everyone knowing their places less another May 13 occurred. Well so much for that.

Apparently, Tik Tok is cracking down on May 13 narratives, while the state security apparatus wags its fingers but does not do much else.

Now I am not blaming PN for this, but keep in mind, PN/PAS’ whole political narrative is based on the fact that the Chinese DAP are attempting to usurp Malay power through Anwar. So you do the math.

But the biggest sacred cow was this idea that a dominant Malay party like Umno for instance was needed to maintain religious and racial harmony. All this has gone out the window.

With PN/PAS, the corpse of multiculturalism lies bloated on the ground post-election. There is no pretence that they are a government in waiting for all Malaysians.

Rather what we have is a government in waiting based on religion and racial hegemony and nothing else.

Harapan has found a way of working with BN in certain states and all that is fine and good. At this point, maintaining some kind of political and religious moderation even in a flawed hypocritical manner is better than letting the religious extremists run states because we have all seen what PAS and Bersatu are capable of when running a state.

Actually, we have seen what they are like when running the country.

I sincerely hope that Anwar, by hook or by crook, gets the throne in Putrajaya and attempts to at least start the process to ameliorate the decades-long abuse the system has gone through.

As far as I am concerned by hook or crook, this is all PAS and BN deserve.

I will worry about hypocrisy when my rights as a citizen of this country which I had the privilege of serving are no longer threatened by religious extremists. - Mkini

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.