"Today we can see when the sultans decreed that mosques should not be used as a political stage, an opposition leader without any guilt said he will continue to do so as politics is a part of Islam.”
– Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.
PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang in disobeying a royal decree by the Sultan of Terengganu has demonstrated that rebelliousness is the way how Muslims should react towards religious diktats from the state.
We always ask for a Muslim leader to lead the way and Hadi, by wilfully ignoring a royal decree, is doing more for the Islamic dialectic than every moderate religious and political operative in this government.
I have to admit the last person I thought would be leading the way for an Islamic reformation here in Malaysia would be Hadi.
I always assumed Anwar Ibrahim would be that person. However, Anwar did not thumb his nose at a religious royal decree.
The Malay/Muslim religious and political establishment should have come down hard on anyone disrespecting Islam in this country - and by disrespecting, I mean ignoring the royalty who are supposed to be the keepers of the faith - but apparently, someone like Hadi can get away with doing that.
In fact, any Muslim who is harassed by the state religious bureaucracy for not following diktats should point to Hadi as a prime example.
Unless of course, Hadi is above the law but that would mean that the PAS chief is the supreme leader of Islam in this country.
Is Hadi above the royalty and religious bureaucracy when it comes to Islam in this country?
The home minister cum PKR secretary-general wants his comrades to "attack, attack, attack” religious oppositional operatives who use Islam to cause instability. But here is the thing: they are just following a script set by the mainstream religious establishment in this country.
As for all those diktats by various state religious authorities about banning Muslims from non-Muslim places of worship, does anyone really think that these are spontaneous expressions of religious policy-making?
No, these are concerted attacks by the religious establishment against this unity government.
Of course, the federal and state governments fund these religious entities and this is the main problem. One would think that religious policy does not exist in a vacuum.
The people who fund these bureaucracies should be the ones shaping policies. However, after decades of letting these entities run riot, these entities think they are above the law. They certainly believe they are above secular law and actively campaign for syariah laws to trump the Federal Constitution.
Hadi is a leader. He set the tone and signalled to his followers that they do not have to follow a royal decree. They do not have to abide by the laws and decrees that Muslims who support Pakatan Harapan follow.
The fact that the religious bureaucracy - both federal and state - has not chosen to sanction Hadi is evidence of either collusion or support.
Pull up your socks, Anwar
When it comes to religious policy in this country, Anwar should be a leader. He should set the tone for his administration. So when Saudara Anwar, who literally holds the purse strings, claims that he has zero tolerance for these religious provocateurs, it means bupkis.
What has the state security apparatus and the religious establishment done to show that the government has zero tolerance for religious extremists?
Keep in mind that the prime minister of this country has acknowledged that there is a concerted effort by religious operatives to destroy his government. He has even acknowledged that some of these people are “paid”.
Read FA Abdul’s latest piece on how a small group of extremists coddled by the state could bring down a wholly commercial enterprise.
This is what religious extremists do. A small group of people and their bureaucratic sponsors control how the majority behaves and thinks.
This is the first principle of religious fascism. Supporters of Anwar either ask for patience or mock any attempts to put a spotlight on this extremely dangerous situation.
This is what the religious extremists want. Every act they carry out acts as a stress test for the government and the goal is to ultimately shape policy without even being part of the ruling government, thereby making it easier to usurp power when the opportunity arises.
Government operatives like Fahmi Fadzil, when they are not blaming the previous administrations for handling issues which they should be dealing with, give timid responses to the fact that the artistes involved in the movie “Mentega Terbang” had their lives threatened and property damaged, for instance.
Leave it to the authorities to investigate, he intones wisely.
First of all, the authorities should not be investigating the producers of “Mentega Terbang” because it validates the arguments that this was some sort of disrespect towards Islam.
By investigating the producers, what the government is saying is that Muslims need to be afraid of this film and it means that religious operatives are right when they demonise people for disrespecting Islam. This is what the religious extremists want.
Meanwhile, Anwar remains silent when his youth and sports minister is attacked using religious lies. He remains silent when religious authorities issue proclamations that certain Muslims are not allowed to enter places of worship.
He keeps quiet when Malaysians are demonised by the opposition and he hopes that his supporters will defend his reticence because it is for the greater pragmatic good, something which has slowly become so unrecognisable that people may as well not vote for the alternative.
This is also what the religious extremists want.
Look, I get that Anwar is in a shaky position, but don’t the big brains in Harapan understand that the reason why these coordinated attacks are happening now is because Hadi and the deep state believe that they can get away with it?
What these religious extremists do not want is a leader who will put up a fight. Because if leaders put up a fight, ordinary people would be inspired to stand their ground.
If ordinary people stand their ground, the religious fascist gig is up. It is not about concentrating on the economy. It is about acknowledging that the efforts to reinvigorate the economy are being hampered (deliberately) using religion and race and this will ultimately lead to an economic downturn.
With each passing day, Hadi and his bunch of religious extremists are getting stronger. They are getting stronger because they believe that the state security apparatus and the religious bureaucracy are on their side.
Hadi believes that Anwar does not have the cajones to pull the levers of power to suppress his dangerous political opponents.
Honestly, you would think that Fahmi, who is the communications minister, would be all over the messaging when it comes to religious extremism using the propaganda organs of the state to craft a counter-narrative.
But what can you expect from the person who said, pre-Sheraton move, that the fissures within Harapan were just a figment of the imagination of the media?
Of course, confronting religious extremism means you have to have not only the will to confront them using the mechanism of the state but also a counter-narrative to remind people of what you stand for.
As it is, Anwar has neither. The barbarians are not at the gate. They are already inside. - Mkini
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.
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