Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Hadi, the politically incorrect face of Malay supremacy - By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Malaysiakini : āMen use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.ā ā Voltaire
COMMENT | You can say a lot about
PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang and lord knows, I have said most of it
in many articles over the years. What you cannot accuse him of is
political correctness when it comes to racial and religious politics in
this country.
Even when the opposition went through its āPAS for allā kool-aid
period, Hadi was chafing at the bit, ever willing to contaminate the
Kool-Aid with hints of the real agenda of the Islamists in this country.
When hebabbles on about a Muslim-only cabinet, the reality is that in Malaysia, this already is the case in substance but not form.
While I appreciate DAPās Bukit Gelugor MP Ramkarpal Singhās defence
of the secular nature of this country as decided by the highest court
in the land, we now know that when it comes to secular (civil) law and
religious (syariah) law, the state security apparatus obviously did not
get the memo. Hence, reminding Hadi or anyone for that matter on the secular nature
of this country is pointless. When an academic like Shad Saleem Faruqi (photo) attempts
to do so, he is hounded by the various Islamic agencies who have taken
it upon themselves to declare Malaysia an Islamic state on who knows
whose authority.
Hadi, meanwhile, has never attempted to hide the fact that he
believes Islam is supreme and that everyone else must submit to its
authority. Furthermore, when it comes to this bit, ā...Islam daripadabangsa yang paling berpengaruhā
(Islam originated from the most influential race), this is just the
cherry on the cake when it comes to racial and religious supremacy. He
is just covering all his bases. Of course, preacher-politicians like Hadi will always manage to
justify their beliefs by quoting from some religious scholar or another.
They will never come out with something original (of their own) as to
why what is essentially a bigoted form of governance is allowed in
Islam. We did have that one chap who claimed that racism was "allowed"
in Islam but one would think that a religious scholar like Hadi would
have the gumption to come up with his own rationale as to why his agenda
for a Muslim-only cabinet was sanctioned in Islam.
Remember that Hadi is vice-president of an Islamic organisation, the
International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), which has been disavowed
by the House of Saud and was described
by a prominent Middle Eastern journalist as such - āIUMS members
justified violence and started an intellectual war with muftis and
traditional Islamic scholars, undermining them in their home countries
and ridiculing their religious edicts.ā
A Malay-only affair
The reality is that for some time now, all cabinet decisions have
been Umno supreme council decisions. And since the Umno supreme council
is a Malay-only affair, the argument could be made that there is already
an unofficial āMalay-onlyā cabinet.
Do not take my word for it. In a Malaysiakini interview, former MIC head honcho S Samy Vellu (photo) claimed that MIC had no voice
in the cabinet. Other MCA leaders have made the same claim at various
times in various news outlets. Collective decision-making is difficult
when it comes to racial politics because at every turn Umno - or any
Malay/Muslim political party ā has to demonstrate that they are
defending ābangsa dan agamaā (race and religion).
Do not get me wrong. The reason why this country has been able to
maintain the facade of being a āmoderateā Islamic country is the urban
demographics and policy decisions that enabled relative economic success
despite all the leakages. In others words, there was political will
that this country would not turn into just another failed Islamic state.
As I wrote
before, āI would argue, and have done so many times, that the only
reason why Umno continues to make overtures to the non-Malay community
is that it needs them as a fig leaf in its charade as a
multiracial/multireligious coalition and maybe to hedge its bets against
the possibility of a sizable Malay revolt. Not to mention that the plum
urban seats are the trough from which its cronies feed from.ā
Now, of course the split in the Malay community, the missteps of the
opposition and the machinations of Umno have resulted in the extreme
fringe ā the unthinking fringe ā of the Malay right to come out with all
sorts of remedies to āsaveā the Malay polity.
I do wonder, though, while we have had royal personalities speak out
against certain opposition figures and speak out against religious
personalities attempting to sow racial and religious discord, but so far
there has been no official statement from any royal household over the
overtly bigoted and unconstitutional provocation of Hadi. This should
tell you something about the political system here in Malaysia.
Muslims cannot decide for non-Muslims
PAS information chief Nasrudin Hassanās claimthat
what Hadi meant was that āsome cabinet positions must be reserved for
Malay-Muslimsā is even more of an indictment than what Hadi said because
at least Hadi was honest. Nasrudinās horse manure that Muslims should
be the ones making policy and non-Muslims should be the ones
implementing them is terrifying and the most insidious aspect of the
Islamisation process in this country. As usual, what we are witnesses to
is Islamists wanting non-Muslims to be complicit in their subjugation.
Think about this for a moment. Muslim potentates would decide policy
and these policies ā there is enough empirical evidence to suggest that
these policies would be detrimental to non-Muslims ā and non-Muslims
would be āluckyā enough because this is āunlike other political systems,
which only accept those with the same ideologyā to implement these
policies.
What separates Hadi from the rest of the Umno-aligned herd is that
the PAS base still believes that they have a shot at truly influencing
the direction of this country. In this case, for instance, they do not
view what Hadi said as malicious or bigoted. They believe that it demonstrates that PAS is willing to work with
anyone and that even in an Islamic state headed by PAS, non-Muslims
would be part of the government and they would not have a problem only
being part of the āimplementationā because all the policy decisions made
by Muslim potentates would be fair and just.
The funny thing is that state governments controlled by the
opposition bend over backwards to accommodate Muslimsā preoccupations
and have to continuously defend themselves against charges of racism and
yet the mainstream Malay establishment does not disavow someone like
Hadi.