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."
Uyghur Muslims: Another rabbit hole we should cease burrowing into - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
There is mass persecution of all minorities in the 57 Muslim majority countries, without let up from time immemorial. They blatantly practice Apartheid. Quran 3:110
Why bother about the Chinese Uyghur when they turn against their own country? The Chicoms persecute the Christians too. Mao Tse Tung a godless bastard once said "Religion is the opium of the people". Rais Hussin for your take, People who live in glass houses should not throw stones". Or you cannot see the beam in front of your eyes but you can see a flea across the ocean. Capiche?
Malaysiakini : āAnd what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral,
lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native
land of the hypocrite.ā - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray<
COMMENT | The last time Rais
Hussin mentioned the Uyghur Muslims (as I remember it) was in the
context of Zakir Naik. Free Malaysia Today reported
him as saying, āRais said he personally could see no wrong in Naikās
activities and speeches. Deporting him would be akin to deporting Uighur
(Uyghur) Muslims to China, he said, referring to a request by China for
the extradition of 11 Uighur men who entered Malaysia illegally last
year from Thailand.ā
Seriously? Itās one thing for Muslims to champion the cause of
persecuted Muslims in other countries, but comparing the realities of
the Uyghurs to an alleged money launderer and religious provocateur?
Ever since I started writing for Malaysiakini, I have made
it a point to refrain from writing about international issues. I do this
because I am a firm believer in taking care of the business in our
backyard, instead of pontificating about the alleged transgressions of
others. However, I sometimes have to step into the fray.
And really, equating the alleged systemic discrimination of the
Uyghurs to the Shoah? Remember when Hindraf leader P Uthayakumar was
jailed for six months for making the same kind of claim with regard to
the disenfranchised Indian community? Here is what DPP Noorin Badaruddin
said:
āThe words used by Uthayakumar such as āmini genocideā and āethnic
cleansingā at an international level gives the impression that grave
crimes and racial oppression were committed.ā This should tell us
something about what is acceptable and what isn't when it comes to
making careless statements.
Opposition supporters, now Establishment supporters, have been
writing to me, decrying this op-ed piece by Rais Husin. How can he say
such things when, in our own country, the non-Malays are oppressed, they
ask? People have stopped using the term āapartheidā when they talk to
me about the institutionalised discrimination because they understand
that I go a bit bonkers. The last person who used it got testimonials
from a South African friend of mine, which he submitted in one of the
truth and reconciliation committees. But I digress.
When we talk about systemic oppression like the kind Rais (photo)
talks about, we only have to look at the reality the Orang Asal find
themselves dealing with when it comes to Malay/Muslim hegemons. Not only
have their land be taken away from them, their very culture and
identity have been robbed by conversions ā sometimes forced ā and the
ongoing machinations of the Muslim state. Of course, the kind of
persecution these people face is rarely talked about in the mainstream
media.
Back in 2005, Malaysiakini highlighted one such case of forced conversion among the Orang Asal in Kelantan, with this allegation made by a convert, Hassan bin Ain: "Hassan believes more than 500 had converted to Islam out of the 2,600 Orang Asli in Kuala Betis.
"Over 60 people got duped into converting to Islam the same way as me," he added. "Hassan also claimed that more than 10 physically-disabled, ill, aged
and mentally-unstable Orang Asli were allegedly dragged out of their
homes by force and registered. "One day, my son and his friends who were on their way to play
football at a nearby field were stopped midway by MAIK officials and
made to recite the kalimah shahadah (declaration of testimony) on the spot. Each boy was then given RM400 and a sarong with a white kopiah(skullcap)," he said."
Discovering the real horrors
Malaysians should educate themselves on the realities of these people
when it comes to how the majority deals with minority ethnic
communities - beyond the Chinese/Indian dialectic. Then you will
discover the real horrors of what some communities go through. Add to this the concept of racial and religious superiority of this
Muslim country and it makes it pretty difficult for someone to mount a
rational, credible defence of the plight of Muslims in foreign
countries. Or at least it should. Unless, of course, the point of
raising the plight of Muslims in other countries is just window
dressing?
And really, Islam is not the only Abrahamic faith that the faithful outside of China get worked up about. As reported in the South China Morning Post
(Want to escape poverty? Replace pictures of Jesus with Xi Jinping,
Christian villagers urged):
āThousands of Christians in an impoverished
county in rural southeast China have swapped their posters of Jesus for
portraits of President Xi Jinping as part of a local government
poverty-relief programme that seeks to transform believers in religion
into believers in the party.ā This of course was met with international
condemnation, even from gorups here in Malaysia but not from the
officials of the then Umno state. I am just waiting for my Hindu friends or people who read my articles
for some sort of grievances against China so, that they too can
āchampionā some sort of Hindu related cause against the Peopleās
Republic of China (PRC).
And China has every right to be worried about Islamic extremism. We
could argue about the means they take to ensure their security, but is
this really a productive discussion since we cannot fall back on any
first principles that would legitimise our criticism against the PRC?
Just last year, Foreign Policy magazine wrote report about how the
Islamic State (IS) is attempting to curry favour with Chinaās repressed
minorities: āA 2016 study from New America, a Washington-based think
tank, found 114 Uighurs from Xinjiang joined the Islamic State. Xinjiang
furnished the highest number of foreign ISIS fighters from any one
region of the world outside of Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, the study
found.ā
In my article
about the Rohingya rabbit hole, I cautioned that this sort of Muslim
solidarity should not be something that the Najib administration engages
in and which should not be replayed by the current Harapan regime. āThe
idea that the IS is going to make Southeast Asia as the main theatre of
operations is widely acknowledged in intelligence circles and security
agencies regionally and internationally. We have to remember that the
region provides ample opportunities based on religious and ethnic
conflicts for the Islamic State to latch on to.ā
What does all of this mean? Our relationship with China is already
fraught because we made stupid deals and, as usual, demonised the
Chinese government. Not only that, we continue demonising the Chinese
community here because it makes appeals to the sensibilities of the
political elite. And I m not only talking about the Malay/Muslim
political elites.
Now, of course, we use this issue of the Chinese Uyghur Muslims as
some sort of fig leaf to demonstrate that, as a Muslim nation, we stand
with our brothers overseas, not realising that such proclamations make
it so much easier for foreign groups to view Malaysia as some sort of
safe house to plan and launch terror activities against the Chinese
interests here and elsewhere.
This goes beyond an op-ed piece by a political operative. There are
homegrown activists groups, religious figures and the numerous little
tributaries that plead the case for oppressed Muslims in other countries
based in Malaysia. Some of these groups are even funded by our tax
ringgit.
Besides the obvious danger that these groups may pose, all of
this really detracts from the hard work of getting this country back on
track, and of course, makes a mockery of attempting to change the
mindset of the Malay polity, which is apparently one of the agendas of
this new administration.