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."
Malaysiakini : āAn appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.ā ā Winston S Churchill
COMMENT
| Apparently DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng wants to āengageā with
Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin after Asri (who claims there was a
misrepresentation) made comments about the DAP in the press.
This
is horse manure. The DAP secretary-general is not meeting the Perlis
mufti, but rather, the finance minister of Malaysia is meeting with the
Perlis mufti. Lim Guan Eng, who prides himself on being a āMalaysianā
first (whatever that means), is meeting with a religious operative who
has made it clear that someone like Zakir Naik is beneficial to Islam in
Malaysia. A religious operative who recently backed a Muslim convert
who allegedly disparaged Hinduism. Asri has a beef with the Hindu
community, once claiming that no rational Malaysian worships cows.
How
can the DAP have friendly ties with Asri? The mufti of Perlis has
dismissed the corruption allegations against PAS president Hadi Awang,
claiming that Hadi was a modest and pious man.
What about all the things DAP has said about PAS president Hadi Awang?
Will the DAP concede that it has been wrong about Hadi, and Asri has a
legitimate point of view when it comes to Hadi Awang?
Asri said
that everyone should be ācarefulā about making allegations: āWe punish
what is manifest. God knows all.ā In other words, all those DAP
political operatives, including the Malay power structures of Harapan
that make allegations against Hadi, should be careful, lest they invite
divine retribution. How would it look, the DAP demonising the MCA for
working with PAS, but having no problem when the mufti of Perlis backs
Hadi Awang?
Does anyone really think that Asri is unaware of the
things the Harapan regime has done for Muslims in this country? Does
anyone think that Asri was unaware of the looting of Islamic funds that
was going on when the Najib regime was in power?
Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim Chee Keong (above),
whose work is admirable when it comes to a whole range of issues, is
operating under a delusion in his rambling on about how the DAP needs to
engage with the Perlis mufti. This has always been the problem
with the DAP. In their quest to court the Malay/Muslim vote, they have
mucked about in scared provinces, instead of commanding the secular
higher ground. Forget what Asri said about the DAP and think about
what he said about Muslims being bullied and under threat from the
Harapan regime.
The Harapan regime has backtracked on the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination (Icerd). They have backtracked on the Rome Statute. They
have given asylum to Zakir Naik. They have cleaned up Tabung Haji and
are attempting to carry out reforms on Felda. They have charged
politicians and bureaucrats with stealing from public funds, and kept
the quota systems which favour the Malay majority.
They have a
religious czar who has proposed policies like a syariah-compliant dress
code for the private sector, among other pro-Islamic initiatives. They
have increased funding of the Islamic bureaucracy. The DAP has funded
Muslim entitlement programmes and gone out of its way not to spook the
Malays to the chagrin of some of its base. Now we could argue this
is a āgoodā thing, but there is no rational argument that could be made
in support of the narrative that Muslims are bullied or under threat
under the Harapan regime. Why is Asri carrying on with this narrative?
Because
Asriās narrative is not based on any objective assessment of Harapanās
polices, only on the emotional strategies of his religious supremacy.
Asri feels Muslims are under threat or being bullied because he feels
under threat and bullied. His Islamic narrative, which is overtly
bigoted and misogynistic, has been supplanted by the subtle machinations
of the Harapan state. This, at times, involves sanctioning the Islamic
far-right, much to the annoyance of the Islamists who prefer to operate
without any sanction from a supposedly Islamic state.
The finance minister is meeting with a religious leader who, when he was chiding the DAP for not making its stand clear on P Ramasamy (above, right)
who was accused of being a supporter of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE), said: āI could also see this hate and anti-Islam
(sentiment) on Ramasamy, which is a trait of LTTE.ā
A religious operative who, in a recent interview, claimed that he had the backingof
70 percent of Muslims when it comes to his fracas with the prime
minster, who claimed he was ādeafā to what the Harapan regime had done
for Muslims in this country . I have no idea why Lim Guan Eng
would want to engage with the mufti of Perlis. This perhaps is just
another way for the DAP to attempt to placate the far right forces,
which seems to be the only way the DAP knows how to operate.
The
DAP has a history of propping up so-called āmoderateā Muslim
personalities, only to have those same personalities come back and bite
their behinds. Asri claimed that he was misrepresented. If this were the
case, why not make a statement clarifying his position? Why does it
take a meeting, initiated by the DAP, for him to make his stand clear?
What
someone like Asri needs is legitimacy. What he needs is his so-called
70 percent support from the Muslim community to see that he has enough
clout for the Chinese finance minister to kowtow to his narrative. And
this is exactly what the DAP is doing. The people who buy into the
narrative that Malay/Muslims are under attack will not believe anything
that comes out of the DAP. There is nothing the DAP could do to appease
or please these people. The more the DAP gives legitimacy to these
types of people, the more āmoderateā Muslims will feel that it is
pointless speaking out because the establishment would always enable the
kinds of narratives that are detrimental to them, more importantly,
Malaysia.
What the Harapan regime should be doing is flooding the
state-owned media with all the "good" they have been doing for the
Muslim community. What they should be doing is naming and shaming the
personalities and businesses that have been looting Muslim funds. What
they should be doing is defending the DAP in state-owned media against
the attacks of the far right. Instead, the DAP, like a dog with its tail
between its legs, conjures up a meeting with a mufti who insists his
narratives are the only legitimate Islamic narratives in this country.
There
is nothing non-Muslims can do to appease the Islamists in this country
except to capitulate to their every demand. Why do think this narrative
of Muslims being bullied under a Harapan regime is pushed into the
mainstream? The reason is simple. When hints of progressiveness are
detected, the Islamists and the far right react to protect their turf.
If
the DAP continues giving legitimacy to extreme forces, it is going to
do more damage to this country in the long run. The next religious
provocation will then crop up and the DAP will pussyfoot around the
issue because, to do otherwise, would be to offend people like the mufti
of Perlis.
I was going to write that with friends like Asri, who
needs enemies? But the reality is that with friends like Lim Guan Eng,
who needs enemies?