Rudyard Kipling"
“When 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 soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It 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."
Normalising fascism via 'deviant' rehab centres By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Monday, December 04, 2023
Malaysiakini : However, liberal Muslims should be worried too. As the state Islamic
Religious Affairs Committee chairperson Mohd Fared Mohd Khalid said:
“The rehabilitation centre will not only tackle those who have veered
from the right path, but it will also help those convicted of committing
same-sex relations or LGBTQ+ by the Syariah Court.”
“Those who
have veered from the right path” is the key here. I understand how
threatened LGBTQ+ people feel but the real targets of such centres will
eventually be people whom the religious state has deemed to have “veered
from the right path”.
I would argue that this would start with
LGBTQ+ activists and end with Muslims who oppose religious law. Keep in
mind that when it comes to the Madani government and Perikatan Nasional,
there is very little sunlight between the two when it comes to such
issues.
We have to remember that what is considered “deviant” is
not written in stone. Different states have different definitions of
what they consider “deviant” when it comes to religion.
Consider
the fatwa by the Selangor religious department against Sisters of Islam
(SIS) that claimed that the group was “deviant”.
After having lost at the Court of Appeal, SIS is appealing
to the Federal Court. Keep in mind how the fatwa defined deviancy when
it came to SIS – “SIS Forum, individuals, organisations and institutions
adopting ideologies of liberalism and pluralism are deviant and against
the teaching of Islam.”
But
what exactly is deviant about SIS? It might be something with their
free Telenisa legal clinic, which is part of a hidden Islamic narrative
that could be used as a counterpoint to the kind of establishment religious narratives that progressive political operatives claim they want to move away from.
Can you imagine the potential if something like Telenisa was given national coverage on state-owned media?
‘Deviant’ figures
Then there are independent preachers like Wan Ji Wan Hussin who gained infamy for being sentenced
for insulting the Selangor sultan, but was always considered a
“deviant” especially when he criticised how the religious bureaucracy in
this country operated.
Preacher Wan Ji Wan Hussin
He
triggered extremists when he said something like: “I don't agree that
only Islam can be propagated. The Federal Constitution states that, but I
don't agree with it from the viewpoint of religion. Let the law
practitioners debate if it’s from the law’s point of view.
“But as
someone who studied religion, that statement is wrong. Non-Muslims
should be given the right to give their views, as opposed to only the
Muslims being able can do so. Maybe that's why people have accused me of
being ‘liberal’.”
Then of course there was the always-interesting late Kassim Ahmad.
To
his admirers, the persecution of this public intellectual demonstrated
the fear the state had of what he wrote and said, and this made him the
poster child for the kind of Islam they believed was “acceptable” in a
multiracial and multi-religious country like Malaysia.
To his
detractors, he was a purveyor of falsity that threatened Muslim
solidarity and he was a puppet of the liberal West whose writings and
speeches would cause the collapse of Malay/Muslim political and
religious hegemony.
Indeed, some progressive supporters would be
perplexed by some of the things he said about certain progressive
politicians and the religious state, to which after they had branded him
a deviant and an “enemy” of Islam.
Kassim Ahmad
The truth was that Kassim was a devout Muslim who believed that his faith was hijacked
by interpreters who had agendas of their own that were not compatible
with his interpretation of what would lead to a liberated world.
Us vs them
What
religious extremism does - and it does this everywhere - is to make a
clear distinction between “us” and “them”. What they want the Muslim
community to understand is that there will always be deviants who
threaten the foundational aspects of the religion.
For
decades, the Islamic bureaucracy through its various tributaries - has
moulded a young voting polity to despise democratic traditions and
norms, with the belief that doing so makes you a better Muslim.
The
demonisation of Muslims who do not follow this groupthink is the
underlying cause of tension within the Malay community, even more so
than the cultural war with the non-Muslim communities.
What
centres like these will eventually demonstrate is that any form of
dissent against totalitarian or fascist religious ideas will be defined
as deviant.