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."
Solehah's Maga - Malays Are Great Always By Andrew Sia
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Malaysiakini : A post by Malay news portal Malaysia Gazette got even more strident comments.
One Izack Saujana said Solehah was brave and not ālembu cucuk hidungā (a cow with a nose ring) that could be pulled here and there. He received close to 900 likes.
One Mey Aprielle commented (in uppercase letters):
SEMOGA DR TERUS KUAT MEMBONGKAR SEJARAH MELAYU DAN ISLAM
(Hope doctor keeps boldly exposing the truth of Malay Muslim history). He received 426 likes.
Donald Trump
The overall mindset seen is: We are victims of the āconspiracyā of
colonial history, and Solehah is our saviour who has revealed the truth.
Never mind the fact that in our country, the Malays control all the
levers of power, including in public universities.
It's like Trump
smartly using racial identity to exploit an āunderdogā identity against
the so-called āswampā and āfake newsā of the elites.
Fact or fable?
Solehah is infamous for her fantastical claims. In November 2025, she asserted
that the Malays taught Romans how to build ships. Forget the
inconvenient fact that the designs of the ships were very different.
Last
September, she claimed in a Gabungan Nasionalis (Nationalist Coalition)
podcast that ancient Malays could fly and even taught the Chinese the
art of āflying kung fuā.
Sahul Hamid Maiddin of Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (Upsi) told the Scoop portal, āSuch claims are simply not logical. History must be based on sources that can be cross-verified.
Prof Solehah Yaacob
āMyths, on the other hand, are folk stories infused with imagination, romanticism and superstition.ā
He
added that the British encouraged legends so that people would remain
lost in fantasies as āescapismā. If so, then it looks like Solehah has
taken over that colonial role.
She also implied the Prophetās
wife, Siti Khadijah, may have had links to the Malays. This looked like
an attempt to gain some reflected glory.
Most recently, she
claimed Kedahās leaders had Ancient Alien ancestors ā just joking, she
said Kedah had much iron ore because of deposits from meteors!
Boat cruises of ātruthā
To
refute Solehah, people have to dig into facts and history. But she
knows many people lack the ability to look deeper or are too lazy to do
so.
There's also āconfirmation biasā - the human tendency to look
for things that support existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory
evidence.
In
other words, people believe their prejudices ā for example, that DAP is
the āgreatest threatā to the Malays, even though the huge scandals of
Tabung Haji, 1MDB and Felda were linked to Umno.
Yet Solehah has clearly been proven āsalahā.
In a 2018 paper for an āIslamic Civilisation Journalā, she wrote that
āa group of historians admitted to fabricating Ancient Greeceā.
Her proof? An article from satirical news outlet The Onion!
If
she doesn't know that satire is not fact, how could she become a
professor? This was a classic ākangkung goreng belachanā job.
I had thought that only less educated or poorer people would be fooled by her.
But
Prof James Chin, who studies Malaysian politics, pointed out that she
has gone on to lead paid boat-cruise tours built around her theories.
Prof James Chin
For
example, Solehah promotes herself as a speaker for the āIslamic
Civilisation Voyage 3.0ā, a four-day cruise from Port Klang to Phuket in
early Dec 3.
During the tour, she will speak on āThe Mystery of the Roman Ship Deceptionā.
Did IIUM review her work?
The Kedah meteors story seemed to be the last straw that broke IIUMās back.
Shortly after, the university announced on Aug 23 that Solehah had been terminated from service on April 27.
But
why delay announcing this by 118 days or four months? Why was she still
allowed to go around claiming to be a āprofessorā? Did she have some
special āprotectionā?
IIUM
Thereās
a fresh fracas with Solehah claiming she was āunfairly dismissedā ā if
so, let IIUM pay compensation. But thatās just a sideshow distraction
from more crucial issues.
Chin noted that IIUM finally took action
because of the negative publicity. So, he asked, if social media had
not exposed her "research", would she still be a professor?
In other words, did anyone internally check her work or peer-review it? If there were, how did she pass them?
If professors at Oxford or Cambridge had made equally bizarre claims without proper proof, how long would they have lasted?
How did Solehah remain as a āprofessorā long after she was caught for citing The Onion as āevidenceā?
A deeper disease?
One academic in a public university told me, āTo get promoted, we have to play the racial game, or we get sidelined.ā
So the real problem could be: was Solehah tolerated, maybe even encouraged, by the system?
The rewriting of history to glorify one race has been going on for years in Malaysia.
Solehah was just its comical extreme.
Historian Ranjit Singh Malhi has pointed out repeatedly that school history textbooks have covered up the roles of non-Malays in building this country.
For
example, the vital role of Chinese tin miners and Indian rubber tappers
has been reduced to just a few sentences. The hard work of Indian
workers who literally built roads, railways, bridges and ports all over
Malaya has also been ignored.
Our countryās Indian (Hindu and Buddhist) past is denied, said Ranjit, even though many Malay words such as suka, duka, kapal, kedai, raja and even bahasa and bumiputera all come from Indian languages.
Even the role of the most bumi of bumiputera, the Orang Asli, has been ignored, lamented Ranjit.
Rightful āmastersā
All this seems to point in one direction ā that this country was first established, then built up by one group.
Therefore, the land belongs to them as the rightful ātuanā or āmastersā.
Many embrace this rewritten ātruthā as a kind of soothing ubat or drug, as seen in the many online comments supporting Solehah.
It masks the pain of ordinary Malays struggling as food delivery riders or low-level staff while the elite tuan grab most of the wealth.
Who
cares about āpetty concernsā such as jobs, corruption and education,
when people are comforted by Solehah's fables of Maga - Malays Are Great
Always.
