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."
Wish Hadi was right about DAP’s secularism By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Monday, April 24, 2023
Malaysiakini : At that time, the current prime minister questioned why Hadi was
going about carrying on with this “fitnah” (slander) against the DAP.
The answer is simple, especially when you consider a supremacist reading of religious texts.
PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang
All of this is the farce of the “social contract” which in reality, is unofficial dogma for political power sharing.
Malaysia Madani just renamed it “don’t spook the Malays”.
Hadi’s fabrications and mendacious political rhetoric against the DAP
comes at a time when the institutions of Malay power, the “tiang seri”
as Umno terms it, is shaking in its foundations because of what Hadi,
who claimed to have initiated the Sheraton Move and the formation of a far-right Malay government which was Perikatan Nasional (PN), did.
Hadi and his fellow racial and religious supremacists have been also busy chipping away at the royal institution.
The Bon Odori festival where a PAS operative openly incited rebellion against the advice of a sultan was just the beginning.
Muhyiddin
Yassin, ignoring the advice of the royalty about the formation of this
unity government, was a demonstration to the PN faithful that the
coalition considered itself above the terms of legal and societal norms
of the Malay polity.
And of course, we have Hadi openly defying the Sultan of Terengganu about politics in the mosque and getting away with it.
Perikatan Nasional chairperson Muhyiddin Yassin
Hadi
is treading on dangerous even seditious ground when he accuses the DAP
of using the monarchy as a “shield” as the colonialists did.
Actually,
it is far more complicated than that and if Hadi wants a history lesson
on the nature of the complicity between monarchy and various European
power brokers, I would not mind giving it to him.
However, the
seditious and dangerous argument that Hadi is making, is that if the DAP
and those aligned with the political party are manipulating the
monarchy, then the monarchy is in danger and the only way to save our
royals and the country is through open conflict.
This is why Hadi attempts to paint the DAP as “pro-communist” when
everything the DAP has said and done demonstrates that they are
unrepentant capitalists.
This has led some dissenters of the DAP’s group to characterise the party - Developers Action Party.
If
DAP were really anti-Malay and anti-Islam, this would mean that Penang
is governed by a political party which is a threat to the Malay
community and Islam but they do so without any sanction from the State -
which is supposed to safeguard both.
This would also mean that
the royal houses in states where DAP enjoys support are complicit in
supporting the anti-Malay and anti-Islam agenda of DAP.
Is DAP secular?
Is Hadi really telling the Malay community that DAP and the royalty are conspiring with their anti-Malay and anti-Islam agenda?
And
what a load of horse manure that the DAP is a secularist party. The
fact is DAP working with Malay power brokers has increased funding to
the religious bureaucracy.
It has gone to great lengths to
demonstrate to the Malay polity that they will not only dress up for the
religious occasion but also throw secularism under the bus if it helps
their Malay partners remain in power.
Keep in mind that Lim Kit Siang said that the DAP supports the Islamisation of this country.
Claiming
that DAP supports Islamisation based on the Federal Constitution is
nonsensical since the Islamists claim the very same in their quest for
religious supremacy as Hadi did in his latest broadside against Lim.
The
reality is that the Federal Constitution, like religion, is open to
interpretation, hence any attempt to impose an ideological or religious
agenda when framing policy “based on the Constitution” is an exercise in
sophistry.
How exactly is “Islamisation based on the
Constitution” that DAP supports different from what the deep Islamic
state has been doing?
Lim Kit Siang
As
I have said numerous times, there are no true religious values; there
are only true humanist secular values, and it does nobody any good to
place religion in a position of power and hope that the majority of its
adherents believe in what you – a non-believer – believe in.
And really the DAP has always tried hard “not to spook the Malays” and Hadi knows it. Remember the historic Penang DAP convention in 2010 where for the first time, a doa (Islamic prayer) was recited? This was said back then:
“The
Penang DAP convention raised a few eyebrows when for the first time in
the history of the party, a prayer was recited before the event began.
“Often
labelled a ‘chauvinist and racist' party by its detractors, the
convention invited Tanjong PAS commissioner Yaacob Omar to recite the
prayer.
“When he went up to the stage, Yaacob explained
to the crowd to remain silent during the recital, which went on for
about four minutes.”
"Islam is for all regardless of race,
social standing or political allegiance," Yaacob said before the
recital. "It is not wrong for anyone to recite prayers at an event that
is attended by many non-Muslims as Islamic teaching preaches what is
good for all," he was reported as saying.
I have always maintained
that the DAP, and indeed all non-Malay political operatives, should be
strictly secular in terms of how they present their ideas and agendas.
They
should not give in to the temptation of thinking that they could go the
easy route and manipulate religious sentiment for populist appeal.
All
these non-Muslim political operatives do, when they don the hijab (for
instance), is highlight the hypocrisy, and moral and intellectual
bankruptcy of their own religious agendas.
What is funny is that anecdotally speaking, the DAP’s base seems to think that all this is wonderful.
Unfortunately,
the base is wrong. The reason why Hadi fears secularism is that it
would eventually loosen the theocratic grip of the State on the Malay
masses. This is why he uses this strategy against the DAP.
He
understands that they and their allies are too pusillanimous to offer
an alternative to the Malay polity, even if it causes them short-term
pain but long-term gain.
Readers may have noticed that I have not
addressed Hadi’s ramblings about communism because to do so would
require a deep dive into the Malaysian left - which Umno had destroyed.
It
would mean delving deep into the left-wing politics of PAS and its
Marxian undertones - not to mention personalities. This is a topic for
another time, maybe when Hadi becomes prime minister.
The political terrain of this country would be a lot more hopeful if what Hadi says about the DAP’s secularism were true.
Unfortunately,
it is not and this is why the politics of this country is damned. If
the DAP were indeed secular, the community which would benefit the most
are the Malays.
Proving Hadi wrong means exposing the reality that
the DAP is not only failing in its secular agenda but failing in its
strategy to woo the Malay vote.
The main reason why Hadi, the deep Islamic state and their political proxies fear secularism is simple.
Secularism protects everyone, even people of faith from the coercive aspects of religion.
