“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”

– HL Mencken

Four years ago, I got into a little spot of trouble. At the height of the Umno general assembly where Umno people were saying even more dumber things than usual, Iwrote, “I have always been cautious of making Nazi analogies with Umno, having had the misfortune of actually meeting those who profess allegiance to those people and ideas that had disposed of the Weimar Republic. However, this Umno general assembly reeked of the ideology that sustained the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

“With Umno Youth information chief Reezal Merican Naina Merican proclaiming that Umnoputras are the chosen people and God’s choice will always be Umno to rule and liberate this land, what we as non-Malays/Muslims are left with is the cold comfort that as ‘pendatang’, Umno and the God they worship will never consider us as Malaysians.”

These days with the minions of Putrajaya scrambling to protect their kleptocrat-in-chief, all that is left are the scraps at the bottom of the barrel. I have no idea if Malacca Chief Minister Idris Haron is a piece of scrap at the bottom of the barrel but his “US out to kill the Malays” remark is the logical extension of Umno hubris most often mistaken as Malay nationalism.

It is easy to dismiss these remarks as those coming from an Umno bottom feeder ever eager to impress his master at Putrajaya but something deeper is at play here. It is to be expected that someone Umno had anointed to lead a state would make such silly remarks against a so-called “friendly nation” but what is galling is the extreme ease in which sycophants accuse an ally of genocidal intentions to stoke “patriotism” amongst a band of brigands.

“You cheated the Iraqis, you killed the Iraqis, and now you want to kill the Malays in Malaysia,” he pompously claimed. Actually, it was Saddam Hussein who cheated and killed his citizens and at one time, the dictator was an ally to the power brokers in Washington.

If there is a lesson to be learnt, perhaps it is how, Muslim – Saddam was more secular than the rest of his ilk – potentates are always bailed out by foreign powers, while they continue to oppress their citizens. One fine day, their benefactors kick out these same tyrants and the country dissolves into mess of sectarian violence and even more corruption.

Federal minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob may not know what got into his (Idris’s) head but every rational Malaysian knows exactly what is in the Malacca chief minister’s head. The same crap that is shoved into the head of every Malay in this country through state propaganda organs that include the wretched Biro Tatanegara (BTN) courses. However, this statement also demonstrates the relative shelter the Malay community has been lucky enough to have had compared to the non-Malays in this country.

Without turning this into a cultural or racial pissing contest, the reality is that the “Malays”, unlike the constitutionally created ones and the non-Malay populations, have never really been exposed to the kind of evil that societies inflect upon their own or been subject to the kind of colonialism that demanded violence instead of “negotiated” independence.

The Chinese, Indians, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indonesians and the rest of the polyglot that make up Malaysia have a sense of history when it comes to the mass killings of their people. We have butchered our own, had others butcher us and have an understanding of our history and the place it has in our cultural consciousness.

History of violence

The pendatangs acknowledge our history of violence and even contemporary violence; that is why many of us think that our home Malaysia (even though we went through some trying times) is a paradise compared to the lands we came from.

However, to craven Muslims politicians ever willing to stoke the fires of racial or religious discord and ever willing to blame Western imperialism on the failings of their own doing, accusations of genocidal intent from foreign powers comes trippingly on the tongue.

Perhaps this chief minister should acknowledge that Muslims kill one another at greater rate than Western imperialism. Perhaps the chief minister should acknowledge that the caretakers of this so-called religion of peace enslave more Muslims than the Western interference. Perhaps the chief minister should acknowledge that all over the world, Muslims have destroyed indigenous culture in pursuit of fidelity to dogma and sectarian ethos.

Appropos everything, I also look with disdain at those who claim that we are living in an “apartheid state” relying on semantic arguments to support their case and those who claim “ethnic cleansing” when making their case for disenfranchisement.

This brings me to the so-called “wasatiyyah” or “moderation approach” to be practiced by the purveyors of corruption in country. Survey after survey has shown that Islam in Malaysia, while more moderate compared to the other failed Islamic states in the world, continues to be used as a tool of oppression against Muslims and non-Muslims in this country.

I have written so many articles on Islam and the mendacious clerics who support corrupt regimes in the name of Muslim solidarity that some Muslims think that I should be subject to whatever strain of pernicious laws that are used to maintain peace and stability.

Let me be very clear. There is no empirical evidence to support the claim that there is “moderate Islam”. There is only evidence to support the claim that some Muslims believe in secular practices and democracy. The same goes for the other two religions in the Abrahamic mode.

In ‘No peace in religion’, I said “If Malaysia is a moderate Muslim country, then we should be used as example by those countries of how a country that is supposed to be an Islamic state is governed by the rule of law and not rule by law. As usual in typical Malaysian fashion, some aim for the crudest moral argument.”

As long as Islam is used as tool to unify the Malay community, we will always have to contend with religion intruding in the Malaysian personal and public sphere. Correction, as long as Islam is used, there will be no public and personal spheres. All we will have are craven Muslims scholars used by mendacious Muslims politicians, reminding us that this is a religion of peace as long as we do not transgress.

If we continue like this, the real question is, is Malaysia worth saving?

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.