– S. Thayaparan, December 28, 2017.

“Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.”

― Voltaire

COMMENT | You can say a lot about PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang and lord knows, I have said most of it in many articles over the years. What you cannot accuse him of is political correctness when it comes to racial and religious politics in this country.

Even when the opposition went through its “PAS for all” kool-aid period, Hadi was chafing at the bit, ever willing to contaminate the Kool-Aid with hints of the real agenda of the Islamists in this country. When he babbles on about a Muslim-only cabinet, the reality is that in Malaysia, this already is the case in substance but not form.

While I appreciate DAP’s Bukit Gelugor MP Ramkarpal Singh’s defence of the secular nature of this country as decided by the highest court in the land, we now know that when it comes to secular (civil) law and religious (syariah) law, the state security apparatus obviously did not get the memo.

Hence, reminding Hadi or anyone for that matter on the secular nature of this country is pointless. When an academic like Shad Saleem Faruqi attempts to do so, he is hounded by the various Islamic agencies who have taken it upon themselves to declare Malaysia an Islamic state on who knows whose authority.

Hadi, meanwhile, has never attempted to hide the fact that he believes Islam is supreme and that everyone else must submit to its authority. Furthermore, when it comes to this bit, “…Islam daripada bangsa yang paling berpengaruh” (Islam originated from the most influential race), this is just the cherry on the cake when it comes to racial and religious supremacy. He is just covering all his bases.

Of course, preacher-politicians like Hadi will always manage to justify their beliefs by quoting from some religious scholar or another. They will never come out with something original (of their own) as to why what is essentially a bigoted form of governance is allowed in Islam. We did have that one chap who claimed that racism was “allowed” in Islam but one would think that a religious scholar like Hadi would have the gumption to come up with his own rationale as to why his agenda for a Muslim-only cabinet was sanction in Islam.

Remember that Hadi is vice-president of an Islamic organisation, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), which has been disavowed by the House of Saud and was described by a prominent Middle Eastern journalist as such – “IUMS members justified violence and started an intellectual war with muftis and traditional Islamic scholars, undermining them in their home countries and ridiculing their religious edicts.”

A Malay-only affair

The reality is that for some time now, all cabinet decisions have been Umno supreme council decisions. And since the Umno supreme council is a Malay-only affair, the argument could be made that there is already an unofficial “Malay-only” cabinet.

Do not take my word for it. In a Malaysiakini interview, former MIC head honcho S Samy Vellu claimed that MIC had no voice in the cabinet. Other MCA leaders have made the same claim at various times in various news outlets. Collective decision-making is difficult when it comes to racial politics because at every turn Umno – or any Malay/Muslim political party – has to demonstrate that they are defending “bangsa dan agama” (race and religion).

Do not get me wrong. The reason why this country has been able to maintain the facade of being a “moderate” Islamic country is the urban demographics and policy decisions that enabled relative economic success despite all the leakages. In others words, there was political will that this country would not turn into just another failed Islamic state.

As I wrote before, “I would argue, and have done so many times, that the only reason why Umno continues to make overtures to the non-Malay community is that it needs them as a fig leaf in its charade as a multiracial/multireligious coalition and maybe to hedge its bets against the possibility of a sizable Malay revolt. Not to mention that the plum urban seats are the trough from which its cronies feed from.”

Now, of course the split in the Malay community, the missteps of the opposition and the machinations of Umno have resulted in the extreme fringe – the unthinking fringe – of the Malay right to come out with all sorts of remedies to “save” the Malay polity.

I do wonder, though, while we have had royal personalities speak out against certain opposition figures and speak out against religious personalities attempting to sow racial and religious discord, but so far there has been no official statement from any royal household over the overtly bigoted and unconstitutional provocation of Hadi. This should tell you something about the political system here in Malaysia.

Muslims cannot decide for non-Muslims

PAS information chief Nasrudin Hassan’s claim that what Hadi meant was that “some cabinet positions must be reserved for Malay-Muslims” is even more of an indictment than what Hadi said because at least Hadi was honest. Nasrudin’s horse manure that Muslims should be the ones making policy and non-Muslims should be the ones implementing them is terrifying and the most insidious aspect of the Islamisation process in this country. As usual, what we are witnesses to is Islamists wanting non-Muslims to be complicit in their subjugation.

Think about this for a moment. Muslim potentates would decide policy and these policies – there is enough empirical evidence to suggest that these policies would be detrimental to non-Muslims – and non-Muslims would be “lucky” enough because this is “unlike other political systems, which only accept those with the same ideology” to implement these policies.

What separates Hadi from the rest of the Umno-aligned herd is that the PAS base still believes that they have a shot at truly influencing the direction of this country. In this case, for instance, they do not view what Hadi said as malicious or bigoted.

They believe that it demonstrates that PAS is willing to work with anyone and that even in an Islamic state headed by PAS, non-Muslims would be part of the government and they would not have a problem only being part of the “implementation” because all the policy decisions made by Muslim potentates would be fair and just.

The funny thing is that state governments controlled by the opposition bend over backwards to accommodate Muslims’ preoccupations and have to continuously defend themselves against charges of racism and yet the mainstream Malay establishment does not disavow someone like Hadi.

You can never win with these people.

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

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.