Sensitive talk

There is no denying the sense of impotence and despair that has engulfed Malaysians in recent days. And we are not talking about the recurring haze. Muslims feel their position and their religion are being questioned, while non-Muslims are increasingly paranoid about their status as citizens under one common Constitution. There is a chasm that cannot be bridged anytime soon and I see people taking positions and digging in.

Some parties think dialogue will solve the issue (albeit behind closed doors) but the reality is not so encouraging. Correct me if I am wrong - there is no state in the world with a Muslim majority (or a significant minority) that provides any platform for dialogue. None. There are too many taboos, too many non-negotiables; non-Muslims are right to ask why they constantly have to acquiesce in the name of ‘tolerance’ when none is forthcoming their way

And what’s happening along the corridors of power? Is an ‘elegant’ response coming from the PM who in his election speeches advanced himself as PM of ALL Malaysians?

Ioannis Gatsiounis of Asia Times provides a commentary that not so delicately suggests that history may already be written (or is it rewritten?) even as we look for answers.

Abdullah has been less than resolute in handling Malaysia's creeping fundamentalism, which is not to suggest the former Islamic scholar is promoting an intolerant strain of Islam. To be fair, Malaysia is a tricky place to govern. It requires deftly balancing the needs of the majority Muslim Malays with those of the Indian and Chinese minorities to prevent social unrest. And yet Abdullah knows that maintaining political control will require first and foremost placating the Malays.

But by caving in to hardline sensitivities over inter-faith dialogue and the supremacy of the constitution, Abdullah, inadvertently or otherwise, appears to be going beyond merely accommodating the Malay community to the point of empowering its fringes. And the dangers this may engender should not be underestimated - this being an era in which a growing number of Muslims around the world are resorting to intolerance to advance their causes and feeling inspired by the results (violent protests against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed is but one example). [More]

Dr M's cause

Ex-PM Dr Mahathir is at it again in his offensive against his designated successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi by calling him to step down. “If we have a prime minister who sold the country, why wait for five years? We have to take early action,” said Dr M. “We must not always say we support the prime minister.”

As always 81-year old Dr M sticks to his oft-repeated philosophy of supporting the cause more than the person. It happened when Anwar Ibrahim was removed. Now as then Dr M says he has no quarrel with UMNO, did not ‘criticise’ UMNO, but its leader. To illustrate his view, he has consistently referred to UMNO pioneer Onn Jaafar and Malaysia’s first PM Tunku Abdul Rahman who themselves resigned or were pressured to step aside ostensibly for deviating from UMNO’s cause. Is it merely a severe case of ex-PM syndrome as former DPM Musa Hitam put it?

I have long stopped being surprised by Malaysian politics. The tragedy as I see it is due precisely to “the cause is more important than the man” schtick that Dr M has articulated so well. Ideas have consequences as they say. Somewhere behind this view is an ideology that is premised on a poor understanding of the value of personhood.

In Morris West’s book The Devil’s Advocate, a much-loved priest Father Nerone in a remote Italian village is captured by communist rebel Il Lupo. Their conversation is instructive, and illustrates the place of Man – tainted as he is by the Fall – in Biblical theology:

Nerone shrugged.

“The work isn’t important. A million men can do it better. You will probably do it better yourself. The work dies. How many men did Christ cure? And how many of them are alive today? The work is an expression of what a man is, what he feels, what he believes. If it lasts, if it develops, it’s not because of the man who began it, but because other men think and feel and believe the same way. Your own party’s an example of it. You’ll die too, you know. What then?”

“The work will go on,” said Il Lupo. The clear eyes lit suddenly as if at a great revelation. “The work will go on. The old systems will perish of their own corruption, and the people will come into their own. It’s happened in Russia. It will happen in Asia. America will be isolated. Europe will be forced into line. It will happen. Nerone, I may not be here to see it, but I’m not important.”

“That’s the difference between us,” said Giacomo Nerone softly. “You say you’re not important. I say I am…. what happens to me is eternally important, because I was from eternity in the mind of God…. Me! The blind, the futile, the fumbling, the failed. I was, I am, I shall be!”

“You believe that, really?” Il Lupo’s eyes probed him like a scalpel.

“I do.”

“You’ll die for it?”

“It seems so.”

Il Lupo stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. He said with flat conviction: “It’s a monstrous folly.”

“I know,” said Giacomo Nerone. “And it’s gone on for two thousand years. I wonder whether yours will last so long.”

Ahmadinejad's hour

Iranian President’s visit to Malaysia on the occasion of the OIC’s emergency meeting on the Hizbollah-Israel conflict was prominently reported. Here is he (l) with our PM Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (r). Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel is an instrument of the US and Britain to dominate the Middle East, and that “It is an illegitimate regime and there is no reason for its existence.” There’s a nice guy for you. He previously put the world on notice after his election by saying the Holocaust was fiction and that Israel had to be “wiped off the map.”

Now the man is here, welcomed and feted as “Man of the Hour” in the New Straits Times own words (Aug 4 06). Here’s what else he said during his brief visit in KL: “Although the main cure is the elimination of the Zionist regime, in this stage an immediate ceasefire should be implemented…”

Someone help me because I have difficulty understanding what the honourable President is saying. If someone’s avowed aim is to eliminate you and erase you from the face of the earth, what legitimacy does this person have in calling for a “ceasefire”?

Here's what a Singapore foreign ministry spokesman said:

"We are utterly appalled by the statement. The situation in Lebanon is very grave. The urgent immediate need is to secure humanitarian relief for the civilian casualties."

"Such irresponsible and provocative statements are obviously intended only to further inflame the conflict and not address either the immediate humanitarian needs or the longer term goal of a durable solution that will address the security concerns of all parties."

No prizes for guessing what Malaysia said.

Interestingly, on the same day NST carried an Op-Ed by Michael Slackman titled A STEP BACKWARDS FOR IRANIAN DEMOCRACY. A blurb beneath the header read, "Iran, backer of Hizbollah, is using the Lebanon conflict to suppress political opposition at home."It first appeared in the NYT linked here from IranFocus.

See also: The Hizbollah Program

Uniformity's curse

We joined the crowds at Doulos when it was berthed at Westport after dropping off Ethan and Elliot for their TeenStreet reunion Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago. And oh the crowds! You would be forgiven if you thought there was a fire sale. Well, a lot of the books on display were going quite cheap although the range wasn’t the type that would have me jumping for joy. I think I stayed no more than an hour.

But I found this book – Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader by James Bratt – (RM24!) which is a collection of writings by Calvinist theologian-politician Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was an intellectual giant and a prolific writer publishing hundreds of books and articles on topics such as politics, literature, art, philosophy, and social issues. He was also a homeschooler, so I feel a special kinship towards him being a homeschooling dad myself.

The late Francis Schaeffer was much influenced by Dutch reformer Kuyper and helped to popularize his work. Others have claimed that Kuyper’s theology of natural order and common grace provided the basis for the institutionalization of apartheid in South Africa (this 1995 monograph gives a different viewpoint). Anyway here’s a fascinating excerpt from a criticism on modern culture and what Kuyper calls the 'curse' of uniformity. Interesting read. Although it was written in 1869, Kuyper could well be speaking about our own times today:

Humanity fashions for itself an iron fence made up of identical stiles. That is its unity. But if you wish to se the unity of God, go out into a wild forest, observe there the crooked trunks, the twisted branches, the mingling of colours, the endless variety of shades, and not how it is precisely in the whimsical interplay of colours and lines that unity is revealed in its finest expression. But what is our age doing? On the model of that iron fence, it trims frolicsome shrubbery into a smooth hedge and prunes those wild trunks to the very top to create a forced unity in the tangled mass by an artificial uniformity. It confuses monotony with harmony and fancies that the full accord of life has been found when every instrument is properly attuned and no dissonances heard…The average is the standard to which it artificially elevates the one and forcibly flattens others, which explains the mediocrity of modern life. In fact, the flourishing of the arts is the tree of true unity, out of an impulse toward a fuller life. The curse of uniformity is thus manifest in the fact that our modern life is almost totally devoid of artistic talent of any kind, poverty-stricken in aesthetic vitality, and totally destitute of artistic creations. Let no one think that this deficiency is accidental. It is rather the necessary consequence of the drive toward uniformity.

I was recently reminded by a blogger that the last time anyone experimented in racial and cultural purity (doesn't that sound like uniformity?) it gave birth to the totalitarian state of the Third Reich. Sobering food for thought.