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Is Dr M to UMNO what Samy Vellu is to MIC?

Posted: 04 Nov 2013 06:57 PM PST

(a) Malay Mail Online = BN loss in Sungai Limau signals Dr M's waning influence, says DAP

"It is clear that Mahathir's influence has receded with this win," Zairil, the son of a former Umno minister, told The Malay Mail Online last night after the official results announced a PAS victory by a lowered 1,084-vote margin.

(b) TMI - Sungai Limau by-election results: Is this the end of Mahathirism?

When Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad descended on Sungai Limau during the last hours of campaigning on November 3, one longtime PAS activist from Alor Star described it as a "relief".

"Many people in Sungai Limau come from a religious education background," said the activist, referring to the community of teachers, students and parents involved in the area's clutch of private and public Islamic schools, which are nationally renowned.

"They still remember how Mahathir used to run down PAS and our Islamic state concept," said the activist of the former prime minister's endless tirades against PAS in the few years before he resigned in 2003.

Personally I don't agree with the the DAP view that PAS' victory in Sungai Limau spells the end of Mahathirism or the waning of Mahathir's power.

Sungai Limau has long been a PAS stronghold thus one could even argue, if one wants to, that Mahathir's campaigning there helped slash the majority PAS had enjoyed in the May 2013 state election by half, thus indicating he is still influential.

I suspect DAP's attempts to link PAS victory in its traditional stronghold of Sungai Limau to 'evidence' of Mahathir's waning influence (or even the end of the so-called Mahathirism) as merely a psychological campaign to demoralize the pro Mahathir forces in UMNO and Perkasa.

However, as written two paragraphs above, I stated that "one could even argue ... yadda yadda ...", which incidentally I'm not, because while I believe Mahathir's political influence in UMNO has indeed waned as indicated in Mukhriz loss in UMNO's VP race, it has nothing to do with the expected PAS victory.

Indeed, no matter how influential Dr Mahathir might still have been, it'd have been unlikely his campaigning in Sungai Limau could topple PAS in the Islamic party's stronghold especially when the previous PAS ADUN had recently passed away and would be a factor in ensuring the PAS by-election candidate receive sympathy votes.

My aim in disputing DAP's claim is principally to show it had not been a correct assumption but rather, as I suspect, a psychological strike against Dr Mahathir's supporters in UMNO and Perkasa.

In fact I wonder what brought about the quite substantial reduction in majority in the PAS victory as compared to the May 2013 results.

But I suspect the local Chinese have been disenchanted with PAS because its previous state government had through its religious-based policies, intruded offensively into Chinese affairs like dress codes for the Chinese very non-Islamic festivals - see my February 2013 post More power to koe-tai - and perhaps also the PAS state government's increase in reserved housing for Malays in the state from 30% to 50%, and who knows, even the abattoir cerita.

Also, PAS' Kelantan state government has troubled many Chinese by their similar (legislated) intrusions into Chinese affairs, as an example, in the hair-dressing salon incident.

Then, PAS Youth Chief Nasrudin Hassan made stupid statements that abandoned babies (through illicit births) were the result of non-Muslim events like Valentine's Day and New Year's Day celebrations.

Malaysiakini reported in 2010 in its Valentine's Day blamed for baby dumping that Nasrudin Hassan had blamed the festivity celebrations on those two days as encouraging free sex that led to ... yadda yadda yadda ... culminating in baby dumping.

Nasrudin claimed: "It's an indication that the 'mating season' occurred during the New Year's Day celebrations."

Balderdash, my dear Yang Amat Alim, New Year's Days and Valentine's Days have been celebrated all over the world, yet we don't see our kind of baby dumping in those foreign countries. Why?

Tell you a bloody secret mate ..... because their societies are far more humane, compassionate, caring, supportive and most important of all, less misogynistic.

Misogynistic? Please read my 2006 post Wives not satisfying husbands are abusive!

And incidentally Nasrudin, what about those numerous cases of incest which occurred more frequently in Kelantan and Terengganu than any other states? Have you yet backtracked them 9 months to either New Year's Days or Valentine's Days, or more likely, Budu Days wakakaka - see Has Aphrodisiac Budu Been Responsible?

Stoning women to death, blaming non-Islamic celebrations on baby dumping, blaming women for everything, wanting to punish women – really I dread to think of such leaders for our nations. But 'tis the nature of the beast.

Early last year I had written in Valentine's Day's wild sex romps & orgies:

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Hijrah in Reverse, Part 1

Posted: 04 Nov 2013 03:56 PM PST

I posted notes on my Facebook page; a forum I utilise primarily as a tool for intellectual engagement, somewhat like a digital/electronic platonic cave or as a virtual salon of the French Revolutionary period, to discuss anything under the sun with view of deconstructing dominant ideas of the day.

islam religion muslim mosque 1 Yes, "hijrah" is the beginning of the new year of the people of the Islamic faith but my questions were these: has the Islamic intellectual paradigm evolve since the 1900s? Has religion courted philosophy? What is still ailing the "Muslim mind" and what fundamental shifts need to be engineered?

These are questions that came to me spontaneously that asked to be posted for members of my Facebook forum I now call the Trishakti salon.

I posted a thought: perhaps the Quran is too personal and personalising of a text to be transformed into a hegemonising and universalising text for an "Islamic state"; perhaps an Islamic state exists in its impossibility, still an "imagined community" ruled by perfect people over perfect people they govern.

Perhaps the Quran is too vague of a grand narrative for political philosophy and that any interpretation of it as one, will run into the unresolvable problem of getting entangled into the complexity of praxis (ideology to practice) of the various "mazhabs/schools of thought", each competing with each other on what truth is.

And we have not yet talked about the nagging problems of the use and abuse of the sayings of the prophet (the hadiths)

Sense and meaning

I thought perhaps the Quran is meant only for personal reading, best done hermeneutically, in that as many as there are souls in this world, therein lies the number of possible ways to make sense and meaning of how one ought to live his/her life as a "Muslim" or a "person at peace" or have submitted to a life of peace and peace-making.

I don't know ... as Socrates would say ... the world of Islam is at best, politically messy, grounded in the triumph of the disabling influences of culture.

I thought, ala the Jeffersonian (American philosopher-statesman) ideal, had the Malaysian constitution clearly separated religion and the state, Malaysians would probably have a less complicated scenario of race-religious relations and class. Rather, race issues would predominate, making resolutions easier.

Countries claiming to be Islamic states are either ruled by dictators or despots, prone to perpetual revolutions due to its internal contradictions.

Like an evolving self and an evolving soul, liberal democracy may still be a useful political philosophy better than theocracy, as Man essentially are not born-sinners to be cleansed by the pepper spray of the state nor born to suffer to be robbed of his rights and be happy suffering.

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Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Selasa, 5 November 2013

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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