Exploitation Of Religion For Political Gain [Part 2]

The Muslims in this country have certainly come of age. Lovingly protected by the government against the pitfalls of sin and eternal damnation, today a growing majority of Muslims are attracted to the beautiful notion of being governed by the hudud penal code and becoming a true Islamic nation.

It is wonderful to know that a Muslim NGO has called for the banning of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s “My Name Is Khan” movie which confuses Muslims as it promotes liberal Islam and religious pluralism. It has also warned Malaysian broadcasters against airing the hit film and called for the blocking of the distribution of the film CD.

Malay right-wing group Perkasa also called for Muslims nationwide to boycott award-winning singer Jaclyn Victor for singing the Malay-language Christian song “Harapan Bangsa”. PAS Youth has done its bit to ban Valentine’s Day, a well-known Western celebration and live concerts which promote a loose lifestyle. And now it wants to meet the King, because the MCA president refuses to apologise for purportedly insulting Islam.

PAS is also ready to hold a discussion with former Perlis mufti Prof Madya Mohd Aszri Zainul Abidin on the “Ayatollah” issue should it ever come to power. Malay bibles have been banned in the Peninsula and the government is serious to disallow Allah’s name to be uttered by non-Muslims. Maybe, the time is ripe for the Muslims in this country to have an Islamic state.

Read more here: 

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2012/11/05/malaysia-%E2%80%93-the-islamic-state/

The tables are now turned. The leaders of Umno and MCA are turning their respective parties into morbid supremacist parties. The very oaths they promised to uphold to create a nation based on shared ideals and ideas, they are the first to break them. They have proven to be utterly irresponsible. The recent outbursts by MCA leaders appear dangerously to reflect Hitleristic inclinations. Chua Soi Lek and his cabal of morbid anti Islam and anti-Malays are making out the Chinese as anti-Islam and yellow supremacists. Just like Hitler from his Mein Kampf, the speeches by Chua Soi Lek and leaders of his ilk, show clearly that they view racial conflict as the determining factor in Malaysian history. Race is not simply just a political issue to be used to curry the favour of the Chinese masses, but the granite foundation of Hitler’s Chua Soi Lek’s ideology. Will the majority of right thinking Malaysian Chinese identify with anti-Islam and anti-Malay MCA?

The Umno people must be blind to the emerging fact that MCA is both anti Islam and by extension anti Malay. But then you have a not so intelligent Umno president who goes around performing the obligatory prayers but who cannot give another example of an unclean mughallazah. With Najib leading Malaysia, we do not have a future. Chua Soi Lek is a racist, anti-Islam and anti-Malay. If 80 per cent of those who lived under Islamic government are poor and illiterate and that Islamic laws sanctioned the rape of thigh revealing ah-moys in short skirts, then who is the founder of all higher humanity and material advancement? Chua Soi Lek and the Chinese? That sounded to me similar to the exhortations of Hitler and his Aryan race. That all manifestations of human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan? Read MCA and Chua Soi Lek? Was that the basis for asking an additional RM 50million but in the end got RM 30 million more that Chua Soi Lek asked? So MCA and Soi Lek must be treated as coiffured peacocks? Soi Lek’s and the other MCA minions gave the inference that MCA  is the Prometheus of mankind from whose bright forehead the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times.

So Soi Lek warns Malaysians and the Chinese especially  exclude and reject him and the MCA and a few thousand years darkness will again descend on the earth, human culture will pass, and the world of Malaysians turn to a desert. The world, my dear Soi Lek, does not revolve around MCA. Because to Soi Lek; culture and civilisation in this country are inseparably bound up with the presence of the Aryan MCA. If he and MCA die out or decline, then Malaysia is doomed. Mca plans to do 8 mega fund raising dinners to strengthen its war chest.

Soi Lek and other MCA leaders say the walkout that took place when it did such a dinner in Johor was not a reflection of eroding support for MCA. Then why is Soi lek venting his anger at China Press for reporting the walkout? The fact of the matter is- support for MCA is thinning out. And MCA and its supporters know it. Rich and not so rich Chinese are no longer supporting MCA and Umno. So, MCA goes on the offensive, attacking what it sees as the one thing horrifying Chinese.

The creation of an Islamic state and the implementation of Islamic laws especially hudud. Its principal unifying theme to mobilize Malaysian Chinese is to scare Chinese of the specter of hudud and an Islamic state being established in Malaysia. That agenda says MCA, will impoverish Malaysia because 80% of the people living in Islamic countries with Islamic law are poor and illiterates. Islam will license Muslims to rape cheongsam clad and armpit revealing Chinese ah-moys.

If the Malaysian Chinese support MCA, they are identifying with a party that is anti-Islam and anti-Malay. Meanwhile neutered and eunuch Umno watches passively. — sakmongkol.blogspot.com

Read more here:

http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=43378:how-stupid-of-scorpenes--the-navy-chief-hudud--the-mca&Itemid=2#

Islam Means Peace

September 22, 2012.

The Islamic Renaissance Front views the recent murders and uproar over the film “Innocence of Muslims” with much sadness and bafflement.

All available facts suggest that “Innocence of Muslims” is not even a film. What is currently known about it was available in the widely circulated YouTube clip which ran for a total of some 13-odd minutes. What is worse, most critics are in agreement on the film’s utterly poor quality — cheap sets, mediocre actors, bad voice-overs and incomprehensible narrative — all of which explains why no one had even heard of the so-called film until Muslims decided to make a fuss about it.

Indeed, the added tragedy is not so much that the film is Islamophobic, which it clearly is, but that the unnecessary attention given to it by angry Muslims, eventually gave the film far more publicity than it deserves.

Why?

The question is why. What is behind the apparent trend of Muslim hypersensitivity? For the protests is just one occurrence out of countless others before, whereby masses of Muslims occupy public space to pressure some form of censure, punishment or banning of some product for insulting Islam. Rather than to reflect, negotiate or dialogue the tenor has often been to confront and suppress.

The most well-known case to date was the furore over Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses”. More recently there were the Danish cartoons. Even the rather well produced “The Message”, directed by Moustafa Akkad in 1976 with Anthony Quinn as the main actor, which did not portray the Prophet at all was deemed by many Muslims to be offensive. A Muslim group staged a siege against the Washington DC chapter of B’nai B’rith, threatening to blow up the building and its inhabitants under the false belief that Quinn portrayed the Prophet.

We now witnessed the needless deaths of dozens of innocent civilians as a result of violent protests that only reinforced the distorted image of Islam as a religion of violence and intolerance. It portrays the vicious face of a religion that was supposed to be a religion of peace and compassion.

The West?

When one observes the discourse closely, one will find that what underlies the narrative is a sense of defeat and insecurity upon being overwhelmed by what is often broadly termed as “the West”. This sentiment is an obvious continuation of an earlier resentment against Western colonialism, which almost all Muslim-majority countries today experienced in one form or another. Daily life in the age of globalisation too has seen an increase of presence by Western products as well as political and cultural values. Geopolitically, the presence of Western military forces in Muslim countries is all too apparent and overwhelming.

All this has somehow been viewed by Muslims as a sign that Islam is left behind, in one way or another, as a civilisation. That in turn further reinforces the anxiety of powerlessness before fearful imaginations of a monolithic behemoth called “the West”. From there, everything Islamic is juxtaposed against it, giving rise to a mood of scepticism against anything and everything that comes from the so-called “West”.

Towards openness and dialogue

But the situation is not that simple. While there has been much decline in science and learning in the Muslim world, which is undeniably tied to a history of colonial exploitation, Muslims must learn to take responsibility for the course of their own progress. Thus, rather than to recoil in defensiveness against everything Western or offensive, there must be instead, an attitude of critical reflection and openness to ideas.

Progress requires freedom, for no genuine learning can proceed when power is imposed from without on what can be said and heard. To embrace this is not to embrace or justify Islamophobic or racist sentiments. It is rather to affirm that racist or Islamophobic sentiments are best dealt with through dialogue, learning and empathy rather than brute force or coercion.

Hate must be combated. Oppression must end. But Muslims will only fail themselves if they proceed in a stupor of insecurity and anger.

Islam is a religion of patience and compassion

There is nothing in Islam that says hate must be combated with more hate. Recall, when the Prophet Muhammad was just beginning his mission, a woman placed faeces at his door in hatred of Islam. Muhammad endured the humiliation peacefully, neither choosing to retaliate in anger or violence, to exemplify that ethos of calm and compassion that defined the eventual success of Islam in Mecca.

Conservative Muslims tend to regard such instances as inevitable given that Muslims did not get in power until Medina, but they forget the historical fact that it was Muhammad’s exemplary character as a clear-headed leader in Mecca that compelled the Medinans to turn to him as an arbiter and leader for their fragmented city in the first place.

Calm and compassion needed in Malaysia too

Yesterday, thousands gathered outside Masjid Jamek Kampung Baru and the US Embassy to protest the “Innocence of Muslims”. Interestingly this saw members of the Islamist party (PAS) and the main ruling Malay party (Umno) marching for a similar cause for once, even prompting the Umno Youth chief to invite PAS to join the ruling coalition.

It is too early to say if this will lead to anything but it does reveal again an age-old fact about Malay politics, namely in how the vagueness of “Malay and Muslim unity” is used as a pretext to overlook other more concerned issues, such as socio-economic justice and multiracial solidarity. Emotions and passions reign ahead of clear-headed rationale and human values.

The Islamic Renaissance Front once again calls for all Muslims to focus on the central agenda of Islam and that is the end of oppression and the establishment of a just society whereby all citizens irrespective of race and creed are treated equally. Enough lives, time and effort have been wasted over this film. It is time to move on and wake up.

* This Islamic Renaissance Front statement carries the names of Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa, Ahmad Fuad Rahmad, Fadiah Nadwa Fikri, Rizqi Mukhriz and Ehsan Shahwahid.

Extracted from: http://www.themicahmandate.org/2012/09/senseless-rage-over-anti-islam-film-islamic-renaissance-front/

Does 'Sam Bacile' – the person allegedly behind the film that has triggered violence in Libya – even exist?

By Jenny McCartney. Published by The Telegraph on 13 September 2012.

A deepening mystery surrounds the personage of "Sam Bacile": the film-maker who allegedly made “Innocence of Muslims”, a film about Islam (which curiously few people seem ever to have watched in its entirety), the crudely insulting "trailer" for which has triggered such a violent reaction in Libya and elsewhere. "Bacile", which seems to be a pseudonym, reportedly described himself to the press as an "Israeli Jew" who lives in California and worked in real estate.

Israel says it has no record of anyone under that name: indeed, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry described the film-maker as "a complete loose cannon and an unspeakable idiot". A consultant on the film, Steve Klein, said that "Bacile" was neither Israeli nor Jewish and that he did not even know his real name, but that those involved in the production had anticipated that it would cause unrest: “We went into this knowing what was probably going to happen.” Well, not quite everyone, it seems. The actors and actresses appeared to think they were taking part in another kind of production entirely, and have now found themselves caught up in a horrific international controversy.

Does "Sam Bacile" even exist? Inquiries have led to Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian living in California who has been convicted of bank fraud and who admits involvement in the film, but denies that he is "Bacile". Perhaps, in the weeks to come, he and Mr Klein may be able to enlighten the public further.

Of course, the blame for the attack on the US consulate at Benghazi which killed four US citizens – including the US Ambassador Chris Stevens – rests with those who carried it out. Of course, in an ideal world, individuals would be free to say even deliberately unpleasant and insulting things about any religion without inciting a murderous response.

But we live in the real world, and the Middle East is a political powder-keg, already rendered even more unstable than usual by civil war in Syria, the collapse of long-standing regimes in Libya and Egypt, and the international intensification of tension about Iran’s nuclear programme. What the makers of the trailer for "Innocence of Muslims" – rather like their fellow-traveller, the Florida pastor Terry Jones who made a stupid show of Koran-burning – have done is to throw a match into that powder-keg, igniting a blaze which has devoured other people.

There is a clear difference between displaying courage in facing down extremist interpretations of Islam (one thinks of Salmaan Taseer, the late Governor of the Punjab, who was murdered after he opposed Pakistan's blasphemy laws) and making a crude, deliberately inflammatory attack upon the religion itself. The former is the action of of a brave individual, and the latter of a dangerous clown playing with fire. We should not be tempted to mix them up.

Link: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jennymccartney/100181003/does-sam-bacile-the-person-allegedly-behind-the-film-that-has-triggered-violence-in-libya-even-exist/

Related reports:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443524904577649891086383820.html

Sam Bacile/Bassel is not an Israeli-American, and his attempt to pass himself off as one is a potentially deadly slander. His film—if there really is any footage beyond the 14-minute clip—did not cost anything like $5 million to make. There is no cabal of Jewish donors who put up the money. Sam Bassel, or whoever used that name as a Facebook alias, speaks and writes fluent Arabic and likely has an Egyptian background. The name Abanob Basseley is, as one Egyptian friend tells me, as typically Coptic as, say, Mohammad is Muslim or Shlomo is Jewish. (St. Abonoub is a Coptic saint named after an Egyptian child martyred by the Romans.) The fact that the film was publicly promoted by Morris Sadek, the head of the National American Coptic Assembly, also suggests a Coptic connection to the film.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/13/friends-of-sam-bacile-a-whos-who-of-the-innocence-of-muslims-film-project/

Public records searches by TIME and others have yielded nothing tangible about a Sam Bacile in California, leading many to conclude that the name is a pseudonym. The Israeli government said it had no record of Bacile as a citizen. Steve Klein (see below), a backer and purported consultant on the film, told The Atlantic he was neither Israeli or Jewish. “This guy is totally anonymous. At this point no one can confirm he holds Israeli citizenship and even if he did we are not involved,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told CNN.

The Speck Of Sawdust In Your Sister’s Eye

2009-06-10 18:26

PAS has found an ally in its attack on the Sisters in Islam (SIS) in Parti Keadilan Rakyat Member of Parliament for Kulim-Bandar Baru, Zulkifli Noordin.

He has joined in the fray and accused SIS of misappropriating the word "Islam." [See Article in Nutgraph, 9 June 2009].

"In fact,” Zulkifli, who is also a lawyer, blogged Tuesday, “I suggest that this group change its name to the Cosmopolitan Women's Alliance, in line with their image since most of them do not wear tudung and some of them are not even married.”

His party as well as DAP, which are partners with PAS in the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition, have both rejected PAS’s controversial stance on SIS [See Article here].

A resolution was passed undebated at PAS’ recently concluded muktamar or general assembly calling for the Muslim women’s rights group to be investigated and declared "haram" if it is found to be anti-Islam.

The Islamist party also said SIS members should undergo religious rehabilitation should the Muslim women's rights organisation be found to go against Islam.

Raising an anti-Islam allegation is as good as labelling someone a heretic or infidel. And this is no small matter. This sounds like the Inquisition. What terrible sin did the younger sisters in faith commit?

Interestingly, although the resolution against SIS was tabled by the women’s or muslimat wing of its Shah Alam division headed by its urbane Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad, some of its women leaders seemed to have distanced themselves from the move.

Central working committee member Dr Lo' Lo Mohamad Ghazali was quoted as saying,” I have a more open attitude … if you don't agree with them, you can just state your views."

She preferred engagement to exclusion.

Former central working committee member Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud was quoted as saying, “
"I don't agree with banning them because I believe everybody needs to be able to speak their minds."

She too preferred engaging with SIS and added that while she did not agree with everything SIS did or said, she respected that SIS performed good work in protecting the legal rights of Muslim women.

"So if they invite me to their functions, I will go, because I don't have any problems with them," she said.

The intolerance is evident during its just concluded general assembly where one of its male delegates poured scorn on non-Muslim women journalists present during the event for not covering their heads and chided them for mixing freely with their male counterparts.

So why is the Sisters in Islam such an abomination?

According to the PAS resolution, it was SIS's liberal views that have caused confusion and were a threat to Muslims' faith, especially to the younger generation and to those who have a secular education.

The issue at hand is PAS cannot tolerate the liberal position taken by Sisters in Islam. The correctness of SIS’ liberalism or otherwise is subject to public discourse. PAS must not see itself as keepers of the faith.

PAS call to “mengharamkan” SIS is not to only “ban” but to declare their sisters in faith as “unclean” as the word in its proper context suggests.

PAS should be reminded: Why do you see the speck of sawdust in your sister’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (By BOB TEOH/MySinchew)

SIS slams PAS' call for its ban

NGOs slam PAS' call to ban SIS

Enlighten group members instead, says Nik Aziz

Zaid: SIS need not drop “Islam”

Khalid Samad Admits Overlooking SIS Resolution

You Are Not Qualified To Talk About Islam: How To Respond To Attempts To Close The Public Domain