Any Other Business

Imbeciles & Morons at the Helm

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve developed the opinion that I come from a country run by imbeciles and morons. Not that I’ve ever had much regard for their intellect, but I never thought they were this stupid. What am I talking about? Well, OK. Here’s an example. Take the simple word “intent”. Two syllables, six letters. Fairly simple, yes? Here’s an excerpt from a news report from MalaysianInsider website:

The daily also quoted Nazri to have said that the series of attacks against the houses of worship has proven that the government was right in its decision to restrict the use of the word.

“Banning the use of ‘Allah’ by Christians was a pre-emptive move to stop outbreaks of religious violence in the nation,” he reportedly said.

Nazri also drew a parallel between the “Allah” dispute and the ‘cow head protest’ in Shah Alam last year, against the relocation of a temple in the Selangor capital.

“Take for example, there is no law in the country that states stepping on a severed cow head is wrong but when a group of Malays did that in their protests against the building of a Hindu temple we hauled them up and charged them because that act was disrespectful to the Hindus,” he reportedly said.

So here, we have two groups of people in two different situations: a bunch of cow-head-stomping protesters and the Catholic Church of Malaysia. This Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department seems to see parallels in these two situations.

For the benefit of those who don’t understand Malay, here’s a teensy bit of what the guy in the blue shirt in the video said, “Jaga-jaga. Kami cabar kamu datang ke Seksyen 23 andai kata kamu ingin melihat berdarah.” Translation: “Watch out. We challenge you to come to Section 23 if you wish to see blood flow.”

The first group marched down a public road chanting slogans (amidst the usual allahuakbhar yelling) and carrying banners, made a speech about the sanctity of Malay supremacy, threatened to spill blood if challenged and then proceeded to stomp on a severed cow head, basically giving the middle finger to all the Hindus in the country. All this because they didn’t want a Hindu temple to be built at the edge of a particular suburb. What was the intent of this group? Obviously, they intended to threaten with violence and to incite hatred. They intended to deliberately insult the Hindus as religious demographic. All this, obviously, against the law. Therefore, it was the simple enforcement of the law that they were, as the minister put it, hauled up. Again, fairly simple.

The second group went to the courts for clarification on whether or not they were allowed to use “Allah” in their magazine, a Catholic magazine with a Malay edition. To them, it only makes sense to use “Allah” as the Malay translation for God since practically all Malay speaking Christian congregations in Malaysia use “Allah” as the translation for God, be it during worship services or in Malay and Indonesian translations of the Bible. Why is Indonesian being brought up here? Well, because back in the day, the government banned the printing of Malay bibles, therefore Christians had to import Indonesian bibles for Malay speaking congregations. In a nut shell, this group of people basically want to use a proper noun (not just any noun, mind you) in a magazine published only for internal circulation. A proper noun that they have been using for eons, but were recently told to cease and desist. According to Article 11 (3a) of the Malaysian Constitution, every religious group has the right to manage its own religious affairs, subject to clause (4) - the one about proselytizing to Muslims. Now since this magazine is only meant for internal circulation, obviously they have the right to use whatever terms they wish to describe whatever they want.

Compare and contrast: one group broke the law, the other sought clarification on the law. Fairly simple. And our “fearless” leaders keep telling us to compare oranges to oranges. Let me say it again, imbeciles and morons.