From accusing Democratic Action Party (DAP) of seeking to eliminate the Malays and Islam to defending the United Malays National Organization’s (UMNO) corruption and Ponzi scheme in the Tabung Haji’s scandal, Abdul Hadi Awang has again weaponized race and religion as political tools. The goal remains the same – to distract Malays’ corruption by blaming the Chinese.
By manufacturing a false narrative that the government was selectively enforcing anti-corruption, therefore unfairly targeting Islamic institutions like Tabung Haji, the despicable PAS president was shifting the fault – from a corrupted pilgrimage fund board to political rivals. The Anwar administration is accused of tarnishing the religious branding just because Tabung Haji’s mismanagement, corruption, and whatnot is being unveiled.
Had the Anwar government kept quiet and continued its cover-up of the Lembaga Tabung Haji Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) findings on its management and operations from 2014 to 2020, the Malay-Muslims would not lose face as its corruption culture would be hidden and the Islamic financial institution mismanagement would not be ridiculed. That was Hadi Awang’s twisted logic.
Because Tabung Haji is a fully government-owned Islamic financial institution in Malaysia, and the management board entirely consists of Malay-Muslims, Mr Hadi could not directly blame non-Malays, especially the Chinese. Still, by hook or by crook, he has to blame the non-Malays – indirectly – with a comical spin that Muslims are less involved in corruption compared to non-Muslims.
But the religious bigot knew he could not prove his twisted argument – either statistically or religiously. So, instead of providing data, he blamed the government for not providing an honest statistic, which he insisted would show corruption involving non-Muslims was higher. Still, he acknowledged that some Muslims with weak religious education do become involved in bribery.
His argument that Muslims are less corrupt than non-Muslims was both hilarious and insulting. The fake holy man argued that “faith and belief” in accountability makes Muslims less likely to engage in graft than non-Muslims. Coming from the same man caught with his pants down taking RM90 million bribes, Abdul Hadi Awang is the real insult to Islam and Muslims.
Political and economic studies indicate that higher corruption in many Muslim-majority countries stems from weak democratic institutions, authoritarianism, nepotism, cronyism, and governance frameworks rather than religious doctrines. In other words, faith and belief, as argued by Hadi, have very little to do with lower corruption committed by Muslims, let alone a Malay like him.
On August 21, 2022, right before his final court appeal, ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak – the same disgraced man who bribed Hadi with RM90 million – swore on his faith at the Masjid Jamek Kampung Baru in Kuala Lumpur. In this oath, he explicitly denied knowing that RM42 million deposited into his account came from SRC International, a former subsidiary of the 1MDB state fund.
In fact, Najib also recited variations of the Islamic oath on December 20, 2019, during High Court proceedings in July 2020, and on December 8, 2021. Amusingly, despite repetitively invoking Allah and swearing on the Holy Quran, the God didn’t come to his rescue. The crook was ultimately sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined RM210 million in July 2020.
Perhaps snake oil salesman Hadi, whom his gullible followers believed was the private secretary of Allah entrusted with golden tickets to the heaven with 72 virgins thrown in, could explain why Najib was sent to prison while his partner-in-crime, Jho Low, remains free? If a Muslim like Najib Razak was less corrupt than Jho Low due to the so-called “faith and belief” formula, why Allah punished only Najib?
Does that mean Allah had rejected the faith and belief of a Muslim like Najib Razak? Does that also mean Jho Low’s God is more powerful than Najib’s God? Based on Hadi’s logic, either Jho Low is less corrupt than Najib, contradicting with his lecture that a non-Muslim is more corrupt than a Muslim, or his argument that “faith and belief” plays a major role in corruption is nothing but bullshit.
Make no mistake – Tabung Haji was not singled out for scrutiny specifically because of their religious branding. In truth, calling a spade a spade, PM Anwar did try to cover up Tabung Haji’s corruption in the past four years for political reasons. But that didn’t change the fact that financial mismanagement, governance breaches, corruption, and even Ponzi schemes had been committed by some Malay-Muslims.
The recent public release of the Tabung Haji Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) report revealed unlawful profit distributions (“hibah”) despite net losses, questionable share transfers, and deep-seated fiduciary failures that drained billions. To cover up the financial trouble of Tabung Haji, extraordinary “hibah (dividends)” were declared to hide investment misconduct, mismanagement and incompetence.
Even if financially illiterate Hadi and his minions do not understand the basic assets and liabilities accounting, they should understand that the pilgrim’s fund had been illegally distributing “hibah” to depositors since 2014, contravening the Tabung Haji Act 1995 where the fund is not allowed to declare dividends if its liabilities are more than assets. This is a simple Islamic teaching.
Ahead of the 14th general election on May 9, 2018, the pilgrim’s fund even cooked its books to justify paying a 6.25% dividend, amounting to RM2.7 billion. The Pilgrims’ Fund Chairman, Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim, had conspired with the board of directors to dip their hands into depositors’ savings to pay the dividends – leading to a nearly RM13 billion bailouts using taxpayers’ money.
Trying to divert attention from Tabung Haji’s scandal by dragging the Penang tunnel project to create a perception that Malay-linked Tabung Haji is being given more public discussion than Chinese-linked Penang tunnel also does not change the fact that corruption, financial misconduct, mismanagement, and Ponzi schemes had indeed occurred in Tabung Haji, whilst nothing has been proven in the Penang tunnel project.
Exposing Tabung Haji scandal is not targeting a Malay-Muslim institution with an intention to tarnish Islam’s image. Covering up and pretending that RM13 billion belonging to 10 million depositors of the pilgrim fund was still there when it had already been “songlap” or siphoned, on the other hand, is a bigger cancer that would engulf Tabung Haji if the scandal is “swept under the carpet” as preferred by Mr Hadi.
By exploiting and manipulating race and religion, the PAS president hopes to put not only majority ethnic Malays and minority ethnic Chinese at loggerheads, but also to rally Malay voters against non-Malay communities through hatred, xenophobia, Malay supremacy and all forms of bigotry in his evil attempt to gain power. But that was not the worst part.
The worst part is Hadi always gets his way in utilizing ethnoreligious rhetoric to frame political contests as a battle for Malay-Muslim supremacy because the Malays (at least majority of them), the Prime Ministers, the government, and the authorities – even the Monarch and DAP – have been playing a role in shaping PAS’ extremism and racism, whether they realized it or not.
For example, when PAS extremists spewed false narrative that the Malay-Muslims and Islam were under attack just because the Tabung Haji scandal was being exposed and discussed, the “majority of Malays” kept quiet. Their silence is seen as an endorsement or approval to Hadi’s false claims, further emboldening the PAS president to stir up racial and religious sentiments among the Malays.
Had the majority of the Malays courageously – and openly – condemned Hadi’s politics of bigotry, extremism, and lies from the beginning, do you really think Hadi is still interested in stoking racial and religious divisions in the country? The fake holy man still plays the same game because it sells like hot potatoes, knowing that the highly insecure Malays, despite their majority numbers and dominance, would fall in line like lemmings every time Allah, Muslims and Islam are being invoked.
To make matters worse, Hadi believes he is “untouchable”, so much so he actually enjoys immunity because not a single government or authority dares to charge or arrest him, let alone send him to prison for deliberately threatening national security. He could say anything he likes without repercussions because he knew the weak Anwar government has no balls to take any actions against him.
Yes, despite 28 police reports being lodged against Hadi Awang in 2022 alone, not a single prosecution has been brought against him. In comparison, a normal netizen of non-Malay ethnicity would have been hunted down, arrested, handcuffed, charged, and sent to prison in less than a week for expressing political, religious, or social views online that were 100 times less threatening than Hadi’s.
For almost four years since Anwar Ibrahim was installed as the 10th Prime Minister, his cowardice saw how both PAS and UMNO leaders were allowed to bully, attack, intimidate, and terrorize non-Malays, leading to the perception among the Malays that it was perfectly fine to do so. Heck, even Anwar had to meet and seek the Agong (King)’s consent, before the PM dares to announce a thorough investigation on Tabung Haji’s RCI findings.
In the same breath, the Monarch was equally responsible for creating the “untouchable” Ayatollah Hadi Awang. Who was the King who awarded the “Tan Sri” title to the man who was banned from entering Saudi Arabia due to his “extreme ideology” and affiliation with terrorists’ groups? Hadi has in the past mocked, ridiculed, contradicted, and insulted Sultans, but the Monarchs could only keep quiet with tail between legs.
Likewise, DAP under the spineless leadership of Anthony Loke Siew Fook has been keeping quiet for the past four years – despite volleys of attacks from PAS extremists on not only Chinese, but also DAP specifically. To cling to power, like his political master PM Anwar, Ah Loke’s childish argument was not to spook the Malay Muslims. Now DAP is paying the price for being a coward.
