PAS - from Progressive to Pythonic

Pythonic is the adjectival form of python. And we all know a python is a:

(a) boa constrictor (snake) which kills its prey by constriction (wakakaka), or

(b) spirit or demon (louder wakakaka).

I'm afraid those are what non-Muslims, especially Chinese Malaysians, currently view PAS as, a demon which if it comes into power, will 'kill' its prey (the non-Muslims, wakakaka) by constricting their non-Muslim social, cultural, religious and general freedom through PAS intrusive version (interpretation) of Islamic laws and policies.

As such, I wasn't surprised by The Malaysian Insider's news item Pakatan fears PAS puritans putting non-Muslim vote at risk which tells us: There is concern among Pakatan Rakyat's (PR) rank-and-file that PAS risks losing the pact's non-Muslim vote in Election 2013 due to the Islamist party's puritanical restrictions for the word 'Allah' and its gender-segregation policies in Kedah and Kelantan.

Yes and no to the causes of their concerns and the likely political impact.

Firstly, most Chinese (I can't say for the Indians)  aren't too concerned about the restriction in the use of the Allah word per se.

Really, why should they when the prohibited use of the Allah word doesn't affect their Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian or folk religious practice.

It's only the Christian Chinese and some civil liberty activists who are. I'm sad to say the civil liberty activists are unfortunately in the minority. And I am equally sad to say most Chinese aren't sympathetic to the Christian religious issue - incidentally I am also one, indeed one who actually opposes the use of the Allah word in the Malay language Bible (al Kitab) - sorry.

However, they have been deeply concerned about PAS' version of Islamic rules which directly affect them, such as the recent gender segregation rules (unisex hair dressing salons; couple holding hands), PAS own interpreted moral values in taking action against 2 non-Muslim men in a car watching aeroplanes taking off at KB airport, and again PAS own interpreted Islamic values in its intrusive dress codes for Chinese New Year concerts ...

... which in turn evoke earlier ugly pictures of PAS being intrusively against non-Muslim entertainment events, and the harsh draconian edicts such as stoning to death that Pak Haji Aziz threatened against unmarried mothers abandoning their newly born babies, without understanding the social issues and environment  driving those women into doing so, ...

... and miscellaneous provocative issues such as prohibiting the sale of beer at non-religious associated shops (7-11) or the caning of Muslims caught drinking (because of who could be next - the non-Muslims?), etc. 

Beyonce

Secondly, regarding possibly losing PR's non-Muslim vote in GE-13, that's already well & truly lost in Kedah.

In a previous post PAS 'blesses' MCA I wrote about ..... my discussions with quite a number of Kedahans here in Australia where I have been informed that their voting families and relatives have grumbled about being 'cheated' by PAS, a belief gained from their 'experience' under a PAS Kedah government, and that they won't ever vote for PAS again.

Mind you, neither my Kedah mateys nor I can say that UMNO or MCA will be the direct beneficiaries of their disgust (not just disappointment) with PAS. Those Chinese voters may well end up playing non-halal mahjung or p'ar kau all day on GE-13 election day, wakakaka, which I suppose will indirectly benefit UMNO.

Inul Daratista

I am of course not saying PAS won't be the next Kedah state government again, but they can take it from me they will have to achieve that minus the support of non-Muslim Chinese. Again I can't say about the voting preference of Indian Malaysians in Kedah - maybe my Indian visitors can help enlighten us on this.

In November last year I posted The python hanging around the ceiling fan reflecting my concerns about a pythonic (wakakaka) PAS, and its increasing arrogance as it senses hitherto unpossessed federal power within its reach.

In that post I had mentioned of my sympathy for gasp gawd omigosh Anwar Ibrahim because of PAS' treachery against a Pakatan agreement, with the potential to AGAIN deny Anwar from his wannabe destiny to assume the PM's post, this time through no fault of his.

Yes, politically I may not like or desire Anwar to be PM, but as a human being I'm not completely lacking in sympathy for a man yearning for 15 years (since 1998) to be the PM he had missed by a manmanlai's breath, more so when this time it's not due to his treachery or impatience but rather, because of PAS treachery.

I did feel really sorry for the man (not the politician) in him.

William Shakespeare (Anwar's fave author) wrote in his play 'The Tragedy of Julius Caesar' (Act II, Scene 3), about Mark Anthony's appealing speech on Julius Caesar's non-ambition in refusing the Emperor's crown thrice:

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

... with the story informing us that the Roman senators suspected Julius Caesar of bersandiwara-ing when he refused the crown 3 times, ...

... exactly as Pak Haji initially did (though only once to Caesar's thrice) when his PAS people demanded for him to be Pakatan's PM instead of Anwar Ibrahim as consensually agreed by Pakatan.

Mind you, a bersandiwara-ing Julius Caesar at least didn't say “Saya lebih rela jadi khadam daripada PM" (I’d rather be a servant to the country and the people).

And poor Caesar also didn't have the opportunity to say "I accept" as did Pak Haji Hadi Awang on a second insistence by his PAS people.

Pak Haji then stated in Kota Bharu on 18 November 2012: "I welcome being elected as the prime minister ... but I ask Allah to grant us victory."

Dear Pak Haji, other than your own party members, no one in Pakatan had elected you to be PM.

As per Shakespeare's words, it would be PAS' treachery, especially Hadi Awang's, that will finish off Anwar - 'Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart'. 

The PAS scorpion just has to be true to its venomous nature, stinging its vital carriage even in mid stream, for Anwar Ibrahim has indeed been its carriage, carrying the Islamic Party across the stream to (be acceptable to) the non-Muslim side.

All that had frighteningly emerged on the eve of GE-13 because PAS has become so damn confident it will be the Pakatan component party with the most number of seats, from its contest in 60 choice federal constituencies. Thus in its anticipatory ebullience, it made its most alarming aggressive avaricious move.

And precisely because of that confidence in its pending election victory, Harun Taib, PAS Ulama Chief, arrogantly declared the Malaysian legal system will have Hudud if PAS wins more seats than allies.

Now, had that been a Pakatan agreement?

While that declaration by itself, that of embracing hudud, has not been not new, and a known aspiration of PAS, what was far more worrying had been Harun Taib’s boast that PAS would implement hudud regardless, ...

... as evident in his reported words above, but more so his statement that “… if not with the current partners we have in Pakatan… may be there will be other pacts that will lend us their support …”.

Apart from its treacherous going-it-alone-after-winning by running over Pakatan pre GE-13 agreements, we need to query what other pacts did/does PAS have in mind?

And that would be the python that will drop down from the ceiling fan.

You know, once I had hope that people like Nizar Jamaluddin and Mat Sabu will keep a rein on those mean misogynistic mullahs and introduce a clean brand of politics based on the best socialistic aspects of Islam, a religion we have been told over and over again is compassionate in accordance with the exemplary excellent example of a Compassionate Allah swt.

I was rightly impressed by Nizar's declaration that the affairs of the state comes first ahead of his obligations to his party, that he was not a MB of PAS, but a MB representing PR and the people of Perak.

Much earlier, in 2006, I was also impressed by Mohamad Hanipa Maidin. In 2006 he was PAS Youth information chief but apparently no longer as the post has been occupied by Ustaz Riduan Mohd Nor.

Last year I might just have read of some disparaging remarks (probably by an UMNO person) against him related to his legal defence of Mohd Kamil Zuhairi Abd Aziz (a Shiite Muslim?).

In 2006 Hanipa had, in my opinion, come in from the left field when he in a forum organized by the Open Dialogue Center condemned the Arab model as unsuitable for democracy and modern civilization.

Startling as it undoubtedly must have been even for the PAS Arab-philes, Hanipa, one of the party's (then) top Youth leaders, stated the Arabs have shown a terrible example, resulting in a negative image of democracy and Islam – yes, Hanipa was talking about democracy and Islam within the context of modern civilization.

Hanipa declared the awful Arab example has unfairly dragged other Muslims down into the gutter with them. He deduced, quite correctly, that the West perceives all Muslims through that Arabic prism.

He went on to attribute the phenomenon of al-Qaeda to the undemocratic practices of Arab leaders. While he was correct on this score, alas, I wished he had also mentioned that the majority of those undemocratic Arab leaders were propped up by the USA for the latter's own interests.

Obviously Hanipa wanted to move PAS away from the ultra-conservative right, and its low class style of campaigning a la the preposterous and in fact blasphemous 'ticket to heaven' promotion prior to the 2004 general election. His policy direction for his party appeared to be a more centrist, shall we say, Islamic democracy.

I had then thought his proposal, if accepted, would make PAS more palatable to the non-Muslims, and enhance the Islamic party's 2008 campaigning as Malaysians had then become impatient with Ahmad Abdullah Badawi's Islam Hadhari. But was Hanipa acting on his own accord when he killed PAS scared cow camel, or did he have his party's approval?

Anyway it didn't matter because in the end, it was the Malaysian voters’ united hatred and disgust for an increasing arrogant and wayward UMNO that brought about the 2008 political tsunami and a degree of non-Muslim acceptance of PAS.

However, I'm prepared to concede that Anwar Ibrahim had contributed enormously towards making PAS politically palatable to non-Muslims, with blokes like Nizar Jamaluddin additionally convincing us that PAS might not be the hidden leopard we had feared.

Back to Hanipa - then to show his democratic credentials and at the same time jab sideways at UMNO's ribs, Hanipa said PAS would not agree to use the Internal Security Act (ISA) against those who published the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) caricatures because the security law was wicked. 

He said: “Those who insult the prophet are definitely wicked but the ISA is worse and it is a law that has been abused.”

I wondered then, did he have prior approval when he said that?

And in a show of new found humility and frankness, Hanipa stated that Muslims in this country should also not assume that all of PAS’ actions were right, but they need to understand that PAS was a political organization, and sometimes would be forced to act according to its political agenda.

PAS attempt to intrude on a non-Muslim Valentine's Day celebration

Clever bloke, he's covering his behind just in case, in the worst case scenario, some loose cannon in PAS starts to sell 'tickets to heaven' again. But I doubt that would have been sufficient to explain the silly misogynist and anti-social, prohibit & punish, intrusive mentality of some of his colleagues.

Poor Hanipa, he couldn't have foreseen what PAS would be doing 6 years later in Kota Baru and Kedah, on the eve of GE-13.

Anyway, we wouldn't have expected to hear the anti-Arab utterance as well as such humble and frank confession from a PAS leader, albeit a junior one, in a million years, but there you were, Hanipa uttered them.

I thought that for Hanipa to voice in an open forum his abandonment of all things Arab and Arabic, he would have had quiet approval from his party higher ups. If he had, I might just have a few things to say, given the recent edicts of the PAS Majlis Surya and the shameful volte-face conduct of Pak Haji Nik Aziz.

Or, in my wildest imaginations, perhaps the more progressive Young Turks in PAS have taken over and adopted a new and more flexible direction in the party's political campaigning. 

I thought that would have been a wise political move as its previous campaign had been directed at the converted when those votes were already assured. By making a radical change from its medieval mindset and practice, it would win over the yet-to-be converted because that's where the additional votes for PAS would have to come from.

I believed then that if PAS aspired to be the federal government, it should accommodate the non-Muslims, their beliefs and concerns, before it could convince them that the PAS brand of Islam [and there was no necessity for PAS to ever abandon its central pillar of Islam] would not be oppressive but in fact would preserve the highest compassionate and just values of Islamic democracy, or if you like, democratic Islam without any medieval cruelty in legal punishment [eg. chopping off hands, gouging of eyes, whipping, beheading, stoning and miscellaneous misogynous practices].

Fast forward to today, and alamak, just when we non-Muslims were beginning to accept PAS, those mullahs would want to do what it did in 1999 and 2004, bearing its fangs and exercising its steroid-laden muscles on the eve of the general election. It must have a perpetual (political) death wish.

In many ways, PAS suffers from the same 'disease' as had Anwar Ibrahim, that of impatience, especially on the eve of victory. As I had on a number of occasions chided Anwar, there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lips.

And we, especially non-Muslims, should be thankful for that, a timely revelation of PAS' pythonic nature.

Just remember, a Malaysia under Islamic syariah laws (inclusive of its hudud) as envisaged and intended by PAS will in all likelihood not have an option for political belakang pusing for non-Muslims and even Muslims.

Democracy and its institution will automatically come under the control of a supreme, non-questionable, non-challengeable (a la the fatwas of Kedah MB), and totally dictatorial religious Majlis, FOREVER MORE, ...

... and as mentioned by RPK in his post Friday prayers are NOT compulsory, said the Mufti, the process in an Islamic environment is not democratic and not questionable even by logic, reason, precedent or rules.

Thus one cannot, in Manglish (Malaysian English), 'simply play play' with our voting in the coming election and then believe we can still vote PAS out in a following election if we don't like its policies.

There may or may not well be any following election once the religious Majlis has been established, for it will be all powerful, absolute in its command, control and governing of national politics and indeed everything, and frighteningly unchallengeable. It is unlikely to put itself in a position of losing its power. Thus it will likely be that all election candidates may have to be approved by the Majlis. 

The pythonic demon will by then have wrapped its sinister coils around you kau kau, where there will be no escape.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made 

- Genesis.3:1