Pakatan Harapan or Pakistan Harapan?

MM Online:


So is it Pakatan Harapan or Pakistan Harapan?

By Alwyn Lau

Four guys caned for having gay sex. A radical preacher from overseas remains protected. Child marriages remain legal. The LGBQT community remains threatened. A Christian pastor’s whereabouts remains unknown. And the religious police continue to stalk, roam and hunt those whose private lives don’t fit the approved script.

Sometimes I don’t know if our government is trying to forge a New Malaysia or not. Or would they prefer this country to be a second Pakistan? Or maybe another Iran?

Then there was that university student who performed a Nazi salute during his convocation who later thanked Hitler for “taking care” of the Jews in WW2.

The irony of him being a History grad was not lost on most people. We could also highlight the deeper irony of him posting his messages on a platform created by a Jew (i.e. Facebook) and (I guess) using an app invented by an Israeli company, Waze. Great example of “we hate the Jews and we approve of their mass destruction, but let’s not overact?”

Because in Malaysia, we have a tendency to overreact when we should instead be chillin’ and minding our business.

We are so damn concerned about how people conduct their sex lives, our religious police — despite it almost being 2020 — still raid hotel rooms and drag consenting adults to religious jail.

Likewise, the farcical “Azmin & Haziq” show can only be popular in places like Malaysia where, somehow, it’s a matter of national concern what two guys do behind closed doors.

 

Me? I’m not gay, don’t want to be gay, and don’t particularly want to watch Brokeback Mountain, but for the life of me I can’t see what a dude’s sexual preferences have to do with his abilities or whatever.

This all seems to be part of the same disease in which one stranger believes he has the right to tell another stranger who he’s allowed to be attracted to sexually.

In the same vein, I wish these same religious officers (or other non-religious ones) would raid the homes of those middle-aged men who take teenage girls as their brides, some as young as 11.

When almost 6,000 teenage girls are being raped legally in seven states out of 13 every damn year, only one conclusion is possible: some of our children are in peril.

Thank God that’s still way below the almost two million child brides from Pakistan annually. Still, that’s no reason to smile.

Our government is under-reacting on this matter just like they are plain frozen when it comes to enforced disappearances of people like Pastor Raymond Koh.

The very thought that our government cares so much more for Zakir Naik than Pastor Raymond totally pisses me off. In what universe is this considered even remotely just?

I suspect it’s the same kind of universe in which gay folks can be thrown off buildings just for being gay, and Jewish people executed in public just for being Jewish, and little girls married off to old guys who already have wives just because, well, the guy likes them young.