On July 9, 20,000 Malaysians gathered in Kuala Lumpur to demand more transparency in electoral laws in connection with next year's national elections.
Police unleashed tear gas and chemical-laced water on the demonstrators and temporarily detained nearly 1,700 of them. According to reports, authorities also detained six opposition activists without trial and accused them of trying to use the rally to spread communism. Police said they found T-shirts and other materials linked to communist figures.
Apparently, these measures didn't suffice for some of Malaysia's nervous ruling elite. The editors of Utusan Malaysia, owned by Prime Minister Najib Razak's United Malays National Organization ruling party (UMNO), defaulted to a time-tested maneuver: When in doubt, blame the Jews!
The Jews? Most citizens of the overwhelmingly Asian economic giant have never and will likely never meet a Jew in their lifetime. And yet the folks at Utusan Malaysia, which is influential among Muslims in rural areas who rely on government-linked media to shape their worldview, are apparently confident warnings about a "Jewish plot" would resonate in a land without Jews.
To understand why, you need only look at the track record of the man who dominated his nation for a quarter of a century, Malaysia's fourth prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad.
Mahathir was credited with engineering Malaysia's rapid modernization and spectacular economic growth. He was a dominant political figure, winning five consecutive general elections. He also used his political clout and controversial laws to detain activists and political opponents.
And Mahathir is an anti-Semite.
Back in 1970, in his treatise on Malay identity, "The Malay Dilemma," he wrote: "The Jews are not only hooked-nosed ... but understand money instinctively. ... Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them the economic control of Europe and provoked antisemitism which waxed and waned throughout Europe through the ages."
In August 1984, a visit by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra was canceled when his Information Minister demanded that music by composer Ernst Bloch be deleted from the program. His crime? He was a Jew and the selection chosen was based on Hebrew melodies.
In 1986, Mahathir charged "Zionists" and Jews with attempting to destabilize the country through allegedly Jewish-controlled media. He subsequently banned The Asia Wall Street Journal for three months describing the publication as "Jewish owned." In the 1990s, Mahathir used the Malaysian news agency, Bernama, to accuse Australian Jewry of conspiring to topple him.
Mahathir, who made Islam a central component of Malaysian identity, made this chilling charge in 1997: "We are Moslems, and the Jews are not happy to see Moslems progress."
Perhaps that would help explain the resounding ovation which greeted his screed at a Islamic Leadership Conference in 2003: "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million ... but today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."
And just last year the elder statesman of anti-Semites said this at a conference: "Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had been confined in ghettos and periodically massacred. But they still remained and still thrived and held whole governments to ransom. ... Even after their massacre by the Nazis in Germany, they survived to be a source of even greater problems to the world."
Placing the blame solely on Mahathir is technically accurate but falls short of being a complete analysis. Such incomplete thinking is similar to the many mainstream media efforts that assign blame for jihadist terrorism on Al Qaeda or on its founder, Osama bin Laden. As Osama and the organization he founded did not invent Jihadist terrorism, neither did Malaysia's Mahathir conjure Islamic-style antisemitism on his own. Where would, where could Mahathir get such ideas?All this may help explain why Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are on prominent display at the Malaysian capital's International Airport.
Such teachings originate from a place no reader or writer at 'HuffPo' would be intellectually honest enough to admit existing -- the Quran, which not only has few kinds words for Jews, but has depths of antisemitism that rival anything that might be sold at Malaysian airports. Verse 5:82 is typical of Quranic teachings on Jews, and states, "You will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers [to be] the Jews..."
Hating Jews is not a 'bug' of Islam, but a defining feature of that belief system. So while antisemites such as Mahathir may come and go, Islamic antisemitism, as codified in the Quran, is eternal.
(By the way, my comment is censored for criticizing Opposition Anwars's blog today, for his double-face)
Imagine if the much worst evil of the Opposition controls Malaysia – not only non-Muslims but liberal/moderate Muslims will suffer! This is the true face of the Malaysian Opposition that consists of the most dangerous alliance of the Chinese-dominated Communist/Maoist-loving party DAP, and the Islamic Nazis of the murderous Jew-hating Muslim Brotherhood/Qardawi-loving Anwar Ibrahim of PKR party and the thuggish Iranian-Mullah like Muslim extremist party, PAS, to form the Malaysian OPPOSITION party!
UMNO is evil (it was mostly due to Anwar being Deputy PM to Mahathir, when he infiltrated UMNO as an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood - he managed to turn Muslim-Malays and UMNO to be more fanatical),yes - but at least UMNO is in alliance with the (non-Communist) Chinese-dominated MCA and Indian-dominated MIC to form the majority ruling BN, that can still reform the half-moderate Malay-Muslim UMNO (although PAS/PKR infiltrators are hijacking UMNO, turning it to be more fanatical - imagine if MCA and MIC are not in the alliance with UMNO; how dangerous it would be for Malaysia and non-Muslims)!
Malaysian politics is not yet the same like in savage Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or elsewhere where Islamic rule is absolute. This is because in Malaysia, we have a big percentage of strong non-Muslims, around 40% - this is why, Malaysia is not an Islamic country like those savage Islamic nations. Further, the non-Muslims in Malaysia are not a small minority as in those savage Islamic nations.
Thus my intention in criticizing your simplistic general approach to politics in Malaysia, Anti-Jihadist, is to prevent such calamity as in these other savage absolute Islamic-ruled countries, which will be, if the Malaysian Opposition controls all Malaysia. They're already causing havoc with Arabic/Iranian-style aggressive Sharia laws in their few states that they control. In the West, we can try to criticize Islam aggressively, in the hope of destroying Islam's dominance and aggression because in the West, is mainly free to do so. But in Islamic-ruled countries, it's not possible for non-Muslims there to criticize Islam as much as they want; thus my perspective is in terms of the practicality in terms of achieving some justice due to the complex politics of dynamically multicultural Malaysia. Just by criticizing Islam alone instead of analyzing the complexity of politics behind it, is not enough to protect the non-Muslims in Malaysia, but by being smart and to ensure that the Islam practised in Malaysia (especially of non-Arabic/non-Iranian version) do not cause much more suffering to the non-Muslims or even liberal Muslims, including under the Opposition rule right now. But as I realized after voting like a fool of the Opposition due to simplistically generalizing as Anti-Jihadist here; how dangerous the Opposition is where such suffering of non-Muslims and liberal Muslims are much more exacerbated. Because Islamic rule once become absolute in all Malaysia, especially as dreamed by the Muslim Brotherhood/Iran through the Opposition Anwar of PKR and PAS of OIL-RICH Malaysia, it will be too late then like what’s happening in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen right now.
Rabbi Cooper's denial of Islamic anti-Semitism is a common problem, I have come across it many times among Ashkenazi (European) Jews. It comes from two sources, the general ignorance of Islamic doctrine and history in the West, and what some call "body-bagology": a desire to prove your clan has suffered more than your neighbour's clan by a raw count of the dead - a blunt instrument to be sure
There is no doubt that in the Holocaust the Ashkenazim suffered catastrophic loss in a very short time-scale, but in trying coming to terms with this loss many have developed a kind of tunnel vision that puts anything outside the Holocaust's parameters in a file marked "not so important".
There are fundamental differences between Western Anti-Semitism and Islamic Anti-Semitism. The first being there in the names I used, Western Anti-Semitism does have it's roots in Christian thought, primarily the schism between Christianity and it's Jewish roots, but it's not encoded in Christianity's primary texts, and therefore tends to be politcal when used rather than religious, (e.g. Barons wishing to free themselves of debts to Jewish money-lenders might whip up anti-Semitic fervour to get a pogrom going so the money-lenders would get killed or driven out of town). The other side of this coin would be that when politics allowed, there was no direct Christian imperative to anti-Semitism and things could be peaceful.
Islamic anti-Semitism on the other hand is enshrined in the Koran and Sharia, and therefore there is a constant war of attrition against any Jews living under Muslim rule. While it is true there were times and places where Sharia santioned persicution of Jews was honoured in the breach, it was only ever temporary and everyone knew it was temporary. Fortunately Muslims were never in the position to commit atrocities on the scale of the Holocaust (then again neither were the Germans until just before they did it), but that doesn't mean they wouldn't do it if they could.
The problem with the tunnel vision created by blinding events like the Holocaust is that low-grade attrition comes to be viewed as peripheral irritation, a distraction hardly worth paying attention to. (E.g. daily rocket attacks from Gaza at Israeli villages near the boarder are ignored by the media, who also expect Israel to tolerate similar low-grade anti-Semitism like boycotts.) The Rabbi Coopers of this world are looking for the next Holocaust, but they fail to see the wood for the trees, they are missing the millions of little events while focusing on the big one. This is a mistake, the Holocaust itself was not a single event, but a cluster of a billion events concentrated in time and space.
Like Moses hidden in the cleft of the rock looking at God's back as he passes, we cannot see all the world's hundreds of thousands of anti-Semitic incidents as they happen, we can only see them in retrospect. But because of things like this story in Malaysia, where anti-Semitism exists without any Jewish presence, we can be sure they are happening. And because Malaysia is a Muslim country, happening because of Islamic doctine, not because of Christian or secular/political Jew-Hatred.
I appreciate your posts, Anti-Jihadist. I keep thinking about the program I saw recently on PBS recently, praising the wonderful openness and tolerance of Malaysia. I guess not.
A fair ruling democracy will not be afraid of opposing and dissenting views. If the ruling govt really stands for righteousness and equality and has the citizens' best interest at heart; then they will fight vigorously to defend it. Right now though, they don't seem to be doing a very good job of it are they?
It's an open secret that non Muslims are not given fair and equal treatment under the current ruling govt. Will it change if the Opposition were to take over? I don' know. All I know is that, this discrimination against the non Muslim citizens of Malaysia cannot continue.
Such incomplete thinking is similar to the many mainstream media efforts that assign blame for jihadist terrorism on Al Qaeda or on its founder, Osama bin Laden. As Osama and the organization he founded did not invent Jihadist terrorism, neither did Malaysia's Mahathir conjure Islamic-style antisemitism on his own. Where would, where could Mahathir get such ideas?
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Very, very true, Anti-Jihadist. Many people find it less disturbing to blame Mahathir or Osama bin Laden than to look at the texts and tenets of Islam itself.
"Chelsea complain over racist abuse towards Benayoun"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/14324943.stm
Thanks for posting this here Thomas Pellow.
The recent demonstration that took place in the streets of KL demanding for clean and fair elections were condemned by Najib the Malaysian PM. He says that such public displays are a disgrace to the nation and puts it (the nation) in a bad light under the international media. Unsurprisingly, the international media did not see it 'in a bad light' but praised it as a noteworthy effort by ordinary citizens marching for their rights to fair elections.
However, Najib is curiously mum about this issue when it clearly received bad press from the international media. If he's so concerned over Malaysia's international image, why hasn't he said anything? The very least he could do is apologize on behalf of his unruly citizens!