“Don’t compare apples with oranges” argued the Home Ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Mahmood Adam to foreign missions. He is right (from his perspective), though whether foreign missions understood is another matter.

Loh in posting #48 in preceding thread has alluded to it already – “…religion is the basis for classifying Malays, and with that the entitlement to NEP. That is why people like mamakthir talk about race and religion. Islam in Malaysia to Malays has a special position quite unlike Islams to Muslims in other countries which serves purely religious purposes. Religion will continue to be a sensitive issue as long as NEP remains.”

In other words religion is not just a belief system but (since May 13) is used to define cultural identity of Bumiputra and, hence, like race, one and inextricable, also to symbolise special privileges, or if you like, supremacy or Ketuanan ideology which defines and has (politically) become the substratum of the ruling party in relation to its constitutency……

It is this ideology around which the ruling party exists and justifies its existence ie raison de etre.; it is this which each member, delegate, party holder of the ruling party measures his worth or popularity as against another rival within for positions with access to the gravy train/largesse. It is also the seamless web that holds all strands of the ruling party in relation to other subservient component parties within the ruling coalition together which again explains why MCA, Gerakan MIC and other East Malaysian component parties within the BN recognise the “sensitivity” of this issue and hence are quiet about the controversy. It is the ideology that has (to detractors) caused the country to lose its brains and competitiveness, and by rhetoric of the politicians (‘Pendatang’ etc) and NEP caused racial polarisation.

The controversy then is not just about the use of word. It about symbolism of power, the cornerstone of what the ruling party stands for, and has transformed to become an issue of “special rights/privileges” to which the use of the word has also become part of!

Hence it is most unlikely (though the arsons may have stopped) that the issue is OVER as Big Joe hopes with his further comment “The Christians MUST be allowed to use the word. There is no choice in the matter..No matter what the Sultan says, no matter what any ulama says. Its a matter of logic…”

For this is not about logic: it is about power whatever academics and religious authorities may argue of etymological origins of the word.

That is why the controversy – and the ban – was created in 2007 by the ban of the word where none existed before since independence. That is why the govt appeals against Lau Bee Lan’s decision, and cannot be seen withdrawing the appeal in spite of arson cases and concerns and risks of alienating Christian voters in East Malaysia or contradicting even 1 Malaysia, the mantra forged by ruling party since 308 to compete and take the shine out of Anwar/PR’s winning formula of inclusiveness!

That is why the main hope to reconciling the irreconcilable – ie 1 Malaysia without violating Ketuanan – is the hope for the Appellate Court to uphold the govt’s appeal to vest the ban with legal legitimacy (just like cases involving Perak Assembly) in further hope that the Herald will compromise (as Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Jamil Khir Baharom has already suggested) ostensibly in the interest of “peace and security” to prevent the arsons of churches and sacrilege of places of worship. This way of argument began – not 5 or 6 days ago but since 1969.