Malaysiakini | May 25, 11

‘Mr Minister, you totally missed the point. Irrespective of whether that person is a clown or idiot, he is an MP and should have known better.’

Minister says society can handle Ibrahim Ali

Cannon: Perkasa incited hatred and ‘jihad’ against innocent Christians who have nothing to do with Umno’s gutter politics. PM Najib Razak invited the Christian representatives to meet up with him ostensibly to clear the air, only to have him stab them in the back after the meeting.

Our society, far from being matured, is victimised by Umno’s nasty and brutish politics. Evaluate the ruling party’s behaviour against the five national principles of our Rukunegara: (1) Belief in God; (2) Loyalty to King and Country; (3) Supremacy of the Constitution; (4) Rule of Law; and (5) Courtesy and Morality.

Umno trashes all the criteria that make us a matured society.

De facto law minister Nazri Abdul Aziz says Malaysians are matured and can handle the incendiary speeches of Perkasa chief Ibrahim Ali. But, somehow they are not mature enough to handle the political cartoons of Zunar. That’s why Zunar’s comic books are banned by the regime.

Cala: Are we a tribal society? Nazri missed the point by 500 miles. Why?

If he was referring to the ancient world of the operation of a tribal society where the people were living in a ‘stateless society’, conflicts then were solved by customs, usages, normative rules, etc, not based on ‘political rules’ because the latter were not there (Colson, 1974, cited in North, 1990, p. 38; Beugelsdijk and Maseland, 2011). But such a society was not efficient.

Today, formal rules that come with a supposedly strong set of enforcement collectively known as political rules are there to ensure the efficient running of a society/nation state.

Nazri, hence, talked as if we are living in a tribal society in the frontier wherein any conflict between two cowboys may be solved through a gunfight. Put it in another way, see what happens if an American senator, for example, publicly calls for the re-introduction of slavery?

Artchan: Nazri, if our society is mature enough, then can you tell Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein that Bersih can, and has the right, to demonstrate and protest?

Blogsmith: Would this occasional clown Nazri – who had once said he is the minister for the then-chief justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim and thus showed he didn’t understand the principle of the separation of powers – extend the same courtesy of being mature to non-Muslims and/non-Malays?

We have so many times in the past seen selective action and pronouncements whenever something occurred which is not pro-Umno/BN.

Terus: Mr Minister, you totally missed the point. Irrespective of whether that person is a clown or idiot, he is an MP and should have known better.

Remember the famous phrase by you-know-who, “One must not only be clean but must be seen to be clean.” The NATO (no action, talk only) government is telling Malaysians that certain people are above the law and as usual these people are either from or associated with Umno/BN.

This is bad for the country and sends out the wrong message. To date, not a single Umno leader has dare censure this ‘clown’.

Zz2XX: Nazri, when it is convenient for you, our society is said to have ‘changed and matured’, in order to protect Umno racists. You can make excuses for that fat-faced Ibrahim Ali. Let’s us see how ‘mature’ Umno’s racists are when someone utters something like what Ibrahim said against Umno’s racists.

Anonymous _a12b: If anyone of the politicians want to comment like Ibrahim Ali, then feel free to do so. After all, you reap what you sow. But the fact that Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has been photographed with Christian leaders is already, to a lot of people, a statement.

In addition, many Christians are ashamed that their church elders are not above politics. His Holiness the Pope in Rome and the Archbishop of Canterbury in UK do not get involved in politics. But no, not our Christians.

Many Christians are confused as to why their religion, which has had peace with the Muslims, been dragged into a situation like this.

Quigonbond: I agree that in a mature society, the society can handle a cretin like Ibrahim Ali. The problem does not lie in the society, but rather the fact that the mainstream media is so lopsided in its reporting that Ibrahim Ali, Perkasa, Pembela and Utusan Malaysia has been given more credence than they deserve, while criticism against them has been stifled.

How would ordinary Malaysians know that most Malaysians find Ibrahim Ali’s invectives offensive? In their minds, when the opposition is not reported, they fear that the contrary is true – that Ibrahim Ali has a lot of supporters.

So Nazri, before you sanguinely expect the public to be able to see Ibrahim Ali as the menace that he is, remove media restrictions first and allow dissenting media to become mainstream, then we talk. If you are not prepared to do that, then you need to use Sedition Act against him. There are no two ways about this.

Moontime: I tried to understand Nazri’s reasoning for not taking action against Ibrahim Ali. I failed. The conscience in me said it’s totally wrong, obnoxious and downright dangerous if the government decided to do nothing.

You, Mr Minister, are practising double standards – one standard for Perkasa aka Umno’s running dog and the other one for the rest of us, opposition included.

If you claim Ibrahim Ali is a clown, he is, to me, the most dangerous clown in the world. A clown that could incite hatred, animosity, anger and eventually disrupt the harmony that our community had enjoyed for the past 40-odd years.

I am very confident that if the same words were uttered by a Christian, changed the wordings to a “holy war against Muslims”, you would have arrested him under ISA even before the guy had a chance to leave the rostrum.

However, I do know that no self-respecting Christian would ever utter those words. In conclusion, Nazri, you are a disgrace to the Muslims by doing nothing.

Anonymous222: If the government thinks we are matured enough to deal with clowns like Ibrahim Ali, it should know that a matured society can and should live without the Sedition Act, the Internal Security Act (ISA) and all those other oppressive acts.

Louis: I am happy that Nazri said that the society has matured. If he really means what he said, he should stop the police from arresting peaceful demonstrators. Similarly he should allow the opposition to publish their own newspaper and remove the censors. Allow them to write what they want, for after all, the society knows what is right and wrong.

Society in general has matured. Only Umno leaders are still infants. No wonder, after more than 50 years leading the nation, it is still far backward behind the likes of Korea and Taiwan.

Anonymous: If our society is matured enough, why are you barking whenever someone touches on matters relating to Malays or Islam? Why the need for Najib to meet the church leaders? Why was MP Teresa Kok detained under the ISA?

Dood: For once, Nazri got it right – Ibrahim Ali is indeed a clown. Then again, it’s no surprise that Nazri recognised that, seeing that he himself is a clown.

Just listen to him: in the same breath, he said Malaysians are mature enough to handle threats of holy war uttered in public by a man who leads a group of fanatic fascists, yet he feels the government is ‘threatened’ by Anwar Ibrahim for trying to maintain his innocence in the fabricated sex video scandal.