The 2017 Ramadan is turning out to be an unforgettable Ramadan month – with unprecedented developments both in the international and national arenas.

In Saudi Arabia, a plot to obliterate the largest Mosque in the world was blocked a day before Ramadan draws to a close.
A would-be suicide bomber who aimed to launch an attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, was cornered in an apartment before he could attack Islam’s holiest site, with Saudi’s interior ministry revealing that three cells had planned the attack on worshippers and security forces at the mosque.

Two days earlier, Islamic State (IS) militants blew up the Grand al-Nuri Mosque of Mosul and its famous leaning minaret, as Iraqi forces seeking to expel the group from the city closed in on the site. This was where three years ago the IS leader Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi declared a self-styled “caliphate” spanning parts of Syria and Iraq.

Earlier today, Qatar dismissed a list of demands submitted by four Arab countries comprising Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt which cut ties with Qatar earlier this month. The demands included shutting down the Al Jazeera Media Network, closing a Turkish military base and scaling down ties with Iran.

Nearer home, the Islamic State (IS) has devoted this month’s entire 46-page issue of its propaganda magazine Rumiyah to promoting the group’s “increase in numbers” in East Asia, featuring an interview with Abu Adillah al-Mujahir identified as the “amir (leader) of the soldiers of the Khalifah in East Asia”, covering Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Japan.

Meanwhile, the Bukit Aman Special Branch Counter-Terrorism Division head Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, has become a prime target for Indonesian Islamic State (IS) militants who want Ayob eliminated.

In the country, the Ramadan month saw an upsurge of the politics of hate, distrust, intolerance and extremism causing a crisis of racial and religious polarisation.

Examples of such extremism and fanaticism rearing their ugly heads include the demand that non-Muslims should not participate in breaking-of-fast events; non-Muslims derided as “kafir”; the thuggish incident in Kluang where the DAP MP for the area, Liew Chin Tong, was roughed up during his visit of goodwill and solidarity to the Kluang Bazaar Ramadan; the concoction and dissemination of downright lies, falsehoods, fake news and false information like the allegation that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) suits to forfeit 1MDB-linked assets had not mentioned the US$27.3 million pink diamond necklace for the “wife of MO1”, which was the sole concoction of news portal Malaysiakini; the shocking statement by the UMNO Information Chief Datuk Annuar Musa that US Department of Justice (DOJ) kleptocratic action to forfeit US$1.7 billion of 1MDB-linked assets as a result of an international 1MDB money-laundering scandal was “part of a conspiracy to meddle in Malaysia’s affairs because the country had a Muslim-led government”, etc.

But the most unforgettable incident in Malaysia in the month of Ramadan must be the transformation of the PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang, into an even greater champion and defender of Najib and his 1MDB scandal than anyone else in UMNO.

DAP does not support any foreign intervention into Malaysia’s domestic affairs but we cannot also justify Malaysia becoming a global kleptocracy.

DAP is fortified in this stand because there can be no religion which supports corruption or a kleptocracy!