The Himpun anti-apostasy gathering

Further to my posting early today, my prediction of the attendance was off the mark by a good 60%. I predicted that a minimum of 10,000 would turn up for the rally when in actual fact, barely 4,000 turned up. Then again I was right about the DUMC case being brought up during the rally where booklets were printed and distributed citing senior pastor Daniel Ho as one of the ‘mastermind’ to the alleged proselytisation of the 12 Muslims who attended the charity dinner. Read more here.

But one interesting point stood out and here, I would like to quote from the Malaysiakini what the Mufti of Perak said, "....the Malays are the most special race in the world as all Malays are “bound to Islam in the constitution”.

He added that the Malays were also special because they were “fluent” and is able to “dominate” Islam although Allah first conveyed it in Arabic.

Now, doesn't that sound like the Jews proclaiming that they are special because they are the chosen people of God? I wonder how he came by with this deduction. I hope he was not on an ego trip as God despises egoists, no matter who they are. Well, to each his own, I guess.

Anyway, thanks should go to the organisers for ensuring that the rally was conducted in a peaceful manner from beginning to end.

One million to gather today?

As the name suggests, "The Gathering of the One Million Faithfuls", I take it that the organisers of the Himpun anti-apostasy rally scheduled today in Shah Alam will generate one million people to the rally, venue being the Shah Alam Stadium. One million? If it materialises, wouldn't Shah Alam for the first time in its history be flooded with people. During the past two Bersih rallies, 50,000 were enough to choke up an entire city, what's more if it was 1,000,000? I certainly would not like to be caught in Shah Alam this afternoon where the main highway could be turned into a parking lot.

Now the venue is going to be the Shah Alam Stadium, but the stadium has a seating capacity of only 69,372. Let's assume that another 10,000 will occupy the field, that will add up to a total of 79,372. Where are the remaining 920,628 going to be accommodated?

I am comforted by the thought that the organisers have given assurances to the non-Muslims that the rally will not be a Christian-bashing gathering, so there is nothing to worry about. It will be a gathering to remind the Muslims to be true to their faith. Did I miss out something here? The gathering was mooted because of the DUMC incident that members of the church were proselytising to the Muslim guests. So are the organisers going to say that the DUMC case will not be mentioned during the rally? I believe the issue will be milked for all its worth especially when you have blokes like Ibrahim Ali (although I understand he will not be one of the speakers), that MP for Kulim Bandar Baru, Zulkifli Noordin and that Mufti from Perak, Harussani Zakaria, attending the rally as well. Any rally that is religiously themed, will be an emotionally charged event. There is no guarantee that this one will not. Well, that's left to be seen.

If one will notice, for the last few days, there have been downpours in the afternoon. If God is kind, he will send another downpour this afternoon, telling the 1,000,000 people to go home and do something more productive and constructive. As to the actual number of people attending? My hunch is minimum 10,000 with 20,000 max.

Novandri Hassan Basri, Papagomo and KJ, it's time you three do the right thing. Own up to your malicious intent!

The young woman depicted as the 'victim of molest' by the teenaged son of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng expressed "shock" and "dismay" today at being dragged into the matter. In a press statement today, Anya Corke (top), 21, whose photograph was used by several bloggers to depict a schoolgirl who was allegedly molested, said she has in "not in any way been victimised" by the 16-year-old boy or his family. "I have never been physically assaulted in any way. The only way in which my 'modesty was outraged' has been (through) the publication of my picture in connection with these scurrilous and unfounded rumours," she said. A third-year student at Wellesley College in the United States, Corke added that she has not been in Malaysia for seven years now and has "never met or even heard of the people involved". "Needless to say, I am totally baffled as to how this even happened. I would also like to express my sympathies to the boy who was defamed by these baseless allegations," she said.

Corke's photo used to protect 'real victim'

Corke, a one-time Hong Kong chess champion whose photograph was lifted from another website, also asked that the people and media in Malaysia respect her privacy. "I hope the public and Malaysian media will... refrain from making unsolicited contact with me and my family, college, chess federation and other affiliations," she said. The Penang chief minister had on Wednesday lashed out at pro-Umno bloggers for trying to finish off his political career by wrecking his teenage son's life with "morally despicable and barbaric" lies. SMJK Heng Ee principal Goh Boon Poh has also denied that such an incident had happened, and that the person depicted on the blogs is a student at the school. Since DAP revealed Corke's identity, several bloggers who have been posting on the issue responded by saying that her photograph was used "to protect the identity of the real victim".

[Source: Mkini]

Some thing tells me that three mentioned above are neither suffering remorse nor guilt strikened by their callous act. To them, I guess it is all part of a political gambit when they knew they have the protection of big brother. But what really struck me in disbelief was when KJ said in his Twitter message that the Opposition have done worse things before. For someone who is Oxford trained, that statement really came across as being childish. I take it that he believes that two wrongs would make a right, so it didn't matter whether it would affect a 16-year old kid, a 1-day old baby, a 80-year old grand parent, so long as "you do it, I can do it too". Such mentality is definitely one of UMNO and not Oxford University.

Pakatan will bankrupt the country but Idris Jala said otherwise

The following is an extract from the Malaysia Chronicle which appeared in its news report on October 16 2011:

Muhyiddin said the opposition was only good at making empty promises. He pointed out that when Prime Minister Najib Razak tabled the 2012 Budget, he had promised to retain the country's deficit at 4.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Yet Pakatan de-facto chief Anwar Ibrahim made a mockery of it.

"The shadow budget by the opposition shows its expenditure, purportedly for the people, but it does not take into account the deficit. If the deficit goes up to 10 per cent, it means the country is not managed well," Bernama reported Muhyiddin as saying a day ago.

Following this report, PKR Chua Jui Meng refuted the claim and said that UMNO was the one who was more likely to bankrupt the country rather than Pakatan. Muhyiddin surely has a short memory. Didn't Idris Jala said that if the government does not take stock of its debts, the country will go bankrupt by 2019? See full report here. Knowing that we will be undergoing such calamity, do we still want to vote for UMNO to run the country for another five years? Naaaah!

Another master piece from Art Harun

Ding dong … a very good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, we have safely landed at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Welcome to Malaysia.

The local time is 5.35pm. The weather is slightly cloudy with the usual monsoon rain expected in about 30 minutes time and the current temperature is 34 degrees Celcius. For those who think that the rain in Malaysia is similar to the rain in Paris, London or New York, please note that our monsoon drains are 8 feet deep and 4 feet wide and run for hundreds of kilometres. They cost 30,000 Malaysian Ringgit per foot to build and 30 million Malaysian Ringgit to maintain per month. We take our rain very seriously, Ladies & Gentlemen. And you would be well advised that our rain is nothing, repeat, nothing compared to the rain in your country.

A bit about Malaysia for you. Malaysia is truly Asia. We have the Talibans in some states and government agencies. Please do not ever ever bring with you a Bible in Bahasa Melayu, the national language.

Sorry, I have to be more specific. No Bible in Bahasa Melayu is allowed in Peninsula Malaysia. Eh, sorry, I have to be more particularly specific. No Bible is allowed in Bahasa Melayu in the Peninsula Malaysia other than the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, our capital and Putrajaya, our administrative capital. In the states of Sabah and Sarawak, Bible in Bahasa Melayu is kosher.

By the way, Bahasa Melayu is also known as Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Kebangsaan. As to why it has three names, let’s not get into that or otherwise you all would never disembark this plane.

By the same token, please do not use the word Allah if you are not Muslims unless you are in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya or the states of Sabah or Sarawak. So Ladies and Gentlemen, beware of the state boundaries while in Malaysia. For example, if you are in Kuala Lumpur going towards PJ Hilton, do stop at the Kuala Lumpur/PJ boundary to throw away your Bible in Bahasa Melayu, if any. And stop using the word Allah too. As a rule of thumb, you would know when to do that when you exit a toll plaza, if you use a highway, that is.

So, as I was saying, we have the Talibans. Then we have the Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and various races from the Indian sub-continents. Venture along the Bukit Bintang areas at night and you will see many Chinese from China, Vietnamese, Myanmarese and Cambodians, all of them women. Somewhere in Ampang, you will see many Koreans. Venture into some of our private colleges which teach English – without students although there are many student names on the register – and you will probably see some Iranians. And that’s apart from the thousands of Indonesians, Thais and Philippines here.

We are truly Asian, indeed.

Speaking of Talibans, if you happen to be an American couple of 60 years of age or more, please be careful while in your hotel room. Your room may be raided at 3am and both of you dragged in a hearse or kereta mayat to a religious agency’s office for “khalwat.” After finding out that you are not Muslims, you would be duly released.

So, don’t worry too much about it. It is part of our effort to give you a full “Malaysian experience”, an experience which you will not forget and will ever remember.

Thank you for flying with us, MAS, Malaysia Air-Asia System, ooops, sorry, the Malaysia Airline System. Here at MAS, we give a lifetime warranty that Malaysia will not turn into an asylum. This lifetime warranty is good for 10 days or until you go completely insane, whichever comes first.

While in Malaysia, please do not hesitate to drive around. Rent a car, like our national car, the Proton. Mind you, Proton gives a lifetime warranty that it’s power windows will work. The lifetime warranty is good for 10 years or until 250,000 km, whichever comes first. A double lifetime warranty that all four tyres will continue rotating is also in the pipeline, we heard.

Do switch on the television set and watch our national channels please. The contents are guaranteed to be inoffensive by the Minister of Information himself. So you can watch all the programmes without being worried that any of them might offend you, your wife or girlfriends, your kids, your mother or anybody. All offensive programmes, including advertisements orpublic announcement service have been removed. Do not worry.

However, there might at times be some black & white video clips of half naked men in a towel in a hotel room waiting to have sexual intercourse with a nice little sex worker during prime time. That is not offensive. So please do not be offended by that.

While you are having your nice Italian, French or plain old English dinner, there might be some discussions on our national television channels about how semen could be found in the ass without any penetration of the ass and the likes. That is also not offensive.

Sorry if you find that offensive. You are obviously hyper-sensitive social miscreants from the West who is too concern with political correctness. Get real please.

For those of you who are Christians, please be careful while talking to the Muslims over here. They are very weak and they could be proselytise to Christianity very easily. If that happens, you are at fault. You could be dragged in a hearse or kereta mayat to any religious office and be interrogated. They might raid your hotel and do whatever.

As a guide, please conceal your crucifixes while talking to your Muslim friends. If you wear crucifix on your necklace or bracelets, do conceal it. If you have a crucifix tattoo on any part of your body which could be seen by your Muslim friends, please remove those tattoos before meeting your Muslim friends. They might get offended or worse still, they might convert to Christianity after meeting you.

Trouble, I tell you!

Now, I wish to make a special announcement to all of you who are British. We are sorry and please accept our most fervent apology for saying all this while that you lot had colonised us. We now say you have never colonised us. Repeat. You, the British, have never colonised us.

All those times, you were only protecting us from the evil Dutch, Portuguese and Thais. In fact, looking at our nation 54 years after you all had left, we now think that you were actually protecting us from ourselves. Our deepest gratitude to you all. Never mind the fact that all our Sultans or Malay Rulers had to follow and do whatever you said. You have been very kind to station your advisers in all our states to advise our Rulers and forced them to follow such advices.

Thank you also for permanently rearranging our society.

For all that you have done in protecting us, we have repaid you with our tins and all our other natural resources. We have also allowed you to convert our land into rubber estates and named our roads in your British names. In fact, we are sorry to have stolen your British names and used them for our roads, schools, temples, churches and others.

You have been very kind.

You might ask why our Father of Independence screamed out Merdeka, Merdeka, Merdeka (Free, Free, Free) at the stroke of midnight of 31st August 1957 had we not been colonised by you? Well, it seems that he was only celebrating the divorce of his good friend from his three wives.

The point is, you have not colonised us. Sorry for saying so for the past 80 years or so.

For those of you who are inclined to know our contemporary political and societal issues, please be advised that you will not impress Malaysians in any of your conversation with us if you talk about our newly read budget for 2012, the fast rising inflationary rate, the impact of the global economy, particularly the impact of the forthcoming Europe meltdown, or the United States’ debt ceiling or similar matters.

The most recent issue in our political arena, which is being discussed everywhere for the past 3 days is the squeezing of tits. In local lingo (use the local lingo if you want to impress us ya!) that is called “ramas tetek.” You can start your conversation with anyone of us by asking, “eh, true ahh that fler ramas the tetek?” And just follow the flow of the conversation after that.

If you want to impress your Malaysian friend more after that, throw in some discussions about sodomy. Then try discussing about the possibilities of semen ending up in the ass without penetration. Come up with your own theory, like the semen could fly into the ass.

Something like that. Then talk about sex videos. You will surely be a hit with the locals in no time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure serving you and we hope to see you again on our flight. A very good evening from me, your friendly stewardess, Norazilawati Azreen Sherry binti Mahat.

(silent)

….

….

Ding dong. This is your chief crew, Tony Fernando. On behalf of Captain Ahmad, welcome on board flight MH481 to London. We apologise for Cik Norazilawati’s mistake in reading the arrival greeting instead of a departure greeting just now.

Our flight to London will take 13 hours……….

The sewer politics of UMNO

Despite a heated defense by Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin, who insists there is basis for the Umno bloggers' accusations that Lim Guan Eng's 16-year-old son is a sex maniac, DAP leaders have provided proof to show up the "Umno lies".

DAP MP for Petaling Jaya Utara Tony Pua said the girl appearing besides Marcus Lim in the blogs run by Papagomo and Bukit Gelugor Umno chief Novandri Hasan, was 21-year-old chess Grandmaster Anya Sun Corke.

Anya, who represents England, is currently an undergraduate of Wellesley College in the United States. She has no ties to Penang,

“The chess board has been edited from the picture. This proves beyond doubt that the accusations by these Umno cyber-troopers are nothing but barbaric lies," Tony Pua told a press conference on Wednesday.

What say you now, 'Oxonian'?

Attention has immediately swung to Khairy because of his heated insistence that the gutter politicking waged by the Umno bloggers was fair. He accused Pakatan Rakyat leaders of using similar tactics in the past against BN families.

However, the most sensational scandal involving BN leaders relates to Prime Minister Najib Razak himself and his alleged affair with Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu. This is hardly a fabrication unlike the Marcus-Anya pix-combo put up by the Umno bloggers. While Najib may deny knowing Altantuya, there are grounds to be suspicious as her murder involved his aide-de-camp and two former bodyguards.

Other BN family scandals involve the son of Minister in the Prime Minister's Department - Nazri Aziz - and Najib's own son Norashman. However both these young men were already young adults and not 16-year-olds like Marcus when they were caught in intimate poses with their girlfriends.

Both young men had been photographed in pubs and at parties having a good time. The pictures were also not tampered with and may not have been released by the Pakatan parties, as suggested by Khairy, but could have come from infighting Umno rivals wishing to do Nazri and Najib an ill turn.

Yet, Khairy, who has two sons of pre-school age of his own, found nothing unethical or wrong with the latest scandal stirred up by the Umno bloggers.

“Bro, what BN leaders & their families get from opposition is far worse. Don’t be hypocritical,” Khairy wrote on his Twitter.

Strip his degree

Lim Kit Siang, who is the granddad of Marcus, immediately shot back. "Coming from an Oxonian? Should strip his degree."

Indeed the time may have come for Malaysians to stand up to gutter politics and demand the Najib and his government acknowledges Umno's problem.

So severe is the Umno addiction to sex that even free-and-fair-polls NGO Bersih has listed clean politicking as one of its 8 key demands to the federal government to clean up the electoral system before the 13th General Election is held.

[Source: MC]

Is that all UMNO can think of is sex, sex, sex, sex and more sex? You can view Anya Sun Corke's photo here. The actual picture used by the pro-UMNO bloggers is on page 2 of the photo gallery. Ms Anya should sue the pants off those who have implicated her in the case and using her photo without prior permission.

Lynas and the people of Gebeng.

I have just returned from Kuantan after a 2-day training assignment and the talk of the town was none other than LYNAS. Although the people were going about quietly attending to their daily chores but deep inside there was this humongous resentment about the rare earth plant located in Gebeng. From what I have gathered from the residents, such resentment was building day by day. The usual remarks were "If the MB is so sure that the plant is safe, why doesn't he move his residence to Gebeng and stay there?" or "Why is Najib's visit to Pekan becoming less and less?" It is to be noted that should there be a leak, the radiation could have a reach of 30 km radius.

All the same, here is a video clip to help you understand Lynas' reason for locating its plant in Gebeng, how rare earth is being processed and how it will affect the community.

PAS says NO to anti-apostasy rally

PAS will not participate in the anti-apostasy rally in Shah Alam this Saturday after organisers said that their event was not linked to any political party.

“PAS has been informed that the event those not involve political parties, thus PAS’ position is not to participate in the rally to respect the wishes of the organisers,” said party president Abdul Hadi Awang in a statement late last night.

The statement was issued after PAS’ political bureau met to discuss their position on the Himpunan Sejuta Ummah (Gathering of a Million Muslims) organised by a coalition of Muslim NGOs.

Chief organiser of the rally Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid told Malaysiakini yesterday that their event was not linked to any political party.

Specifically, Mohd Azmi said Kulim Bandar Baru MP Zulkifli Noordin, Senator Ezam Mohd Noor and Pasir Mas MP Ibrahim Ali have no role in the event, nor were they invited as speakers.

“Any statement issued by them regarding the event does not represent the organisers,” said Mohd Azmi.

In event was organised in view of purported increasing attempts to persuade Muslims to embrace Christianity.

The last incident which attracted widespread attention was the raid by Selangor religious authorities on a dinner event organised by the Damansara Utama Methodist Church.

'Don't cause friction with others'

It was claimed by Selangor Religious Affairs Department (Jais) that 12 Muslims at the event were being subject to proselytisation attempts by Christian evangelists, which is forbidden by law.

Following this, an investigation was carried out the results presented to the Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah who decreed that although there was evidence of proselytistion, it was not enough for legal action to be taken.

Meanwhile, Abdul Hadi urged rally organisers to ensure that the event is held in accordance with the country’s laws to ensure Malaysia’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious society is in harmony.

“Any efforts to raise a religious and racial polemic will not create an environment which is beneficial to anyone.

“PAS views with seriously at attempts by anyone who attempts to take advantage of the situation for political or purposes,” he said.

He said PAS was supportive of any attempts, by NGOs or other groups, to strengthen the Islamic faith as this is a commendable effort but it must be done in a courteous manner.

“PAS is of the position that to strengthen the faith in Muslims, it must be done through peaceful dakwah (preaching) which is how Islam has been accepted by society in this region,” he said.

[Source: Mkini]

To participate or not to participate, that was the question. To participate would mean alienating the non-Muslims, especially the Christian community. Not to participate, would have the party facing a repercussion from the Malay Muslim community, and knowing UMNO and its agents, they will exploit it to the hilt. So a decision has been taken and we should applaud PAS for taking such a courageous stand.

We have been told officially that there was no attempt to Christianise Penang, and the recent national statistics further showed that there were no records of Malays having converted to Christianity. So why the necessity for such a rally? Would the police issue permits to the Buddhists or Hindus should they wish to hold similar rallies to protest against the government for converting their people to become Muslims?