Yes Prime Minister, moderation is A HARAM WORD FOR YOUR UTUSAN

Datuk Seri Najib Razak today took his message of moderation to the media, urging them “to take back the centre” and reclaim the agenda for peace and pragmatism.

State news agency Bernama quoted the prime minister as saying the movement of the moderates could marginalise the extremists, and that the media had a significant role to play in this quest.

“With collective determination, we can build a more rational, secure and equitable world.

“As media messages about the majority who seek peace and moderation spread around the globe, this new world is indeed within our reach,” he said at the opening of the 43rd International Convention of the World Chinese Language Press Institute in Penang.

Perhaps he should tell that to the Umno-owned media.

The ones who believe that Malaysians owe everything to Malays. That non-Malay Malaysians have to be thankful that they can be citizens of this country and the “social contract” must be followed at all costs.

That’s fine if the majority of Malaysians believe that and keep returning a government that believes in Malay supremacy. That Barisan Nasional (BN) is not an alliance of 13 parties but one supreme overlord with 12 handmaidens.

But the prime minister is not saying that. Clearly, he says that “we can build a more rational, secure and equitable world” that will lead to “this new world is indeed within our reach”.

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What does Malaysia need to achieve this? The alphabet soup of programmes and agencies is there to facilitate moving the economy forward and bigger so that it can be shared by everyone.

Do we still need quotas for every race? Are we not Malaysians no matter our origins? Can we get over this hang-up that we identify ourselves by race and, thus, have a quota to fill?

Can we just all help the poor? Can we forget about whether someone of a particular race can or can’t be the prime minister of this country? It just has to be a Malaysian no matter race or creed.

How hard is that? Do we need reminders who settled in this country first? Should we need a reminder whose faith is supreme? Doesn’t the Rukun Negara explicitly say that Malaysians believe in God?

Malaysia has been moderate since it came to being in 1963. And before that Malaya too. All prime ministers since August 1957 have been talking about moderation.

There was a time when even the newspapers spoke about moderation and nation-building. Not anymore. Perhaps the prime minister should remind his party’s press about that.

The fact that he has to remind them and that they are losing readers is testimony to their blinkered mindset that extremist views are not welcome in Malaysia.

Yes, Prime Minister, moderation is good. One just hopes the message gets through this time.

If only our political leaders had the political will to achieve no Muslim-Muslim unity, they could have utilised the opportunity presented by the GE12 to convince our Muslim brethren even at that time (about forty years ago!). Much of unpleasantness wrought out by ISLAMIC might have been wisely avoided. If only our Muslim brethern had gracefully responded to the clarion call of the GE13 at that time promptly without waiting for lengthy and delayed judicial process, the India of today would have been surprisingly different.

'Divide and Rule’ was the policy of the British to sustain their imperialist designs Malaysia and elsewhere. This was made possible by a handful of MALAYSIAN who contributed their might to please their British masters. Thus they successfully played their part as political pimps! However, after the dawn of Independence, these very cohorts of the British were quick to switch over their loyalties and joined the UMNO, the ruling party, as well as the other political outfits that preferred to tread on the footsteps of the British rulers, only to perpetuate the policy of ‘divide and rule’. This group of vested interests styled themselves as progressives and secularists, and did everything possible to destroy and cripple the values of life cherished and nourished by the people of the land. They were quiet faithful in perpetuating the policy of NON MUSLIM-MUSLIM divide and in the PROCESS fooling both! Many were THE ISSUE on which they could harp and take the people for a ride, irrespective of whether they were Muslims or non-Muslims. The issue centred around KETUAN MELAYU was one such issue and was exploited by them to frighten the Non Muslims as well as to blackmail the MUSLIMS! fifty three years after, when the country was still not prepared for celebrating the Golden Jubilee of the KETUAN MELAYU issue, the judiciary pronounced a verdict that left the intellectually challenged pseudo-secular brigade aghast! No wonder, a verdict of this nature angered some champions of pseudo-secularism like PERKASA who had the audacity to remark ‘that the non Muslim felt by suit verdict’. However, our non Muslim brethren who were accustomed to the pseudo-secular tantrums of political heavyweights, reacted sharply to IBRAHIM ALI’s statement.

However, better late then never! We are gifted with a Muslim leader like ANWAR IBRAHIM who has already proved his worth. Let us hope that a matured leader like HAJI HADI AND KARPAL would establish an atmosphere of harmony which is the basis of MALAYSIAN ethos!

DHAKA: A Muslim cleric has been arrested in northwest Bangladesh following the death of a woman who was publicly caned as punishment by an Islamic court for an extra-martial affair, police said Monday.

Sufia Begum, 50, was accused of having an affair with her stepson and was sentenced by a religious court in her village in Rajshahi district, the local police chief told AFP.

"Village elders tied 10 canes together and beat her legs," police chief Azizul Haq Sarker said. The woman who carried out the beating for the elders has also been arrested.

Begum was whipped 40 times on November 12, local media reported.

"She became seriously ill and was hospitalised after the caning, and she died last week," Sarker said, adding that police launched an investigation following a complaint from Begum's brother.

In conservative, rural parts of Muslim-majority Bangladesh, rights groups say it is common for women to be publicly whipped for "crimes" like adultery despite a High Court ban on such religious punishments.

In some documented cases, rape victims have been flogged for being a "participant" in their sexual assault.

In July, Bangladesh's High Court outlawed punishments handed down by religious edict, or fatwa, following a series of public interest litigation cases lodged by local human rights groups.

Some 90 percent of Bangladesh's 146 million people are Muslims and most live in rural areas.

Should we be concerned about the fate of Christian communities in the Arab world?

This burning issue hits the headlines time and again whenever a church is attacked in Iraq or Egyptian Copts are bullied. Most recently an appeal by a group of Arab intellectuals to rise above sectarian divisions was published in the French media following a gory attack against Iraqi Christians.

The media routinely characterise the disappearance or wholesale departure of Middle Eastern Christians as “imminent” or “unavoidable”. And the trend has been to explain the dangers facing the Christian community as a result of the rise of “radical” Islam. This explanation reinforces the idea that Christians are victims who must be “saved” from Islam.

This coverage also provides the opportunity for Arab governments to escape responsibility by blaming religion for any political or social unrest, thus renewing their lease on legitimacy on the cheap.

Conversely, some Western opinion leaders do not realise the impact of statements asserting, for instance, that the end of colonialism deprived Middle Eastern Christians of valuable support from Europeans, or calling Arab Christians “Westernised Arabs". Such remarks ignore the importance of Christians’ ideological contributions to Middle Eastern societies, and the fact that in the mid-20th century it was Christian elites who imagined, conceived and carried the inspiring project of Arab unity.

The concept of Arab nationalism, conceived in part by Christian Arab intellectuals, such as Michel Aflaq, the Syrian founder of the socialist Ba’ath party, was based on the idea of a social body where clan, tribal and religious divisions would be subsumed in the nation, or even in the Arab community. Arab unity was the avenue to a pan-Arab state bolstered by the values of reason, citizenship and modernity.

Despite efforts for pluralism, such as the UN coining 1999 the Year of the Dialogue of Civilisations, the international community seems to be blind to the real challenges of diversity in the world in the past decade.

Celebrating coexistence is not the only response. Dialogue between cultures at the international level can succeed only if it is paired with changes at the national level. How can cultural coexistence be promoted if, within national borders, the cult of the dominant faith, or indeed the one-party system, still exists? Governments in Arab countries should protect their Christian citizens instead of bringing to court men and women who have chosen a way other than that of the majority.

Multi-national organisations can also lend their support. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in addition to defending Muslims living in the West, can also advocate against the abuse inflicted on Christians in the Middle East.

Some voices, including that of Saudi Prince Talal ibn Abd al-Aziz, the brother of King Abdullah, warn that the departure of Christians would be a threat to democracy and modernity in the Arab world. More such voices should speak up in order to initiate a long overdue debate about the living conditions and rights for religious minorities. A failure of democracy, in which citizens lack equal rights under the law and where there are few checks on leaders’ powers, is largely responsible for the current disaster.

To say that Christians should merely be "tolerated" in the Arab world is grossly unfair. Christians have always been an integral part of the land where they were born and raised, the land of their forbearers, the land of the Bible. They are not a recently imported religious minority that deserves our charity. They do not come from a foreign country. They are active citizens of their homeland where they should have the choice to remain.

If they leave, it will be the end of our history and the beginning of our downfall. The fate of Christians in the Middle East is linked to the fate of the Arab world as a whole.