Is Muhyiddin confused?

In my last column, I defined what I called uniformed incompetence or what can be called \’idiocracy,\’ or a bureaucracy of idiots! 

These are public officials who do not know the laws and proper rules of good conduct and civil behavior related to specific issues and policies, especially in the public spaces. They are misled, either because of genuine ignorance, or they are honest to goodness idiots.

One would have assumed that the deputy prime minister would at least understand what the prime minister spoke about when the latter brought up the need for some kind of inter-faith dialogue to defuse the hot issues such as the Allah controversy.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak had in fact said that inter-faith dialogues are needed to diffuse the underlying misunderstanding between communities within the country.

The acting Agong has reiterated the same thing at the City Day awards ceremony. I would thus assume it is now a public policy and perspective!

Why then is Muhyiddin dubbing the dialogues an ‘inter-faith commission\’ when Najib and the Agong are talking about the democratic process of reducing confusion and misunderstanding vide a process of dialogue between faith communities?

Does Muhyiddin have a more sinister motive? Or, as someone said on the web, is it all part of a larger Umno plan to create and infuse confusion in some sectors of society and the country for their own reasons?

Hidden agendas

DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang may have therefore hit the nail on the head when he questioned the rationale for why 800 public servants were invited to a talk by Jakim when at the same time, all top public servants were participating proudly in the launch of the published and transparent version of the NKRA – the execution strategy for Najib\’s ‘people first, performance now\’ agenda.

While English media praised the government initiative for dialogue as mooted by the 1Malaysia Foundation chairman Chandra Muzaffar, why is Muhyiddin raising a contrary voice and misleading the ordinary Malay public?

I see in the shadows Mahathir Mohamad ( right ) colluding with Ibrahim Ali who is neither PAS nor Umno. Is Mahathir working against the whole one ‘Bangsa Malaysia\’ ideal? He should say so then, instead of playing both sides!

If Mahathir is Malay first and Malaysian second he should say so, and withdraw his Bangsa Malaysia thesis except it has to be done over the grave of the late Noordin Sopiee.

As part of the May13th generation, I am surprised that common sense has prevailed among the public despite it being uncommon among our politicians.

Usually we consider tcommon sense is a rare commodity. But ever since the cow-head incident, and the burning of churches, suraus and temples, and most recently the throwing of pig-heads into mosques, what has impressed me most is the maturity of the large majority of average Malaysians.

I was even totally unprepared for Muslim NGOs volunteering to watch over church buildings.

Therefore, what did I, an ordinary citizen, learn from all these events, incidents and reactions?

One, the people of Malaysia will always be peace-loving unless they are purposely cornered into a reactive amok-like behavior for retaliation.

Most Malaysians above 40 years old and having lived through the May13th incident would not want to see any semblance of a reoccurence.

 

Second, the ghost of May 13th has no sense of history or emotional bearing upon the younger generation of Malaysians, especially those less than 25 years of age. They are of the Mahathir generation, who witnessed an outspoken and opinionated leader of the nation.

He was willing to take on global leaders; without fear or favour, and sometimes even with a personal vengeance. These young ones are now willing to offer the same spirit in vehemently expressing their views against this same Mahathir, for his inconsistency of comments and views. Monkey sees, monkey learns, and monkey does!

Thirdly, my personal experience also tells me otherwise. On September 16th 2009, our NGO, jointly with IAIS built an inter-faith dialogue partnership.

It was conducted in a closed-door environment as we were not sure of the quality and types of views and expressions to be expected. We deployed, in writing, all the 10 decalogue rules of dialogue, and sought to observe all of them.

We had 12 speakers, two observers from other faiths, and two neutral moderators for the content of the dialogue. The focus of the dialogue was on unity and what it meant from all sides and perspectives.

What an exhilarating and enjoyable dialogue we had. To make the spirit even more special, many non-Muslims had fasted the whole day and were able to breakfast with their Muslim counterparts!

Now, some may say that was only those who knew more and were more informed and learned. But, that is not true either. I attend Malay weddings (albeit within an English-speaking crowd context) and there we could all carry on a comfortable conversation round the meal table without any problems.

Finally, I was able to attend a Sisters-in-Islam hosted review of a movie entitled ‘The Imam and the Pastor\’, which documented how the two leaders of communities are now becoming peacemakers. Again, this was a mixed but English-speaking audience, although one participant spoke almost entirely in Malay. This was another actual inter-faith dialogue with no problems!

Therefore, my advice to Muhyiddin ( left ): please take time to be educated (gnosis) with the real and genuine intent of peacemaking efforts without being confused yourself and then confusing the unlearned population.

We need rational and honest Malaysian leaders who can set good examples of how to undertake peace-building; not warmongers or those who do not believe or have not learned to trust others. May God guide Malaysians and Malaysian leaders in the right direction.