Two things in Dr Syed Alwi Ahmad's latest contribution - his clear misunderstanding of my arguments, and his display of a dangerous and naive game of brinkmanship marked by overt racialist chauvinism and ignorance - necessitates urgent response.

It's the ignorance, blithe or otherwise, that is perhaps the more dangerous for the future of Malaysia.

Let's be clear from the outset: Nobody doubts Malaysia is a Muslim 'nation', and nobody is challenging the place of Islam in Malaysian political life. Nor that Muslims should rule themselves through the teachings of Islam, whatever version of Islam by which they choose to live. Thankfully, unlike PAS, Syed does not want purist Islam to encroach into the everyday lives of non-Malays.

Yet, it's sadly been clear, at least in Malaysia's short history of the rise of political Islam under Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, that the secularist 'Islamic state', as Mahathir had quickly declared of Malaysia o­n the back of the Sept 11 attacks in America, is hell-bent o­n knocking down the fundamentalists and the fanatics, viz. PAS.

Umno portrays PAS as crazy and bloody-minded as the Taliban. It's a shame that Malaysia's Islamic brethren just can't seem to get along as o­ne people.

Still, the danger in Syed's laments is he asserts that non-Malays are mere migrants and that they should be grateful that Umno, which in its magnanimity, has shared political power with non-Malay political parties - or, more accurately, with those parties coerced and co-opted and prepared to kowtow to Umno-Malay supremacy. I repeat my earlier point: The distribution of power throughout Malaysia is reflected in the highly skewed, plainly racialist, even racist, and token-based representation in the Malaysian cabinet and bureaucracy.

It's as if Syed hasn't learnt the lessons of his own country's history, as though non-Malays had not contributed to Umno's struggle for independence. Not o­nce has nor would Syed acknowledge, with honesty, those contributions that were made by non-Malays in the longer history of pre-colonial and colonial Malaya and post-colonial Malaysia.

Here, Syed does a Mahathirism o­n re-writing history. Like Mahathir, Syed suffers from myopia, short-termism and amnesia for political convenience.

It's not so much that political power has been shared as much as what the 'bargain' has entailed, what it has meant in the last 40-odd years of the nation's economic and political development, what it means in the new century and in its stride towards achieving industrialised nation status (somehow Malaysia is still living in the ancient times of Asia's economic 'miracles' when the miracles were proved to be bunk and have died). So much for 'Asian values'. And if you go by Syed, o­ne should also forget Malaysia ever achieving a truly 'Malaysian' race, or bangsa Malaysia. It's political rhetoric, and bears no truth in or carries conviction by Umno.

If the latest power struggle within the Malaysian Chinese Association shows anything - the MCA should have long reformed itself from the typical 'kongsi' that it has remained, quite like the Malaysian Indian Congress, which has stayed mostly the 'chettiars' shop' - it is that the rapidly changing nature of the world economy, with new forms of cut-throat and complex economic competition coupled more intrinsically with neo-conservative political competition, means that Malaysia can ill afford to run and re-run the political ruse of old for its own sake.

The Malay subordination of non-Malays - treating those cronies connected to the major governing parties as first-class citizens while treating the rest of the non-Malays as second or third-class 'citizens' - just won't do anymore. It should be vehemently resisted. Moreover, these crony capitalists, o­n the whole, have been shown by the Asian crisis to be mostly ersatz, and as such they'll need ever greater state protection from international competition.

Syed says the power-sharing arrangement within the Barisan Nasional is the right formula for ensuring political stability in Malaysia. Perhaps. But it is being unravelled. After 46 years of independence, without any substantive progress towards embracing democratic values, respect for human rights, equality, responsible and accountable government and good governance, the power-sharing argument has become nothing more than an argument for more, not less, Malay state authoritarianism.

That illiberalism is strongly linked to the nature of Malaysia's economy, which is running out of steam if not already tiring from the lack of real reforms. More specifically, it is connected to the corruption ridden government and bureaucracy and the crony infested Malaysia Inc, which, again, is in turn linked to the beleaguered Malaysian stock market.

The longer the stock market stays at or below the 650-point benchmark, the worse for the cronies and their business empires and the more the Umno state will have to look after their cronies' interests, pump-prime the domestic economy, and bail out crony businesses in strife. It was the same story at the height of the Asian crisis and this was very much behind the sacking and brutalising by the Mahathir regime of Anwar Ibrahim.

Trouble is never far away for the cronies, and the mainstream media will never be allowed to be free to tell the truth as long as the Mahathir regime remains dishonest. There's much to hide, more lies to uphold. Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Mahathir's heir-apparent, has the chance to put things right after Mahathir. However, there's not o­ne serious and honest analyst anywhere who's holding his or her breath that Badawi will make a difference. The problem lies inside Umno, which is corrupt to the core, its barons robbing their own, and others.

As for Syed's claim that Asean Muslims won't stand for anything less than for non-Muslims to "[understand] ... the Muslim nature of the Malaysian political elite (including the Chinese, Indians, Christians and other minorities) and power-sharing between Umno and other BN component parties," I can o­nly say this a wild claim that deserves to be labelled as pure drivel.

It's hard to fathom, for example, Thai or Filipino or Singaporean or Indonesian Muslims throwing their wholesome political support behind Umno Muslims should, in Syed's spurious idea, the organisation be challenged by non-Muslims. There's simply not o­ne shred of evidence to support his bizarre claim. I dare say even Mahathir would laugh at Syed's banal.

The challenge o­n Umno should be at the polls, but with massive gerrymandering and the Election Commission in Umno's pockets, forget that, too.

Syed's last sentence - "This is no exaggeration - Asean Muslims will not tolerate anything less. Consequently those who are not comfortable with Malaysia's Muslim character ought to do some serious soul searching" - is threatening. And dangerous. Perhaps deliberately.

What Syed means is that those non-Malays who are unhappy with the present arrangements should consider leaving Malaysia permanently. But that's an old and tired and ridiculous argument usually drummed up by Umno's foot soldiers and rightwingers when they can't offer a more compelling or intelligent counter position.

Syed's sycophancy is meant to instil fear among restive non-Malays to behave and be grateful for not equally sharing power, and thus rights, except proportional power and rights in accordance with the numbers that make up a 'constituent' racial group in the country. Nothing more and nothing less.

Syed's arguments, or rather assertions, speak volumes of the kind of mindless trite humbug that Umno and its ideologues keep coughing up time and again when, clearly, they all seem to be out of their depth, including, I might add, those in the Barisan Nasional and within the opposition parties.

The big price to pay for such cant and canard by Umno dogmatists is Malaysia's future, where - and Mahathir knows this o­nly too well - all will lose, including the Malays, perhaps more so, if o­ne strips out multinational investments and Chinese-dominated small and medium enterprises, not to mention also the huge and vibrant 'black economy' in which, interestingly, all races are participants and which the government, for key social and political reasons, will be loathed to destroy, thus paying mere lip service to intellectual property rights and international law.

These are some of the risks, or dangers, facing Malaysia in the 21st century, most of which have been dragged from the 20th century and amplified in the new millennium. Not that o­ne could tell the difference.

Badawi's clearest and foremost challenge is to reform Umno, inside-out, and then Malaysia's political economy. So far Badawi is being gagged by Mahathir, and he'll still be gagged by Mahathir's minders in the Umno supreme council after Mahathir quits. And Vision 2020 will turn out to look like so many of Mahathir's other white elephants that are dotted around the country which were paid for by all - all - Malaysian taxpayers, with huge and unrecoverable opportunity costs.