The growing responses by writers such as JS Shaari and SAB to my article and letter on the serious limitation of the Malaysian feminist paradigm are interesting. But at least the arguments are now less 'emotional' and more intellectual and academic. But still, there are serious foundational flaws as I will point out.

These flaws are perhaps derived by the weak foundations of the Malaysian feminists' understanding of what "humanism" as well as "Westernism" connotes. I must, however, congratulate the writers for moving from the "illogical" to the "logical", purely from the "right brain" to the "left brain" of the brain-hemispheric mode of this complex issue of "feminism".

The inability to come to terms with these serious theoretical errors unfortunately most often forces the Malaysian feminist, especially the "Malay-Muslim feminist" (a contradictory and oxymoronic term itself) to resort to calling her critic a "male chauvinist", a term in itself poorly understood by these so-called brigade of feminists.

The letter writers who offer critiques to my idea of "kampong-ism" as opposed to feminism missed the point. I wrote:

'Kampong-ism is not race-based, ethnicity-based, gender-based, greed-based, sexual-preference- based or ideology-based philosophy of human liberation and organisation. It has the potential of reorganising societies based on the themes Rousseau, Reason, and Revolution in Human Consciousness.'

I had suspected that these writers who do not read social theory would not be able to understand what I mean by "kampong-ism". I am not suggesting the feminists as a disgruntled and theoretically-barren interest group seek refuge in a 'kampung' or hide under a coconut shell. In fact it is the opposite, if the feminist themselves understand the meaning of pastoralism in activism. I suspect the writers failed to comprehend this metaphor, and hence have argued wrongly.

Malay-Muslim feminists in particular, and Malaysian feminists in general are a construction and almost an "invention" of the excessive "illiberal strand" of Western democracy. Such is evident from the inability to understand the difference between "feminism" and "apartheid"

There are other stands of illiberal democratic ideas that are fast mutating, metastizing, and destroying the ethical fabric of our society, among them corporate-crony-capitalism, degenerative music such as Black Metallism, ill-conceived alternative religio-paradigmatic inventions such as "Ayah Pinn-ism and Anti-Hadis-ism, and race-based economic designs derived from Malaysian-styled plutocracy.

Let us go back to this Malay-Muslim feminist mystique-problematique.

In a capsule, Malaysian feminists analyse, collect data, argue, conclude, and advocate using the paradigm of Western theoretical fancy and get support from their theoretical colonisers from the West too. The language of Malay-Muslim feminist is also a transplantation of the discourse of neo-colonialism derived from the Western feminist movement.

Western feminism is ideologically controlling the direction Malay-Muslim feminism. The latter is like a Malaysian branch of McDonald's and Starbucks.

Language structures and reconfigures reality. There is this argument that feminism is about humanity. But what brand of "humanism" are we talking about? Does "humanism" mean advocating for "equal rights" without clarifying or even clearly understanding what "equality". "equity" or "equal opportunity" means"?

There is also the argument that Malaysian feminism is about "Western humanism". I am not sure what this word means. Are there variants of "humanism" Eastern, Mid-Eastern, Continental, Oriental, Occidental, Aboriginal humanism?

Malaysian Muslim feminists are trapped in their own "logic bubble", "prison-house of language", and "paradigm of limitations" derived from the "cultural logic of the dangerous stand of Western illiberalism".

To contract the strand of Western illiberalism means to subject oneself to a range of other "ills" that have pervaded Western democracy itself. Radical feminism is one, consumerism is another, and militarism is yet another.

I hope readers will understand better the range of thoughts I presented on feminism and do justice to my idea of "kampong-ism" by analysing the propositions concerning its base and superstructure.

The writer can be reached at: [email protected].