All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring. - Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

COMMENT There has been a ratcheting up of racist rhetoric against the Chinese community of late by Umno, culminating in the rather odious challenge to PAS by Umno's Kemelah state assemblyperson Ayub Rahmat that ‘hudud law' be implemented in Johor for everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim.

Notice Ayub's unfortunate choice of words, "The Syariah Criminal Code (II) 1993 State of Kelantan does not reflect the true requirements of Islam. It creates discrimination in terms of execution (among Muslims and non-Muslims)."

In other words, it's "unIslamic" to have a set of laws that discriminates between Muslim and non-Muslim and because this is Malaysia, between Malay and non-Malay. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Like most Umno politicians Ayub does not see the contradiction between the Umno obsession of upholding Malay rights, which in turn is translated into unofficial and official institutionalised discrimination, and the so-called egalitarian perspective of Islam...