COMMENT There is evidently something very wrong with some Malaysians these days. Malaysians who are belligerent, mostly men and, plainly, largely Muslim. Although the latter, given the things they say and do, is quite questionable.

In June this year, multiple-medal gymnast at the SEA Games in Singapore, Farah Ann Abdul Hadi made the news worldwide not because of her splendid athletic achievements but because of the condemnations she received for the leotard she was wearing.

A couple of months ago, in September, it was reported that another Malaysian, 18-year-old Hajar Nur Asyiqin Abdul Zubir had won a Bank Negara scholarship to study chemistry at Oxford.

Instead of being congratulated for winning such an award to study at a prestigious university, she was virtually crucified on social media for not wearing a tudung .

A few days ago, 15-year-old Ummi Khazriena, a Form 3 girl by my reckoning, was mercilessly insulted and humiliated.

Ummi Khazriena, for those who have been fortunate enough not to follow and be angered by all that venom, is a former child actor.

She and Tan Hong Ming were the stars in the late Yasmin Ahmad’s much-loved 2007 Petronas National Day advertisement titled ' Tan Hong Ming In Love '

A Malaysian blogger reportedly posted a new picture of the two former actors, now grown-up, of course.

Some Facebook commentators then decided they needed to be moral police and also, basically, reveal their sick, perverted nature and started commenting on the teenager’s body.

Their own inadequacy

They told her off for wearing a top that showed that she had breasts! And, as the Malay Mail Online put it, made `sexual innuendoes on how 'big' she looks now’.

Clearly, these men-to-maggots had never been breast-fed, possibly growing up - and I use the term cautiously - staring curiously at naked storefront mannequins, wondering about their own inadequacy.

Clearly, too, I felt, they must have been abandoned babies, without mothers and without sisters. Because if they did, they surely would have thought - assuming they do think - about the bile they were spewing before spewing it.

And they must have grown older, fed on a diet of pornography and machismo, where sex - or their lack of it - was the first and only thing on their mind, especially when they see a woman or even a little girl.

Almost 60 years after Merdeka, more than 40 years after the New Economic Policy (NEP) was put into place, decades more in which one education blueprint has replaced another, this, unfortunately, is the state of play in this green, often hazy, land of ours.

So this stupidity, this inanity, this misogyny continues. And sadly it continues largely with little criticism, without much-needed counters.

Too often, the reports are filed by our transcribers in the media, always clearly wanting to just `report accurately’.

That extra step - of going beyond just stating what these hateful morons have to say; of getting counters, of providing us with an understanding of the implications of allowing such hatred to spread further - is seldom taken by our media boys and girls.

Cruel, misogynistic

The sensationalism, it would seem, is all that matters.

And the fear of these fascists and misogynists who often utter the most revolting comments and then have the gall to justify them in the name of God and religion.

This must stop.

And it can only stop if we stand up to these bullies and miscreants, irrespective of whether they are politicians, captains of industry, pseudo-academics or even religious `leaders’.

It can only stop if we all stand behind - no, in front of - Farah Ann, Hajar Nur Asyiqin, Ummi Khazriena and all the other oppressed women in Malaysian society - and rip to shreds the inhuman, cruel, misogynistic comments and behaviour of these louts.

There is nothing religious in what they say.

And there is absolutely nothing noble in their wanting to put women down.

ROM NAIN is a media analyst and academic who is weary of incompetent, unethical leaders and their apologists and spin doctors in the media who try to get away with murder while professing to rub shoulders with God’s angels.