These days, the governments of Muslim countries are wont to criticise the actions of the US government as unilateralist, overblown, overkill and provocative. While such criticism is both valid and precise, they should also spend some time looking at the conduct of their own security forces within their respective borders.

If it is well and fine to disabuse the American government for some of its own myopic failings and contradictions. But the governments of countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia should also vent some of their bile and venom on the unilateralist behaviour and excessive violence of their own security apparatus, ostensibly in the name of 'protecting peace' and 'maintaining stability' For whose peace and stability is being protected here? The general public or the ruling elite?

Such considerations come to the fore when one witnesses ugly spectacles such as the behaviour of the police last Saturday, when force was used to disperse a crowd of peaceful protesters who had gathered in front of the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters. Judging by the photographs taken at the scene, it was clear that the group that was assembled was neither violent, threatening nor capable of breaching the walls of the institution itself.

They were, in fact, exercising their fundamental right of assembly and had assembled for the simple aim of highlighting contradictions and alleged abuses by the police; a growing public concern in Malaysia that is both legitimate and has been tacitly acknowledged by the government's recent announcement that there should be a royal commission of enquiry into the conduct of the Malaysian police force itself.