This week alone, Malaysiakini carried two stories about the conflict between non-Muslims and their convert spouses. If Fatimah Fong converts her child to Islam, then the father, Tan Cheow Hong, can kiss goodbye to any hope of keeping the little girl with him. The other is S Shamala and Muhammad Ridzwan fighting over the custody of their children, also a proxy battle over jurisdiction, whether civil law or syariah.

In July 2008, Anwar Ibrahim turned to the Syariah court to clear his name over the sodomy allegation against him. His syarie lawyers filed a qazaf complaint against Saiful Bukhari Azlan to request a probe. Under syariah law, Saiful would have had to produce four witnesses, failing which he could be deemed as bearing false witness and jailed up to three years.

azlan Singapore’s Straits Times gave its take on Anwar’s gambit: “By going to Islamic court, he discredits civil justice system and puts onus on accuser”.

Anwar’s recourse to Syariah imputes a belief in the superior justice of the non-secular court. Thus, he and by extension PKR - lately coming across more and more as a husband-wife-daughter-blue-eyed boy family business - would be hard-pressed to criticise any shortcomings in the Syariah judiciary. Nor can the public expect PAS to question the conduct of the Syariah court.

As such, we would need to look to DAP displaying enough political will in defending parental rights of the minorities. The Chinese seven-year old was after all ‘snatched’ in Butterworth, Penang, a DAP-led state.

I’ve been warning of the danger of DAP kowtowing to Islamisation which is intensely affecting every facet of life in the country. DAP has been so assiduously currying favour with the Malay-Muslim electorate that the party topliners, particularly its secretary-general, will not dare to risk their reputation as newly-minted defenders of the faith.

Both factors are hampering DAP’s effectiveness in representing its core constituency - the Chinese and Indian working class.

‘Change’ in DAP-style

The seats that DAP holds are a clear indication of who the party supporters are. Of its 29 Parliamentarians, 22 are Chinese, none Malay. Of the seven Indian MPs, Karpal Singh and his son Gobind Singh Deo are Sikh, Charles Anthony Santiago and John Fernandez have Christian names, leaving M Manogaran, Prof P Ramasamy and M Kulasegaran the remaining three Hindus, presumably.

everest corporal m moorthy The bodysnatching cases (of corpses and living children) in recent decades have predominantly been Indian until this Fatimah Fong case surfaced. It was the 2005 bodysnatching of M Moorthy , the Everest mountaineer, that prompted the birth of Hindraf.

Indian Hindus have been increasingly disenchanted with DAP’s pandering to Malays and not valuing their long-standing loyalty. They made their displeasure felt in Hulu Selangor, a seat with 19 percent Indian voters and cost Pakatan the by-election. M Kulasegaran’s recent travails in the Perak party polls have further alienated the community.

Analyst Ong Kian Ming has estimated that the Indian vote swing against the BN in peninsular Malaysia was approximately 35 percent, Chinese 30 percent and Malay five percent in the last general election. Meaning, percentage-wise, Malays abandoned Umno-Barisan only by a slight margin (mainly due to the anti-Dollah sentiment and Mahathir's incitement, and not a drastic change in mindset) although the mood of the tsunami helped PAS break new ground with non-Malays.

As one example, Siti Mariah Mahmud beat an MIC candidate in Kota Raja, Selangor - a seat that has 28.3 percent Indians out of its 51 percent non-Malay voters.

Lim Guan Eng lecturing Chua Soi Lek on how the latter should educate himself on the glory of Islamic civilisation while at the same time calling Chua “ignorant” must have boggled the party’s traditional ground - the Ah Peks and Ah Sohs who stood by DAP when the party was in the political wilderness. These were the faithful who raised funds in the lean times before DAP unprecedently tasted power and control of a state, Penang (now a caliphate wannabe).

These grassroots must be scratching their heads wondering why DAP and its representatives, even those in Perak and Selangor, are going overboard touting Islamism when previously Lim Kit Siang had challenged Ling Liong Sik to “sever all relations” with Umno and pull MCA out of government if Umno should cooperate with PAS.

Consequences of action

From my very first political writings, I’ve dwelt on Indian and religious issues - my essay on Hindraf appears in Kee Thuan Chye’s ‘March 8 ' book, and my article on temple demolitions is compiled in ‘ Religion under siege? ’, a Kini Book. I’m consistent; it is DAP that has made the 180-degree turn.

Granted, the scenario has evolved and proponents of a two-party system quite understand the neccesity of DAP’s liaison with PAS these last two years. However, their flagbearers do not have to descend to such nauseating antics. As I wrote last week, despite MCA’s more than 50 years with Umno, we’re yet to see their Wanita leaders traipsing off to mosques in selendang .

NONE On the other side of the fence, the prayer said in Penang mosques for Lim Guan Eng to convert to Islam is being investigated by a special police task force. It is only DAP that refuses to see how its Islamic posturing (something best left to PAS) has far-reaching implications and repercussions. For instance, would Teo Nie Ching wear her baju kurung and selendang during the daylight hours of Ramadan and be seen to be eating publicly?

As a result of her surau-hopping, the Selangor religious department actually banned her from further visits! She was furthermore questioned by police. Pakatan supporters would retort that it was petty for whoever it was to make Teo the subject of a police report. However, by the same token, consider also that Lim’s aide similarly made a police report on the doctored photo of the DAP sec-gen.

There's no dispute that the photoshop was black propaganda, which Lim laid at the door of Umno cybertroopers. Nonetheless, would any other Chinese opposition leader have been targetted? Would say Tian Chua or Chong Eng be superimposed into the Muslim ritual slaughter of a cow? No, because the shoe wouldn’t fit.

It is Lim who has been leading PAS on. If a boy was flirting with a girl to that extent, her father would sternly demand: Young man, do you have honourable intentions?  

Umno upping the ante

“Najib is making a foray into Islam Wassatiyyah branding”, I wrote in my column on June 3, a full six months ago. If Abdullah Ahmad Badawi introduced Islam Hadhari, Najib Razak too has his own branding.

Are you (the rabid Pakatan pitbulls who populate my readership) even today yet aware of the term ‘ wassatiyah ’? Najib spoke about ‘middle way’ Islam in his maiden speech at the United Nations, during his Hari Raya address as well as at the Malaysia Day celebration.

‘ Wassatiyah ’ is an Arabic word. Other Arabic words were also bandied about at the Umno general assemby not only by the party president once again promoting Islam Wassatiyah but also by the Youth chief whose speech was titled ‘ Maqasid dan Manhaj Perjuangan’ (when the Malay words ‘ matlamat ’ and ‘ pendekatan ’ would have done well enough).

azlan A pro-Umno blogger pointed out that one would have expected this Arabism stunt from Anwar Ibrahim. It would not occur to most that Khairy Jamaluddin, the urbane Oxford graduate who speaks impeccable English, would want to do the fiery Arabic routine. Interestingly enough, pro-Pakatan blogger ‘uppercaise’ also pointed out that Lim Guan Eng’s paean to the glory of Islamic civilisation sounded like he was channelling Anwar.

A letter to the editor by Ruzaini Fikri in The Sun observed that “the recent [Umno] assembly has marked such a disturbing trend of moralising and pontificating by delegates and speakers, that one would confuse it for a religious conference”. Ruzaini additionally found the call for the establishment of a council of ulama “most disturbing”.

There are indeed several other disturbing aspects in Islam becoming so bureaucratised and Islamists dictating national policy. The bodysnatching and incidents of religious bigotry do not occur in a vacuum but in the context of this Islamist ascendency.

Not only is DAP is not part of the solution, it is most certainly adding to the problem. Karpal’s roar that an Islamic state would be instituted over his dead body has become muted and his a lone voice in the party top echelon.

See also the writer's discussion of Arabism in the Malay language.

Why M’sian First is a joke

HELEN ANG used to be a journalist. In future, she would like to be a practising cartoonist. But for the present, she is in the NGO circles and settling down to more serious writing and reading of social issues.