Efforts by the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to provoke opponents by massacring civilians and beheading US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and British aid worker David Haines, appear to have worked even better than it perhaps bargained for.

Now, not just the US, but also some 30 other nations, including many in the Middle East, have been galvanised into action against this latest band of killers using Islam as a pretext for their criminality.

And just this week, as Australian troops and aircraft were deployed to join the international effort against ISIL, a police dragnet foiled an alleged plot to randomly seize a stranger in Sydney, behead him on camera and post the video online.

The suspect in this intended atrocity, Omajan Azari, was detected discussing the plan in an intercepted phone conversation with Mohammad Ali Baryalei, the most prominent of about 60 renegade Australian citizens believed to have joined ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

Among other Australians believed to have been recruited for the cause by Baryalei, according to the Sydney Morning Herald , are Khaled Sharrouf, who has appeared on social media in the act of executing prisoners, and posing with his young sons, one of whom is seen holding a severed head, and Mohamed Elomar, who was also shown displaying the severed heads of alleged “enemies”.

What is BN doing about 'terrorists'?

All of which gets me wondering just how many Malaysians have joined the ISIL cause, and what the BN regime is doing about them.

Not much, I suspect, considering the fact that Perkasa information chief Ruslan Kassim ( right ) has not been charged for his recent threat to behead those who he deems to be guilty of insulting Islam.

But then of course Ruslan Kassim is a stooge of the BN regime, whose current head, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, just weeks ago recently exhorted members of Umno to “emulate the bravery of ISIL if the party is to survive.”

Najib’s massively-overstaffed Prime Minister’s Department issued a disclaimer to the effect that this statement did not constitute support for ISIL or any other terrorists.

But this denial rang somewhat hollow in light of the ISIL-admiring Najib simultaneously engaging in a terrorist campaign of his own in the form of sedition charges against a slew of critics and opponents.

One of these, student activist Adam Adli Abdul Halim, has just been convicted of the charge and sentenced to 12 months’ jail.

His offence? Making the statement in an address to a ceramah following the May 2013 general election that, as quoted in Malaysiakini , “we can’t wait five years to topple Umno and BN.

"Five more years, it is 2018. I can’t wait until 2018. In 2013, we shall topple Umno and BN together and boot them out of Putrajaya.”

Incitement charge used selectively

In urging the court to decide on a custodial sentence, deputy public prosecutor Mohd Abazafree Mohd Abbas reportedly claimed that what Adam Adli ( centre ) had said in urging the removal of a legitimate government was serious.

“The sentence should serve as a deterrent for others as Adam is bright and he fought for democracy and knows that a change of government should be done through democratic means,” Abazafree added.

Though, of course, the government in question arguably was and remains illegitimate, given that the Najib-led BN regime lost the popular vote but “won” the 2013 general election by means of massive gerrymandering of electorates, selective stacking of voter rolls, secret manipulation of postal votes, shamelessly biased media coverage and outright voter bribery.

And as for otherwise respecting the democratic process, Najib clearly had no intention of handing-over government to the opposition in the event that it won, in light of his call to delegates at the 2010 Umno General Assembly to “defend Putrajaya at all costs”, even to the extent of “bodies crushed and lives lost” .

If that wasn’t incitement to terrorism, I can’t think what would be.

Yet, thanks to the police, judiciary, mainstream media and other civil institutions sitting firmly in his pocket, Najib remains at large and clearly considers himself so untouchable that he can happily add insult to injury by charging opponents with sedition.

Not that he really needs to, except to try and give a lie to Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s claim that he is a weak leader.

A messy opposition

But Najib hardly needs to be strong, given the miserable mess that some of the opposition parties have been making of things lately.

PAS, having already lost a previously-held state in the 2013 general election, then proceeded to shoot itself in the foot by advocating the introduction of the much-hated hudud.

Since then, it has been further demonstrating its undesirability to most of the electorate through months of sordid infighting with a clearly demoralised and disorganised PKR over the replacement of the menteri besar of Selangor.

As if to press home just how pathetically irrelevant and out-of-touch PAS is, its youth wing has just passed a resolution declaring that the MH370 and MH17 disasters were a “lesson” to Malaysia Airlines to dress its female flight attendants more modestly, cease serving alcohol to passengers, and broadcast prayers aloud before take-off and landing in order to ensure Allah’s protection.

All of the above make the informal opposition “coalition” Pakatan Rakyat look almost as stupid and self-seeking, if not yet in a position to be as corrupt and self-enriching, as the BN regime that the majority of Malaysians have been counting on it to replace.

And thus BN terrorism is free to rage unabated. Free not only to assassinate the reputations and careers of opponents with trumped-up allegations ranging from the sodomy rap perennially hanging over Anwar Ibrahim’s head to the current barrage of sedition charges, but also to continue to commit and get away with extra-judicial killings.

Like the still-unsolved murders of Mongolian “model” Altantuya Shaariibuu, corruption “witness” Teoh Beng Hock, and literally hundreds of other suspicious deaths at the hands of the BN regime’s forces of so-called “law and order”.

But now that ISIL and its sympathisers in the Middle East and Australia are fast heading for their well-deserved fate, it’s tempting to think that terrorist regimes like BN and its head-hunting supporters like Perkasa might also be closer to getting the chop.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia', ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.