vox populi small thumbnail 'It is amazing how Umno can mix debauchery and religion into a deadly cocktail and have it served to the Malays to drink.'

Anti-Anwar book distributed at Umno dinner

Avatar1: Syed Hussein Alatas' books have always been a bunch of garbage. Now if Anwar Ibrahim were to make a police report, the police will start to investigate Anwar instead of the writer.

If Anwar doesn't sue the writer, Umno will claim that the books contains accurate information and Anwar is afraid of suing. If Anwar sues the writer, he might not win and if he wins, Syed Hussein might be dead by then or already a bankrupt.

But one thing for sure, Umno is celebrating its 65th birthday with such great fear of Anwar. It looks like Najib Razak is having sleepless night after all.

Cannon: Malays should seriously question themselves what they're seeing. It is amazing how Umno can mix debauchery and religion into a deadly cocktail and have it served to the Malays to drink by its wicked priests.

Supporters of Umno are staggering about in spiritual blindness, looking but not seeing, listening but not hearing - confused and burdened that their faith is under siege. The enemy from within their community is poisoning them and leading them astray as a people.

Disgusted: It was utterly disgusting and uncultured to give out such defamatory book for free at the Umno 65th anniversary dinner. How could any decent human being allow and condone such conduct?

Umno, being the ruling party, is stooping so low as to allow such stinking politics to emerge. Do we have any more hope of having a government consisting of noble, capable, committed and well-cultured politicians from Umno?

Isana: Syabas, Syed Hussein, for making good money out of Umno's obsession with Anwar. Umno is so scared of Anwar that they have thrown everything at him, but nothing seems to work and 'the man who will destroy Umno' is still standing and hitting back.

Ben Hor: So, this slanderous book is allowed and commissioned by Umno but a mere political cartoon book by Zunar is not allowed? This is hypocrisy at its fullest.

Lawyers want Islamic laws outside Parliament's ambit

Quigonbond: Parliament makes laws. Everything relating to laws must be permitted to be debated in the Parliament.

If PPMM (Malaysia Muslim Lawyers Association) thinks MPs are off-tangent, then offer to provide their views on the matter. But the invitation should not only be limited to them but to any other Muslim NGOs who are interested to provide their intellectual take on the matter. That way, debaters are well-informed, and as a result, the debates will increase in quality.

What PPMM is suggesting is simply backwards - for it represents Muslims the likes of Pembela which is under a siege mentality in a country where Muslims form the majority of the citizen and enjoy special protection under the federal constitution.

Worse still, coming from lawyers (by the way PPMM is not recognised by the Malaysian Bar, and their functions don't fall under the Legal Profession Act), it's really shameful.

Multi Racial: Is PPMM president Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar a qualified lawyer? He talks as if he doesn't understand laws.

How can any change in constitution and law be excluded from Parliament? If that is the case, the Christians, the Buddhists, the Taoist and other religions should request the same. Then which law is superior over the rest when there is a stalemate?

David Yee 154a: What is our nation becoming? Eventually we will end up not having power in our constitutional law to govern our country. Shouldn't we keep race and religion out of politics?

It would not be a surprise if we will end up at the bottom growing economies in Asia after being bypassed by other Asian countries. We are too busy being engrossed in being outwardly religious, internally corrupt and foolishly blind to problems in front of us.

Artchan: Good idea. When they have parliamentary elections, create a new voting slip for every parliamentary seat for Muslims. Then all these Muslim wakils (representatives) can have their own Parliament. And the non-Muslims will have their own.

The only condition is that the Muslims cannot contest against non-Muslims, and likewise non-Muslims cannot contest against Muslims. So we will have two Parliaments - one for non-Muslims and another for Muslims. Maybe we will have a Parliament for Christians as well.

I think then Malaysia will be peaceful because when the laws are debated, it will be debated by the same lawmakers with the same religion. Perhaps we should have a Christian PM and Muslim PM and Buddhist PM, etc, etc, and each of these PMs can only preside over their own kind...

David Dass: These lawyers do not understand the value of the system we have today. They want laws to be passed outside of Parliament. Do they seriously want to dismantle the democratic system that we have today?

Someone said that Malaysia will progressively dismantle the system that we have because the system was given to us on a platter. We never had to fight for our freedoms as the Europeans did. So they appreciate the system because they know what life was without the freedoms and they know how much blood was shed to win those freedoms.

Do not let our democratic institutions be destroyed by narrow-mindedness, bigotry and most of all by foolishness.

Malaysian Born: We are a constitutional monarchy that practices parliamentary democracy. There is no such thing as a law being passed or implemented that either by-passes parliament or the king. When you hear people talk about enacting laws that somehow get approved without going through the Parliament, we should all be nervous.

We are a country whose official religion is Islam. We are not an Islamic country despite the statements by certain opportunistic politicians. For the record, the greatest errors and wrongdoings in the name of religion have historically been committed by the adherents of the religion and not outsiders.

If people want to have a special club to pass laws for themselves, they should go live in Saudi Arabia - even there it would not be for long as democracy is coming there too. All laws must go through the parliamentary process.

Azizi Khan: This means that the Malay rulers will have absolute power to discuss ‘Umno-approved and filtered version of Islam', sanitised by Umno loyal muftis to ensure maximum benefit for Umno itself.

 

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