COMMENT I wonder why after the Tunku Mahkota Johor (TMJ) has already put it point blank, two Umno leaders are not getting the cue.

Despite attracting over 6,000 comments for a single post, and the page being shared by over 45,000 fans from different races, the red-shirt strategy is still being used to threaten the yellow-clad Bersih supporters.

The article in Malaysiakini alone attracted 57 comments and nearly 12,000 shares on Facebook, something that I would personally envy.

It is no point for Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin to now distance Umno from the red-shirts; the damage is already done. Umno’s signature is all over the red-shirts. With all the motorcyclists used to harass the Bersih convoys, I even wondered whether these were the Mat Rempits that Khairy had once tried to befriend.

In a video clip which was uploaded in the Home of the Southern Tigers Facebook and which has gone viral with nearly 1.5 million views, in my opinion, the prince was obviously expressing his disgust with the seven red-shirt supporters who were trying to show off their prowess or ilmu kebal (supernatural power).

Red vs yellow

It is obvious that the red-shirts were using the ilmu kebal to show off their prowess with the intention to intimidate the Bersih supporters, yet they were not courageous enough to show their faces.

After firing seven shots, the prince just shrugged his shoulders and walked away. After all, what else can he do to help these people come back to their senses?

Perhaps, it was just coincidental that there were seven red-shirt supporters, but the significance of the seven shots was that, no matter how impenetrable one is, there is nothing like really being undefeatable.

So why has Sungai Besar Umno division chief Jamal Md Yunos and Umno Youth exco member Armand Azha Abu Hanifah not get the point? Did they even have some grey matter to make them think what the TMJ was trying to tell them?

In an instant, their arrogance dissipated into timidity. What the TMJ did was enough to force them to walk away, consoling themselves that the TMJ was merely teasing them.

If the TMJ could tease them, and they appeared to enjoy it, we, too, should tease them because these two were acting like circus clowns to distract people from the real issues involving billions of ringgit from the public coffers.

By right, they should have lost face and realised that the TMJ was literally telling them off, when they tried to portray the red-shirt as strong and mighty with their ilmu kebal. What they fail to realise is that it is a culture that is no longer compatible with a progressive modern society.

After all, silat is supposed to be for self-defence, not to be used to intimidate the civil society. I think the TMJ’s message is clear: If they cannot live in a civil society, they might as well eliminate themselves from the surface of this earth. I do not think I can interpret the TMJ’s message any better than that!

The keyword is ‘point blank’. With the seven gunshots, which were never meant to kill, I believe the TMJ was trying to wake up people in the likes of Armand and Jamal.

So, what is ilmu kebal?

Silat in itself is a martial art. There is nothing wrong learning a martial art for one’s self-defence; however, going beyond martial art to try to pursue the supernatural is what I am concerned about our younger generation of Malay youths.

With the kind of publicity that these proponents of ilmu kebal are getting from the media, it may lead the younger generation to go astray from the true path.

They may become too obsessed with it that they become possessed by some unknown spirits. Ilmu kebal is nothing but a spiritual takeover of one’s body by another spirit being. The Chinese have it, and the Indians in some ways also have the ability to tap the spiritual prowess.

Many years ago, through a now-defunct Chinese cult known as ‘Bai Ting Gong’, I have personal experiences dabbling with the spirits when I was still in secondary school. The moment I raised my hands above my head, my body was ready to enter into a trance. It started swirling around, before I felt that I was ‘powerful’.

I could punch my hand very hard onto the textured wall without feeling any pain at all. It was as if I was wearing a pair of boxing gloves. There was the great feeling. I was in control of myself, but every movement I made was full of power.

However, as soon as I decided to leave the cult, for nearly five years, I experienced all sorts of disturbances.

Since then, I have warned people never to play with the spirits or do anything that could expose them to the spirits world.