“If you think that you are living in a stupid country, you can be sure that you are being governed by the most stupid people!”

- Mehmet Murat ildan

There is a whole lot of dumb going around now. Since the hegemon is making every card in the deck a racial one, aggrieved Malay supremacists have been tripping over themselves attempting to remain relevant at a time when the Malay community is divided and Malay political parties are wondering who exactly a majority of the Malay community - in the peninsula - will vote for. A decisive majority is needed for the winner to claim that the party is the only one that can defend “bangsa” and “maruah”.

Perkasa has been wondering around like a headless chicken attempting to please many Malay masters but only managing to further expose the scam that the BN is anything but a vehicle for a kleptocratic racial hegemon. While Perkasa comes out sounding like the village idiot, groups such as Isma (Malaysian Muslim Solidarity) have a strong consistent message of racial and religious supremacy, bolstered by a cadre of Muslim professionals who engage in sophisticated rhetorical legerdemain to subvert the democratic process in favour of Umno, although they claim the mantle of “independent” Malay/Muslim opinion shapers.

Perkasa meanwhile is waging a muddled war on two fronts, the first with MIC and the second, with MCA. While certain Umno personalities rightly point out that Perkasa is a joke, the reality is that much of what Perkasa advocates is in line with mainstream Malay thought even though the community is fractured and not along ideological lines but along party (political) lines.

Perkasa’s war against the MIC is based on the MIC’s Vell Paari statement that Indian Muslim preacher Zakir Naik - who apparently is an honorary member of Perkasa - should be investigated for allegedly being an Islamic State (IS) recruiter here in Malaysia. Apparently, such a claim makes someone a threat to Islam.

While I have no idea what Zakir Naik is doing here, the reality is that Malaysia has always been a transit point for Islamic terrorism. The New Mandala ran a piece in 2013 - ‘Extremism in the name of Islam and Malaysian Muslims’ - which I think is still relevant today. Indeed, I think the climate has become more tense with recent geopolitical conflicts and regional ratcheting of Islamic fervour by hegemons fearful of loss of power.

While I thought the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project was a flawed endeavour, I do think that the thrust of the piece - an examination of how the state creates an environment either willing or unwittingly for these types of extremists to thrive - is an important point.

The article references prominent experts and the work of two I am most familiar with - Joseph Chinyong Liow and Gordon P Means - and points to the reality that when the state makes the environment conducive to radical ideologies then we can expect more trouble from foreign devils waiting to use Malaysia as a transit point and staging area for terrorist acts.

Anyone here remember the Kuala Lumpur ‘al-Qaeda summit’...