Yet, all it can find evidence against to charge them in court are all citizens of Western countries. But this is explained away so its founding fathers could frequently turn in their graves. This is not surprising. These countries deny their cultures for a hybrid adjusted for political correctness and ill-thought fairness, and instinctively ignored outside the political arena. Even the plays of Shakespeare are modified so it would be politically incorrect. This culture is in turmoil. And they react in bloody fashion, as the new culture demands a place where the old is in conflict with the political demands of the day.
So, mere suspicion is enough in many countries -- the US, India, Malaysia, Singapore, now Pakistan -- for large-scale arrests in this widespread governmental terror against terror. But it also reflects in the day-to-day lives of citizens in countries deemed to be democratic and law abiding. In Malaysia, any one arrested under the Internal Security Laws cannot even move the courts to ask why. Once arrested, he loses all rights. In Singapore, one Muslim parent who insisted upon his child wearing the headscarf, the 'tudung', to school was stopped on his way to work and threatened by who he believes are the ubiquitous intelligence officials to cease and desist or be prepared for a serious accident or other mishaps on his way to work. He fled to Australia with his family and seeks political asylum.
It is taken as read, by the authorities, that if one ventures into areas which redound on the regime's stability, one deserves what one gets. Whatever constitutional and other laws guarantees. In any country, one who takes a position far out of the prevailing political centre invites trouble. The position of the Muslim activist, as the communist once was, is precarious in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and other countries firmly entrenched in this quoxitic US-led war against terror. Laws which guarantee his rights are suspended. But in every instance it falls into the government of the day's plans to hobble its opposition. It does not matter if it is a democracy or a dictatorship. The underlying pressures are the same.
In practice, this does not intrude into the personal lives of citizens. It is their thoughts than their personal habits or practices which conform to the "civilised" norm that force the jackboot and the harsh laws. But when Islamic laws are the issue, as in Malaysia and in several countries in Africa which adopts it as a badge of its arrival in this Muslim world, the local rulers impose it harshly, but only on others, not on themselves. Polygamy is allowed in Islam, but in Malaysia it is possible only with the consent of the first wife. Nor can they marry secondary wives in Thailand. This law is ignored, but who gets caught are the powerless. An UMNO state mentri besar, now a party vice president, married his sultan's daughter in Thailand. A senior PAS politician marries in Thailand, is lightly tapped on his knuckles and told to go and sin no more. If it had been a bus driver or a garderned, whether from UMNO or PAS, he would have been jailed.
If you and I commit murder, we are hanged until we are dead. But if you and I were cabinet ministers, or senior officials in the governing political parties, heaven and earth would be moved so we would not. One Malaysian cabinet minister was sentenced to death in the 1980s, his sentence was commuted to life, released after a few years, is rehabilitated and is now a political functionary in UMNO. If he were not who is, he would not be so lucky. Then there are the cronies of the establishment. They cannot be challenged either. If they are, they sue for defamation.
In one high profile case, the lawyer for the crony shortchanged the judicial process by shortcircuiting the legal process by helpfully writing the judgement for the judge giving his client what he sought. The lawyer to make sure nothing is left to chance, took the chief justice and the attorney-general on holidays, denied it until evidence in the form of photographs was produced. There is this arrogant worldview in Malaysia that if a crony or government functionary sued for defamation, all that needs to be adjudicated is how many millions he should get, not if the suit has any relevance. At its height, even government ministers got into the act. When there is easy money to be got, no one misses a trick. Now it is common for political parties to threaten for defamation and demands hundreds of millions of ringgit. It does not matter if he is a cabinet minister or an opposition leader. Law firms representing the parties in the governing coalition now strengthen their defamation departments.
These abberrations happen because those in power believe it must be outside the law. Some fall out, as, for instance, the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, when who is in power decides who should not. For whatever reason. The UMNO vice president, Tan Sri Muhammad Taib, was caught redhanded with a shopping bag full of money, RM2.4 million worth, in Brisbane. He remains a much respected, if a bit shopsoiled, figure in UMNO, a king maker more than king. Dato' Seri Anwar is dismissed on unproven charges of sodomy and corruption, the cases so heavily laden with politics that a fair trial is impossible. When the new Puteri UMNO leader, Ms Azalina Othman Said, is accused of lesbianism, Dr Mahathir demands proof, as he did not when Dato' Seri Anwar was so accused. He was drummed out of UMNO and sacked as deputy prime minister and deputy president even before the investigations were complete. What keeps this confrontation sane and, in a sense, invigorating, is that sometimes, as with J.B. Jeyaratnam in Singapore and Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, refuses to accept this official condemnation, and struggles on to enhance the cultures in the societies they live in, to the regime's discomfiture.
Ultimately, this reflects, as Thucydides explains in his Peloponnesian Wars circ 500 BC, flaws of a culture and of its leaders. The US does not know if it is an extension of the British Empire that ruled the waves for 400 years, a latter-day Roman Empire, or Sparta at its conflict with Athens. It does not have a culture beyond massive consumerism and instant gratification in an isolationist worldview which regards all outside its borders as barbarians. So it takes on crusades and wars because its equanimity is disturbed. In Malaysia, at the other extreme, the primitive Malay culture at the onset of independence meshed in well with the immigrant cultures of the Indians and the Chinese and of the natives in Sabah and Sarawak was well placed to be fused into a Malaysian culture, on which must take centuries, when it was sidetracked, after the events of May 13, 1969, into one in which the only acceptable was Malay dominance. It skewed all attempts at fusion. Thirty years on, it is as diffused as ever.
What we see is a deliberate political attempt to force Malay culture on the other cultures and demand it be Malaysian culture. The confidence that comes with a settled culture, as in, say Iran or Iraq, evades us. In this manouevring, the finer points of what its citizens had come to expect is lost. Especially when the Malay worldview is enhanced so the non-Malay could be hobbled. This is done in uncertainty, the harsher methods employed reflecting it more than confidence. So, in Singapore, where its remarkable success in creating a first world in a third puts it out of sync with its neighbours. For its own protection, it accepts the First World viewpoint on any issue that threatens its security. So it follows blindly this crusade against terror, and provides its regional spokesman. So in the United States, where its inward looking worldview is challenged by a rebellion amongst the barbarians. In all three, and in many others, it is this reluctance to address its own culture that causes it to all but self-destruct. And every attribute considered right and proper in a culture is held hostage to short-term demands.
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