“Stop ‘Arabising’ Malay culture,”

Malays should put a stop to the ‘Arabisation’ of their own culture and challenge those who condemn deep-rooted practices and traditions of the Malay community as unIslamic,”

“The Malays are not Arabs. Therefore, it is important that we do not ‘Arabise’ the Malay culture to the extent that everything that the Arabs do, we must do.”

“The Malay culture arose from time immemorial, even before 1409 when Islam came to Malacca, and we cannot simply ignore that period from which we came.”

“I am not anti-Arab culture and this does not mean I hold contra-views against the Arab culture. In fact, the Arab world has many aspects that have benefited and enriched the world in terms of art, poetry and so on.”

“Even Bahasa Malaysia is imbued with salient influences from Arabia. But the community should not be influenced to the extent that they are blinded into thinking all that is Arabic is good for them.”

“We just, in chorus, say, 'Aha, perhaps so', but we never fight back to say that this is a deep-rooted tradition of the Malays since time immemorial. We should ask, 'Put to us which Islamic tenet is being violated?' Nobody says that.”

“This fervour began in 1983 (during the Iran Revolution) in accepting as gospel anything with the world ‘Islam’ in it.

“In fact, when any Arab acts uncultured, we refer to them as ‘Badwi’. This is of course not to be confused with ‘Badawi’, which is the family name of Prime Minister.”

“If you can remember, our recently-retired Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, once openly criticised Tunku Rahman for gambling with his Chinese friends while there was rioting on the streets on 13 May 1969. Mahathir was then sacked from Umno for this criticism of the Tunku.”

“But that is another matter. The point I am trying to make is the whole country admits that the Tunku gambled. He also owned race horses and never missed his weekends at the Turf Club.”

“The Tunku also never denied he indulged in liquor and told everyone his sin of drinking is between him and God and does not concern any other mortal. All that matters, said the Tunku, is that he was a good prime minister and his gambling and drinking did not make him a bad prime minister.”

Then, in the 1980s, all this changed and we became radical Muslims. We need to bring Malaysia back to the days when we were liberal Muslims, modern Muslims, progressive Muslims, not radical Muslims like today.”

With regards to the contradicting policies of the government in implementing Islamic rules:

“I agree, in the 1960s, Muslim couples could court in the Lake Gardens without any disturbances. I remember couples would be necking in dark corners, under the trees, and behind the bushes in the Lake Gardens. They would also park their cars along Jalan Duta and the road leading to Carcosa Sri Negara and have sex in their cars and no one would come and disturb them.”

“Today, even non-Muslim, Chinese couples, get arrested merely for holding hands. And they did not even do this is dark corners, yet they get arrested.”