wagging
the dog

all through cyberspace, chatrooms, coffee-shops and cafes, people are talking about the conspiracy that was at sauk, perak the first week of july.

its a simple story. fifteen men in three four-wheel drives run off with an arsenal that could equip a small army. four hostages and another thirteen men later, an army of three thousand plus police circle them.

and during the one hundred and eight hours stand-off punctuated with scattered firing, two hostages die under a barrage of durians and bursts of gunfire.

eventually eleven men surrender and the rest are captured within moments of a face-off between a general and a disgraced private.

the army recovers the arsenal, including a m203 grenade launcher in nearby sungei petani. another 24 are under detained under the internal security act with a few others identified within the uniformed ranks.

end of story. not!

well, at least not in cyberspace, chatrooms, coffee-shops and cafes. and among politicians in parliament and wanna-bees at the wayside.

so, is it wag the dog? or did these moslem mystics go mad and pull off a stunning heist only to flounder and blunder in the bush, not before making the al-ma'unah a household name and killing two men mercilessly.

but the killings did occur. and one al-ma'unah paid the price with his life. does that make it a greek tragedy or a "grik" comedy as one-off film-maker hishammudin rais raised in his column in cyberspace.

or a fake event as opined by numerous others in reformasi websites, designed to terminate the theological terror thought of by parti islam se-malaysia and their cohorts?

a movie poster on the net speaks volumes of what these people think, including a few who claim to work in putrajaya - home of mahathir mohamad and his government of the day.

the truth cannot be further than that.

the moslem mystics of al-ma'unah did what they did and those on both sides of the benches in parliament have had a hand in it, including the ruler of reformasi - anwar ibrahim.

these men espouse a militant malay islam - different from the faith that prophet muhammad brought to the arabian desserts more than 14 centuries ago.

they are an offshoot of the islamisation policy after 1982 when anwar became mahathir's frankenstein to produce moslem malays with just a superficial knowledge of their faith - enough to pray and quote the quran but not enough to know what their religion is all about.

and so intolerance ruled the land, entertainment centres were closed down as public funds went to the construction of mosques and suraus - ostensibly to propagate the faith in this model moslem nation.

just like the islamists in parti islam se-malaysia, who were inspired by ayatollah khomeini and his mullahs, this malay moslem islamisation programme today produces all things islamic in form but not substance - they are only islam insofar that they are malay.

and these pious people spend more time in the mosques and suraus - all swathed in turbans and robes to pray and to chat while theirc children are elsewhere - unattended and open to suggestions.

the other moslems in malaysia are not part of this islamic drive. only malays are moslems and only moslems are malays. but to deny malays their belief in the mystical is to deny their malayness = nature's finest gentlemen as the british colonialists would say.

with their insufficient knowledge of their faith, inherent belief in malay mysticism and hatred for mahathir, these men - whether from al-ma'unah or other groups - have taken the road of jihad from fighting colonists to themselves - in the name of islam.

they are all martyrs to their cause, sacrificial lambs to those who hold the reins of power in both sides of the benches in parliament. extremists who either end up dead. or bankrupt in business if they turn to the capitalist caprices of their chiefs.

their exploits are and will be exploited to further the cause of either mahathir's lingering administration, the islamists who dream of an islamic state and the reformats looking to free their ruler.

and like al-ma'unah's self-styled mahaguru amin razali who followed the footsteps of another self-styled tok guru ibrahim libya, others will walk in the same shoes and display their devotion to death.

one need not wag the dog, only tweak the theocracy.