This is one helluva an article by Helen Ang in Malaysiakini. This is about Little Mullah Napoleons (LMNs) - edit

Recently I visited a National Service (NS) training camp where the girls were walking around in prim, closed-collar shirts. For reasons best known to the trainers, female trainees are forbidden to leave undone the topmost button of their outfit – which looked like a hybrid of security guard-cum-factory worker uniform. Non-Muslim girls were given to understand that the two inches of bare flesh peeking out from the top of their neck is indecent exposure. The point is moot however for Muslim girls whose tudung conceal the collar.It seems to me that the NS is applying a ‘tutup aurat’ requirement on female trainees. Who determines the parameters of this ‘Islamic dress code’ stricture on non-Muslim NS participants? Indeed why should there be at all this regulation to fasten that one top button? What it has really come to is this: The powers-that-be have reached a stage where they are taking it upon themselves to micro-manage how Malaysians dress. The restrictive imposition above reflects how Little Mullah Napoleons (LMNs) are now poking their noses even down our necklines.

And these controversies concerning formal dressing keep erupting one after another. Non-Malay graduans are to wear songkok at convocation and their female counterparts the tudung. Directives on attire are making Malay or Muslim signifiers compulsory for Malaysia’s minorities.Our country is getting to be world famous for criminalising anything and everything under the sun. Not attending NS is criminal too. So like it or not, there’s no way that pampered middle-class teenagers can escape call-up. (The elites and upper classes, I’m reckoning, have their own ways and means of evading this onerous duty.)NS is like a forced coming together of two segregated worlds, the tectonic plates colliding and grating for three months. In the dorms, there is the artificially enforced social mixing where teens are alternated Malay, Chinese and Indian etc in their bedding arrangement. As with other ill-conceived and costly flip-flop policies in education, NS is a logic-defying, top-down fiat.

Its ostensible purpose is to integrate the races and this done amongst 18-year-olds. It’s a ‘too little, too late’ measure that is at odds with the world as Gen Y knows it. After leaving behind the NS regimen, will these teens be expected to revamp their wardrobe filling it with long-sleeve shirts, and remembering to button up completely? Or would they, upon their return to suburbia, thankfully revert to tank tops and mini skirts?Nowadays national schools train children to be Syariah-compliant. There is recitation of ‘doa’ at assembly and functions. Will the non-Muslim pupils have to raise their hands palm up for the Islamic prayer? Will they suffer punishment if they don’t? Well, I’ve heard that some indeed have been punished for not complying. A lot of the mischief comes from those in the Education Ministry and department heads who uninhibitedly hand down Ketuanan Melayu directives.

Have we heard of the LMNs who create havoc with their idiosyncratic rules and regulations ever handed a reprimand? If anything, their actions would probably fast-track them up the career ladder for services to Bangsa, Agama dan Negara. Concomitantly, these actions left unchecked are rendering Malaysia a place almost impossible to call home by citizens who are neither Malay nor Muslim. We can no longer tamp down these episodes of Islamist bigotry using the spot fire-fighting technique or approach. The problem has to be addressed at its root and the root cause is the almost total Malay domination of the teaching profession in the public sector. Note: As I go to press, there’s been another report of LMN terrorism in a suburban school. For the complete article subscription is required in Malaysiakini