How did the Sarawakians elect this Moron? Anthony Loke, how is this clown your Deputy?

― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

COMMENT | PAS-led Perikatan Nasisonal is making it clear that there is no such thing as universal human rights, only human rights as defined by their religious dogma.

Keep in mind that according to Abdul Hadi Awang, and this means according to PAS and PN, as far as human rights are concerned, non-Muslims have to be “pak turuts” (followers). In other words, we do not have any human rights and the only thing we need to do is follow Malay/Muslim diktats.  

Bersatu’s Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal's rejoinder to Malaysians not to conflate Western ideologies on human rights to Malaysia’s is the kind of cherry-picking that religious and racial extremists do: to use so-called Western democratic norms when it suits their purposes but abandon them when it becomes inconvenient.

Me : At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term "Islamophobia" formed in analogy to "xenophobia". The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist. This term, which is worthy of totalitarian propaganda, is deliberately unspecific about whether it refers to a religion, a belief system or its faithful adherents around the world.

The term "Islamophobia" serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire.

It follows that young girls are stigmatised for not wearing the veil, as are French, German or English citizens of Maghribi, Turkish, African or Algerian origin who demand the right to religious indifference, the right not to believe in God, the right not to fast during Ramadan. Fingers are pointed at these renegades, they are delivered up to the wrath of their religions communities in order to quash all hope of change among the followers. Islamophobia—that is, the word itself—is meant to silence you.

It has already silenced President Obama, hasn’t it? He hasn’t even spoken up for his fellow Christians who in recent weeks have been victimized in Iraq (where maybe we still wave some sway), Egypt (our very expensive ally), Nigeria, Pakistan et al.