Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Why Hadi is the face of Malaysia’s future by Dennis Ignatius
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Part 1: The “invisible” constitution & the emerging Islamic state
PAS president Hadi Awang is getting more and more extreme and
outrageous in his pronouncements. After his failure to take Putrajaya
(despite winning more seats in parliament than any other single party),
he has become particularly bitter, resentful and combative. He seems
determined to provoke confrontation between Muslims and non-Muslims.
When it comes to Hadi, there seems to be a certain political
paralysis; no one really knows how to deal with the challenge he poses.
Some call for his arrest but they are too afraid to arrest him. There
have also been calls for the government to come up with an effective
counter-narrative to challenge Hadi’s disruptive, divisive and
disagreeable brand of political Islam. Others are hoping that the
Malay-Muslim intelligentsia will take him on.
What most still don’t get, however, is that Hadi represents the face
of Malaysia’s future. He’s a sign of the times, an augury of the change
that’s coming upon our nation. We are a nation in transition – from an
unfinished and deeply flawed Westminster-style secular constitutional
democracy to an as yet undefined Islamic state.
It’s already too late to talk about stopping Hadi or about reversing
the slide towards an Islamic state. It is now only a matter of time
before political Islam triumphs over Malaysia’s secular
constitution. We are only deluding ourselves if we think the clock can
be rolled back. There’s no going back anymore; all that remains to be
seen is what kind of Islamic state will emerge and who will shape it.
The signs of political Islam’s ascendancy and the future that Hadi
represents have, in fact, been obvious for quite some time; the process
is already far advanced on several fronts. Decades of intensive
indoctrination within our national institutions, for example, have
quietly but decisively transformed them into bastions of political
Islam. The lines between private religious obligations and institutional
responsibilities have been increasingly blurred. Many Malay-Muslim
public servants now feel obliged to prioritise their religious
imperatives (as defined by the ulema) ahead of their duties as public
servants.
