The continuing furor over a college dropout’s allegation that he had been sodomized reveals the malicious mindset and perverted priorities of the Abdullah Administration.

It is also a gross perversion of justice. Those who would have Anwar swear by the Quran and voluntarily donate his DNA to the police, whose reputation is only slightly less soiled than the criminals they apprehend, have it backwards. It is the norm of the civilized world that one is innocent till found guilty; it is for the state to prove its case beyond any reasonable doubt.

I can excuse law-illiterate Abdullah for not appreciating such nuances, but for his law-trained ministers like Rais Yatim and Syed Hamid not to know that is reprehensible. They are breaching their profession’s ethics and ideals.

Besides, since when has our Quran been debased to a lie detector? If only the truth could thus be readily sought, we would not need expensive forensic investigations! Such naiveté!

What with the economic challenges, endemic corruption, and rampant crime in the country, our leaders’ voyeuristic obsession on this alleged male-on-male khalwat represents gross misuse of scarce state resources, a flagrant perversion of priorities.

Perverted Priorities

In this 21^st Century, a charge of sodomy sounds so, well, medieval! To think that in Malaysia today that ‘crime’ carries a 20-year prison term! Perhaps some diligent law student could tell us the last time there was a sodomy trial in Malaysia. I am not counting the 1998 case against Anwar Ibrahim that was subsequently overturned on appeal.

That was nothing more than a crude political maneuver to smear and silence the former Deputy Prime Minister. The glaringly shoddy forensic investigation and amateurish prosecution did not in the least embarrass the authorities.

Nonetheless, in the process Anwar suffered that infamous black eye, the result of being senselessly beaten while in custody by no less than the Chief of Police. The country however suffered an even more damaging black eye, figuratively speaking, from that sorry episode.

Many countries have repealed their sodomy laws making it no longer a crime. Even prudish Singapore reduced the penalty to a maximum of only two years, a far cry from Malaysia’s 20!

Such an enlightened attitude does not mean that society treats lightly or refuses to acknowledge male-on-male sexual assaults. Many jurisdictions have removed the gender specificity to the crime of rape, meaning it can be perpetrated by man on man. It would not surprise me that, like everything else, the Malaysian penal code has yet to be updated to recognize this new reality.

Unlike rape, which requires the legal determination of lack of consent, sodomy does not have that statutory burden. Enough that sperms (or any tissue) other than that of Saiful’s were found in his anus, a fact that could be established through forensic examination. That overrides the “he says, she says” (or in this case, ‘he’) argument. The authorities’ long delay following completion of the forensic examination signals something sinister.

In the context of modern criminal law, what the young man is alleging is that he had been raped. Of course in conservative Muslim Malaysia, a rape charge does not quite have the same devastating political impact as that of sodomy. Indeed, in UMNO’s upcoming party elections one of the candidates for Vice-President was once accused of raping an underage girl.

This sodomy investigation is less the seeking of justice for a ‘soiled’ pretty boy, as Abdullah would like us to believe, more an orchestrated political exercise in character assassination. The recent public opinion polls confirm this.

Meanwhile there are two statutory declarations linking Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah to the brutal murder of a Mongolian model, a translator in the scandalous multibillion dollar submarine deal with France. By whatever measure, the viciousness of the crime or the personalities implicated, these other two allegations are considerably more serious. You would not know that from the reactions (or lack thereof) of the officials.

This sodomy allegation has been commented upon by ministers, senior officials, and Members of Parliament. Don’t they have substantive matters to worry about? Even science-illiterate Abdullah has suddenly become an expert on DNA and its use in forensic investigations!

Now we have evidence that another physician had also examined the young man and found no external indications of bodily injury. This fact was known to the police but it chose to ignore it, until the report was exposed by Raja Petra in his Malaysia-Today.

Although that first physician’s assessment was not a formal forensic examination, nonetheless its negative clinical findings cannot be dismissed. Discrepancy between it and the subsequent official forensic examination must be explained. It throws reasonable doubt to the charge.

The story gets even more bizarre. The victim had a special “visit” with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak right after the alleged incident. Najib apparently took pity to this stranger. Such paternal concerns! Even more inexplicable is why Najib or his subordinates would allow access of this nondescript political climber.

Serious Problems Neglected

There is no shortage of critical problems facing the country. Citizens’ concerns are far from these sexual shenanigans, real or alleged, lurid or otherwise. They are too busy eking out their daily living. Our leaders’ preoccupation with these silly things merely confirms our deepest suspicions of incompetence and omission at the highest levels.

We suffer daily through the rot of our institutions, as when we visit the land office to pay our assessments or see the dilapidation and neglect that is our children’s school. On the roads we are harassed by those menacing Mat Rempits and have to contend with those boys in blue demanding their share of the “road toll.”

Where are our leaders? Asleep at the wheel, and with Abdullah, literally so! With the upcoming UMNO elections in December, they are even more distracted.

Tun Mahathir, hitherto a trenchant critic of Abdullah, unhesitatingly supports him in this latest action, declaring that it is unlikely for Abdullah to be stupid enough to repeat his (Mahathir’s) mistake of a decade ago. Mahathir deludes himself if he believes that Abdullah has now suddenly become smart or has his priorities right. Mahathir is also mistaken if he thinks that Anwar is as stupid as Abdullah to repeat or be caught with the same mistake.

Contrary to Mahathir’s new-found assessment, Abdullah is as inept and incompetent now as he was before Saiful’s statutory declaration. Abdullah will remain so until we get rid of him. Mahathir was wrong on Abdullah before (as he now readily admits); Mahathir is wrong on Abdullah now.

When Mahathir asserted that we must get rid of Abdullah for the good of the party and country, his message resonated with the masses. In supporting Abdullah’s current foolish action, Mahathir not only risks diluting his central message but also jeopardizes his last chance at remedying his earlier grievous error in anointing Abdullah.

With Abdullah asleep at the wheel, continue to expect the worse. As for this sodomy charge, look ahead to the mainstream media to be filled with silly utterances of our politicians and pundits, as well as prurient details of this slimy case. I for one do not look forward to the graphic description of the private anatomy of this pretty boy who started the ball (pardon me, his balls) rolling.

Farish A. Noor

At present, there are several right-wing conservative Buddhist groups calling for Thailand to be officially declared as the first Buddhist state in the world; a feat unmatched by anyone else thus far, even Sri Lanka, which has remained secular all these years. One wonders what the implications of such a move might be both for Thailand and the region as a whole should it come to pass. Would the rise of right-wing Buddhism have an impact on the Muslim and Christian minorities in the country? Would it further inflame the situation in the South of Thailand where conflict between Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims has been raging since 2004?

One factor that has prevented any country in ASEAN from unilaterally making such drastic changes to its internal politics has been the checks and balances offered by the region’s plural character itself. A quick look at the map of the ASEAN region would show that this is a region of many faith communities living together and overlapping. Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei remain predominantly Muslim, but they are flanked by predominantly Buddhist Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and even Vietnam. In turn there is the Philippines which is Christian as well, and in all these countries – Singapore being a case in point – there are also large pockets of cosmopolitanism mixed with multiculturalism and multi-religiosity too.

Historically this may have been one of the factors that prevented countries like Malaysia and Indonesia from unilaterally upping the stakes in the Islamization process, for it would have raised eyebrows in the neighbouring capitals. How long this state of affairs will remain unchecked, however, is anyone’s guess. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the rise of political Islam has also given birth to radical new Islamist groupings like the Hizb’ut Tahrir that are now calling for a Pan-Muslim ASEAN super-state, far-fetched though their ambitions may seem.

Malaysia on the other hand seems to be making tentative steps towards raising the stakes in the Islamization race further. Following the results of the March 2008 elections that badly damaged the image and standing of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) party led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, it would seem that the political elite of the country are more in favor than ever for a political compromise between UMNO and its former arch-nemesis, the Malaysian Islamic party PAS. For several weeks now the Malaysian political scene has been abuzz with talk about a possible merger between the nationalist UMNO and the Islamist opposition party PAS, on the basis of further developing and ensuring Malay-Muslim unity in the country.

An Islamic state in Malaysia? The implications are manifold and would consume the attention and energy of a legion of political analysts. How would such a merger between the nationalist UMNO and the Islamist PAS work? Would Malaysia finally declare itself to be ‘the Islamic state of Malaysia’? What would happen to the existing institutions of state such as the Parliament and the Monarchy? (PAS, for instance, has mooted the idea that the Parliament would be subsumed under a more powerful council of guardians and ulama since the 1980s.

In Malaysia itself the talk of a possible merger between UMNO and PAS has given cause for anxiety among many of its citizens who wish to see the country remain on its secular-democratic track, and who fear that the sudden rise to power of PAS would undermine all the achievements of secular civil society in areas such as multiculturalism, gender equality, and freedom of speech. Even among the ranks of the Islamist party itself there are dissenting voices arguing that the latest gambit by UMNO to bring PAS closer to it is nothing more than a thinly-disguised attempt by UMNO to remain in power at whatever cost.

One other factor that has to be raised now is how all this will affect Malaysia’s image abroad and how this may damage Malaysia’s standing as a moderate Muslim state in the region. After all, was it not the government of Prime Minister Badawi that promoted its own brand of ‘moderate’ Islam, dubbed Islam Hadari – that was in turn roundly condemned as un-Islamic by the very same PAS that UMNO is now trying to court? For decades the Malaysian government has presented the country as a bastion of moderate Islam while decrying PAS as a ‘fundamentalist’ party. Is this ‘fundamentalist party’ now being courted by UMNO to secure UMNO’s dominant position in the country? And would this mean that UMNO will now allow the very same ‘fundamentalist’ PAS to dictate the form and content of normative Islam in Malaysia?

Should the UMNO-PAS talks continue, and should PAS ever be brought into the ruling coalition by UMNO, the ASEAN region may have to look closer at Malaysia and consider the implications of this move for the region as a whole. A Malaysia with Islamists in power and a Malaysia that finally commits itself to the creation of an Islamic state will have long-term implications for ASEAN and the wider community. For a start, the success of the Islamists in Malaysia (should it come to pass) would embolden Islamists in Indonesia and other parts of the region to press ahead with their demands for an Islamic state too. What next? An Islamic state of Indonesia? And where will these moves take Malaysia and Indonesia, two key strategic states that have until recently been cast as ‘model’ ‘moderate’ Muslim states on the geo-political map?

It is for these reasons that the behind-the-scenes negotiations between UMNO and PAS in Malaysia cannot be seen as domestic concerns alone. ASEAN today has become too integrated and inter-dependent that any radical shift in any single ASEAN country is bound to have an impact on the economic viability and political stability of the region. UMNO today may be desperate to hold on to power, but even UMNO has to realize that there are internal and external limits to the manoeuvrability of any party.

Dr. Farish A. Noor is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University and co-founder of the www.othermalaysia.org research site.

Dr. Farish (Badrol Hisham) Ahmad-Noor, Senior Fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Block S4, Level B4, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798 Tel: (Office) 0065 6790 6128; Main line: 0065 6793 2991