As Voltaire, the great French scourge of superstitions and sundry other stupidities famously proclaimed: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”.

And sure enough, God has been invented so many times both before and since Voltaire’s time, and in so many guises, genders, versions and even perversions that you’d have to be superhuman to keep up with them all.

Small wonder, then, that a political regime as sub-normal as Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional is finding the whole concept too complex for words.

“Words” being the operative... word here. Though not word as in the well-known Biblical passage: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), but word as in the word ‘Allah’.

‘Allah’ according to majority world opinion being the Arabic word for ‘God’ or the ‘Almighty’, but according to Malaysia’s ruling regime-owned Islamic authorities the exclusive Arabic-originated ‘Malay’ word for the uniquely ‘Malaysian Muslim’ God.

But only in the peninsular, or even only in the state of Selangor, where - according to former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad - Catholic weekly The Herald editor Father Lawrence Andrew (right) is out to “hurt Muslims” by insisting that Christian churches will continue to refer to God as ‘Allah’ in their sermons in Bahasa Malaysia.

Umno-owned religio-racist tabloid ‘newspaper’ Utusan Malaysia quoted Mahathir as declaring that Father Lawrence should respect the recent Court of Appeal’s decision that the use of the word ‘Allah’ is exclusive to Muslims in the peninsular, and thus help “preserve the religious harmony that exists in the country.”

Meanwhile, the defiant priest is being investigated by the police for suspected sedition, the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (Jais) has seized several hundred copies of the Malay-language Bible from the Bible Society of Malaysia in what many consider an illegal raid, and Malay-rights groups have threatened protests outside churches.

Massive setbacks for BN

However, these latest moves in the BN regime’s long-term project to employ Islam and Allah as allies in and alibis for, or at least diversions from its criminal misgovernment of Malaysia have met with some massive setbacks.

The first and most inspirational of these for all of us who long for a better, BN-free Malaysia was the appearance of a group of 40 or so mainly “progressive Muslims” outside the Lady of Lourdes Church in Klang during morning mass last Sunday, Jan 5.

The group, which included Marina Mahathir, daughter of our ex-premier, came bearing flowers and a message of moral support.

“We are here to show solidarity with the congregation,” Marina was quoted as explaining.

“A lot of us here are Muslims and we believe that Islam is a religion of peace.”

After conducting the mass, parish priest Father Michael Chua praised his 900-strong congregation for “not being cowed”, and thanked MPs including Teresa Kok and Charles Santiago, and people from other churches, the Bar Council and the Muslim group for their support.

Far from shamed by this show of inter-faith solidarity and his daughter’s prominent role in it, however, former PM Mahathir sneered that “maybe she feels the actions taken were too harsh. That’s her... I don’t know her. Her name is Marina”.

Then he proceeded to render his own name even more mud than ever, calling for the government to bring back the Internal Security Act (ISA) to control the actions of the “extremist minority” that he claims has “undermined the country’s stability”.

Continuing to flog his trademark divide-and-rule hobbyhorse, he predicted that “Malaysia will face a very difficult 2014 and may even face a Syria-type crisis if people are allowed to openly annoy each other”.

“Before this (Allah) controversy came up, I don’t think Jais will ever take the Bible belonging to the Christians. (But) you purposely come up with something to annoy people,” he ranted.

“It is not religious. It is just a means to annoy people and be uncaring about other people’s sensitivities. If you start running down other religions, what will happen to this country? You want this country to be like Syria or something?

‘Races, religions very sensitive issues’

“You want freedom, you want to be liberal, you must understand how to handle these things. Races are very sensitive here. Religions are very sensitive issues here,” he raved, before turning on the minority whose rights his daughter Marina has most consistently championed - lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals (LGBTs) - and scornfully asking: “And then they are going to walk naked in the streets... do you want?”

Stupid rhetorical questions aside though, what do Malaysians really want? A ruling regime like BN that so piously pretends to respect, protect and pray to Allah while in reality profanely preying on the people? Or a legitimately elected, genuinely democratic, honest-to-god clean and efficient government?

That the majority of Malaysians unquestionably want the latter is witnessed by the fact that well over 50 percent of voters in the May 2013 general election chose opposition candidates despite overwhelming support for the regime from the crooked ‘mainstream’ media, police, civil services and the Election Commission.

And since then BN has - as many Islamic scholars around the world have attested - done even more harm to its already ‘haram’ reputation. Not only through its latest efforts to fake support and respect for Allah, but for its endlessly ungodly greed.

As evidenced by the jet-setting lifestyles of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his shopaholic consort Rosmah Mansor and the simultaneous draining of the rakyat for more cash for the endlessly insatiable cronies.

In fact, Najib has proven himself such a transcendent false prophet and monster of self-adoration that he has even permitted his graven image to appear on Chinese New Year ang pow packets. Thus recalling for us the validity of another of Voltaire’s best-known ‘religious’ remarks: “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”


DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia', ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.