COMMENTThe ominous ‘Restore ISA’ bandwagon got off to a troubling start last week, what with a former prime minister and the current inspector-general of police lending their voices to the effort.
 
The obvious regression that the move entails must have struck a discordant chord because comparably prominent voices in society soon piped up in opposition to the idea.
 
It was a good thing that former attorney-general and former Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) chairperson Abu Talib Othman (left) and former deputy prime minister Musa Hitam swiftly weighed in with sensible arguments against restoration of the Internal Security Act (ISA). 
 
Otherwise, the prominent identities of the two voices for the return of detention without trial - the odious nub of the ISA - would have given the restore bandwagon enough locomotive power to become a going concern.     
 
Fortunately, it did not help the restoration cause that one of the voices for the wielding of coercive state power in dealing with rising religious and racial tensions happened to be a former minister of dubious discernment.

Zainudin Maidin, an ex-Utusan Malaysia editor who went on to become information minister under former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, urged the return of Dr Mahathir Mohamad to a national leadership role, precisely for reason of his supposed efficacy in dealing with “extremists” and the tensions they cause.

Ibrahim Ali's immunity
 
Mahathir is the patron of Perkasa, the right-wing group that has been strident in espousing Malay economic and religious rights.
Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it was considered that the group’s leader, Ibrahim Ali, had crossed a red line in January last year when he urged the burning of the Bible in the Malay language.
 
When attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail offered weasel reasons for not calling up Ibrahim to account for his incendiary call, Abu Talib chided the AG’s chambers for being lackadaisical.
 
Ibrahim was then called up by police to give a statement, but Mahathir interjected with extenuations on behalf of Ibrahim’s conduct. This is someone a sycophantic Zainuddin claims is adept at dealing with “extremists”.
 
In the event, no charges under the Sedition Act – the ISA had been repealed in late 2011 – were preferred against Ibrahim.
 
As anyone who has knowledge or experience of the incitement stakes knows, one inflammatory statement, if not impugned, begets another; and one incendiary call, if not arraigned, foments another.

The climate of licentiousness that unbridled and provocative statements spawn is infectious. 

One can draw a causal line between the Bible burning call by Ibrahim in January last year to the ‘bughah’ (armed rebels) label applied by Perak mufti Harussani Zakaria to the protesters against raised prices of goods who demonstrated on New Year’s eve near Dataran Merdeka. 

Incentive to misbehave
 
In Islamic understanding, it is ‘halal’ (legitimate) to shed the blood of bughah. It is doubted if anyone, in public discourse over the last several years in Malaysia, has issued a more incendiary call than Harussani did with that label he applied and with its attendant implications.
 
In truth, Harussani’s pyromaniac bent has been on public display from 2006 when he announced that mass conversions of Muslims were to occur on a certain Sunday at a church in Ipoh. 
 
As a result, an agitated crowd of Muslims gathered on the periphery of the church but it turned out that the bruited-about conversion was actually an induction ceremony for a sacramental ritual that scores of Catholic children undergo at a certain stage of their faith journey.
 
Later, when quizzed about the source of his dangerously false surmise, the mufti offered a convoluted explanation that raised questions about his capacity to sift grain from chaff.
 
If it is the job of government to prevent and mitigate the inflammatory, Harussani (left) could not have known because, subsequent to his lethal misdemeanors, he was chosen to receive the honorific ‘Tan Sri’ and he became a Maal Hijrah recipient, awarded for exemplary religious conduct.
 
It is said that moral hazard exists when a policy produces incentives for perverse behavior. The powers that be have provided Harussani with no small incentives for his continued licentiousness.  
 
Perhaps, more than the return of an Internal Security Act, the body politic needs a Control of Ineptitude Act (CIA). 
 
Admittedly, a CIA would be inherently bad law by reason of difficulty in application. Save of course in one instance – if invoked to control the asininity entailed in bringing back the ISA.


TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades now. He likes the profession because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.