It’s becoming increasingly and excitingly evident these days that perennial campaign by the members, cronies and supporters of the criminal BN regime to pose as the ‘defenders’ of Islam, the Malay people, the Malaysian constitution and even Malaysia itself is, as always, nothing but a cynical sham.

Or, in other words, a preposterous scam by a coterie of poisonous self-styled putras to cling to power for the sole purpose of feathering their nests at the expense of the rest.

And especially at the expense of Malaysia’s brightest and best, as currently following the tragic death of legal tiger, political titan and towering and tireless opponent of all that’s rotten about the BN regime, Karpal Singh.

Having chosen to ignore rather than attack other recent major losses from the ranks of great Malaysians ranged against their reign of robbery, jobbery, repression and incompetence, indomitable activist Irene Fernandez and indefatigable blogger Bernard Khoo aka Zorro Unmasked, they really went to town in the case of the Tiger of Jelutong.

BN’s MP for Langkawi, Nawawi Ahmad, Facebooked a posting that included a collage of pictures of Karpal’s remains following his fatal road accident and a news clipping from a 1990 issue of Utusan Malaysia quoting Karpal’s assertion that Malaysia would become an Islamic state “only over (his) dead body”, plus a message reading “would anyone like to take on Karpal Singh’s challenge? Please give your names. Hehe.”

And if that wasn’t ugly enough, in a later posting, Nawawi, who is also the chairperson of Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd (KTMB) used Karpal’s death plus the disappearance of MH370 as an opportunity to advertise rail travel with the message “you can die while riding a car, face accidents on motorcycles, go missing on a plane, so it is better to ride a train. Campaign with KTMB.”

Meanwhile, former MP, former vice-president of racial-supremacist ‘NGO’ Perkasa, and currently syariah lawyer Zulkifli Noordin ( right ) had tweeted that “at a time when the PAS Kelantan government wants to implement hudud with the help of Umno, Allah made Karpal die because he was its foremost opponent.”

“May the struggle to implement hudud in Kelantan succeed,” his tweet continued, “Thank God for the unity between PAS and Umno, and with Karpal no longer around, I believe the path is becoming clearer.”

These two idiots and others of a similar ilk changed their tunes when civilised netizens reacted with outrage, and even some of their BN colleagues pretended to protest, against their cretinously callous remarks.

Damage well and truly done

But the damage was well and truly done in that it once again raised the spectre of BN’s religio-racist project of achieving permanent dominance over the Malaysian people.

Or, more specifically, the outrageous hypocrisy of the regime in posing as the “defender” of Islam and the Malay race when in fact this robber-regime is, as I never tire of repeating, an absolute disgrace to both.

A disgrace further highlighted by the fact that the very body that should by rights exemplify Malaysia’s finest possible expression of the Islamic faith, the National Fatwa Council, used Karpal Singh’s death to once again demonstrate its corrupt collusion with the BN in its campaign to use race and creed to justify divisiveness in the service of regime greed.

The council seized on what it clearly saw as a heaven-sent opportunity to air its pro-regime bigotry in warning Muslim mourners for Karpal against using the phrase “Rest in Peace” (RIP) to or about non-Muslims because it has “Christian connotations”.

“RIP is an assumption that the non-Muslim person would receive God’s blessings,” it continued, but “from an Islamic point of view, a person who has died in blasphemy will not receive God’s forgiveness and blessings.”

A sentiment that inspires me, admittedly and indeed proudly atheist as I am, to wonder how a Fatwa Council can contrive to acquit itself of what seems to me the ultimate blasphemy: mere tolerance, let alone active support, of such a lying, thieving, iniquitous, hypocritical and in every other sense un-Islamic and indeed altogether God-forsaken regime as Malaysia’s BN.

A question that further causes me to wonder, as ever, how such highly suspect ‘religious’ authorities imagine that their antics on behalf of their BN paymasters can avoid alienating even more of Malaysia’s millions of good, honest, sincere and upstanding Muslims.

A self-serving fraud

Literally everything BN says and does is such a self-serving fraud as to insult the intelligence of any even half-sentient human being, let alone offend his or her religious principles.

Even the very words of whatever languages we use to try and communicate with each other are twisted, perverted and prostituted in the process of being pressed into service by BN and its apologists.

The word “peace”, for example, comes to actually mean the absolute opposite, as in former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s so-called Perdana Peace Foundation, which is nothing but a pretext for waging war on Mahathir’s pet hates, which include Jews everywhere but especially in Israel, and of course ‘the West’ in general except the powerful to whom he secretly sucks-up.

And of course, in the mouth and on the lips of current minority Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, literally countless formerly perfectly respectable and trustworthy words and phrases like “democracy”, “truth”, “transparency”, “zero tolerance for corruption”, “people first”, “performance now”, “promises”, “transformation”, “inclusiveness” and “election integrity” have been similarly perverted and poisoned.

Which brings us to the poetic coincidence of Lim Kit Siang’s reporting of Karpal Singh’s last words in Parliament as “don’t play with the constitution” with Najib’s patently and blatantly lying assurance that his government “would continue to defend the constitution and fight for social justice for all.”

But at least Karpal, along with his two fellow recently-fallen Malaysian heroes, Bernard and Irene, is now, whatever the National Fatwa Council may have to say on the subject, reaping his richly-deserved reward and resting in peace.

And now it is up to the rest of us to be inspired by all those who have lived and died in the cause of liberty from the thieving, lying, secretive, repressive and incompetent BN regime, its corrupt and homicidal police, compliant judiciary and ‘religious’ authorities and mouthpiece ‘mainstream’ media to persevere in their splendid spirit.

With the aim of never for even a moment, either here on earth of with our heroes and heroines in the hereafter, letting these pests rest in peace, but rather to eventually seeing them rot in prison.

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’.