It is clearly a fundamental quirk of human nature to try and present ourselves to others as better than we know or at least suspect ourselves to be. And one of the curses of the human race is that we permit ourselves and others to indulge this pathetic penchant for hypocrisy on such a staggeringly destructive scale.

The countless petty individual hypocrisies that many of us permit ourselves, like pretending to be virtuous citizens while inflating our expense claims, fiddling our taxes, breaking traffic laws, cheating the boss by surfing porn sites at work or indulging in any of our sundry other little secret vices, wreak their vengeance on us when they’re practiced on a societal or even global scale.

Ideologies, of course, are the richest possible examples of human hypocrisy writ large, and several have been very much in the news this week.

Islam, for example, which was the pretext employed by a criminal religious maniac who staged a siege in Sydney in which tragically two of his innocent hostages were killed, and he was, too. Then this hypocrisy in the name of the alleged religion of peace was followed by the cold-blooded slaughter of 132 students in Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban, and yet another massacre and mass-kidnapping by Nigeria’s Boko Haram.

And in a simultaneous demonstration of the massive hypocrisy of Christianity, democracy and freedom combined, the US not only officially admitted to the systematic illegal torture of terror suspects by the CIA in its notorious ‘rendition’ programme and detention at Guantanamo Bay, but also conceded that this orgy of torture and similarly illegal drone strikes on alleged terrorist targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been ineffective.

However, no such admissions about such atrocities as the ‘loss’ of flight MH370, the debts of 1MDB or suspicious deaths at the hands of the police were forthcoming from the very home and headquarters of hypocrisy, Malaysia.

Where the lying, corrupt, massively criminal and criminally incompetent ruling regime is such a disgrace to the Malay race and Muslim religions that it claims to represent and defend that it has to hire groups of racists and religious maniacs to represent its interests.

Groups like Perkasa and Isma, in concert with sundry other ‘religious’ authorities have repeatedly confiscated Christian bibles and hymn books and even contrived to deny Malay-speaking non-Muslims the right to use the generic Arabic word for God, ‘Allah’, and threatened a repetition of Malaysia’s notorious May 13, 1969 racial and religious riots if the nation’s racial and religious minorities refuse to toe the Umno-party line.

And the Umno-led Barisan Nasional coalition that has ruled the country by hook and by crook ever since its independence in 1957 has so comprehensively corrupted the Malaysian constitution, perverted the justice system and stacked all the civil services with its cronies and supporters that its critics and opponents are virtually powerless.

At the same time this sordid, one-sided state of affairs is propagandised by the lying slogan ‘1Malaysia. People first. Performance now.’ and mainstream so-called ‘news’ media totally owned and/or dominated by the regime.

‘Best in the world’

And the whole ugly mess is headed by a prime minister so hypocritical as to be able to state with a straight face that many facets of Malaysia, including its rigged ‘democracy’, fake ‘news’ media and debased education system are the “best in the world”.

When in fact the only facets of Malaysia that are truly world-class are the stealing of elections, massive misappropriation, mismanagement and outright theft of public money, illicit outflows of these stolen funds, and the criminality of the regime’s police and other law agencies.

So many ‘suspects’ have mysteriously died in police custody and shoot-outs as to almost do the Taliban proud, and yet, despite horrific evidence of violence on the corpses of one victim after another, hardly any police are ever charged, and none are ever convicted of more than token trivial charges.

And while we’re on the subject of murder, just as Sydney hostage-taker Man Haron Monis has been revealed to have been suspected of being an accessory to the gruesome murder of his former wife, people uncomfortably close to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak were clearly accessories to the 2006 murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu, the Mongolian translator in the scandal-riddled yet still uninvestigated Scorpene submarines purchase while Najib was defence minister.

In short, the Malaysian ruling regime as currently headed by the sanctimonious Najib and god-fathered by the mendacious former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, is as contemptible an example of hypocrisy as could be found anywhere on the planet.

But perhaps, just perhaps, all may not be lost, as thank goodness the human propensity for hypocrisy is offset by our capacity for hope.

For example, though sadly it can’t restore life to the victims of the Sydney siege, their deaths inspired not only an outpouring of sympathy for them and their families, but also a wave of support by the media and individual Australians for the genuinely god-fearing Muslims among us.

Most notably, a wonderful woman of whose name I’m unaware, started the #ill ride with you movement to ensure that any identifiably Muslim people travelling around Sydney would feel safe from any anti-Islamic feeling that might arise in the wake of the siege.

And apparently the massacre of students in Peshawar also has its consolations, in that it has united more Pakistanis than ever against the Taliban, and hardened the resolve of the always deeply suspect and apparently incurably corrupt government of Pakistan to take some positive action for a change.

Meanwhile, in Malaysia, the terminally tainted Najib seems to be surviving as prime minister so far, despite strong signs that Mahathir and his racio-religionist goons want him replaced. But more and more Malaysians, Malays and non-Malays alike, are becoming so hyper-critical of not just Najib but the entire BN regime, that they might someday finally refuse to be held hostage by these criminal hypocrites any longer.


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’.