The latest Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim) directive to censor concerts , sums up the quality of the men who run it. This is what happens to organisations which lack appeal, which have no worthy policies, and with no outstanding workers. The only way they can make themselves relevant, is by having gimmicks.

Jakim is manned by people with too much time on their hands and who use the hours between 8am and 4pm to think of ways to spoil other people’s enjoyment. It is highly likely that their daydreaming includes the 72 virgins waiting for them in the after-life.

Jakim’s speciality gimmicks are to issue ‘bans’. Bans give it power over the people. Its equivalent, in political parties, is Umno Baru. Umno Baru’s gimmicks are handouts, like Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M), and the packs of rice and milk powder, just before an election.

Umno Baru is savvy enough to know that too many bans on top of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (Pota) and the Sedition Act, will make people rise up. Both Jakim and Umno Baru realise that gimmicks manipulate people’s behaviour, in the same way as Jakim’s bans condition our actions.

If Umno Baru stopped dishing-out money like confetti, do you think it would win the next election? Even former PM Mahathir Mohamad has alleged that Umno Baru is run on money politics.

For a start, Jakim insults the intelligence of the Muslims by calling itself an organisation of ‘Islamic development’. What Islamic development?

We only remember Jakim for its bans and prohibitions. Does it talk about compassion towards fellow human beings, not just to fellow Muslims? Does it talk about building bridges with other communities? Did it advise Muslims to desist from protesting in front of a church that erected a cross on its rooftop?

The church is a house of worship and the cross is symbolic. If MacDonalds can have its golden arches, then why cannot churches have crosses? Does Jakim ever wonder why Muslims in Umno Baru’s 21st Century Malaysia are overly sensitive?

The people in Jakim can’t have heard of the Golden Age of Islam. The scholars and people who lived in that era were encouraged to explore, not just physically travel to far-flung places and experience different cultures, but also to examine the far reaches of the mind. Then again, it must be daunting for the people in Jakim to think.

The latest directive from Jakim was to issue a set of rules governing concerts and entertainers. Why won’t Jakim stop being the nanny extraordinaire to Malaysian Muslims?

Sexually explicit road shows

If Jakim wants to censor entertainers, start with the Umno Baru lawyer, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, and his side-kick Khairy Jamaluddin. Shafee organised a series of sexually explicit road shows after the Sodomy II verdict was announced. Readers have been in touch to say that Shafee was in London last Friday to meet Malaysian students. What did they think of him, one wonders?

Jakim’s prerequisites would have disqualified Shafee and his ‘entertaining circus’. The conditions set by Jakim include things like being of honourable character, having good intentions, not being provocative. Shafee failed on all counts.

Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has already subjected Malaysian children to the ‘best education’ in the world. In the past, these children were able to escape the oppression of the Malaysian education system by going to concerts. Now the Muslims will have no escape, and the teenagers and young adults must conform with Jakim’s choice of music and artistes. What we read is also subject to scrutiny.

Jakim does not want Malaysians to be exposed to western lyrics. Jakim does not want Malaysians, especially Malays, to have an alternative viewpoint, but by far, the best Jakim directive is that jokes must toe the line.

The reason for Jakim’s latest ban is because a video, showing a tudung-clad Malay girl interacting with a K-Pop artist on stage, went viral.

In that incident, we saw a completely innocent fan-and-idol interaction , on stage. Artistes do that, to engage with their fans. Fans love to be able to meet, and be seen, with their pop idols.

Jakim turned an innocent ‘fan-meets-her-idol episode’ into a policy which will ultimately affect all Malaysians. The fan and her idol, might as well have been having full-blown sex on stage, because Jakim are too confused to understand that a peck on the forehead is just that - a peck - nothing more, nothing less.

Jakim’s strict censorship of concerts was started because its power is waning. Big-bully Jakim would fit better into a Saudi straight-laced society than multi-cultural Malaysia. We all know that Saudi Arabian girls go wild in London.

One of Jakim’s directives was that jokes should not lead to extreme laughter. Well, here’s one; “Jakim is the big joke”, whilst everyone cried, with laughter, tinged with sadness, at what has become of Malaysia.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO).