Much to lose as an ‘authentic’ Islamic nation

“You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.”

- Aristophanes, The Knights

COMMENT | Saudi Arabia recognising us as an authentic Islamic nation is not something Muslims should rejoice. Indeed, any recognition by the House of Saud is fraught with danger. In these perilous times when the Muslim world is reeling from the belated realisation that the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to extremism and geopolitics, Malaysia as a stable moderate Muslim country should be careful who it chooses to get into bed with.

In the ‘Kingdom in Malaysia’, I articulated what I thought about this whole idea that we can benefit from the House of Saud - “I contend there is nothing we can and should take from the Saudi kingdom. I would argue that the reason why Malaysia is a so-called moderate state is because however dismally we have managed to resist the excesses of the House of Saud, we still have a multi-ethnic population whose contribution in politics, economics and culture has maintained a fast fading line between what the Wahhabis and their ilk want and what is rational.”

This idea that a small relatively stable Muslim country like Malaysia is running to embrace a failing kingdom locked in a life and death struggle with not only various Islamic extremist groups that they helped fund but also another nation - Iran - is troubling for more than just the absurdity of thinking that there are any real privileges of being considered an “authentic” Islamic state.

Prime Minister Najib Razak asks why King Salman Abdulaziz Al-Saud picked Malaysia and then goes on to claim because we are “recognised as authentic Islam and for our moderate approach. Those are what he (King Salman) views highly”. This, of course, is total horse manure, because if King Salman really viewed “moderate” Islam highly, he would practice that in Saudi Arabia instead of giving Wahhabi clerics free reign to practice a regressive form of Islam.

Najib also claimed that he got a “positive response” to build “two haj complexes in Makkah and Madinah”, which means very little because we all know how the House of Saud takes to Muslim interlopers attempting to profit from Islam in their country. The House of Saud, of course, is the only one who can benefit from Islam.

I have argued that our prime minister is in a better position than the monarch from Saudi Arabia is. So why then does King Salman bestow such largesse upon a small Muslim Southeast Asian nation. You can believe what our prime minister claims, that the House of Saud thinks that we are a moderate Muslim nation that he views highly or you can believe that we are part of a greater Sunni/House of Saud struggle against the nation that the Saudis believe is a threat to their hegemony - Iran.

There is a reason why US President Donald Trump chose to make his grand speech to a host of Muslim potentates in Saudi Arabia. There was a reason why there was a host of Sunni-dominated heads of state in Saudi Arabia where Trump made it clear that Iran was the big bad wolf in world geopolitics and that what was needed was the Muslim world to fight against “terrorism” and recognise that Iran was meddling in the business of other Muslim countries, and as such part of that ‘terrorist’ definition....