Will Terengganu Islam soon cross the Titiwangsa?

Beginning this year, all supermarkets in Terengganu are required to close for two hours during zohor on Fridays.

Then there is the plan to punish Terengganu men who miss the Friday congregational prayers by parading them in hearses around town.

It was also reported that Muslim couples riding a motorcycle together in Terengganu, if not married to each other, would have to attend a religious counselling session.

The latest news is that Terengganu intends to make its female tourists adhere to a dress code.

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The Tudung Index

Terengganu is Malaysia’s most Melayu state, where 97.0 percent of the population are Malay. Its neighbour Kelantan is 95.7 percent Malay.

Since Malays in Malaysia must all necessarily be Muslim, this infers that Kelantan and Terengganu are the most Islam-saturated states.

The Titiwangsa mountain range separates the east and west coasts of our peninsula. The practice and culture of Islam has developed with some differences in the various Malay states.

Penang is the least Malay state in our country and thus, less than half of its population are Muslim.

Are we moving from this …

… to this, eventually?

HANNAH YEOH

Since Hannah Yeoh has had so much practice wearing tudung, I do not want to hear any complaints from DAP if Malaysia should follow in Brunei’s footsteps by requiring non-Muslim women to tutup aurat at official functions.

Najib opting for the Race card

“Bila dah kat tepi gaung pandai pula minta tolong bangsa sendiri”, commented a reader yesterday about Najib Razak and his latest waad in Din Turtle’s blog @ March 1, 2015 at 7:56 PM.

Penang deputy chief minister II P. Ramasamy said in his statement today – “under the circumstances of political duress, Najib has nowhere to turn but to Malay groups…”- see ‘Najib embarks on racial agenda’ (Malaysiakini, 2 March 2015)

With his back against the wall, Najib has calculated that it is most strategic to cast aside the Chinese (and perhaps the Indians too) for his political survival. He appears to be burning his boats with the non-Malays when he made his Malay Unity oath complete with the whole moon-and-stars shebang on Saturday night (Feb 28).

BELOW: Chinese opposition supporters love Muslims

The alif ba ta trajectory

In our country, the Malay is inseparable from Islam. Hence Najib, by succumbing to Umno’s right wing, does not merely split our country by race but by religion too.

And however dementedly The J ‘Moderate’ Star is railing now at “religious bigots” and “extremists”, the genie can no longer be put back into the bottle.

The Chinese and Christians are only reaping what the DAP sowed. The Dapster evangelistas have made the Malays feel so besieged that these bullied Muslims are seeking refuge in becoming even more religiously orthodox.

The DAP likes to claim that Race is “so yesterday” while Religion should not be a pressing national issue compared to “good governance”, “transparency”, “accountability”, “competency” and the rest of their cakap-tak-serupa-bikin buzzwords.

Well, is it true that Malaysians are actually disinterested in religion and the bogeys are merely played up by the “divisive” Umno?

Kenapa Hannah Yeoh takde Islam di hati dan masih belum dikurniakan hidayah setelah sekian lama?

Malays are highly religious nowadays

Three quarters of a million (750,000) Facebookers liked Felixia Yeap’s entry about her decision to embrace Islam.

My blog posting about Felixia’s conversion and how it upset the J-Star readers has garnered around 25,000 page views to date.

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My stats box – see above – records 23,418 hits on the ‘Berita Felixia peluk Islam’ page. However, I’m rounding the figure to 25k by topping up with my own estimate of 1,500 additional reads accessed via the homepage.

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Explanatory note: Total views of my homepage is 1,616,552 (hits). This figure refers to visitors who only look at what’s featured daily on my front page without proceeding further to open the Comments section, and hence not registering any click on particular postings.

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‘Khairy lancar buku di gereja DUMC‘ notched 21,252 page views according to my blog data, and I estimate the overall page read to be 22,000-23,000.

Out of my blog top 10 postings, eight are ones written in bahasa Melayu while two are those in English.

My two postings in English which were most read are ‘GE13 proves that BN don’t need Chinese to form govt‘ (6 May 2013) at N0.4 and ‘Malays can rule on their own without sharing power with Chinese‘ (1 Aug 2014) at No.6.

The rest of my Malay language top 10 postings deal with the subject of Najib shooting the blogger “bangang” Umno as well as:

• hudud
• tudung viz. Hannah Yeoh
• Alifah Ting
• the Internet film insulting Prophet Muhammad / the Florida pastor who threatened to burn the Quran
• Pakatan’s Merdeka Day 2012 logo which I said contained elements of Christian iconography (181 reader comments)

Honorable mention must be made too of my postings sitting at the 11th and 12th spots respectively – ‘Fakta-fakta menarik tentang Ridhuan Tee‘ and ‘Adakah Ridhuan Tee seorang Melayu?‘

The trend of my blog top stories indicates a strong interest in hot button religious topics.

The above chart shows Umcedel survey results (details here) on kalimah ‘Allah’.

Kalimah ‘Allah’ fault line

Asked whether they agreed for kalimah ‘Allah’ to be used by non-Muslims, the younger poll respondents were the most vehement in their objection – blue bar represents ‘No’.

Among the naysayers (all races):

• 21-30 yrs old:  65%
• 31-40 yrs old:  59%
• 41-50 yrs old:  54%
• 51-60 yrs old:  56%
• above 61 yrs old:  57%

What the Umcedel study shows is that younger Malaysians are the most religiously conservative. This might have something to do with the popularity of tahfiz classes as well as Islamization of the national school, boarding schools and Mara junior science colleges.

The lower their education level, the more strenuously the respondents (all races) object to non-Muslims using kalimah ‘Allah’.

Overall, the majority of Malays – or almost four out of every five Malay – are adamant that non-Muslims should not use kalimah ‘Allah’. (See chart above – 77 percent of Malays say ‘No’)

The risk of Malays becoming radicalized is growing each day, especially if the provocation – e.g. Christian claim on kalimah ‘Allah’ – does not stop immediately.

Coupled with the Najib administration’s abandonment of the Chinese electorate, the risk of a violent conflict is similarly growing. This is especially so if the DAP still chooses to continue with its current brand of militant evangelical politics.

Related:

Kaedah DAP tarik undi Bumiputera Kristian Sarawak

Perpatah tentang durian dan timun

1. There’s a saying, Durian dengan mentimun, menggolek rosak, kena golek binasa. This is the situation facing the Chinese minority in Malaysia. In our case, the Chinese are of course the metaphorical cucumber. Malays are the buah durian.

Nak tengok budaya ampu bodek Umno? Nah, nih dia!

Perangai sebiji macam kat Perhimpunan Agung Umno …

Ye le, amalan berpeluk-pelukan, berpegang-pegangan dan bercium-ciuman di PAU ‘cam ni lah

How many handbags does she need?

In my posting yesterday, I asked what do Rosmah and Dodgy Podgy have in common besides their mutual love for branded handbags?

Answer: Their height and weight.

Rosmah, Hannah and their double chins

‘Tahanan politik’ @anwaribrahim dizalimi ratusan nyamuk

Shafee roadshow should proceed

Pakatan, particularly the DAP, and their media propagandists are hellbent on scuttling the Umno Youth-backed roadshow featuring lead prosecutor in the Anwar sodomy case, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah.

If the opposition is so dead set against an idea, then you know that the project is beneficial to the BN.

Double standards against Felixia Yeap

Felixia Yeap’s interview appeared in TMI today, ‘Being Muslim, I appreciate my Chinese roots more, says ex-playboy model‘.

The article has drawn 117 194 reader comments as of now.