Al Arabiya English - Malaysia Betrayed By Najib

Here is a news article written by one Dr Azeem Ibrahim that is still current and relevant. My comments follow.

I have argued time and again that the greatest threat to the Muslim world is not the West, but rather, corruption and incompetence in administration in the Muslim countries themselves.

To this argument there were a number of crucial pieces of evidence. First of all, there is a clear inverse correlation between corruption and economic development not just in the Middle East, but globally. 

Secondly, Muslim countries are among the most corrupt countries in the world, and this maps well to the problems we know well from the region.

In this sense, the abundance of natural resources has served to mask much of the problem, as per capita wealth in the region comes out as much higher than it would have been for a given level of corruption, and that distorts the perception of societal problems in these countries.

For another, that abundance of wealth can be used to buy off the acquiescence of the population to an otherwise questionable regime, as is the case with the benefits that these states lavish upon their population, or alternatively, can be used to fund extensive repressive police and intelligence apparatuses to keep the population in check, as was the case in Saddam-era Iraq.
 
But there was also plenty of converse evidence, specifically states on the periphery of the Islamic world which did not conform the region’s reputation for corruption. Most notably, we had the examples of Turkey and of Malaysia.

Malaysia is a secure and naturally wealthy country with a track record of success in development and is suffering entirely from self-inflicted wounds.

In both the cases, the countries have inherited and sustained over the span of the 20th century an ethos of modernism and civic-mindedness which emulated that in the successful countries in the West. And they reaped the benefits of social and political stability, and economic development, both having been the most economically developed Islamic countries in international rankings.

But I fear we are about to be witnesses to a very cruel experiment, which I believe will prove my argument. It is yet too early to make a definitive judgement on the direction Turkey is heading,  the omens do not look good.
 
Breakdown of institutional functioning

In the case of Malaysia, we are already seeing the breakdown in institutional functioning and credibility which will likely see the country join the other Middle Eastern countries in the infamous club of corrupt and barely functioning states.
 

Malaysia has been betrayed not so much by its institutional traditions, as by its populist Prime Minister Najib Razak. He has ridden a wave of popular support into power on the back of promises for economic liberalization, and growth and opportunity, but has seemingly wasted no time in milking the state dry for his own personal gain and the gain of his family.
 

An ongoing Wall Street Journal investigation is looking into evidence that as much as $1 billion has been siphoned into the prime minister and his relatives’ bank accounts, most of it from the coffers of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, allegedly started by Mr Razak soon after he took charge in the country in 2009. And a further $5 billion are unaccounted for.

 
Neither Turkey nor Malaysia can hide behind the usual excuses about Western intervention or historical colonial crimes. Both have come into the post WW2 world as confident, independent nations, and both carved a way in the world for themselves through hard work and diligence, efforts which have yielded a good life to the majority of their citizens.

 
Turkey currently finds itself in a complex political, economic and security crisis from which we cannot draw too many general conclusions. But Malaysia is suffering entirely from self-inflicted wounds. It is a secure and naturally wealthy country with a track record of success in development. But it has let its guard down, and has let corruption infest the highest levels of government.

 
Malaysian civil society must now take firm and immediate action to put the country back on track. If not, I fear that the country will tragically end up as the perfect case study into how the problems of the Islamic world stem primarily from domestic corruption.
 
________________________

Azeem Ibrahim is an RAI Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford and Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. He completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge and served as an International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a World Fellow at Yale. Over the years he has met and advised numerous world leaders on policy development and was ranked as a Top 100 Global Thinker by the European Social Think Tank in 2010 and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He tweets @AzeemIbrahim

My comments : Malaysia and all the other Islamic countries have been  betrayed by its people, either the majority voters (as in Turkey and Malaysia) or a sufficient minority that wields influence and power (like the oligarchs and their sycophantic religious clergy aka butt kissers).

Both these groups have supported and continue to support the corrupt and the tyrants as their leaders. Why is that so?

The short answer is they are extremely short sighted. The shorter answer is that they are less intelligent. They are less intelligent because they are not properly educated.

Whether at home under the care of their mothers (when they were young), under the care of their families and societies, under the guidance of  the religious teachers or  under the tutelage of their education systems,   they have not imbibed real values that are relevant to human life.

Instead they are brought up, moulded, guided and taught to become human failures. There is not an Islamic country in the world that can be declared equal to or as successful as even a mid-level Western country. 

The problem becomes worse for the Muslim countries because minus some forceful handto overlook their affairs (colonialism, a cruel dictator,  a benevolent dictator, an authoritarian system etc) their natural state is to regress, to become dysfunctional, quarrelsome and finally to kill each other. In other words, when left alone to their own ends, they all become quite insane.

This contrasts sharply with non Islamic countries around the world who have a much better record of being able to organise themselves and improve their quality of life. 

Many have gone through wars, corrupt regimes, kleptocrats, cruel dictators etc. But once their wars are over or their tyrants have been overthrown, they can get along with organising their affairs and move forward. Hence we see the stars shining brightly or beginning to shine brightly over Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, even the Philippines, of course China and many rising nations in South America and Africa. 

If left to themselves, minus the corrupt and the dictators, the natural state of these countries is to advance very quickly.
  
The single largest positive factor that I perceive is that in all these advanced and advancing countries, religion is kept out of politics and out of government. Or in the case of the Philippines religion is beginning to be kept out of government and politics.   They are not paranoid about their religion.     

The second point is that in these countries, their society does not pry into the private affairs of its citizens to expose and embarrass each other over what they term 'criminal sins'.  In Islamic countries, the society itself (mothers, fathers, siblings, relatives, neighbors, the village, the town) constantly watch and pass judgement on each other over alleged breach of religious rules and cultural taboos.

Making things worse is religion that is very short of evidence to prove its beliefs. Hence religion becomes not uniform - meaning there is no one version. At best it is a sectarian imagination.  

And because the mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, relatives, neighbours and their society at large are the conduits of this rather backward behaviour, it is a natural extension that their politics, their governments, their police, their enforcement authorities ALL reflect the wishes and the beliefs of the society.

Hence they are doomed. 

There are many Rule No 1s to making themselves stupid. One of the Rule No 1s is 'do not question your religious teachers, do not ridicule (aka question) the religious teachers, do not question your religion, do not ridicule (aka question) your religion'.  Hence the 'anti-blasphemy' laws, the crime of of 'insulting Islam', the 'apostasy laws' etc. It is a mark of an uneducated society, despite its universities and universal 'education'.

If you spent seven years studying at a school for bomohs (shamanism), it does not make you educated at all. That is what some of these religious outfits are. 

Would you like some evidence? 

Does a Hysteria Kit represent an educated society? 
Does a "We provide prayer answering services" sound like it comes from an educated society? 
Does 'Kismis Tawaf' indicate that they have any brains at all?  

I am afraid not. 

Along come the smart beggars like Super Moron, Bawang and Tin Sadin who can see that the people are indeed not 'educated'. 

They can read that the people prefer 'black magic' instead of science.
Or in other words, that the people prefer the irrational instead of the rational. 
They can read that the people are swayed by promises of the non-existent instead of a higher quality of life and standard of living here today.

So they take the people for a ride.

Then they go one step further. They must keep the people stupid.

So give them more overdoses of the supernatural, of blackmagic, of the illogical (kita tidak boleh gunakan akal dalam semua perkara) and of incoherent religion. 

And then to keep them in line make laws to frighten them and to keep them from asking too many questions.

Jail them for 30 years, fine them RM100,000 and/or whip them 100 lashes.     

The betrayal is by their brains. Their brains are just stupid.