Ghostbuster can’t heal busted hearts

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By WINNIE YEOH winnie@thestar.com.my

GEORGE TOWN: Ong Q Leng might be an accomplished spiritual healer and ghostbuster but some people seek her help even to solve problems brought unto themselves, especially marital problems. But Master Ong, as she is better known, says these are problems she cannot solve.

“Marital problems require the individuals involved to find a solution. Some women told me their husbands used to love them a lot but later had mistresses.

“I told them they needed marriage counsellors. There are no spirits involved,” she said.
 

Fighting the fires: Ong showing a sign which she used to chase away the djinns from Zainab’s house in Kelantan.

Ong, 34, offers services of healing, spiritual cleansing, feng shui tips and general consultation to her clients.

As a little girl, Ong used to be scared out of her wits by ghosts that delighted in disturbing her, knowing that she could see them clearly through what is believed to be her “third eye”.

Her fright even caused her to stutter and by the time she was 11, she was so fed up of being frightened that she started “scolding the spirits and threatening them not to bother her”.

In June 2007, while she was working as a sundry goods sales representative, she knew through her sixth sense that she was destined to help people.

She then healed her 84-year-old grandfather, who was suffering from testicular cancer, and went on to help more people and her enthusiasm grew along with her success.



The most recent case was when she helped 73-year-old Zainab Sulaiman from Kelantan to chase away the evil djinns that caused hundreds of small fires at the latter's house.

Zainab made a trip to Penang on Sunday to express her gratitude to Ong.

The widow, who lives in a wooden house in Kampung Penambang Bunga Emas near Kota Baru with her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, had been plagued with mysterious fires which destroyed over 250 articles of clothing, mats, curtains, mattresses and many other things.

At least five paranormal experts had attempted to exorcise Zainab's house since late last year till January a bomoh, a Thai medium, an American couple who practise exorcism, a group of Muslim ghostbusters, and Ong.

Ong added that some parents also sought her help with their children's studies. She said she could help by changing their names as that would bring improvement in some cases.

“A person's name is very important and it can affect one's whole life. In everyone's life, God decides 50% of our fate when we are born while the rest depends on our choice.”

Because of her young age, Ong said she was often “challenged” by other masters on her skills.
“I have received calls and visits by people pretending to be sick but I know their intention. We should be helping the needy instead.”

Entrepreneurs Need to Learn to Be Good at Sales

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Martin Zwilling Startup Professional's Musings

A good entrepreneur is not necessarily born a good salesman. In fact, they are often the opposite, more focused on building things rather than selling them. Yet, in today’s world of information overload, marketing and selling skills are critical to the success of every startup.

The alternative “If we build it, they will come” approach has long been relegated to the field of dreams, after Kevin Costner’s movie by the same name. In my own effort to keep up with the times, I just finished a new book by Julie Steelman, “The Effortless Yes: Demystifying the Selling Process.” Julie is known as the entrepreneur’s selling mentor, for both men and women.

Steelman does a good job of outlining the key selling steps that separate great salesmen from the rest of us. In my view, every entrepreneur has to be a great salesman to succeed (among the many other required skills), so you should take a hard look at these points:

• Dust off your moxie. Don’t hope that a miracle will happen and your products and services will sell themselves. Be passionate about what you are selling, and decide to be of service, by providing your customers with something of value in exchange for deserved payment. Set aside fear and doubt, and stand tall with your message.

• Claim your sweet spot. The sweet spot if the essence of your brand. The way to claim it is to name your expertise or specialty, describe for whom it’s meant and clearly state how it delivers on its promise (or what is called your unique payoff proposition). Make it real for you and your customers.

• Craft your irresistible pitch. An irresistible pitch is a clear and concise explanation of what you do best, benefits to your customers, an honest statement of why you do what you do, a question that pulls the listener in, and words and language that engage the hearts and mind of your ideal customer.

• Socialize your message. Generate leads using social media, but don’t rely on it alone to make sales. Use the media to initiate contact, highlight your human element, and communicate your specialty or expertise in a way that anticipates what your customers might be thinking about. Facilitate a transition to a private environment for closing a sale.

• Engage graciously. Always treat customers with respect, honesty, and warmth to make the selling process more enjoyable, fun and delightful. The goal is to deepen the relationship, and discover if their needs match your offer. Listen closely for what they are saying and expressing. Don’t forget to follow-up. Skip the cold calling – it’s just too cold.

• Discover your signature selling style. Learn to sell in a way that matches your personality and your strengths. Check the definitions in this book or other sources to see if you are the humanitarian, visionary, maverick, romantic, nurturer, mentor, or one of a dozen others. Tune your approach and you will find yourself enjoying the selling process.

• Perfect your natural ask. As you go through the sales cycle with your customer, there comes a point when it’s natural for the transaction to conclude. Asking the customer for their decision demonstrates leadership on your part, shows you have confidence in your offering, and prompts them to make a final decision. You can’t win if you don’t ask.

I’m not suggesting that a startup founder has to do all the selling, and doesn’t need to find or hire people whose focus is marketing and sales. In a startup, everyone has to sell – you can’t afford to rely on specialists for everything.

Just recognize that if you are in business for yourself, you are in the business of selling. Selling well is about creating relevancy with customers and aligning your product suite with their needs. That has to lead to a win-win close where the customer satisfies a need and you make money, or you don’t have a long-term business. Are you comfortable with your selling skills?

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Radical management: it’s happening! make more money!

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Radical Management Makes Much More Money

Steve Denning RETHINKinShar

“Radical management: it’s happening” is the headline in the editor’s letter of the management journal, Strategy & Leadership, Volume 39, Issue 3. Robert Randall offers twin messages:

“One, corporations are failing their stakeholders by wrongly favoring some more than others or by not managing discontinuity through best practices that foster continuous innovation; two, it’s time to try something else.”

He continues:

As a result of working with these authors and reading manifestos by other leading strategic management thinkers that also call for a reinvention of management, I’m confident that we are witnessing a best-practice revolution. When respected management thinkers like Michael Porter and Gary Hamel tell management to re-boot, then it’s time. It’s not as if the failings of hierarchical, shareholder-first management are a secret. So it should be no surprise that many of the principles of radical management are quietly being adopted by leading companies around the world, to a greater or lesser degree.

Management reinvention… offers company-wide rapid-business-model development as a response to market discontinuity. To compete successfully despite frequent and sudden change, firms have to foster the competencies that promote continuous innovation in both offerings and operations. In practice, managers shift their focus from producing low-cost or high-differentiation offerings to satisfying customers. They become enablers instead of controllers, coordinate their organizations through dynamic linking of teams and customers rather than command and control, make social and customer values their prime concern, and communicate so as to further stakeholder conversations. Leading advocates are Gary Hamel (“It’s time to reinvent management,” S&L V36, N2), Stephen Denning (“Masterclass: The reinvention of management,” S&L V39, N2 and “Reinventing management: the practices that enable continuous innovation,” in this issue), John Hagel in The Power of Pull, and others.

(Note: Those articles require a subscription.)

Outstanding article award

Meanwhile the Emerald Literati Awards For Excellence were officially announced last week.  My article, “Rethinking the organization“, was selected as the Outstanding Article in Strategy & Leadership for 2010. The direct link to all Outstanding and Highly Commended Papers is here.

As a special exception, my prize-winning article, Rethinking the Organization, is available free for unlimited distribution until September 1 here.


______________________


Steve Denning’s most recent book is: The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace For the 21st Century 

Surprise! Radical Management Makes Much More Money

My colleague, Dennis Rebelo, has written a generous piece about my book,  The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass, 2010). (Jossey-Bass, 2010) while also asking: is radical management really so radical? Isn’t this really just a restatement of the humanist principles that have been formulated many times before?

The bridge between radical management and humanist values

In his blog, Dennis notes the connection between the humanistic principles taught at Saybrook University and the principles laid out in my book and has crafted “a list of some rules of thumb to offer leaders to expand on (but not replace) Steven’s interlocking principles – bridging his concepts to humanistic studies, topics and approaches.”

1. “Focus the organization on delighting clients” (Steve Denning) which means “become more aware of the role of a collaboration culture in supporting the mission you joined to serve fellow human beings” (Dennis Rebelo).

2. “Work in self-organizing teams” (Steve Denning) meaning “focus on natural formation versus control and command styles of the carrot and stick era of management so that you can experience joy at work” (Dennis Rebelo).

3. “Operate in client driven iterations” (Steve Denning) or “engage in a dialogue in the Bohmian-spirit to suspend judgment en route to understanding others” (Dennis Rebelo).

4. “Deliver value to clients” (Steve Denning) in other words “work with honor as you promised you would to serve” (Dennis Rebelo).

5. “Foster radical transparency” (Steve Denning) which is to say “graciously accept the sharing and critical thinking that stems from diversity” (Dennis Rebelo).

6. “Nurture continuous self-improvement” (Steve Denning) because “people are naturally inquisitive and so let the human endeavor at work encourage learning” (Dennis Rebelo).

7. “Communicate interactively” (Steve Denning) which is to say “dialogue versus monologue because no collective wisdom comes from watering down the thoughts of another human” (Dennis Rebelo).

Dennis concludes: “To be human means to accept, honor and be able to work with ease and grace despite having differences in thoughts and feelings with other people… Perhaps being human to get a human back is not a radical concept after all. Let’s not let it be.”

The article is a useful reminder that some of the roots of radical management have been around for a very long time. Indeed much of the spirit of radical management is driven by a wish to transform organizations from places where employees and customers are treated as things to places where people are treated as people. As Dennis points out, that ought not be a radical thought.

Future historians and psychologists will undoubtedly look back on the 20th Century and scratch their heads, wondering why did hundreds of million people accept to go on, day in and day out, treating other people as things and allowing themselves to be treated as things. What illness of the human spirit could have afflicted so many people to act in such a strange way?

More than just the old humanist principles

Yet this line of thinking should not delude us into thinking that radical management is really no more than the general humanistic principles that have been around for centuries. There are at least five fundamental ways in which radical management goes beyond general humanistic principles.

1. A change in the goal of the organization

Fixing the goal of the organization on delighting customers (or stakeholders) involves a lot more than “becoming more aware of the role of a collaboration culture”.

It is a fundamental change in the goal of organizations from making money for the shareholders to delighting the customers or stakeholders. It is a change in the basic geometry of organizations. Top-down becomes outside-in.

By and large, the humanist school of management from Mary Parker Follett onwards tried to work within the existing framework of shareholder capitalism, without always realizing that the goal itself would inexorably undermine humanist values. Instead of working within the goals of shareholder capitalism, radical management changes the very goal of the organization. Radical management rejects the framework of assumptions of traditional management and offers a different framework.

2. Radical management makes much more money

Happily, when the organization changes its goal to delighting the customer, it ends up making more money for the shareholders, because the organization is now in sync with today’s marketplace, where the customer is in charge. Delighting the customer is not just profitable, it is hugely profitable, as one can see from the results of Apple [APPL], Amazon [AMZN] and Salesforce.com [CRM], particularly in comparison to companies still being run in the mode of shareholder capitalism, such as GE [GE], Walmart [WMT] and Intel [INTC].

Hence radical management doesn’t have to depend on persuading business people to treat people as people just because that’s the right thing to do (which it is). Happily the economics is inexorably driving the change, whether business people want it or not. Wall Street is already putting traditional, thing-driven firms out of business at an accelerating pace, as Deloitte’s Shift Index conclusively demonstrates. In one sense, this phenomenon is a triumph of humanism. But we should not forget that there is a lot more than general humanist principles that is responsible for what is occurring.

3. Many of the practices are genuinely new

Many of the people-oriented vocabulary and practices would be unfamiliar to the humanist writers. That’s because these practices and this vocabulary are genuinely new:

• At the organizational level, the goal of the firm to delight customers is measured by the Net Promoter Score. It enables the organization to measure whether it is delighting the customer by inviting the customer to imagine a story: “Would you recommend this product or service to a colleague or friend?”
• At the level of the team, work is planned in the form of user stories—a special kind of story devised to formulate the goals of teams in terms of customer outcomes.
• The user stories that are developed are then sized and prioritized using other methodologies called “story points” and “planning poker” to measure how much work is involved in making any of the user stories “come true.” In such work places, people routinely speak of “implementing stories.”
• Value stream mapping is a tool that creates a story of the organization seen from the customer’s point of view, and helps identify any delays in delivering value to the customer. It enables the organization to manage the forgotten competitive weapon: time.
• These story-based measures enable the firm to go further and—for the first time—calculate the productivity of a firm in terms of human outcomes rather than merely the production of things.

With radical management, we are thus in a world of NPS, user stories, story points, planning poker, team velocity and value stream mapping. This vocabulary and these methodologies represent an evolution of the innocent world of general humanist values. In effect, by using these discoveries, radical management is able to transform general humanist principles into actionable business processes. The humanist principles are sound. But by themselves, they are not enough to run an organization.

4. Doing all the changes together is new

Individually none of these seven principles is new. Each principle has been implemented by some organizations for many years:

• Finding ways to measure client delight and the consequent impact on firm growth has been systematically studied by Fred Reichheld and his colleagues at the consulting firm Bain & Company for over twenty-five years.

• Self-organizing teams have been the staple of new product development for several decades.

• Iterative work practices have been promoted since the 1930s by Walter Shewhart, a quality expert at Bell Labs.

• Reducing inventory and delivering value to clients each iteration lie at the heart of lean manufacturing, which was invented by Toyota some fifty years ago.

• Radical transparency has been a guiding principle of software development practices known as Scrum and Agile for several decades.

• Continuous self-improvement is a legacy from the total quality movement for more than half a century.

• Interactive communication—storytelling, questions, conversations—has a rapidly growing literature and practice in the past decade.

Individually, then, none of the seven principles is new. What is new is for organizations to break free from the interlocking assumptions of traditional management and put all the principles of radical management together as an integrated, mutually supporting whole. It’s the integrated implementation of all the pieces that gives the approach its full power. Each of the components adds an increment: when they are combined, the increment becomes exponential.

As I noted in my post yesterday, many companies have mistakenly approached radical management (and its forerunners: Scrum, Agile and Lean) as it if were just another business process to be bolted on to the existing business processes. The result is generally a failure. Radical management is a different way of thinking, speaking and acting in the workplace. It is only when firms realize this that they achieve the full benefits from implementing it.

5. An end to mere PR

Traditional managers have often professed to be devoted to delighting their customer and valuing employees as the organization’s most important asset. Yada, yada, yada. Everyone knew that the real bottom line was neither customer focus nor valuing employees: the real goal was making money for the shareholders. The other stuff was PR bullshit.

So if radical management were to be merely talking about becoming more aware of the role of a collaboration culture, there would be a serious risk that people would see it as more of the same traditional management PR bullshit. They would suspect that the real bottom line of radical management was really still what it always was: making money for shareholders. By being crystal clear that this is a shift in the real bottom line of the organization from making money for shareholders to delighting the customer, we get to the heart of the matter of what is really driving the organization. This is not just PR bullshit. This is a fundamental change in the way organizations are run. This is what makes this thinking radical.

________________________

To learn more about the principles and practices of radical management, read Steve Denning’s book: The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace For the 21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2010).

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Obdedient Wives Club (OWC) to offer sex lessons

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Obedient Wives Club to offer sex lessons on how to pleasure husbands

 By ISABELLE LAI isabellelai@thestar.com.my

RAWANG: Sex lessons to help wives “serve their husbands better than a first-class prostitute” will be among the classes provided by the Obedient Wives Club (OWC) to help promote harmonious marriages and counter social ills.

Its vice-president Dr Rohaya Mohamad said it was time sexual prowess took a front seat in marriage, beyond that of the traditional “good mother or good cook” roles.

“A good or religious wife should also be good in bed,” she told reporters after the launch of the club's Malaysian chapter at a golf club here yesterday.

She said a husband who was kept happy in the bedroom would have no reason to stray, seek out prostitutes or indulge in other social vices.

Making its debut: Fauziah Arifin from the OWC giving a token of appreciation to Positive Image Resources Sdn Bhd executive director Datin Zainah Abdul Ghani at the launch of the club in Rawang yesterday. Looking on are Sakinah Rahmanuddin and Selayang Umno deputy chief Datuk Nasir Ibrahim.

 

“The family institution is protected and we can curb social ills like prostitution, domestic violence, human trafficking and abandoned babies,” she said, adding that she believed these problems stemmed from unfulfilled sexual needs at home.

Dr Rohaya, who previously served 15 years as a doctor in the Health Ministry, said the club would also offer counselling and lecture sessions for wives, husbands or couples.

She said the Malaysian chapter had around 800 members while its chapter in Jordan had 200, adding that another in Indonesia was set to be launched on June 19 in Jakarta.

Asked whether wives should remain obedient if their husbands still abused or cheated on them despite being “kept happy” in the bedroom, Dr Rohaya said everyone was subject to God's rule.

“God has His ways and is fair to all. A husband is also subject to God's rule, meaning he can go to hell, too. But a woman must be a good wife to the end,” she said, adding that according to Islam, women should pray, fast during Ramadan, protect their chastity and obey their husbands if they wanted to enter heaven.

Dr Rohaya said the club was undaunted by public criticism, adding that she believed this was a “successful formula” to happy marriages.

OWC and the Polygamy Club were formed by Global Ikhwan Sdn Bhd, an organisation founded by former members of the banned Al-Arqam Islamic group.

A mass wedding reception for eight couples was also held during the launch.

The brides were aged 18 to 22 while the grooms were aged 20 to 48. All are OWC members and agreed that disobedient wives were the cause of many social ills.

FB group counters ‘sexist’ wives club

PETALING JAYA: Facebook users have started a group called “We Do Not Want Sexist Nonsense From Global Ikhwan Sdn Bhd” after reading about the Obedient Wives Club (OWC) launched by the organisation.

Someone called Matthew Tard Ong wrote that he created the group as he believed both partners played a role in keeping a marriage healthy.

As of 9.30pm yesterday, 133 people had joined the group. The OWC, or Kelab Taat Suami, was launched yesterday. Its members strived to delight their husbands in almost every way.

OWC vice-president Dr Rohaya Mohamad said this included keeping husbands sexually satisfied so they would not turn to prostitutes or keep mistresses.

A Muslim husband, who only wanted to be known by his first name Zul, said he did not agree with the message sent out by the club.

“Yes, sex is important, but you can’t say that it will help curb social ills in such a sweeping manner. “There are other factors involved,” said the 36-year-old technician.

He said men tended to stray for psychological reasons that he himself did not fully understand. Men, he said, could cheat on their wives despite having a happy marriage.

Sociologist and social activist Rohanna Ariffin suggested that OWC members read up on statistics by women’s rights groups and the police to find out the factors that caused domestic violence.

“Women shouldn’t be women’s worst enemy. Husbands have to take responsibility for their own behaviour,” said Rohanna who is also a Parti Rakyat Malaysia central committee member.

She stressed that it was wrong for women to take all the blame for men’s weaknesses.

However, Selayang Umno deputy chief Datuk Nasir Ibrahim said the club was extraordinary and unique.
He said Selayang Umno fully supported the club as most problems had their roots at home.

“There may be negative voices decrying this as male chauvinism but I don’t see it that way. If the family institution is strong with good marital relations, it can help counter social ills,” he said at the launch of the club yesterday.

‘Wives can curb social ills like prostitution by being obedient and alluring’

By ISABELLE LAI

PETALING JAYA: Wives who “obey, serve and entertain” their husbands can help reduce social ills such as prostitution and domestic abuse, according to members of The Obedient Wives Club.

The Club, to be launched Saturday by Global Ikhwan Sdn Bhd, aims to teach wives how to keep their husbands happy and contented.

Global Ikhwan, an organisation founded by former members of the banned Al-Arqam Islamic group, also launched the Ikhwan Polygamy Club two years ago.

Global Ikhwan spokesperson Siti Maznah Mohd Taufik said that many social ills were caused by disobedient wives who failed to bring joy to their husbands.

“Domestic abuse happens because wives don't obey their husband's orders. A man must be responsible for his wife's wellbeing but she must listen to her husband,” said Siti Maznah in an interview on Friday.

When asked whether it was the wife's fault for being abused, she said: “Yes, most probably because she didn't listen to her husband.”

Siti Maznah, 48, also stressed that husbands would not stray and turn to prostitutes if wives supplied them with a satisfying sex life.

She said women had the duty of making themselves attractive and dressing up beautifully at home.

“Wives should welcome them with sexy clothes and alluring smiles when in the privacy of their homes,” she said, adding that she herself did the same as everyone in the club practised what they preached.

Siti Maznah, a second wife and mother to five children, said she treated her husband's first wife like her elder sister.

“Altogether, we have 16 children in our household. My husband is a happy man, you can see it from his actions,” she said.

According to her, the Ikhwan Polygamy Club now has over 1,000 members comprising both husbands and wives. The average number of children per polygamous household ranges from four to 26.

Siti Maznah admitted that husbands were not perfect and it was natural for disagreements to occur, sometimes.

“We can have discussions and disagreements. We don't just keep quiet when we don't agree with our husbands,” she said.

However, as long as husbands did not go against Islamic law, their final word was law, she said.

Perak mufti supports Obedient Wives Club

By SYLVIA LOOI and FARIK ZOLKEPLI  newsdesk@thestar.com.my

IPOH: Perak mufti Tan Sri Harussani Zakariahas given his backing to the Obedient Wives Club, which offers “sex lessons” to help women keep their husbands.

Harussani, who recently banned the poco poco dance in Perak, said women needed to be reminded of their roles and responsibilities to their husbands.

The younger generation is too absorbed in cultures that are not their own. Wives must be very obedient to their husbands. - Tan Sri Harussani Zakaria

“The younger generation is too absorbed in cultures that are not their own. Wives must be very obedient to their husbands.

“However, in Islam, the wife can go against her husband if what he does is not according to the religion,” he said, calling for more such clubs to be set up throughout the country as a way to counter social ills.

He was responding to a statement by club vice-president Dr Rohaya Mohamad that a husband who was kept happy in the bedroom would have no reason to stray, seek out prostitutes or indulge in other social vices.

The club had also offered sex lessons to help wives “serve their husbands better than a first-class prostitute”.

However, Johor Islamic Council advisor Datuk Nooh Gadut said the use of the term “first-class prostitute” was extreme, adding that marriages in Islam should not be just for sex but for, among others, love.

The Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG), which includes the Women's Aid Organisation, Sisters in Islam and Women's Centre for Change, said the club's principles were narrow-minded, degrading, and an insult to women around the world.

JAG spokesman Maria Chin Abdullah said Malaysian women had contributed enormously to society and that the latest development was a setback in progress.

“It is degrading to ask another individual in this case, a woman to wait on another person hand and foot. Our group is fighting for gender equality but the club is looking to degrade women even more.

“To objectify women as mere sex objects to satisfy their husbands' lust is simply unacceptable. “I hope more men can speak out against the club's outrageous stand,” she told The Star yesterday.

Social activist Pang Khee Teik said women should realise that they were not only “doing it” for their husbands but for themselves as well.

“We must remember there are people with little or no sex drive. Any campaign by the club must not pressure women into feeling guilty about it,” said Pang, who is also the co-founder of annual sexuality rights festival that advocates equal sexual rights for all.

Supremacist thinking, race, religion conspiracy theories of threat: same actors, same old script!

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Sharing The Nation By Zainah Anwar

There should be zero tolerance against those who abuse race and religion to promote supremacist thinking and incite hatred.

WHOSE voice should prevail? Those who perpetually see race and religion as being under threat and demand that every person who believes, thinks, behaves, dresses, acts and opines differently should be “fixed” through state-sanctioned operations (such as boot camps or rehabilitation camps), punished under the Internal Security Act, the Sedition Act, the Official Secrets Act, the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Syariah Criminal Offences Act, or just denounced and demonised as enemies and traitors of race, religion and country?

Or those who envision a democratic and just future, where rights are recognised on the basis of citizenship rather than just race, religion, or sex?

The choice is obvious to most of us, the good citizens of Malaysia who love this country and are determined to be resilient, resourceful, and open-minded to face the challenges and realities of the 21st century.

Healthy beat: Even the innocuous fun of poco-poco is considered a threat. — Filepic

 

But there are demagogues in our midst who are relentless in their abuse of race and religion to stir up fear and conflict.

For what purpose? To remain in power so that their privileges and entitlements are entombed forever?

Could this escalating rhetoric of racial and religious-based recriminations be a last ditch do-or-die effort to maintain business as usual, never mind the consequences to the nation or even their own party?

Is it because the elections are coming and they remain myopic in their belief that race and religion will win them the battle?

So they endlessly manufacture many more new threats – from the innocuous fun of poco-poco to the relativism of post-modernism, from calling Muslims opposed to Umno and PAS unification as “pengkhianat Islam” (traitors of Islam) to accusing Christians of plotting to turn Malaysia into a Christian state!

Even the outdated “communists under every bed” threat is now being thrown into the cauldron of dangers besieging the Malay community. All this, of course, to add to the existing long list of threats that include pluralism, liberalism, feminism, secularism, kongsi raya, open house, tomboys and yoga.



If this is merely tiresome, one can just laugh it off. Alas, it is not. It is corrosive to the body politic and well-being of the nation. It foreshadows a downhill slide into ethnic and religious conflict. It contributes to the record outflow of capital and talent that the country is suffering now.

It has got to stop!

And yet, for years, a mainstream daily newspaper continues to be the conduit for such inflammatory, unverified, provocative stories with front page banner headlines, giving it authority and legitimacy with seeming support from the powers that be.

The Government cannot talk about 1Malaysia, economic transformation, government transformation, talent recruitment or high income country on the one hand, and on the other legitimises, whether directly or indirectly, the use of race and religion to incite fear for short-term political gain.

It is hard to understand why these same actors are trotting out the same old script that cost the Barisan Nasional government so dearly in 2008. It’s as if nobody has learnt any lessons from that political tsunami.

Since attacking liberal Muslims and ungrateful Chinese did not work in 2008, they have amended the script to add Christians and the so passé communists. Aren’t they creating more enemies instead of making friends?

Ashutosh Varshney, the Indian political scientist based in the United States, spent 10 years examining three pairs of Indian cities, one riot prone and the other peaceful, in confronting the same contentious ethnic issue.

In his seminal work Ethnic Conflict and Civil Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, he establishes three findings significant to Malaysia.

First, the role of the press. In violent cities, instead of investigating rumours, often strategically planted and spread, the press simply printed them with abandon. In studying peaceful Calicut and violent Aligarh over the Babari mosque agitation, he finds Aligarh’s local newspapers printing inflammatory falsehoods, while Calicut’s newspapers neutralised rumours after investigating and finding them unfounded.

When I was a journalist 20 years ago, my editors would not print any news – and certainly not on the front page – with alarming headlines without authoritative verification. Now some mainstream newspapers act just like irresponsible bloggers who turn rumours into instant fact, intentionally to damage reputations and serve partisan interests.

Second, Varshney finds that whether violence or peace prevails depends on the role politicians play in polarising citizens along ethnic lines. Politicians who seek to polarise Hindus and Muslims for the sake of electoral advantage can tear at the fabric of everyday engagement among citizens.

He finds that conflict erupts into violence when organised gangs are not just involved, but are also protected by politicians, thus escaping prosecution under the law for their criminal actions.

Third, and most importantly, he finds that trust built on inter-ethnic social and civic ties is critical for peace. Inter-ethnic associations in cities, such as trade unions, business associations, teachers, lawyers, doctors, non-governmental organisations and some cadre-based political parties, are decisive in preventing violence because they build bridges and manage tensions in times of ethnic conflict.

Varshney finds that a synergy emerges between communally integrated civic organisations and local arms of government. This leads to better monitoring and preventive action as these relationships nip rumours, small clashes and tensions in the bud. In the end, polarising politicians either do not succeed or eventually give up trying to provoke and engineer communal violence.

The lessons for us are clear. The sources of threat to our society and the sources of strength for bridge-building in our multi-ethnic society are clear for all to see. Thank God, again and again, many fair-minded Malaysian citizens have not risen up to bite the bait thrown out by the demagogues.

The point is our diversity, our pluralism, had always been our strength. We have a proud and long history of the races and religions living and working together. Malaysia was truly Asia. Now this rings hollow, meant only to trot out in tourism campaigns. Why is our pluralism now a threat? On what basis? Where’s the evidence? Who benefits from such a projection of threat?

What makes it mind-boggling is why these supremacist groups are given so much face and space? Think of the number of meetings held by those searching for solutions to ethnic, religious and regional conflicts that have been stormed by these “thugs”? Those of us meeting peacefully indoors, sharing our concerns and exploring possible solutions were the ones forced to abandon our meetings because they posed “a threat to public order”!

It is high time the Government unequivocally adopt a zero-tolerance policy against such agent provocateurs who abuse race and religion to promote supremacist thinking and incite hatred.

Our leaders must seriously come to grips with our new political realities and work harder to bring the message of change to its grassroots leaders. Some others do not even feel they need to be protected – by anyone. They feel 40 years of affirmative action are enough for them to stand on their own two feet and compete on their own strength and merit. What they want now is just simple good governance to enable them to thrive and for everyone to be given a fair chance to reach their full potential.

I wish these demagogues would spend their time and energy finding real solutions to real threats. For a start, how about chewing on the fact that a Merdeka Center survey found that 70% of Malays feel that the main threat to the Malay political position in the country is corruption among Malay leaders. Not the Chinese, Christians, communists, liberalism, pluralism, feminism, post-modernism, poco-poco, or yoga.

Can we please not waste any more time and emotion on imagined enemies and threats before we reach a point of no return? I know problems exist. But can we please search for solutions through rational dialogue and mutual respect, using verifiable facts, data and analysis instead of inflammatory pronouncements and conspiracy theories?