From Malaysia Kini

By Terence Netto

Even as Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim took his case to the courtroom of public opinion – increasingly riveted judging from the size and composition of crowds during his two-stop tour of southern Perak on Friday – the bile of his detractors was equally a match.

‘Anwar khianat Melayu Islam’ spewed one banner at the junction where the road from the town of Tapah meets the narrower turn-off that heads for Sg Manik, the second and more well attended location of the PKR leader’s two-stop swing through southern Perak.

Clearly, Anwar’s unequivocal condemnation of the outrages against mainly non-Muslim places of worship in recent weeks had drawn the ire of quarters wanting to exploit last month’s High Court decision in favour of non-Muslim use of the term ‘Allah’ as a rallying point to regain Malay support and put Pakatan Rakyat on the defensive.

These quarters see the ‘Allah’ decision as a lighted match thrown into a powder keg.

But the even temper of the mixed race crowd at Slim River, the first stop, and later of the predominantly Malay crowd in Sg Manik, indicated that at the most the ‘Allah’ issue is a tempest in a teapot.

Perhaps that explained the desperation of the bannered slurs against the Pakatan Rakyat chief.

Anwar’s combative speech to a mixed race crowd of about 1,500 people at a shop lot in Slim River showed that he fights best when he is up against the ropes.

He was preceded at the podium by PKR’s lesser lights, Chan Tian Chua (right) and Elizabeth Wong, whose spiel was useful as appetisers to the main course.

By the time it was the PKR’s adviser turn to speak, the crowd had waxed to its highest number at around 1,500 and when he finished 45 minutes later, people were still trickling in from the surrounding vicinity, obviously having heard titillating bits from motorcyclists who had periodically peeled from the belt of listeners to scamper into the nearby housing estate.
Indisputable magnetism
The mainly Malay crowd at Sg Manik, at about 10,000, far by much in excess of any gathering Anwar has drawn on his peninsula-wide road show since it started, had not come just to hear the pros and cons of the ‘Allah’ issue.

In the rural Malay heartland, the grapevine at warongs and suraus reverberates with the latest juicy tidbits. In the last several weeks, the word in Sg Manik has been about a police report lodged by the former driver of the area’s Member of Parliament, Tajuddin Rahman, of Umno.

The driver, until recently, of the famously cantankerous Pasir Salak MP, had alleged in his report that Tajuddin had punched him after he had lost his way while looking for the Deputy Prime Minister’s house one night in early December.

Tajuddin was invited to a meeting of selected Umno MPs from Perak at Muhyiddin Yassin’s (left) Bukit Damansara home. An allegedly irate Tajuddin then took over the wheel of the car but he was equally at a loss to find the DPM’s residence.

Since the time the driver, who is from Sg Manik, lodged a report over the alleged incident at the police station in his kampong, Pasir Salak’s most famous denizen has not been seen in the constituency. The police there it is said want to talk to him.

No doubt this story factored in accounting for the outsize crowd at Anwar’s Sg Manik ceramah, though it detracts from his indisputable magnetism as a draw on the hustings.

But after PKR’s head of Bureau of National Unity and Religious Understanding, Mohd Nor Manuty, had given a painstaking explanation of the ‘Allah’ issue from the theological standpoint, Anwar took over and riveted the crowd who must have felt some gratitude to Tajuddin Rahman for having giving them added impetus to be present.
‘Allah’ can be used by Christians
Essentially, Anwar rehearsed what he had said earlier at Slim River, the narrative this time having with more Islamic inflections.

His skilful staccato attack on the administration of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak (right) drew laughter and applause.

He revealed that during his mid-January visit to Lebanon for an Islamic conference, he spoke to renowned preacher Sheikh Yusuf Qardawi and other comparably weighty scholars who held that the term ‘Allah’ can be used by Christians.

He also said these scholars condemned as vicious the attack on his character implied by the sodomy charges preferred against him.

By the time Malaysia’s most famous stump orator wound up close to midnight, the memory of the bannered slurs against his Malay-Muslim identity had faded into the inky night.

And the alleged incident concerning Pasir Salak’s parliamentary rep was reduced to a mere footnote in the larger saga of Sodomy II.