First, we witnessed the burning of Anwar Ibrahim caricature by stupid Universiti Malaysia Sabah student activists.

When an academic of 40 years like me use the word ‘stupid’ on students from a university, that is a first for me and I hope the last for I never use the word at all to describe the state of intelligence of students.

These university students are extremely lucky that I am not on the Board of Discipline presiding over their case.

Now we see in the Turun Anwar rally, the flogging of effigy of Anwar Ibrahim.

The rally was organized by PAS and Bersatu with their PN ‘little’ partners of other races. What was worse was that the flogging was done at the mosque.

Firstly, as part of the Islamic Reform movement and as a former member of PAS, I reject the use of religion in politics.

The Islamic Reformation was wrong. Religion should never be part of politics, ever.

Now some silly people will argue that burning effigies is part of the freedom of expression as well as a democratic right.

Well, to these people, I would like to say, please consider burning the effigy of the Qur’an or the Bible and let’s see how much freedom of expression will get you.

Just because others do it does not make it automatically right for that same practice to be done here. Why? The symbolic intentions will not be the same.

In Islam, the idea of burning something comes close to the idea of ‘burning in Hell’.

Perhaps some Western countries do not believe in Hell and so burning is just burning and has no other meaning except the finality of things.

When one burn somethings, one is saying, that’s it-lah, no more talks, no more discussions, its war of else.

Flogging in Islam has a sacred tradition that is related to some moral crimes related to sex. I have not read a situation where flogging was for a political leader that had killed no one or had caused no wars.

So, to me, those students who burn the effigy of Anwar may not understand that by doing so they are implying that Anwar can burn in Muslim Hell.

This is wrong as Muslims are taught that no one knows their destinies in the Hereafter other than Allah.

Secondly, by burning the caricature of Anwar, there is the finality of no discussions or no more parley.

In politics, there should always be discussions and parleys or else it is no longer politics.

When asked by a podcaster why they chose to burn the caricature of Anwar, the student being interviewed on TheGoodCastShow  answered that they wanted to get attention and so they thought they were successful at achieving their attention-grabbing action.

As I have said, this is either immaturity or plain stupidity that an action has only one meaning and not ten other possibilities.

Similarly, what were the intention of the floggers of Anwar’s effigy at the mosque?

Flogging in Islam has a sacred tradition that is related to some moral crimes related to sex. This was practiced not only by tribal Muslims of old but also by other religious faiths as well.

I have not read a situation where flogging was for a political leader that had killed no one or had caused no wars.

I do not know what heinous crimes that Anwar had done to merit the symbolic flogging at the mosque.

Now, if it were Tun M, I can give you a long list. But in the Reformasi era, we flogged nor burn no effigies of that unremorseful old man.

I applaud the police for apprehending these two ‘stupid’ Malay Muslims who neither know the boundaries of their religion nor the boundaries of political differences.

Syabas to the police! I hope these two would be justly dealt with.

This incident should show Malaysians the kind of politics Perikatan Nasional is playing. And if there are other parties who wish to partner with these people, they are also smeared by the mud of immorality and extremist behavior.

This is not my Malaysia. This is not even my Islam. This is the lowest act of human dignity anyone should tolerate.

Thank you for the police in their quick action in apprehending these two immoral clowns from PN.

They represent the best or the worst of that coalition of nonsensical parties unfit to either be called Islamic or Malaysian.

(Prof Dr. Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at a local university and his writing reflects his own personal opinion entirely.)