Religious Extremists Attempt To Hijack Healthcare System

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“And I see that we can’t deny at-risk groups from getting PrEP and that it is better for us to prevent at-risk groups from spreading HIV to their partners, society, friends, or acquaintances.”
- Deputy Health Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni
I sincerely hope that the Health Ministry does not buckle to the immense pressure applied by various religious extremists and their governmental proxies to deny life-saving drugs to vulnerable and demonised groups.
The modus operandi of religious extremists is to target low-hanging fruit when it comes to religious hegemony.
Selangor state religious department’s argument that a certain group should be denied medical aid, which is funded by taxpayers, is essentially laying the foundation to use healthcare as a punitive instrument against people they deem against the teachings of Islam.
We should ask ourselves why religious leaders would risk the spread of diseases just to satisfy the requirements of their religious dogma.
Deputy Health Minister Lukanisman Awang SauniWe should also ask ourselves why religious leaders want to jeopardise the economy and other social services by the spread of a disease which could be mitigated by rational healthcare policies.
As noted, these religious supremacists are intent on not only dictating who could use taxpayer ringgit but also making people who do not subscribe to their religious beliefs complicit in contributing to a healthcare crisis made worse by religious dogma.
Now, Malaysians who think that the attacks against the LGBTQ community are not really important are missing the point. By forcing the government to capitulate to their extreme demands, what they are essentially doing is shaping healthcare policy when it comes to all Malaysians.
Furthermore, these religious extremists are counting on the fact that some Malaysians believe the same thing they do and object to the existence of LGBTQ people on religious grounds.
Then, of course, they are those who subscribe to the dumb US culture wars where the LGBTQ community is a major talking point. All these people, in reality, are helping religious extremists in this country to carry out their agenda to turn Malaysia into a theocracy.
Fascist regimes do this all the time. What we are dealing with here are not lifestyle choices but rather the overt control of how people use their bodies.
Religious extremists already control the way women use their bodies and human sexuality in all its diversity is anathema to religious extremists.
This is also why someone like Local Government Development Minister Nga Kor Ming attempting to equate the LGBTQ lifestyle (whatever that is) to hedonism, profanity and free sex, is exactly the kind of culture war horse manure which enables the religious extremists in this country and his pusillanimous comrades in the unity government.
PAS/Perikatan Nasional take great delight when the DAP makes statements like this because they know that LGBTQ activists and those oppressed by the ketuanan system look to the DAP as the progressive and secular alternative and this includes Malays as well.
So go ahead DAP, contribute to the toxic narrative which finds transaction in the base that wants to turn this country into a theocracy.
The reason why Kuantan MP Wan Razali Wan Nor asked the Health Ministry for its response to the Selangor mufti’s stance was that he was attempting to cow the ministry into acquiescing to the will of the Selangor mufti.
This is a healthcare issue so why on earth would the stand of the mufti of Selangor be relevant? Well because the religious bureaucracy has become a beast of its own and some politicians feel they have to bend their knees to these organisations.
Keep in mind it was never always like this. The religious bureaucracy has grown to such an extent that these days, we have religious personalities sounding off on numerous issues without consulting the political apparatus.
Here a PAS political operative from Pahang is referencing the religious diktats of the mufti of Selangor. This is the kind of collusion that has been happening for decades with the normalisation of PAS in mainstream Malaysian politics.
Local Government Development Minister Nga Kor MingWe have seen how PAS operatives have attempted to use dodgy science to attack the Rahmah food programme. Every day, PN political operatives attempt to stir up some religious controversy hoping it would derail the government.
Keep in mind that all this is part of a coordinated narrative. The outdated policy of barring HIV-positive Malaysians from public universities is a case in point. This is not a directive from the Health Ministry but rather from the Education Ministry.
There is really no scientific evidence to ban HIV-positive Malaysians from public universities. So you have to ask yourself if this is not a decision by the Health Ministry, why is it that the Education Ministry is carrying on with this ban?
The reason is simple. It is far easier to link HIV/AIDS with the LGBTQ community and in this way, religious extremists get to ban LGBTQ people from public universities - which are tightly controlled and infiltrated by operatives from the deep Islamic state. Keep in mind that this is about control and controlling young people in public universities is what extremists desire.
During the pandemic, the spread of Covid-19 was made worse by the fact that religious extremists and their proxies were flaunting regulations and radicalising their supporters to break with regulations designed to stop the spread of the disease.
And they were helped by agents in the government who made it easier for these people to carry out their destructive behaviour.
We had the biggest clusters from religious groups, who intentionally disobeyed protocol and were on social media attempting to portray the government as being dictatorial because they would not allow people to fulfil their religious obligations.
Mind you, religious operatives who spread such nonsense like anti-vaccination theories were more likely than not to scramble to get vaccinated and stayed away from massive gatherings they encourage their supporters to attend. All these are patterns we need to pay attention to.
Religious extremists don't care about their own, much less a diverse polity. This is why they cannot govern. They can only rule. - Mkini
S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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