Nationalism to Islamism – the mind’s opium
This statement may be shocking. Generally speaking, people are indifferent when leaders speak of Islamic this and that. They have formed their own ‘rational expectations’. They have already anticipated that they are just empty talks and therefore adjust their reception accordingly. This means they will say – ho hum, not again.
So why do leaders have a penchant of adding affixes of Islamic to things? Because it lulls gullible Muslims and Malays into believing that just by adding this affix or prefix to the good or service we offer, we have a solution. Hence for example, to untangle the financial mess brought about by the subprime culture, we need to follow Islamic finance. In other words, it’s the lack of Islam that is responsible for financial problems.
It’s a raw deal for Islam these days. In Europe as pointed out by Farish Noor, everything bad there is attributable to Islamic influences. Anything associated with Islam now appears to be subjected to cultural cleansing. Hence people in Switzerland voted to ban the construction of minarets on mosques in order to stem the Islamization of that country.
