The murmurs beneath the 'Land Below the Wind'!

Mission Sabah: The Manhunt
V.G. Kumar Das

It used to be that Sabah was one of Malaysia's high income earning states. In the late 60s, Sabah was poised to go places. Then the vultures moved in .....

First, they reaped the land of its natural resources. Then they divided the lands and sealed their dominance through the ballot box. Readers well-versed with Malaysian history of the early 1980s would be familiar with project IC where citizenships were given away like M&M's to 'eligible' subjects. Thousands of Filipina boat people flocked to the shores of Sabah to be counted. The project was deemed a whopping success with the favourable state election results (to the national ruling party) that ensued. Nobody actually wondered why most congregations of Pakistanis in the country are centred in Sabah - as if there was a mass trans-subcontinental migration of Pakistan êmigrês is in the 80s. Blame it all on project IC!

Not to forget the moral and economic support of Islamic freedom fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that Malaysia gave in the name of the brotherhood of Islam. Now the dog is coming back to bite the hand that fed. Descendants of some of our leaders who still continue their traditional family business find Sabah a lucrative spot. Blessed with aquatic beauty, it lured in an array of tourists with fat bank accounts back home. Every time the pirates of the coasts of Sabah were low in cash, all they had to do was start their engines, head towards these tourists spots and catch a few hostages for ransom. Like clockwork, it worked every time.

It is helpful when the coastline is long and is manned by incompetent servicemen equipped with outdated weapons. Their replacement weapons had been approved, but somehow they landed elsewhere, perhaps outside the country, thanks to interference from the top echelon.

The watering down of news from this end of the country came in handy as well. In the recent Lahad Datu stand-off, the powers-that-be managed to paint a rosy picture of the incursion for a good one month before busybody foreign media spilt the beans.

Prof. Emeritus Dato’ Dr V.G. Kumar Das

With this background and the restrictive discomfort of the pandemic lockdown, Prof VG Kumar Dass' creative juices must have flowed in abundance to create this fiction. With the worldwide spread of radical Islam and Salafism, the secluded position of the State, and the dubious infamy that Malaysia is attracting as a transit point for jihadists, the author picked Sabah as a setting for a high-octane paced police thriller.

A spate of violence in the capital alerted the police intelligence (this appear as an oxymoron, probably because of its lack of independence) to zero in on Sabah. They stumble upon a jihadist training camp. ASP Zain of the counter-terrorist and seven-member elite commando team spring into action, with the help of the state-of-the-art telecommunication interfering devices to infiltrate and cripple their devious and megalomaniac plans of absolute anarchy.

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Check out anytime, but can never leave!

Kalifat (Miniseries S1 E1-8, Swedish, 2020)
Netflix

BR Ambedkar, the Indian polymath, an economist, a jurist, a philosopher, politician and social reformer, was once at a crossroad.  Having had first-hand experience pulling himself out of poverty and earning himself a myriad of international recognitions, the public's discriminatory behaviour was still palpable. The honour of leading the committee to draft the Indian Constitution meant nothing. Post-Independent India still oozed caste discrimination bigotry. 

He ventured into the possibility of leading the whole oppressed and backward communities to embrace another religion. Babasaheb Ambedkar took a deep dive into various religions, including Islam and Christianity, and finally decided upon Buddhism. About Islam, he had this to say. The Brotherhood of Islam is not the brotherhood of Man but an exclusive club to care for their own kind. 

Even though the religion preaches egalitarianism, in reality, this is far from it. The Arabs like to think they are superior because the Prophet was an Arab. With their long civilisational history behind them, the Persians would get offended if he is confused for an Arab. The whites are of a different class, but the Asians and Africans go nowhere near the status of the Arabs.

Muslims comprise 21% of the world population, but they share only 5% of its GDP. 57 Muslim majority countries (out of 195) have 1,840 universities (25,000 worldwide). To date, there are only three Muslim Nobel Laureates in the field of science - Mohammad Abdus Salam in Physics (Pakistan),

Aziz Sancar (Turkey) and Ahmad Zewali (Egypt) both in Chemistry. Unfortunately, Abdus Salam, as he is of Ahmadiyya denomination, has naturally been declared a non-Muslim by Pakistan. Interestingly, all these Professors reached their zenith only after leaving their home countries for further education. Even after their successes, they had to settle overseas to delve deep into their research.

Despite all the bad publicity surrounding these countries, there seems to be no concerted effort to correct the situation. It is not business as usual, though. Many of the occupants of these countries lament that all their problems are perpetuated by the enemies of religion. By allowing radical belief ideologies to take a mould, everyone looks contended, seeing all of mankind's progress take a U-turn and move into a retrograde fashion. Women empowerment has gone down the drain, the thirst for knowledge has fizzled out, public amenities have collapsed, but nobody is deterred. They have a bigger calling - to fulfil self-proclaimed God's commands and to prepare for the afterlife. That is it. The cavemen savage laws that our ancestors worked so hard to rectify have made a pompous comeback with the help of petrodollars.

This miniseries, which is set in a country with the capital city with dubious infamy as the rape capital of the world, is said to give a realistic portrayal of what happens at the ground level. It shows how young pubescent girls are brainwashed through radical Islamic teachings and packed off to ISIS territories as jihadi brides. They are given the wrong impression of the supposed land of milk and honey in the palaces of ISIL. The boys are given weapons to fight in the streets of Syria. There are promised a place in Jannah as if the teachers have gone there and have a first-hand account of what goes on there. 

The story starts with Suleiman and his two teenage daughters. Suleiman is an Islamic immigrant to Sweden who has personal experience seeing how radical Islam can spoil a nation. His girls lead an everyday Swedish teenage life - school, friends, boys, mobile phones and basketball. However, an assistant teacher who is part of a more significant movement goes on a recruitment drive preying on troubled and confused teenagers.

Meanwhile, in Islamic State, a Swedish girl, Pervin, who ran away from Sweden to become a jihadi bride, wants to return. Now, with a four-month child in her arms and living amidst daily bombing and drone attacks, it is not what she signed up for. She wants out. Through a friend with a mobile phone, Pervin managed to contact a social worker in Sweden. 

The miniseries, through the 8 episodes, tells us how the Swedish police try to rescue Pervin and at the same time try to save Suleiman's daughter, who made a dash to Daesh Land. Interesting.

I cannot help but think of Ingmar Bergmann's film 'The Virgin Spring' when viewing this show. 'The Virgin Spring' was set at a time when Paganism was having a hard day keeping its congregation. Christianity was making inroads, and it was the flavour of the times as more of the affluent part of the society took the plunge into Christiandom. Unfortunately, it looks like Christianity has had the same fate a millennium later, trying to ward foreign teachings from permeating their community. Life is cyclical; history repeats itself!

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Affairs of heart are irrational

Sufiyum Sujathayum (Sufi and Sujatha, Malayalam; 2020)

It started with a slow but discernable sporadic increase in reported cases of Hindu girls eloping with Muslim boys. Then came in the honour killings. The media picked it up. Everyone else then came out with their experiences of so-and-so female members of their families ex-communicating from the rest in pursuit of true love. To these girls, it finally meant embracing a new religion, new name, erasing themselves of their past lives and age-old traditions.

People started calling this phenomenon as 'love jihad' - a supposed form of religious warfare by Muslim boys to entice Hindu girls into conversion through marriage. It was a numbers game. They allege that that was another modality to increase their representation in the community. In 2009, it garnered national attention with claims of widespread conversions in Kerala and Karnataka. There were also similar accusations by British Sikhs and minorities in Pakistan. Even though the National Investigative Agency (NIA) in India found common instigators in 'love jihad' cases, the police and the court dismissed them as pure fabrications with no substance. As there was a hypothesis that these brides were prepared to be made ISIS bride, it became a terror issue, hence, NIA came to the picture. 

Another point not mentioned in any of these arguments is the lack of young boys in many of the places where 'love jihad' takes place. There were no economic opportunities in these states and the young men had to go off to work in the Gulf States or Singapore. Young girls with raging hormones and Muslim boys, in the spring of youth, left behind to mind religious and theological duties were the best ingredients for a perfect storm. And suave hunks with Bollywood movie-star look as many of these Sufi practitioners have, as some are from the Middle East, sparks are bound to fly.

As these girls who are alleged victims of forced conversion were major in the legal sense and were intelligent and educated, the courts could not nullify such unions. Anyway, affairs of the heart are never logical and cannot be argued in a sensible manner. Blinded by romance, the world is a wonderful place and pigs can fly.

Even though movie pundits on the social media hailed it as another must-see movie of 2020, I seriously think one can give this one a miss. It tells the story of a vocally-challenged Hindu Karthak dancer whose only job seems to be to cycle around the village and play with children in the madrassah. In the small town where the only member of the male gender is an uncle or from the geriatric population, a tall bearded young man is a sight for sore eyes. She is fascinated with him and his way of life - his mystical dances and songs. She falls flat for him despite the arrangements made by her parents for her to be married to a groom working in Dubai.

Long story short, she is emotionally blackmailed by the parents to get married.

Ten years on, she returns to India with her husband, after the Sufi lover dies. The rest of the story is about her letting go of her boyfriend and coming in terms with her status as a wife and mother, leaving her juvenile puppy love behind.

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Adversities part of life!

Partition Museum, Amritsar.

Every day we hear of people justifying the violence that is accelerating around the world to injustices of those in power against the powerless. The perpetrators rally behind their leaders who hail their people as victims of an unjust system. They are ready with conspiratory theories to justify resistance to the cruel world. 

Unfortunately, life is never easy. Demands snowballs when one party's need is fulfilled. Pretty soon, splinter factions will arise, and the requests never end. Even people who had been uprooted from the hostilities still insists on returning to their past glory days, which by all accounts, may be a figment of their imagination.

Examples of these are aplenty around us.

My recent meetings with close Sindhi friends whose past generation was the victim of such an atrocity showed me how they handled the whole catastrophe. I did not think much of what they were saying then, but my recent visit to the recently opened (August 2017) Partition Museum put everything in perspective.

At the dawn of 15th August 1947, India and Pakistan saw a mass exodus of brothers separated only by religion. The scale of migration was of gargantuan proportions, only seen in war times. 4.7 million Pakistani Hindus migrated to India. Their send-off was anything but courteous, and their welcome was no red carpet. The Hindus were mainly from Sindh district which had been annexed to Pakistan with a single stroke of the pen of a senior lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe, from the UK. The idea of the British was to get the hell out of their colonies as they had become quite a thorn in their flesh. Radcliffe fitted the bill quite neatly as he had never been to India and thus was ignorant of the intricacies, local politics and bondages that the region shared. In record time, seven weeks, he slashed off cultures, bonds and relationships built over centuries. Realising the hardship that he was going to create, Radcliffe left India without even collecting the fees due to him.

Neighbours, who had had cordial brotherly relationships, suddenly transformed into machete-wielding demons who loot and went on killing and raping sprees. Overnight, people lost everything - money, family, homes and dignity. Landowners and merchants became refugees, living on handouts and kindness of others with whatever little commonality and compassion they had. From diwans and zamindars, they became paupers.

The sad tale ended when the community took stock of their situation and started life afresh in other regions. Their diaspora can be seen spread the world over - India, Malaysia, Singapore, UK, US, Europe and the remotest corners of the world.

In every place they lay their hat, they called it home. And every land they sojourned, they had been resourceful and successful. They did not live on the pity of others, brandishing weapons and crying for revenge and justice.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1190552

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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The liberty to voice

Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan

Author: Caroline Fourest (2007)

For Mature Readers Only.

For the longest time, Tariq Ramadan has been hailed as a moderate Muslim. He has been looked upon as the person who would be the go-between to help to salvage the good name of the religion. His paternal grandfather established the notorious Islamic Brotherhood, but that did not prevent him from having his voice heard in the international arena. He asserts that he cannot be blamed for the sins of his grandfather and the baggage that he carries with the family name. Nevertheless, he is proud of his heritage. Tariq, probably named after the first Muslim conqueror in Europe when he invaded Spain, also shares his name with the pillar of Europe, the Rock of Gibraltar, called Rock of Tariq in the Islamic world.

His wife is Isabelle, an ex-Catholic, now plays the picture-perfect image of an ideal Muslim wife. His brother, Hani, a non-practising physician, gave up his medical practice to go in the line of dawah (spreading the message, but they do not call it proselytising). Unlike his younger brother Tariq, he lacks the suaveness and charisma. He is said to be too brash in his sermons at his family-run Geneva Islamic Centre that had landed him in hot soup with the Swiss authorities.

I think that is where the controversy starts. Tarif and Hani, according to the author, are actually two sides of the same coin. Tariq, despite his seemingly modern outlook of the practice of the religion and benign look, is said to have the same ideology of the fire-brand Islam as propagated by his grandfather Hassan Al Banna, Al Banna's henchmen Said Qutb and Hani Ramadan. Hani is supposed to spread the word from the inside whilst Tariq spreads his malicious sugar-coated 'doublespeak' message to the ummah in the rest of the civilised world. He says different things to a different crowd; to the non-believers, he emphasises that the Islamic laws should be contextualised to time and people, to the believers, he would adamantly assert that there is a need for the modern Man to go back to the golden age of Islamic Empire. To the kaffir, he would say that Islam is compatible to secularism and modern democracy; amongst his own crowd, he would insist that Muslims are different from the rest and they need to exert their superiority over their newfound state that gave them homage. Lest they forget that the host state 'rescued' them from their native countries, but they would be quick to counter their claim by saying that the West were the ones to fanned the fire in the first place. In so many strong the author accuses Tariq Ramadan to be a Salafi fundamentalist, not a reformist.

Author: Caroline Fourest

Tariq's association with many of the world's notorious jihadists including Ayman Al Zawahiri, the Al Queda No. 2 man, put Tariq into the list of the unwelcomed travellers in many countries including France and the USA. He is accused of being the subversive instigator of Muslims the world over. He encourages youths not to be passive citizens but instead, demand their rights. He wants them not to conform to the majority rule which is unIslamic. Ibn Taymiyyah, the controversial 13th-century Islamic thinker with his dogmatic teachings, is his role model. Tariq seems to condone the terrorism manned by fringe Islamists' group but fail to address the injustices carried out in the name of religion in Islamic nations. He is quick, however, to accuse of a Hamas-Zionist conspiracy or cry Islamophobia when the Muslims are in the wrong.


Tarik Ramadan denies part of his religious activities include proselytising but agrees that his wish is to have Europe, a Dar-al-Harb where Muslims are the minority, to a Dar-al-shahada or House of Witness/Message. In traditional Islamic sense, countries are either Darul-al-Islam (House of God) where Muslims are the leaders or Darul-al-Harb (House of war where Muslims are persecuted). So, in his words, he plans to bring the message of the gospel to the masses and make them believers?

This book was written in 2007 by a French journalist who was in the minority who opposed Tariq's interfaith work. Somehow, being the virtuoso of rhetorical and semantic undermining, he managed to stay in the limelight over the years. It should be interesting to see how he is going to dodge the new accusations of sexual misconduct that sprung in the social media recently and has made it to the French courts.

A taboo subject...

The Jew is not my Enemy

(Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism)

Tarek Fatah (2010)

Warning: Only for Mature Readers

It is often said it is good to forgive and forget. People also say that to err is human and to excuse is divine. We have seen nations fight in one generation, only to be allies in the next. But somehow, the Muslim-Jewish animosity seems to have last centuries.

The earliest record of Jewish betrayal happened during the Battle of Badr (Trench War) when Meccan pagans ambushed Prophet Mohamed's army in Medina. A group of Jews who were chased from Medina for breaking certain treaties joined forces with the Meccans. As the going was tough, and the mighty Meccan army could not infiltrate the Medinians, the renegade Jews tried to coax the Medinaian Jews to double cross. Here, the story turns cloudy. After the win, Mohamed is supposed to have personally killed about 900 Jews to be buried in trenches. The authenticity of such an event has been argued for ages now. On the one hand, opposers to this narration claim such an event is not even mentioned in the Quran. It is also not in keeping with His previous teachings of not punishing others for the crime of someone else and the Islamic law on the treatment of women and children.

There was also a time when Jews and Muslims had apparently lived in harmony, in Andalusia, for example. Under Islamic rule, many Jewish thinkers including Maimonides prospered.

The problem of justification of Jew bashing had started with the writing of Ibn Ishaq, in the 14th century, of the biography of Prophet Mohamad. In his writings, he described the killing of Jews by the Prophet. Somehow, this made its way to the Hadiths and newer prints of the Holy Book. Extremists groups, with leaders like Banna, Qutb and Maududi, were more than happy to continue the Prophet's unfinished work.

In the modern era, every malady faced by humankind is often pinpointed at the Jews and their secret agenda. Let there an earthquake, a flu epidemic, the communist insurgency, tsunami or even Sunni-Shia divide; the Jews are almost always blamed. What started as a secret meeting in 1895 to decide the fate of the displaced Jews culminate to Balfour declaration and eventually the creation of the state of Israel. This formation invoked the ire of the jihadists for losing part of their land, as the second most sacred mosque where the Prophet is said to have ascended to heaven is situated. What the jihadists fail to realise is that the Ottoman Empire and the Grand Mufti were supporting the losing side of the World Wars, Germany and Hitler respectively.

Paradoxically, the Quran does not condemn the non-believers. If at all, it is the Hadith that does. In one verse, it is said that Judgement Day would only come after the last Jew is slain!

The author goes on to condemn the Muslims themselves for fighting amongst themselves and practising race politics where Arabs perch on the highest branch. Many Muslims societies, long ago, used to live in harmony with other communities. Now, with the new brand of militant Islam practised by believers gives the impression the religion is a hostile one. Many non-Islamic countries who obtained Independence around their Islamic counterparts have reached great heights in term of economic, scientific, social and living standards. Sadly, the Muslim countries still struggle to get their act together. They dream of turning back the clock to Golden Era of Islamic Civilisation.

In the concluding chapter, Fatah takes a swipe at Holocaust deniers. He reiterates that many Muslim fighters too died fighting against the cruel Nazi regime. This includes the Turkestan Army, the many Muslim soldiers buried in Majdanek, Poland, just outskirts of Auschwitz, the Muslim soldiers of the British Empire and Princess Nor Inayat Khan @ Nora Baker who was a British secret agent who died in a concentration camp. Interestingly, the Princess is the great-granddaughter of Tipu Sultan of India who fought to defend his land against the British. She gave her life protecting for the course of the British, fighting tyranny.

Author with Holocaust survivor Max Eisen
Auschwitz, March 2010 

3 Negatives and Might make a Right?

The Power of Nightmare (2004)
The rise of politics of fear
#03. The Shadows in the Cave
With the appointment of Bill Clinton as the President and the fail of various uprisings to establish Muslim governments in the Islamic countries, it looked both the neoconservatives and the jihadists movements were doomed to fail. They appear to be marginalized, losing the flavour of the times. The turning point came with the 2001 destruction of the New York Twin Towers.
After failing to receive people's support in Algeria and Egypt, in 1998, Zawahari and Osama retreated to the barren land of Afghanistan. They then changed the strategy. Instead of creating mayhem in Islamic countries, they creating ruckus in concerns of the enemies of the Muslims (in their eyes).Attacks were targeted at embassies, hotels and outlets frequented by their enemy's citizens (read Americans) in Kenya, Tanzania. Volunteers from various countries who came to Afghanistan to serve in the name of religion were recruited as suicide bombers who died in the name of religion, not for hatred of Americans!
Osama was a financier for many anti American activities. He himself did not own any army to boast. For media publicity, he used to hire rag-tag soldier for PR!
Just like that, Khalid Sheikh Muhamad approached BinLaden for funds to bomb American. This event sprang the neoconservatives into action. They quickly cooked up a myth, portraying Osama as an all powerful General monitoring his army from the fortress high up in the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. They even gave a name to the non existent movement - Al Qaeda. The jihadist on the other side were thrilled by such recognition!
 The familiar faces in the Reagan administration who created an enviable all powerful enemy in a collapsing Soviet came to the forefront - Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
US allied with the Northern Alliance, the warlords who were fighting with the Talibans (ultra conservative group) and started paying them by the count of head of death soldiers that they killed.

Even though there was no evidence of such a sophisticated network, the neoconservative created such a fantasy, a frenzy with terms like sleeper cells and dirty bombs which could spray lethal doses of radiation to the general public!
Slowly, the web of deceit began to implicate Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attack and justified an attack on sovereign country.
Politicians now have a different role as a protector from fear of an imagined bleak future. Just like the Green Movement in the 80s who advocated that the Governments of the day had the moral obligation to protect the world from environmental degradation even though they could not prove the decay then, the politicians embarked on the Precautionary Principle. It says that 'not having the evidence that something might be a problem is not a reason for not taking action as if were a problem'. Hence, action without evidence seem justified!
In the beginning, two thinkers (Kutb and Strauss) were disillusioned with the world we lived in. In pursuit of a better world, it appears that they have both failed. The world, as it is today, is as confused and chaotic, if not, worse than it was in the 50s.

I can see clearly now!

The Power of Nightmare (2004)
The rise of politics of fear
#2. The Phantom Victory

The neoconservatives and Islamic jihadists have one common goal- to elevate their community. In the mid 70s and 80s, USSR was also their common enemy. Their playground then was Afghanistan. When Afghanistan was attacked, Ronald Reagan and his band of neoconservatives took it upon themselves to arm the Mujahideens with latest technology and weapons as well as plaster them with tons of money to crush the Soviet power.
Pretty soon, the Muslim clergymen around the Muslim passed a fatwa (decree) calling it a religious duty to help their Muslim brothers to protect their motherland. This just drew support in many forms. Through Abdullah Azam's enterprising efforts, help came from Arabs, members of Muslim Brotherhood and other more radical Islamic groups. Some prisons were more than willing to relieve their radical inmates for this jihad. These people wanted to use Afghanistan as a model to make Islam as a nucleus to flush out corrupt regimes in the Middle East.

 Ayman Zawahari (influenced by Sayid Kutb) recruited the rich Osama Binladen to plan for a post war Afghanistan. Soon there were two groups of freedom fighters emerged - the moderate ones under Azam and the radical Islamists who were non-Afghanis, most Arabic jihadists. These jihadists feel that democracy was unIslamic as it gave politicians power to make laws. Only laws of God and Koran can be used on Earth, hence politicians or people condoning politicians should be killed!
The Afghani war was taking its toll on USSR. Body count was increasing and the economy took a nose dive. Gorbachev tried to break a deal with Reagan to negotiate peace and allay his fear on the probable direction of a radical Islamic government in Afghanistan but it was plainly refused. The Soviets left wounded.
Both the US and the Mujahideen thought that they had both won the war all by themselves. The neoconservatives thought their weaponry and planning of fighting violence with violence did the trick. The Islamists thought their dedication and quest for the Truth won the war!
In reality, the unconvincing and brittle Soviet system of governance collapsed like a pack of cards. The collapse of the Berlin Wall further convinced the neoconservatives that their way of violence freed people and spread democracy. In reality also, it was a phantom victory, nobody actually won the war.
Azam died suspiciously in a car bomb blast, giving Zawahari and Osama to out power the struggle. The fire of Islamic revolutionism spread to countries like Algeria and Egypt. Local election favoured radical groups who planned to abolish democratic elections after they had won. The army then moved in to enforce martial law. 

Fall of Iron Curtain

 Again people are seen as zombies, just following the masses with no mind of their own and no foresight.
In the 80s, Saddam Hussein was an American ally. That changed when he attacked Kuwait. It prompted the stability and peace loving Bush Sr, a non neoconservative (like Kissinger) to interfere and send Saddam's army back to Iraq. This disappointed the neoconservatives.
They returned with a vengeance. They campaigned to create religion as a basis of society, even though they do not believe in religion. A noble lie for the greater benefit of the nation is acceptable in their dictionary. They infiltrate the Republican Party, advocating moralism and opposing multiculturalism. This turned off the people who voted the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton.
After failed attempts at establishing an Islamic institutions  in the Islamic countries, the jihadists retreated into the hostile terrains of Afghanistan. Osama and Zawahari with their warped sense of justification went on spree of killing politicians and all who supported politicians, i.e. general public. Their perception is that all politicians are corrupt and all those who supported them need to be punished. They, as the vanguards of the decree of God, had to do what they have to do.
Across the Atlantic, the spread evangelicalism and moral advocacy did not go well with the American public and the Republican party was booted out. In a way, the ideology of Straussian was similar to Marxism! In comes Bill Clinton, the subject of witch-hunt . Barrage of accusations were hurled to discredit the Clintons via Arkansas project - White Water shady land deal (enen though the Clintons lost money), drug smuggling, sexual predatory and even murder (it turned out to be suicide). After many failures, the linchpin was Monica Lewinsky's dress and the affair which managed to try and impeach the president, but in vain! Kenneth Starr and his fellow neoconservatives found a phantom enemy in Bill Clinton.