Earlier this week, Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah implored bad actors to cease from inflaming ethnic and religious passions.
To avoid incitements, the Sultan of Perak said "firm and immediate action" must be taken to stop speech or actions that "poison the minds and rouse emotions" by exploiting ethnic and religious differences. No arguments there. In fact, His Majesty's wisdom is a reaffirming guiding light.
But here's the troubling catch: Will the ruler's warning have any affect on the recalcitrant? Would they defy him anyway in deference to a "higher calling"?
At this generational tipping point in the journey to revive our heritage of pluralism, certain apocalyptic and reprehensible rumblings sear social media, contemptuous of the values that define Malaysia — moderation, hospitality, harmony and neighbourliness.
Yet, these miscreants operate recklessly, taking cues from their ringleaders, the alchemists of venom distilled from religious orthodoxy fused with financially muscular racial supremacist.
Add that to their political parties' angst and self-entitlement. These bad actors aren't skulking in the shadows or contriving hatred from alien bases. They engage in hostilities in benign settings. They could be your likeable village leaders, neighbours, workmates, even friends and family.
Weeding them out is not easy. Unlike political party parachutists, these average folks harbouring a noxious doctrine were never planted into the community. They were born and nurtured within it.
Their grievances are bonded by ideologies, non-sectarian dogmas and anti-tribal antipathy they claim threaten their raison d'etre.
What's that you muse about strange bedfellows? This political promiscuosity desires to subvert laws and practices of established governance. If you can believe it, the orthodoxy once reviled the supremacist as infidels, spawning two-imam mosque congregations, community disintegration, family disavowals, divorces, haram of food prepared by the latter, and the re-performing of old burial rites.
Now, the orthodoxy heckles old hellraising tropes but embrace the supremacist because this conjugation yielded largesse of power and wealth. Their hypocrisy is staggering: it'll take a Herculean effort to undo this societal insecurity bordering on madness. Naturally, right-thinking Malaysians of contrasting looks and faith fear the collapse of comity, unity and stability. They teeter in a state of funk.
Thankfully, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's administration has pledged reinforcements of constitutional rights but in the opposition's craze to topple him, how low can the next duplicitous plot go? Despite his base's strident criticism, the home minister is perhaps prescient in his refusal to review the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012.