FLASH floods occur frequently in Malaysia, particularly in its urban centres where inundatations were unheard of many years ago, some causing immense damage to properties and livelihoods, and even human deaths.

Some people tend to brush these incidents off as a mere consequence of heavy rainfall or a clogged drainage system.

But if you care to dig deeper to find the root cause, you would likely have to consider factors of rapid and unfettered development and environmental degradation in such forms as extensive hill slope-cutting and destruction of forests, all of which contribute to global warming.

Environmental destruction can also pose a threat to our food security which, in turn, could trigger food shortages and higher food prices. This is a factor that is often neglected by those who relentlessly pursue overdevelopment and huge financial returns.

The above is to illustrate the importance of knowing and acknowledging the wider social and political context of a certain phenomenon.

We get the bigger picture by connecting the dots. Otherwise, we would only be dealing with the symptoms.

Missing the forest for the trees could make you a naive, misinformed and misled person or worse, an unwitting victim of the dark designs of vested interests.

Another example, which is obvious to many, is the electoral handouts and promises offered by contesting politicians to their constituents in the pursuit of the former’s larger design of winning votes and gaining political power.

Cash is given and projects are promised or swiftly implemented. Babies are carried and kissed. In the past, there were contesting politicians who dared to dirty their hands to fix motorcycles and repair rooftops. Why, bridges were pledged even where there were no rivers.

These are offerings and aid that might have been driven by some elements of care and concern, but the overriding purpose is, nonetheless, to achieve the larger goal of winning an election. Some people become cynical of such handouts as a result.

Talking of elections reminds us of an incident in Sabah, the underlying cause of which might have been missed by many people largely because there were no social media or news portals then that would have been able to provide an alternative narrative regarding the case concerned.

In the 1990 general election, leader of Semangat 46 Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah visited Parti Bersatu Sabah chief Joseph Pairin Kitingan in Sabah where the former was given the Kadasandusun headgear sigah to wear.

Tengku Razaleigh’s wearing of the sigah became controversial as the headgear was made out by the legacy media to bear a Christian cross, suggesting that the leader of two huge opposition coalitions, which were in intense competition with the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN), was selling out Malay interests and Islam so as to win the general election.

As part of the wider pursuit of electoral gains, this incident also indicates the attempt to burnish BN’s Islamic credentials in full view of the Malay-Muslim constituents, who were largely distraught by the seeming betrayal of their collective interests.

The controversy surrounding the headgear, which didn’t have a cross in the first place, was partly blamed for the eventual failure of the opposition coalitions to gain federal power.

In contemporary Malaysia, the endeavour of competing Malay-Muslim parties to out-Islamise each other should be seen in the wider context of an Islamisation drive in the country as well as to win the hearts and minds of the majority community.

Not knowing or ignoring the bigger picture could also place you on the wrong side of history.

Take the brutal Israeli offensive against Gaza. The carnage that has been inflicted upon the Palestinian people following Hamas’ October 7 ferocious attack on Israelis is justified by the Israeli regime and its western allies as an act of self-defence.

The argument unjustly negates the 76 years of ethnic cleansing, displacement, murders, pillage, oppression, humiliation, harassment, and dehumanisation of the Palestinians in their homeland that form part of the Israeli settler colonial project.

Insisting that the October 7 onslaught had triggered the Israeli brutal military response is to push aside a vital backdrop of the cumulative frustration, anger, and desperation that have filled the Palestinians since 1948 when Israel was created.

To knowingly or otherwise decontextualise an issue or incident can be perilous. – May 2, 2024.