Happy New Year everybody! I hope you had a good 2024, and will have a better 2025. May all your dreams come true in the new year, unless you’re a serial killer, an animal abuser or a politician of any kind at all.

I’d like to offer some predictions for 2025. Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future. Many smarter people have humiliated themselves with predictions that went wildly wrong, so I’ll be in good company.

However, my confidence in my prediction-making lies in the peculiar state of affairs of Malaysian politics, which is this – year in year out it’ll be the same …(the word I want also means excrement)… all over again.

Prediction number one

The god-fearing and learned crowd from the east coast will bring out the rotan and whip more poor souls, perhaps in Terengganu again, or perhaps in the other states giddy with excitement about joining the whipping league table.

The usual outcry will be ignored, even if it comes from fellow learned ones.

Some of those will find a sadistic, sanctimonious pleasure in hurting and humiliating a person, as well as in witnessing or even videotaping or livestreaming the occasion. “This hurts me (whip!) more than it hurts you (whip! whip! whip!)” indeed.

No amount of reason or logic will stop this process. The whippings will not deter anybody, of course, but those in charge will double down on the policy, instead of figuring out what else can work better; the whippings will continue until public morality improves, in their mind.

Don’t forget the real reason that powerless people, like most of us, are the ones being whipped: it’s to remind us who’s boss. The higher-ups will never be whipped: they’re too powerful and can turn around and do some whipping themselves.

This is just a power trip disguised as morality – though, hey, what do I know.

Prediction number two

The halal issue. While the secular federal cabinet has tamped down the controversy, that won’t stop some heroes from sneaking in rules here and there, especially there. And why not?

It’s easier to deal with what is halal and haram in food and drinks than to deal with what is halal or haram regarding corruption.

The issue of halal certificates mostly involves the non-Muslims, and for certain policy-makers, anything that makes non-Muslims unhappy apparently makes God happy. There seems to be no shortage of people wanting to make God happy.

I happen to think that it takes a lot more work being a good Muslim than just angering the non-Muslims — but, again, hey, what do I know.

Some Muslim will also be caught up in this halal-haram certificate madness, but they are likely to be just poor peasants running food stalls and eateries – people of no big consequence, the kind of people who also get whipped.

They may get noisy, but they pose no threat to the learned ones, so this is not a big problem.

Where the learned ones have placed themselves as holding the final word about halal and haram, over and above what the Quran says (the holy book puts the onus of halal consumption purely on each of us Muslims as individuals), then feel free to carry on consumption, in the knowledge that if somehow the certificates fail, the sin will be on those who did the certifying. Of course I could be wrong – hey, what do I know?

Prediction number three

Politicians will continue to use Islam as cover for Malay nationalism. Some are no longer afraid of being openly racist, but many still coyly hide behind Islam. But both types know that Islam is a powerful shield by which to protect themselves as well as turn into a cudgel to bludgeon people with.

Many will chant Malay is Islam, Islam is Malay, which sounds very unIslamic, but hey, what do I know?

Prediction number four

Malay-only political parties will be running around like headless chicken again in 2025, trying to convince us that what is black is white, and what is white are donations and gifts, while the learned and the pious will be busy whipping and certifying.

If you’re a common criminal busily preparing the defence of your impending court case, you’d better hurry. Many court cases are being withdrawn or thrown out, such that the court dockets are clear and your case may come up sooner than you think.

Be prepared, though again, the usual caveat applies – what do I know.

Prediction number five

House arrests will be a big thing in 2025 — they’ll arrest houses and put them in jail, to be produced in court only through a writ of house corpus, which’ll be the first instance of its kind in the western system of jurisprudence, and will occupy pages 213 to 267 of the Malaysian Boleh Book of Records.

Some people will say that that’s not what house arrest is; eager legal beagles are working hard to properly define it and make it happen, so that no house will actually be arrested. We shall see.

Prediction number six

Politicians will continue to swear at and insult and sue each other and try to bankrupt each other. While most politicians themselves aren’t rich, some will have a rich sugar daddy who can produce a million ringgit, while others will have a million sugar daddies who can produce a ringgit each.

Bonus prediction

If you’re tired of all this stuff, go back to bed and sleep your way through 2025. Nothing much will change, at least not for the better. Much will get worse. The world itself is going nuts, wars and genocides continue, as the west gets senile, toxic and unreliable.

Try not to wake up for another 20 years; maybe by then we’d have come to our senses and realise there are real existential issues facing us, such as the climate trying to annihilate us, or that the few trillionaires, each of whom has his own private rocket ship to Mars, are already halfway there, leaving behind a wasteland for us.

I pray the learned and pious will realise that if they cause the hearts of the non-Muslims to turn away from Islam; if they are to certify foods and drinks as halal, preventing Muslims from using their own God-given judgment; and if criminals and perverts are allowed to walk free around us (or even just stay confined in their houses, or if the houses themselves are arrested), then God will surely be angry.

Wake up at the end of 2025, or even in 2045, and see how things are. I’m pretty sure much of what I’ve predicted here would’ve come true, though hey, what do I know?

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.