Global media are widely reporting on new allegations of sodomy lodged against Anwar Ibrahim, an opposition Malay politician and leader in the global Muslim Brotherhood. According to one late report:
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim took refuge Sunday at the Turkish Embassy after police began probing an allegation that he sodomized his male aide, reprising a sex scandal that led to his imprisonment a decade ago. Anwar, 60, dismissed the accusation — made in a police complaint by the 23-year-old aide on Saturday — as “a complete fabrication.” He said he fled to the embassy because he feared for his life. Several embassies offered to shelter him but Anwar chose the Turkish mission because of his close ties with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Badrul Hisham Shaharin, a senior member of Anwar’s People’s Justice Party. It was not clear how long he would stay there, even though police say they do not intend to arrest him before investigations are complete…….Bakri Zinin, the federal police chief for criminal investigations, said the aide filed a complaint Saturday claiming Anwar had sodomized him in a condominium in an upscale Kuala Lumpur suburb. “We want to establish the allegation first to see whether there is truth or not,” Bakri told a news conference. “We will conduct a thorough investigation and be fair to both sides.”…….Anwar, a charismatic politician, was once part of the ruling establishment, rising to the post of deputy prime minister and finance minister in then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s government in the 1990s.But it all unraveled in 1998 when he was accused of sodomizing his driver and abusing his power to cover up the deed. Mahathir fired him from the government and had him jailed. Anwar was subsequently convicted on both charges but Malaysia’s highest court overturned the sodomy conviction and freed him in 2004.
A previous post has discussed Ibrahim’s recent return to prominence as a result of Malaysian elections held last March.
Ibrahim has many ties to the global U.S Muslim Brotherhood include helping to found the International Institute of Islamic Thought where he currently serves as a director, representing Asian youth and serving as a trustee for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) during the 1970’s and early 1980’s, and appearances at numerous Brotherhood-linked conferences. As a previous post noted, Ibrahim was scheduled to speak last December at a conference in Istanbul that featured a large number of prominent speakers with ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood. Another recent post also discussed Ibrahim’s appearance at a Saudi economic forum. The current media coverage on Ibrahim appear to be ignoring this history which may be explained by a recent article from the Malaysian media on how Ibrahim has reinvented himself:
DATUK Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who started as a firebrand Islamic student activist, reinvented himself as a Malay nationalist after joining Umno in 1982 while continuing to promote and defend Islam. In 1999 after he was sacked, jailed and desperately fighting to save his political career, he had a difficult and momentous choice to make between forming a Malay-only nationalist party or a multi-racial party as his future political vehicle. Considering the need to show a united, strong political face – both to Malaysians and his legions of foreign supporters, Anwar chose a multi-racial platform. It was a “politically correct” decision and successfully piled the pressure to free him and return him to the political mainstream. But in the process Anwar lost the two main planks he had rode to come within a whisker of becoming Prime Minister – as champion of Malay nationalism and promoter and defender of Islam. Now, as a leader of a multi-racial party, he cannot speak exclusively about Malay nationalism or about Islam but has to present himself as a Malaysian leader and stand on a platform of equality, justice and fairness for all Malaysian races.