“I am not worried about anything. I have my own priorities and principles that are far more important than people who speak nonsense. The day someone can come and snatch the coffee from my hand is the day I should actually be worried," TMJ said in an Instagram post.
“What is the worst that could happen?” TMJ asks no one in particular.
The Johor Darul Ta'zim (JDT) Football Club owner added that his inner strength stems largely from his faith and complete reliance on Allah.
Johor’s Crown Prince, Tunku Ismail Sultan Ibrahim (TMJ), also says he remains completely calm amid ongoing issues, emphasising that nothing worries him as long as he holds firm to his principles, priorities, and faith in Allah.
He was responding to a public question on how he manages to stay composed despite scrutiny and criticism. He said that calmness comes from knowing what truly matters.
Despite years of dealing with doubt, hatred and smear campaigns, he said he continues to rise above them.
“Understand this, haters or those who lose move in groups. Only the strong walk alone.
“They hate you because you survived everything that was meant to break your spirit, and you are still standing strong. Strength like that frightens the weak," he said.
He also reflected that every challenge he encounters is part of Allah’s decree and forms an essential part of his journey.
“In the end, everything will end, people change and life goes on. Because some of us are not destined to be ordinary.
“We are born to achieve greatness, responsibility, and to endure challenges again and again. Every challenge shapes a legacy.
“Every battle has been won before it is fought. Even if I lose, I win. It has been written. It is destiny,” he said.
Fighting words indeed that TMJ has said - we can clearly hear the defiance in the presence of adversity and fortitude throughout the assault of difficulties in it in his words.
Listening to TMJ speak makes you wonder whether everything is truly okay.
It is reassuring to know that TMJ is holding strong, but it would also be reassuring to know what storms he is currently facing that require him to summon such strength. Other than welcoming former UFC champion and legend Khabib Nurmagomedov recently, the only major public issue with TMJ’s name attached to it is the FAM–FIFA heritage player fiasco.
And I seriously doubt meeting Khabib is what’s giving TMJ his Invictus moment. Which naturally leads to the question: is the FAM–FIFA heritage player fraud scandal the thing that is triggering this Molon Labe or Zafarnama-like declaration of inner fortitude?
It might be. No one knows how this scandal will ultimately resolve itself, although at this stage, we can be quite certain that one way or another, a resolution will come.
Because the problem is simply too big to be swept under any carpet.
The fraud involved is so blatant, so obvious, so enormous, that it is impossible for the country to move forward until some kind of settlement is found.
FAM is trying to downplay the entire affair by labelling it as merely “administrative errors,” but even children will not believe that administrative errors resulted in not one, not two, not three, but seven foreign players with no connection whatsoever to Malaysia being fast-tracked into citizenship.
None of these players spoke a single word of Bahasa Malaysia, yet somehow all of them passed their Malay language proficiency tests.
In João Vítor Brandão’s case, the forged birth certificate listed his Malaysian “grandmother” as male.
In Jon Irazabal’s case, “Kuching” was spelled as “Luching”.
That’s not a typo.
That’s a cry for help.
FIFA didn’t need intelligence analysts.
They didn’t need forensic linguists.
They didn’t even need glasses.
The forgeries were so bad that they practically confessed by themselves.
Right now, there is a deafening silence about what is going to happen next. Some people are meekly suggesting that the next step is to appeal to CAS, but the fact that everyone worth their salt is saying an appeal has a next to nil chance of succeeding, and the effort is just going to be a waste of energy, attention and resources, is making us suspect that more anything else, the appeal is just likely something that those involved are touting, as a means of buying time.
And it makes us all wonder whether the silence we are hearing is the silence that occurs after a great tree has been cut, and we are waiting for the moment when it finally hits the ground.
This scandal is too big to be resolved without an appropriate sacrifice.
Had this scandal involved only Malaysia, perhaps it could have been quietly buried. But FIFA has escalated the matter into an international criminal probe involving authorities in Malaysia, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and the Netherlands.
It is very unlikely that this issue will end quietly.
That there is an elephant in the room is beyond question — all of us can see it.
How do we know all of us see it? Because all of us are refusing to talk about it, even though we all know we see it.
The more we talk about the carpet, the lighting, the ventilation, the colour of the curtains — instead of the elephant standing in the middle of the room — the more obvious it becomes that we are all pretending not to see what is right in front of us.
Officially, no one speaks of it.
Unofficially, social media is not afraid to say Voldemort’s name - it has been abuzz with all sort of speculation as to who it thinks the elephant in the room is .
And so we return to the question:
Is TMJ feeling tested by Fate and Fortune because he is struggling to confront or reveal the elephant in the room in FAM-FIFA scandal?
Other than a health scare ,that is the only logical conclusion that we can make .
If that is the case, then I hope that no matter what TMJ is facing behind the scenes, everything will turn out fine.
Because at the end of the day, no matter what anyone says, our existence is still governed by Fate and Fortune, and all of us are ultimately bound by our own actions.
Whatever we do will return to us — and there is no force in the universe that can alter that truth.
Knowing this, those who stand on the side of what is true and right will rejoice.
And those who crossed the line, especially those of us who pressed the pedal to the metal the more we crossed over the line, will not even for a moment, be free from fear, or ever know peace.
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