By Luke Hunt
Ronnie Klassen, a spokesman for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in Sabah, was an organizer of the planned protest. He said there were genuine fears for the safety of the demonstrators.
‘We decided to call it off because of the two to three hundred people that were there, there were many elderly people around and we felt that we didn’t want any one of the elderly people to be injured or anything of that sort.’
Arrests have been made and prosecutors have charged three Muslim men with fire-bombing a church in Kuala Lumpur. But police have also complained that witnesses were not coming forward. Instead, they were reporting their accounts on blogs and social networking websites like Facebook.
This isn’t what Tan Kong Beng, Executive Secretary of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, had in mind when he recently said Malaysian Christians were expecting change in Malaysia.
‘They want to see a better Malaysia for their children and that means better relationships among the various religions, specifically with Islam,’ he says.
Politically Speaking
Father Andrew says Muslim elements within government were trying to bolster their religious influence and political support base by attempting to assert Islam over the diverse ethnic and religious mix that makes up Malaysia.
‘We can call them zealots,’ he says. ‘But I think we have to take a step back.’
The United Malay National Organization (UMNO), which has controlled political life in Malaysia since independence, has suffered a reduced majority in parliament and waning public support. Some observers have suggested elements within the party were aiming to appease hard line Islamic demands in the northern states of Peninsula Malaysia in return for votes at the next election, and by increasingly linking the Malay race with Islam.
Amid all this, former Prime Minister Mohammad Mahathir has weighed in, claiming Malaysia’s image should not be tarnished by the Allah issue and adding that it was wrong to cast a bad light on Malaysia as other countries have been criticised for their stance on religious issues.
He singled out Switzerland, which does not allow minarets on mosques, and France, which restricts Muslim women wearing the veil or ‘tudung.’
‘No country’s image is immune from criticism and Malaysia is no exception as evidenced by the bad press it is getting over the “Allah” issue,’ Mahathir told reporters recently.
Father Andrew said such issues never existed before 1980–shortly before Mahathir would begin his 22-year run as prime minister–but since then, a political battle has emerged between UMNO and the pan-Islamic party Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) with each trying to trump the other’s Islamic credentials.
That political battle, Father Andrew says, ‘was there to establish that someone is more Malay, more Muslim, than the other.’
‘In order to strengthen your own identity and establish your own niche and stake in this place you have to create a kind of uniqueness about you and this uniqueness can only come about if we can now say it is Islamic to the race. We are Malays because we are Muslim and we are a kind of pure breed.’
Across Malaysia non-Muslims are being urged to turn the other cheek–not to retaliate in the wake of the fire-bombings and attacks on their shrines.
They are obliging so far, but the frustrations remain. The survival of Malaysia’s carefully sculpted and cherished image as a secular state–a place where multitudes of races and creeds can live and play under a truly Asian umbrella– is far from certain.
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Asif Ali
Since the beginning of Islam, the Christians have always kept distance from Muslim religious names and in this matter they always have “avoided” the use of ALLAH for God and have preferred ‘GOD’.So why now going for ALLAH???
In continuation to above, the Christian Missionaries have, in the Middle East been busy in publishing and distributing brochures, flyers and other stuff in Arabic with the title “Muhammad” on the cover, this ofcourse if not out of love for Prophet Muhammad pbuh but to “deceive” Muslims.
So, this new “act of love” is nothing but to create “schism” and “create” and “sow” the seeds of hatred.