Please remove all breakable objects in your immediate surroundings before reading this.

Done? Good. Here it goes. 

There exist a concerted attempt to undermine Islam and Muslims, in Malaysia , today. This structured effort is being generated from outside Malaysia and if unchecked, will lead to further instability with regards to the acceptance and sensitivities of Malaysian Muslim majority towards conversion outside Islam.

In a recent landmark case where Lina Joy wished to omit the word “Islam” from her MyKad, no longer depicting her faith in Islam, the Chief Justice of Malaysia ruled that “one cannot embrace or leave religion according to one’s whims and fancies”.

It was seen as people taking advantage of the case for their own narrow quest. Some say it was an attempt to test the system which protected the interests of the predominant Malay Muslim majority. The case attracted a lot of NGOs from abroad, hiding under the veil of universal values such as human rights.

However, the structured effort still continue. Some of them tried to re-define and narrowly interpret Islam and/or the covenants and conventions that Islam stood for, for ill intent and skewed reasons. The Ministry of Internal Security recently banned 37 titles of books contained elements that will demean Islam, from the Malaysian perspective.

Syariah Chief Judge Datuk Sheikh Ghazali Abdul Rahman said the decision meant that only the syariah court could judge cases involving Islam and apostates. "The decision cements the court as the authority on Islam in the country. If other courts were allowed to interject in Islamic cases, that would make the syariah court’s role redundant," he said.

 

The Howard government recently outdid its Western masters in the war on terror, announcing that it would begin banning and restricting materials that it deemed to be promoting ‘terrorism’.

The announcement alarmed activists who are already worried about the way in which Canberra is living up to its status as deputy sheriff for the US . It is common knowledge that the latest book-banning move did not target works bearing titles such as “How To Make A Bomb”. Nor did it mean removing books praising Hizbullah – the kind of book that could not have made it into the Australian bookshelves anyway, thanks to the intensely Islamophobic campaign being championed by a tiny, but vocal and powerful, segment of the country.

 

We can learn a lot from the Aussies.

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