Cabinet faith panel gets moving from 2011

Datuk Ilani Isahak was appointed by Cabinet to chair talks among Malaysia's multireligious leaders.

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 — The Cabinet’s renamed faith committee will knuckle down next year to mend the feverish debate over religious rights, which is showing signs of flaring up again amid murmurs of a snap general election.

Datuk Ilani Isahak, the Cabinet’s appointed coordinator for the Committee for the Promotion of Inter-Religious Understanding and Harmony Among Adherents announced a two-day workshop “on developing a strategic plan as a way forward”.

“The objective of the workshop is to discuss the framework programmes, activities and to foster friendship and better understanding among the members of the committee,” she said yesterday in a media statement disclosing its meeting held last Thursday.

“It will also outline programmes for year 2011 and 2012,” the petite Kelantanese added.

Ilani said the workshop was also geared to “further establish and strengthen this committee via a shared vision, mission and objectives as well as to identify the way forward and means to further enhance inter-religious harmony and understanding and to deal with issues which currently affect religious harmony and understanding in Malaysia”.

Once established, she said she expected the committee to be able to speed up solutions to recommend to the Najib administration for action.

The committee, mooted by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak himself, was formally set up this year after a nationwide series of attacks on houses of worship following a controversial court ruling that Christians could use the word “Allah” to also refer to their God.

It held its first meeting on April 6, but the fragile attempts among the committee’s multireligious leaders to form a bond was snipped soon after by extremist groups who objected to — among other things — its name.

It was previously called the Committee Promoting Inter-Religious Understanding and Harmony.

The Thursday meeting was only its second formal meeting since its inception.

The Cabinet also ordered a new joint secretariat to be formed, in reaction to demands from the extremist groups. It now consists of the Allied Coordinating Committee of Islamic NGOs (ACCIN), the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST), the Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (Ikim) and the Department of National Unity and Integration (JPNIN).