A screen capture of Siti Nor Bahyah’s video on YouTube.
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 11 — The youth wing of the Council of Churches Malaysia (CCM) urged a Muslim preacher today to apologise for linking Christianity with vices in a sermon about Valentine’s Day.
CCM Youth secretary Elaine Teh said Siti Nor Bahyah Mahamood’s remarks would create disharmony within Malaysia’s multicultural and multi-religious society.
“She based her arguments with unsupported legends and fables and had chosen to use the public sphere to abuse another community’s beliefs with erroneous opinions, which were weakly disguised as facts,” said Teh, calling her remarks “derogatory and irresponsible.”
“Ustazah Siti could have advised the young people to be wise and not be exploited by such [a] blatantly commercialised celebration rather than openly attacking another community’s beliefs without well-researched facts,” she added.
Siti Nor Bahyah, who called herself a religious teacher and motivational speaker, had said in a television programme aired on TV9 more than a year ago, that “vices, going to discos and to be in remote place with a partner as Christian tradition.”
The recording of the show has since been uploaded on video-sharing site YouTube and viewed by close to 100,000 visitors.
In an attempt to discourage Muslims from celebrating Valentine’s Day on February 14, Siti Nor Bahyah also presented several versions of the origin of the celebration and declared the day as a Christian festival.
She had said that Valentine’s Day started as a celebration to commemorate the fall of the Islamic administration in Spain, adding that it would be inappropriate to for Muslims to take part in the celebration.
Today, Teh said Siti Nor Bahyah’s “careless remarks have humiliated the beliefs of others and resulted in creating disharmony by inciting hatred of one community to another.”
“Therefore, CCM Youth hopes that Ustazah Siti would apologise to the Christian community in the spirit of unity through diversity,” she added.
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