Interfaith chief says Utusan report fans religious divide

KUALA LUMPUR, May 8 — Utusan Malaysia and Muslim groups are fanning a religious divide when they should raise reports of purported attempts at a Christian Malaysia with the Cabinet’s special faith panel, the national interfaith council chief has said.

Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) chief Reverend Thomas Philips said there was a special subcommittee to deal with such “sensitive” matters.

“We already have a Cabinet interfaith committee. They should raise it there. They are fanning this issue out of control. Why do they need to evoke the emotions of people?” he said to The Malaysian Insider, referring to the allegation, which was based entirely on blog postings by several pro-Umno bloggers and reported today by Malay-language paper, Utusan Malaysia.

Several Muslim organisations lodged police reports after reading a front-page article in the Umno-owned daily titled: “Malaysia, negara Kristian? (Malaysia, a Christian country?).

Philips said the special subcommittee was scheduled to meet next week but that the meeting has been postponed indefinitely.

The working committee on seeking an understanding on issues among adherents, under the Cabinet’s Special Committee to Promote Interreligious Understanding and Harmony, was among four subcommittees formed on December 2 last year.

It is jointly helmed by Datuk Mustapha Ma and Reverend Hermen Shastri, and it last met on March 17, though sources told The Malaysian Insider that there was no headway in talks on thorny issues as Muslim representatives had failed to turn up for the meeting.

The MCCBCHST president reaffirmed that the non-Muslim council has made it very clear that nobody was scheming to usurp Islam’s position as Malaysia’s official religion.

“We’ve already made it very clear that nobody is threatening Islam. Nobody can undermine Islam’s position as the official religion because it is in the Federal Constitution.

“We want to uphold the Federal Constitution and we will not do anything to change it and we accept the position of Islam,” Phillips said, repeating the MCCBCHST’s statement reported yesterday.

The Mar Thoma priest also told The Malaysian Insider the Cabinet faith panel was also scheduled to meet with ministers in charge of the committee, Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom and Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon, next week, ostensibly to discuss the replacement for its Cabinet-appointed coordinator, Datuk Ilani Ishak, who died of cancer on February 24.

“But the May 12 meeting has been postponed,” he said, adding that no replacement date has been given.

“If it happens, it happens. What else can we do?” he said.

The heated religious rhetoric from before the April 16 Sarawak election appeared to have died down immediately after, only to flare up again this week as right-wing Malay groups sounded the alarm over the rising popularity of the Chinese-dominant DAP and accused Christians of laying Islam under siege.

The Muslim Organisations in Defence of Islam (Pembela), an umbrella coalition that had filed police reports over the allegations, accused Christians of scheming to draw more and more Muslims into Christianity, which is an illegal act in Malaysia.

Pembela president Dr Yusri Mohamad said the Christian community’s demands over the “Allah” issue as well as the Alkitab row prove that they want to convert Muslims to Christianity.

“We are dealing with aggressive, confrontational groups of Christians.

“Their demands over the Alkitab, kalimah Allah are connected to their attempts to spread Christianity ... They are using this strategy to tame Muslims, by using terms that we are familiar with in our own religion,” Yusri said yesterday during a Pembela function here.

The syariah lawyer said these are direct attempts to “compromise the position of Islam” as the country’s official religion.

Utusan Malaysia reported from several blogs whose owners have accused the DAP of sedition in an alleged conspiracy with Christians to change the country’s highest law to put a Christian in place of a Muslim as prime minister.

To back up their allegation, the bloggers pointed to a grainy photograph showing what they described to be a secret pact between the DAP and pastors at a closed-door dinner party in a Penang hotel on Wednesday.

The dinner organisers – made up of the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship (NECF), Global Day of Prayer, Marketplace Penang and Penang Pastors Fellowship – have denied the claim as lies, and explained it was to honour several pastors from Sarawak who were in Penang for the Unashamedly Ethical marketplace conference held on Thursday.

“Such fellowship dinners are common amongst Christians and are part and parcel of the Christian custom of love and fellowship,” they said in a statement, which The Malaysian Insider had reported on Friday.