Dr M’s failures pushed Malay youths into the arms of jihadists, Perak mufti says

(Malay Mail Online) – The policies of the Mahathir administration with its focus on safeguarding non-Malay interests, have pushed Malay youths towards the Islamic State and jihadism, Perak mufti Tan Sri Harussani Zakaria said.

The controversial cleric’s assertion came after Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, retired after serving the country as prime minister for 22 years, blamed the country’s clerics for not doing enough to stop disaffected youth from seeking out jihadism.

Harussani said the government during Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s tenure gave too much emphasis on industrial growth, a sector dominated by the non-Malays, leading to Malays becoming impoverished.

The cleric told Malay Mail Online when contacted this week that poverty drove disaffected Malay youths to romanticise the idea of martyrdom because “they have nothing else on this earth”.

“I think he was overboard,” the Perak mufti, who has courted controversy over his anti-Chinese stance in the past, said of Dr Mahathir.

“When he was ruling, he focused too much on industry. And who dominates industry? Not the Malays. This led to the Malays to become poor and because their development was neglected, they are attracted to the idea of martyrdom because they have nothing else on this earth,” he added.

In his blog posting yesterday Dr Mahathir said by keeping silent, the Muslim clergy in Malaysia are allowing the appeal of the Islamic State to take hold.

Local youths are susceptible to the wiles of the Islamic State jihadist movement because of their weak religious understanding, the former prime minister said, criticising the ulama, or Muslim clerics, for failing to state clearly their stand on the violence perpetrated by the group.

The nation’s longest-serving prime minister complained that there is no effort to study and debate allegations of apostasy made by jihadists.

Additionally no fatwas have been issued by disinterested ulamas, who only hold to the Quran and Hadith, he added.

Harussani, however, dismissed the allegation as baseless, noting that he and other muftis have spoken up against the IS in the past.

“But we actually have made our stance on the matter clearly several times in the past. Few other muftis have too. I have criticised IS before,” he said.

Harussani then continued to attack Dr Mahathir, claiming his policies made non-Malays more successful than their bumiputera counterparts.

“He built roads? Can the Malays eat the roads? Chinese people used to farm but then they developed to become engineers but the Malays farm and are still farmers,” he said.

On Monday, Bloomberg news service reported that as many as 40 Malaysians are currently fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, with some saying that the jihad was mandated by the Prophet Muhammad.

The total number of Southeast Asians fighting alongside Islamic State is estimated by governments and police to be a few hundred. The violence and brutality committed by terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria poses a threat to the Middle East and, if left unchecked, the world, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations said in a statement on September 27.

Malaysians and Indonesians fighting for the IS have also reportedly banded together over their common language and are said to be planning to expand their numbers to form a “katibah”, a military unit of 100 men roughly equivalent to a company.

Malaysia has designated IS a terrorist group.

The organisation was formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).