Malaysia's Muslim prime minister broke new ground in national race relations yesterday, appearing for the first time at a Christian gathering to dismiss the notion that his country was governed as an Islamic state.
In an emotional speech, which followed a moving Christian prayer for his cancer-stricken wife, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi wiped away tears in front of dozens of priests and nuns as he appealed for religious dialogue and moderation.
"As prime minister of Malaysia, I am not a leader of Muslims but a Muslim leader of all Malaysians," the former Islamic scholar told a conference of the World Council of Churches (WCC), an umbrella group of most Christian denominations.
"Therefore I have a responsibility not just to my fellow Muslims, but also to Malaysians who profess other religions as well," he said before finishing his speech with a call for religious unity and quoting from the Bible.
Abdullah took the leadership of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference last year and has tried to galvanize a group speaking for a fifth of humanity into more effective positions on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But at home he runs a secular government ruling over a population where Muslims are a slim majority and the state religion is Islam. Almost half the population, with big ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, follow other faiths or beliefs.
"I do not want to claim that there are no problems among the different ethnic and religious communities in Malaysia," he said.
"There are still very many things that we need to work on, but if the world ever needed a lesson in diversity and making it work, I am confident Malaysia can be a showcase," he said.
When asked after his speech why he had shed a tear, the prime minister said his mind had turned to all the suffering in the world.
But it was clear the prayer for his wife, led by a Malaysian bishop, had moved him before he rose to speak.
Abdullah's wife has been undergoing breast cancer treatment in the US.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS