Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim yesterday accused the government of stifling non-Muslims' rights, as his party declared it has begun preparing for the next general elections.
Anwar, a former deputy prime minister and an ex-stalwart of the ruling party, also said that Malaysia's majority Muslims feel their own rights are threatened by greater clamor among minorities for protection of their rights.
"The worrying thing is the Muslims feel their position and their power in religious discourse is eroding. The non-Muslims feel they are being marginalized and discriminated against," said Anwar, the adviser to the opposition People's Justice Party headed by his wife, Azizah Ismail.
"We have come to a stage where it is considered unhealthy. The debate over ... religious issues has been contentious. There is a lot of unhappiness," Anwar said at a news conference during a dialogue that his party hosted to provide a venue for discussing the role of Islam in Muslim-majority Malaysia.
Anwar's backing of the minorities appears aimed at expanding the support base of his party -- which has its roots among Malay Muslims -- ahead of the next general elections, which must be held before 2009.
Azizah told reporters that the party is already preparing for elections.
"The mood is with us on the ground," she said, adding that there is a negative feeling against the government.
Anwar was sacked from his post as deputy prime minister in September 1998 following a fallout with then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad over economic policies.
Anwar was arrested, tried for corruption and sodomy, and sentenced to a total of 15 years in prison.
He was released in September 2004 after he was acquitted of the sodomy conviction and had finished serving his sentence for corruption.
Anwar then called for a cross-cultural dialogue to try to ease the tensions between Malaysia's various ethnic groups.
He cited recent disputes over the faiths of two ethnic Indian men after their deaths.
Islamic authorities in both cases claimed the men had converted to Islam and should be buried as Muslims, despite arguments to the contrary by their families.
"I do appreciate the concern of non-Muslims," Anwar said.
"The action by certain religious departments and offices backed by government authorities ... to deny the rights of non-Muslims ... and to deny open public discourse has exacerbated the problem," he said.
In one case, an Islamic Shariah court allowed the Islamic Religious Affairs Department to bury Maniam Moorthy, a former Mount Everest climber, as a Muslim, ignoring his widow's insistence that he had never practiced Islam and had consistently celebrated Hindu holidays.
The other case was settled after Islamic authorities withdrew their claim over the body of Rayappan Anthony, an ethnic Indian Roman Catholic who had once converted to Islam, after his family proved he had returned to Christianity.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS