ADUN SPEAKS | PAS causing misery for Kedah non-Muslims
ADUN SPEAKS | The PAS state government is causing misery amongst non-Muslims in Kedah.
If MIC needs to be banned for allegedly trying to incite people over Hindu temple demolitions and pointing to the failure of the Kedah PAS government to allocate funds to Hindu temples, then what should be the punishment meted to PAS?
PAS is not only a religious party but a racial one too.
Most of the time, despite the high philosophical talk, party leaders find it difficult to separate religion from race.
PAS, by portraying itself as a pious Islamic party, knows that championing Islam in Malaysia means also championing the Malay race.
While there is nothing wrong in championing the rights of a race or religion, PAS cannot hypocritically deny basic fundamental constitutional rights to non-Malays or non-Muslims...
ADUN SPEAKS | The PAS state government is causing misery amongst non-Muslims in Kedah.
If MIC needs to be banned for allegedly trying to incite people over Hindu temple demolitions and pointing to the failure of the Kedah PAS government to allocate funds to Hindu temples, then what should be the punishment meted to PAS?
PAS is not only a religious party but a racial one too.
Most of the time, despite the high philosophical talk, party leaders find it difficult to separate religion from race.
PAS, by portraying itself as a pious Islamic party, knows that championing Islam in Malaysia means also championing the Malay race.
While there is nothing wrong in championing the rights of a race or religion, PAS cannot hypocritically deny basic fundamental constitutional rights to non-Malays or non-Muslims.
As a matter of fact, Kedah Menteri Besar Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor (above) should not bark up the wrong tree.
As far as Indians are concerned, MIC is neither dead nor alive.
No one party is going around inciting Indians to gain popularity.
This is simply the wild and careless imagination of Sanusi who has proved himself to be an ineffective leader in Kedah.
Sanusi couldn’t even tell the difference between cholera and Covid-19 let alone contain the pandemic in his state.
Indians are upset and angry simply because more temples have been demolished in the state in comparison with the earlier BN and later Pakatan Harapan governments.
If the authorities can demolish temples, some of which were more than hundreds of years old, you expect Indians to offer the proverbial other cheek?
Sorry, Indians are not the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi.
Some months ago, a Hindu temple in Kedah older than the railway station was demolished on the basis of its illegality to make way for road expansion.
A huge, majestic tree, also hundreds of years old, considered holy by Hindus was cut down as well.
What happened to the road expansion? There was no road expansion, but the site where the temple was located has been turned into a motorcycle park.
So much for the honesty and integrity of the Kedah PAS leader and the present menteri besar, Sanusi.
To date, a number of non-Muslim places of worship have been demolished, and I was told, more sites have been identified for demolition.
Sanusi should be the last person to talk of law and order or the illegality of non-Muslim places of worship.
If successive governments have not discriminated against non-Muslims, why is there a need to build temples on state or private lands?
If the state had provided land and financial allocation for non-Muslim places of worship, the present situation might not have arisen in the first place.
I don’t think the non-Muslims have nothing better to do than mischievously plan and build places of worship on state or private land.
It was the BN government that was mainly responsible for marginalising the non-Muslims in the country to the extent that even they cannot pray or worship without being worried about their places being torn down.
If temples could exist over hundreds of years, even before the country became independent and long before the birth of PAS, why are they suddenly considered illegal and marked for demolition?
Sanusi should not overact, but should carefully look into the history of non-Muslim places of worship instead.
He asked a question that if Muslims have no problem in building their mosques and surau with permission from the local authorities, how come Hindus could not do this?
Sanusi might be suffering from bad amnesia, he conveniently forgets that Muslims, being bumiputera, enjoy a pre-eminent position in the country politically, economically and culturally.
But over the last 60 years or so, the rights of non-Muslims have gradually whittled away by governments embarking on aggressive racial and religious extremism.
It is strange that you afford non-Muslims their rights to establish their places of worship but yet deny them land and approvals for it, as though approvals for their places of worship are just waiting to be delivered on a silver platter.
In the final analysis, Indians and MIC are not at fault for the present state of affairs regarding temples in Kedah.
It is the mind-set of PAS that is the present cause of misery amongst non-Muslims in Kedah over the matter.
P RAMASAMY is the state assemblyperson for Perai. He is also deputy chief minister (II) of Penang.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
