The youth wings of PAS and Umno will not take part in the Pakatan Harapan-led protest against US President Donald Trump’s travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim countries, to be held outside the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur this Friday.

“We (Umno Youth) will not be involved in any movement led by the opposition,” Federal Territories Umno Youth chief Razlan Rafii told Malaysiakini.

Razlan (photo above) also downplayed protests against Trump’s executive order signed last Friday, which critics have described as “anti-Islam” and against basic human rights.

“Trump’s ban against the seven countries is a sovereignty issue. You cannot equate it to a humanitarian issue, like what happened to the Rohingyas in Myanmar,” he argued.

As for critics who questioned Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s perceived silence on the ban, Razlan insisted that Trump has a right to defend the sovereignty of the US, so long as it does not trigger a humanitarian crisis.

“If the US starts to kill people living in their country, then Malaysia would react in the same way as how we condemned the Myanmar government,” Razlan said.

PAS Youth vice-chief Mohd Khairul Nizam Khairuddin also said that the wing would not be joining the Harapan protest.

'We will do our own movement'

“We will be doing our own movement to protest the ban. As for the other parties, they can do whatever they want,” Khairul Nizam said when contacted.

He also stressed that PAS would continue to raise issues affecting Islam and Muslims, whether on the domestic front or at an international level.

On criticism of Najib’s stand on the travel ban and the bar on Syrian refugees from entering the US, Khairul Nizam said: “That question you have to ask the prime minister himself.”

Pakatan Harapan chief secretary Saifuddin Abdullah had tweeted his call for opposition MPs to stage the protest and the formal announcement on this was later circulated by DAP Youth.

Asked to comment on DAP’s role in the protest, PAS Youth deputy chief Khalil Abdul Hadi would only say: “The DAP in Malaysia is ‘anti-Islam’ but on this US issue, they want to act as a hero to defend Muslims.”

DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang is reportedly mulling legal action against PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang for accusing him of being “anti-Islam”.

Trump’s travel ban was enacted against all citizens, regardless of their religion, from the seven Muslim-majority countries of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia.

He has also suspended the US refugee programme for 120 days and specifically barred Syrian refugees for an indefinite period of time.

A federal US judge has since granted an emergency stay on the ban, following a lawsuit filed by two Iraqis detained at New York's JFK International Airport.