COMMENT | The rally against the state-sanctioned violence of Myanmar against the Rohingya Muslims shows the true nature of Umno and PAS.

Instead of urging the UN, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Asean to put an immediate stop to the violent excesses of the Myanmar government under the leadership of Aung San Su Kyi and the military, Najib Abdul Razak and Abdul Hadi Awang have taken to producing a counter-narrative – that Muslims in Malaysia must be united against the Rohingya genocide.

Of course they must stand together. But the counter-narrative of Najib and Hadi, oddly enough, does not concern the fate of the Rohingya Muslims, who have been displaced over several generations in Myanmar, but instead has more to do with drumming up support for Umno and PAS.

At a time when close to a million Rohingya people are exposed to genocide and ethnic cleansing, it boggles the mind that Najib and Hadi could stoop so low as to politicise this plight to advance their own electoral pact and agenda.

The above shows the moral depravity of Umno and PAS. In Islam, the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims must be protected at all cost. In the Quran, it is stated that the act of "killing an individual" is equal to killing "the whole of the humanity."

“Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.” (Surah Al-Ma'ida 5:32)

Murder is, therefore, considered the most heinous and abject capital crime in Islam.

To "legalise what is prohibited" is an equally serious crime in Islamic law and jurisprudence. By forming an electoral pact to consolidate power, at a time when the level of corruption has become endemic, is akin to encouraging more vice and crime.

By using the plight of the Rohingya Muslims to prop up Umno and PAS in the eye of the public is nothing less than an act of desperation...