Calls for Calm Ridiculous

Sin Chew Jit Poh

29 January 2014

 

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Putrajaya calls for calm after the latest attack on churches in our country. What a joke.

 

The recent events of Molotov cocktails being thrown at a Penang church and the hanging of banners outside five Penang churches claiming “Allah is great. Jesus is the son of Allah” seems to be the work of people intent on causing trouble.

 

Of course at this point of time we have no evidence as to who did these despicable acts. But we have seen this kind of thing before. In 2010 there were several attacks on churches around the country; the worse being the one on the Tabernacle Church in Kuala Lumpur which was severely damaged.

 

And let us not forget the grotesque cow head protest outside the Selangor state government offices. That was done to protest the building of a Hindu temple in Shah Alam.

 

We know who took part in the cow head protest and we also know who burned down the Metro Tabernacle church. They were not Hindus or Christians.

 

The reason I raise this point is because if past experience teaches us anything it is that there will be people who will make the claim that the recent fire bomb attacks and the banners are probably the work of Christians themselves in order to stir trouble.

 

It sounds idiotic, and that is because it is. Unfortunately there are many idiots around who will buy into such rubbish.

 

Whoever the real perpetrators are, the question that hangs in the air is how did it come to this? We have been having attacks by thugs on Non-Muslim targets for the past four years. How come the government has done nothing to calm the situation down?

 

In fact they have made it worse. This whole Allah debacle would not have been an issue at all if the government had not decided to persecute The Herald Newsletter for using the word. And worse; to appeal the decision of the High Court which held that the Catholic community had a Constitutional right to practice their religion in peace, which includes using Allah as their term for the Lord.

 

The government does not appear to understand the Constitution. Reading it, the only reason that a government can lawfully control the activities of any religious group is if they are propagating their faith to Muslims. There has not been any evidence that the Herald was being used for this purpose. There is no evidence that the bibles recently taken by the Selangor Religious Department was being used for this reason.

 

By persecuting the Herald, by not making a stand on the freedoms of Malaysians as guaranteed by the Constitution, by not saying that the blanket ban on words like Allah and Nabi for non-Muslims is unconstitutional, the government has, either intentionally or not, legitimised the act of the bigoted and irresponsible.

 

Calls for calm now are all well and good; but let us not forget that neither the Christian or Hindu community did anything unlawful in reaction to the attacks they experienced. Which is why I find the recent announcements from Putrajaya so funny, because the victims don’t need to be told to be calm; instead what should be done is catch the culprits and more importantly return this country back to the path of fairness and justice.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish readers Gong Xi Fa Chai. Let us hope the year of the horse brings our country some happiness.