Normally this blog only comments on the persecution of Christians by Muslims, however, other religious minorities also suffer persecution at the hand of Muslims. To highlight this, I will quote from this article:-When Hindus gathered courage and protested in an unprecedented solidarity on November 26 in Kuala Lumpur, they were crushed brutally by the Malay police using chemicals in the water cannons. None of those who had put up a united front against a cartoon created in Denmark felt anything bad or condemnable in the injustices meted out to the Hindus in an Islamic country. When it's a question of Hindus getting unfair treatment in a Muslim majority region, the 'civil, sophisticated and articulate' Muslim intellectuals take refuge in the statement that it's a matter concerning a foreign country. But when it's a question regarding a cartoon or a fatwa for beheading a writer, they say -we are a global Ummah, anything happening anywhere to Muslims is our common concern!
Quite; one rule for Muslims, another for non-Muslims.
This year Diwali was not celebrated openly by Malaysian Hindus in protest against the demolition of one of their most revered shrines, the hundred-year-old Maha Mariamman temple in Padang Jawa. In the last fifteen years, hundreds of Hindu temples have been demolished and the number of forcible conversions and unfair treatment on religious grounds has been constantly increasing. The tragic case of Revathi was just a recent one.
Churches being demolished, temples being destroyed: same old story. The case of Revathi is similar to those of Christian converts in Egypt who are prevented from changing their religion on their identity cards.
Moorthy Maniam was a Malaysian Hindu hero. After he died, a group of Muslims claimed he'd made a deathbed conversion. Despite his widow's protests, the Sharia courts declared that he should be buried as a Muslim. “They used Moorthy to show that in this country, Islam is supreme", complained his lawyer.
In the 1980s, Malaysia's Sharia courts were given equal power to the civil courts, creating two parallel legal systems. But while the Sharia courts are constantly trying to extend their authority, secular courts are reluctant to challenge them.
Christians, especially converts from Islam, have also suffered at the hand of the Sharia courts in Malasia. One of the most famous examples of this is Lina Joy: she converted at age 26 but couldn't get her religion changed on her identity card (doesn't this sound so familiar).
The Federal court ruled that matters of conversion to and from Islam were an issue for the Sharia court and refused her appeal:-
The ruling stated that "a person who wanted to renounce his/her religion must do so according to existing laws or practices of the particular religion. Only after the person has complied with the requirements and the authorities are satisfied that the person has apostatised, can she embrace Christianity.... In other words, a person cannot, at one's whims and fancies renounce or embrace a religion."
One of the most outrageous statements I have ever read. This has, of course, caused problems for Lina Joy: she is (or was) unable to marry her Christian fiancée because marriage between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is forbidden in Malasia. The non-Muslim partner has to convert to Islam.
The article continues:-
Hindus seems to be losing hope on all fronts and are making last-ditch efforts to attract attention by any which way to their sorry state of affairs. An umbrella organisation of thirty Hindu NGOs has been formed under the banner of Hindu Rights Action Force or HINDRAF that had called for the successful demonstration on November 26.
. . .
It's a reflection of India's secular government that the Malay Hindus of Indian origin chose to knock at the British doors, strangely petitioning the British government, Malaysia's former colonial ruler, to pay two million dollars each to every Indian-origin Malay as compensation for 'putting them in a situation of darkness and exploitation' which was a result of bringing their ancestors as indentured labourers a century before. They are discriminated on religious grounds and economic opportunities are not available to them.
It is, perhaps, a reflection of the loss of hope that the Hindus seem to have given up any attempt to oppose or change this discrimination. They seem to regard it as some sort of force of nature and hold the British responsible for leaving them to it's mercy!
They have my sympathy; they are being persecuted as many Christians are being persecuted inmany Muslim countries, but the people who are responsible for this are those who are doing the discrimination and persecution.
No comments:
Post a Comment