Perkasa forces Islamic seminar to be put off

Putrajaya only recognizes the Sunni denomination and the Shafi’i school of jurisprudence.

SEREMBAN: A seminar on denominational differences and variety of beliefs in Islam, organised by the newly set up NGO Projek Pluralisme Malaysia in Seremban, has been postponed after Perkasa lodged a police report against it.

The seminar was to have taken place on Thursday and Friday at a state government-owned hotel in the Negri Sembilan capital. The hotel has since reportedly said that it would not allow the event to go ahead at its place.

“I had to cancel it. I can’t afford confrontations. The hotel had rejected the event anyway, it even refunded our payment,” said organizer Khalid Mohd Ismath, who heads Projek Pluralisme Malaysia, in a media update via text message.

“I got a call from them on Monday. It said orders from above. The hotel did not want to be involved in problematic programmes.”

Dr Mohd Faizal Musa, a lecturer at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia who is also an award-winning novelist popularly known as Faisal Tehrani, was scheduled to be one of the three guest speakers.

The others are co-ordinator of charity group Religion of Love, Hussain Sajjad; and a vocal writer and activist known as Benz Ali.

Muslims make up 61.3 per cent of the Malaysian population, followed by Buddhists at 19.8 per cent, and Christians at 9.2 per cent, according to the latest census data from 2010.

There’s freedom of worship in the Federal Constitution.

However, Putrajaya only recognizes only the Sunni denomination.

Shi’ism, Islam’s second-largest branch and practised by an estimated 15 per cent of the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, is regarded as deviant by Malaysia, which strictly adheres to Sunni teachings.

Malays make up 50.4 per cent of the country’s population, according to the Department of Statistics figures for 2010, but Muslims form 61.3 per cent.