PKR Have To Defend Maznah

The decision of PKR to appoint its Information Chief, Latheefa Koya as the council to represent Maznah Mohd Yusof that is currently being investigated under the Seditious Act because of her video insulting the Islamic faith is a right decision. Maznah did not do anything wrong per se, her only fault is that she trains dogs for a living. Many Malays that we know keep dogs as pets. There’s nothing wrong about it. We do not know when it becomes an offence to make a video clip portraying a bunch of dogs being walked by their owner with the background sound of the Muslim call for prayer. The sedition act is normally used for offence relating to racial provocation and not a video about dogs. Even if so, Maznah has been taken into custody by the police and she will probably be prosecuted. It has become the duty of the PKR to help these women that we feel has become a victim of the viral video circulating on the internet. In the same time, I see that there are many parts of the Malay community and the government to change in order to avoid any unnecessary detention in the future. It is sad to see a women like Maznah wants to share her way of life with others and somewhat being considered as trying to insult the religion of Islam. We do not think Islam is insulted with a youtube video. In this issue, we would like to ask all parties to be calm and take action rationally. Dogs are considered as unclean animals in Islam. However, what we know is that, there are no rules in Islam to restrict Muslims to train or keep them as pets. Islam promotes love and respect of all Allah’s creation including animals such as dogs and cats. We hope that as a pre-emptive act of forming a government after the 14th General Election, PKR and its entire component from the Pakatan Rakyat have to think of a way to review all of the archaic law such as the Seditious Act. If the acts are here to stay, we are hoping that a big change needs to be made so that other people "like" Maznah would not be subjected to this kind of discrimination.