IS THIS YET ANOTHER WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION?

The Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM) said they would leave the issue of the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (JAIS) raid on its office and the seizure of Christian publications and Bibles to the Federal Government to resolve.

It seems officers from the Prime Minister’s Department visited BSM yesterday to discuss this matter. “They promised that they would do their best to resolve the issue. We are leaving it to them to do so,” said Dr Rev Simon Wong.

Meanwhile, the Selangor Umno Liaison Committee chairman, Datuk Seri Noh Omar, has asked Muslims to abort their planned demonstration in front of a church in Kelang tomorrow. Other Umno leaders have called for calm and have asked everyone to not play up or politicise this issue so that a peaceful resolution can be sought.

The Pakatan Rakyat Selangor EXCO Member for religious affairs, Sallehen Mukhyi, under who JAIS comes, said he was not aware of the raid and only found out after it happened and after the brouhaha regarding the raid.

Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, the previous Chairperson of BERSIH and a staunch Anwar Ibrahim ally, whacked Sallehen for what she labelled a ‘non-existent’ response.

DAP leaders have whacked Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and blame the Federal Government for this fiasco and have asked him to intervene and resolve the matter.

The Selangor State law that forbids non-Muslims from using 34 words, Allah included, was passed in 1988 when Barisan Nasional was ruling the state and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was the Prime Minister and Anwar Ibrahim was his Education Minister and the President of the International Islamic University of Malaysia (UIA).

Barisan Nasional was at that time a coalition of 14 political parties of various ethnicities and religious persuasions and this law in Selangor (plus in many other states as well) was not opposed by any of the non-Muslim coalition members (some of these people who are now in Pakatan Rakyat).

Pakatan Rakyat, which took over the state 20 years later in 2008, did not see the need to amend or repeal this ‘Barisan Nasional’ law. In fact, this is the law that JAIS under Pakatan Rakyat used to raid BSM and confiscate those Christian publications and Bibles.

Okay, there may be more facts to this issue that I did not mention (such as the statements from the Malaysian Bar Council, lawyers, Church leaders, Muslim leaders, politicians, and so on) but I am trying to understand this as best as I can and that, I suppose, sums up what the issue is all about.

However, the more I try to understand this issue, the more confusing it becomes. And herein lies my problem.

Many want the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister to step in and resolve this matter. This means the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister must instruct the Selangor State Government about what to do.

But can that be done? If the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister can interfere in religious matters in the state, would that not also mean the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister can interfere in other state matters such as the water issue and so on?

Under the Federal Constitution, religion and natural resources are state matters and the Federal Government cannot interfere in these matters. And that was why they passed the Petroleum Development Act when Tun Razak Hussein was the Prime Minister about 40 years or so ago — so that the Federal Government can take over what would be considered a state resource.

In short, petroleum, a state resource, comes under the state. Hence for the Federal Government to be able to have control over this very precious state resource they had to pass a law in Parliament called the Petroleum Development Act. The other resources like timber, water, mining, land, etc., are still under the various states though (unlike oil and gas).

So, can the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister interfere in Selangor religious matters seeing that we do not have the Religious Affairs Act? And if the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister wants to interfere in Selangor religious matters and ensure that this fiasco is not repeated in Selangor or in any of the others states, should they then pass an Act in Parliament to take away the power of religious matters from the state and bring it under the Federal Government (like oil and gas)?

I am not sure whether blaming the Federal Government for this crisis and demanding that the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister step in to resolve this matter is a good idea.

Maybe the opposition, in particular DAP, wants to shift the blame to the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister so that the blame does not fall onto Pakatan Rakyat Selangor. But by doing what DAP wants done that would mean the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister will have power over state religious matters.

And the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister have been trying to do this for a long time (control religion in the states) but because religion comes under the state and not the Federal Government thus far its hands have been tied.

And now DAP wants to untie the hands of the Federal Government and give it power over religion, which before this was the power of the states.

Hmm…is DAP being a bit too clever for its own good? By shifting the blame to the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister and by demanding that the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister take the blame and resolve this matter, DAP may be creating a bigger problem than the one it is trying to solve.

I hope DAP is not trying to create a smokescreen to shift the focus from the problem of its party elections and in doing so is setting the stage for something that can only be described as creating a monster.

Once you force the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister to take the blame for this JAIS fiasco, and to take over the task of resolving the matter, you are going to give the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister powers over all other religious matters as well.

Why not play safe? Instead of trying to shift the blame from Pakatan Rakyat Selangor to the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister, it would be safer to blame Pakatan Rakyat Selangor and make sure that state religious matters do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister.

I do not think the Pakatan Rakyat people, in particular DAP, has thought this matter through properly. In their eagerness to shift the blame to the Federal Government and/or the Prime Minister, they may actually be opening a Pandora’s box that once opened can never be closed again.

Are these DAP people really that stupid or are they intentionally trying to create an even bigger problem that the people will refocus on and which will help them forget about DAP’s internal party problems and the pending dissolution of the party if they continue to defy the RoS?