Ikim says Islam rejects that all religions are equally good
By Sharifuddin A. Latiff
According to this year’s AC Nielsen survey, Ikim Radio has 786,000 listeners who tune in to the 24-hour channel. The numbers are impressive for a broadcast media run by the Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia, a government agency.
Recently on Dec 15, Ikim issued a press statement saying:
- Firstly, Islam rejects religious pluralism which claims that all religions are equally true and equally good.
- Secondly, only one religion possesses the perfect and complete revelation, that is, Islam (see the Qur’an, Al-Maidah, 5:3).
The rest of the statement can be read at their website.
Putting two and two together, Ikim which has a lot of resources (i.e. staff and funding provided by the government) has at the same time a wide reach, for example, its radio listeners not to mention the functions it organises and the weekly column it has in The Star.
Little known is the fact that it was set up by Mahathir as “an organisation with an agenda to popularise Islamic thinking”.
Ikim is next mulling having a TV station. “Since IKIM.fm radio now has its own loyal listeners, we should move ahead towards having our own television station,” its radio director Ahmad Jais Alias told Bernama.
So there is a huge audience being subjected 24/7 to popular ‘Islamic thinking’ via this state-sponsored mass media. It is a thinking that a few days ago declared ‘other religions cannot be as good or as true as Islam’.
Meanwhile, TV Al-Hirah is already a reality.
