Chan Lilian in ‘trouble’ over her Christianity, actually

ARCHIVES 2011

By admin-s On Jul 31, 2011

Her milking public sympathy by portraying herself as “just a housewife” doesn’t wash. She is, as we know, working in the office of the Penang chief minister-cum-DAP secretary-general. Her job makes her a political operative with the DAP party machinery behind her, and no innocent bystander.

By Helen Ang

By all accounts, the crux of Chan Lilian’s contentious tweet lies in this line: “i think all Christians shud march for all the persecution they had done to us and our Lord”.

Quite frankly, I doubt that the police cyber crime unit can pin any concrete intent to her fairly ambiguous “sharing of thoughts”. After all, her sentence does begin with “I think …”.

Many others on the social media network had in the run-up to Bersih 2.0 encouraged their friends to march, and notable personalities published their appeal to solidarity with the event organisers. On the radar of overall efforts to drum up support for the July 9 rally, Lilian’s tweet hardly registers a blip.

Therefore, a logical analysis infers that it is not Bersih but the Christianity component of the tweet that is being scrutinized in the police investigation on Lilian for sedition.

PAS steadfast with Islamic state

Blog House Malaysia secretary Tony Yew who lodged the police report against Lilian has said that he is against his religion being “used by some to garner popularity”.

Like Lilian, her fellow Catholic Tony comes across as rather vague too. However, we can examine the back story to see the role that religion plays in our domestic politics, which is what the Tony-Lilian brouhaha is really all about.

PAS is Parti Islam Se-Malaysia: the ‘Islam’ in its name an unequivocal declaration of the party’s raison d’etre and dakwah.

The PAS constitution states that Islam is the party foundation and their aim to create [a system of] governance in which the values of Islamic life are implemented.

Their over-riding objective then — stated unambiguously — is to make Islam the guide to politics and statehood where the supreme laws are the Al-Quran and Sunnah, and where the Syura Council’s role is to guarantee that PAS does not veer from these highest laws.

Hence, the hotly contested arena in Malaysia is doubtless political Islam.

PAS’s main adversary Umno has for decades been shouting the slogan ‘Untuk Bangsa, Agama dan Negara’ (For Race, Religion and Country’). Islam in Malaysian politics is old hat. What’s new is Christianity being brought into it, particularly after the March 8 last general election.

That Lilian should have her unfortunate brush with the police stems from the route that her party adopted.