Nancy Shukri, Yours is Not to Reason Why?

By admin-s Last updated Oct 13, 2014

And why talk only of the sanctity of Islam and not the sanctity of other religions?

Kee Thuan Chye

De facto law minister Nancy Shukri is being bombarded left, right and centre for her written reply in Parliament to the question of why Perkasa President Ibrahim Ali has not been charged for his alleged threat last year to burn Malay-language Bibles. And she deserves it.

She has tried to cover up her blunder by insisting that she was not defending Ibrahim Ali’s act and that her critics got her wrong for saying she was. I agree she wasn’t. I agree some of her critics, like Gerakan Youth chief Tan Keng Liang, misread her reply – because, as she has claimed, she was merely conveying a justification handed to her by the Attorney-General’s Chambers without herself subscribing to it. She never said in her parliamentary reply that it was all right to burn Bibles to defend Islam. That is true.

Nonetheless, she can’t get away with not facing up to her responsibility. Her passing of the buck to the A-G’s Chambers is not acceptable as an excuse for not doing her job right, which amounts to not doing her homework and not thinking before acting.

In fact, her admission of conveying only what the A-G’s Chambers told her actually makes her look worse. It clearly shows that she was merely acting as a messenger instead of doing her job as a minister.

If she did her job right as a minister, she would have first checked the validity of the A-G’s justification for not charging Ibrahim. She would not have proceeded to write this reply to Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng’s question: “The statement made by (Ibrahim) was not intended to cause religious disharmony but was only to defend the sanctity of Islam. Therefore, no prosecution was carried out.”

Anyone given such a justification would have instantly balked at it. Any thinking person would have realised the import of its implications.