DAP manifesto shows Malaysia not secular, says PAS

(The Star) – PAS has hit back at a DAP leader for suggesting that Malaysia is a secular state, saying that the DAP’s own 15th General Election manifesto showed otherwise.PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man said if Malaysia was indeed a secular country, DAP would not need to push for Malaysia to be secularised.

“The DAP manifesto proves that Malaysia is not secular. Furthermore, the Federal Constitution states that Islam is the official religion of the country. This is why all official events always have the Islamic element such as do’a,” Tuan Ibrahim told reporters yesterday.

“The ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ concept which is being pushed by DAP does away with Malay’s privileges and goes against the basic pillars of the formation of Malaysia when it gained independence,” Tuan Ibrahim said on the sidelines of the 69th PAS muktamar.

“The pillars include equality, freedom of religion and culture, Malay privileges which no one should question. We have all accepted these and we should do all we can to protect them,” said Tuan Ibrahim.

DAP lawmaker Lim Lip Eng had yesterday proposed three ways for PAS to appeal more to non-Muslims, one of which was to accept that “Malaysia is a secular state with Islam as its official religion”.Lim was responding to PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang’s call for his party to garner non-Muslim support before the next general election in order to win enough seats to form the Federal Government.

In his remarks yesterday, Tuan Ibrahim also said the term “kafir” has been misused to vilify PAS in the eyes of non-Muslims.

“It is not meant to be insulting. There are a few types of ‘kafir’ – those who are hostile to Muslims, those who have no problems living among Muslims and those who have made a pact with Muslims to keep the peace,” he said. “As long as they do not go against those pacts, we, too, should keep to the promise and it is our duty to protect them at all costs from those attacking them.”“As for DAP, there are some of them who are hostile to Muslims but we would not regard them as enemies who need to be attacked unless they attack us first,” Tuan Ibrahim said.

He said PAS would hold more awareness programmes among non-Muslims to dispel the community’s fears towards the party.

“The Green Wave-phobia has been played up by our enemies after our victories in the last general election and false ideas have been spread such as that non-Muslims will not be allowed to practise their religions when PAS wins.“PAS will bring non-Muslims to see for themselves what we have done for the non-Muslims and how non-Muslims live in the states governed by Perikatan and PAS,” he said.

For example, in Kedah, non-Muslims have been appointed as state officials as the community is larger than those in PAS-controlled Kelantan and Terengganu, Tuan Ibrahim added. Meanwhile, PAS secretary-general Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan has introduced the MyOnePAS app to digitalise the party’s activities.

“We are the first political party in the country to introduce a super app to enable our supporters to donate virtually or use akin to a debit card,” he said.

“A RM25 fee will be charged for physical cards that will have a maximum credit limit of RM10,000, while the ewallet can store RM25,000,” said Takiyuddin, adding that the app is also open to the public.