By Ravinder Singh

PAS leader Khairuddin Aman Razali speaks as if Muslims, just because they form the majority in Malaysia, have rights that non-Muslims are not entitled to.

In a recent statement, he claimed that non-Muslim interference in the right of states to enact Islamic laws was a threat to the majority population.

Is he saying that a non-Muslim cannot have any say over the conversion of his or her children when the other parent decides to convert to Islam? In many such cases, the conversion is prompted by a desire to smite the other parent over some irreconcilable difference. The children are snatched and hidden safely behind the curtain of religion. Invariably, it is the mother who is the victim.

Can Khairuddin and other claimants to piety honestly tell us whether the Prophet would look kindly upon husbands who abandon their wives and snatch minor children away from their mothers? A reading of any of his biographies by classical scholars would tell us otherwise.

Did Muslims not interfere in the affairs of the non-Muslims when they snatched bodies from funeral homes? Did they not interfere in a non-Muslim wedding when they pulled a bride out in the midst of the ceremony, supposedly to verify whether she was a Muslim? Why destroy statues in places where non-Muslims worship? Why demand that crosses be taken down from schools and other buildings?

If the Prophet himself did not compel people to become his followers, then whose instructions are some of his followers following in demanding that one parent who becomes a Muslim can convert his minor children without the consent of the other parent?

Are all these not interferences in the affairs of non-Muslims?

Is Khairuddin saying that Muslims can interfere in the affairs of non-Muslims by using their majority status to make laws that legalise such interference?

When Muslims do what the Prophet neither did nor ordered them to do against the non-Muslims, they are clearly interfering in the affairs of non-Muslims. That they are the majority in the country does not legitimise their non-Islamic actions against the non-Muslims.

Ravinder Singh is an FMT reader.

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