How Jakim spent nearly RM1 billion this year
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/m...lion-this-year
In recent weeks, questions have been raised over the Islamic Development Department of Malaysia’s (Jakim) relevance, and how it actually spends the nearly RM1 billion of taxpayer’s money it receives each year.
The federal Islamic agency under the Prime Minister’s Department has become the subject of debate since the son for former deputy prime minister, Tawfik Ismail, said it should be abolished for serving little purpose other than to regulate the personal lives of Muslims.
Tawfik has drawn flak for that, and has opened up debate on the role and relevance of the agency in regulating Islam.
In response, Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki said Jakim had become even more relevant today as it was involved in dealing with Shia and “liberal Islam” as well as threats from militant group Isis.
Director-general of Jakim, Datuk Othman Mustapha refused The Malaysian Insider’s request for an interview on how the department’s budget has and will be spent.
Meanwhile, the department’s public relations officer told The Malaysian Insider that neither Jakim’s financial history nor audited accounts were available for the public.
According to the Treasury, however, Jakim’s objectives can be boiled down to three main points: a) spreading Islam; b) producing “credible” leaders; and c) creating a management system based on Islamic values and ethics.
To achieve these objectives this year, Jakim received an allocation of RM819,074,900 from Budget 2015. For next year, that figure has been reduced slightly to RM724,594,600.
The Treasury’s website provides an estimated breakdown of how the funds were used this year as well as the department’s “output”, and it appears that “Policy” activities ate up most of Jakim’s budget.
RM531,392,000 on Policy
An estimated RM531,392,000 was spent this year to, among others, thwart attempts to “deviate” Muslims by groups Putrajaya deems “deviant" and “threatening national security”.
Other objectives under this category include: coordinating and standardising Islamic laws throughout Malaysia; enforcing state Shariah laws; pioneering research in the fields of Islamic study; and developing and coordinating Islamic education in religious schools.
According to the Treasury’s estimates, Jakim managed to carry out the following policy activities:
- Six programmes held at the state, regional and international levels;
- 10,000 halal certificates;
- 2,243 research and monitoring efforts;
- 35 programmes to coordinate the management and development of fatwas; and
- 10 programmes to coordinate improvement in quality of education.
Next year, RM486,772,000 has been allocated for policy activities, while the estimated output remains the same.
RM125,223,600 on Management
The management of Jakim and its staff cost taxpayers approximately RM125,223,600 this year, and the output was:
- 13,300 processed cash vouchers;
- 97% officer positions filled;
- 12 Jakim management meetings; and
- 9,000 applications for the Halal certificate.
Next year it will receive an estimated RM94,590,900 allocation, and the public can expect the same results.
RM97,374,000 for the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department (Jawi)
Jawi’s objectives is to prevent Muslims in the Federal Territories from flouting Islamic laws, and to take charge of Islamic affairs in the area.
The Treasury estimates that with approximately RM97,374,000 this year, Jawi managed to:
- Carry out 60 operations;
- Take action against 500 cases;
- Manage 88 Sekolah Rendah Agama, Sekolah Rendah Agama Integrasi, and Sekolah Menengah Agama; and
- Administer 114 Quran and Fardu Ain classes.
Next year, Jawi will receive RM94,590,900 to carry out the same number of tasks.
RM24,259,700 on Human Development
Human development, which covers training preachers and scholars; monitoring and coordinating Islamic policies; and dakwah (preaching) efforts, ate up an estimated RM24,259,700 of this year’s budget.
The output of that money? According to the Treasury’s estimates, Jakim this year:
- Published 130 magazines, publications and flyers on dakwah; and
- Organised 125 programmes on social and Islamic family development.
Jakim hopes to slash the money for human development activities to RM15,659,700 next year, but its ambitions remain the same.
RM14,934,700 for Sabah Jakim
Sabah Jakim’s objectives are to provide efficient service and administration; and to boost the quality of human capital, management and administration for society based on Islam’s teachings.
With a nearly RM15 million budget allocation, the Treasury estimates that Sabah Jakim this year organised:
- 135 dakwah programmes;
- 80 KAFA (Quran and Fardu Ain classes) programmes;
- 55 programmes at its Islamic Training Centre; and
- 65 publication and public relations programmes
It also carried out 50 research on strengthening the faith, according to the Treasury’s estimates.
Next year, the allocation will be reduced to RM11,560,000, although the output is expected to remain the same.
RM10,593,800 for Sarawak Jakim
Like its Sabah counterpart, Sarawak Jakim aims to provide efficient, effective and quality service and management; spread dakwah, and strengthen Islam.
With the money it received, Sarawak Jakim carried out an estimated:
- 270 dakwah programmes;
- 50 secretariat and management programmes;
- 60 research programmes;
- 86 Sarawak Training Centre programmes; and
- 44 Malaysia Islamic Skills Institute Sarawak (Ikmas) programmes
Its allocation next year will be reduced to RM10,593,800, although the output is expected to be the same.
RM8,103,100 for Darul Quran
The Darul Quran institution focuses on training SPM graduates to understand and memorise the Quran, as well as produce preachers and scholars.
According to the Treasury, the estimated output for this year was:
- 559 huffaz (memorisers of the Quran) underwent training;
- 38 huffaz trained in reciting Quran at the undergraduate studies level;
- 30 individuals joined a short-term public training programme for a Tarannum Al-Quran higher certificate; and
- 30 individuals joined a short-term Basics of Qiraat programme open to SPM leavers.
Darul Quran received the same allocation for next year, and its output is expected to remain the same.
RM7,194,000 for Malaysian Islamic Training Institute (Ilim)
This institute’s objective is to train civil servants tasked with Islamic affairs to be “religious, competent and courageous in facing challenges”.
With the money, it selected 8,000 participants for its course; carried out 160 courses; and one study on the outcome of the course.
Next year, the institute will receive slightly less funds, at RM7,617,600. – November 22, 2015.
- See more at:
http://nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinio...s-made-it.html
Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It
Fuck the Saudis n their perverse ideology
By KAMEL DAOUD
NOVEMBER 20, 2015
Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.
Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi Arabia is a Daesh that has made it.
The West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture. The younger generations of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books, and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns.
One might counter: Isn’t Saudi Arabia itself a possible target of Daesh? Yes, but to focus on that would be to overlook the strength of the ties between the reigning family and the clergy that accounts for its stability — and also, increasingly, for its precariousness. The Saudi royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by succession laws that encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between king and preacher. The Saudi clergy produces Islamism, which both threatens the country and gives legitimacy to the regime.
It is worth reading certain Islamist newspapers to see their reactions to the attacks in Paris. The West is cast as a land of “infidels.” The attacks were the result of the onslaught against Islam. Muslims and Arabs have become the enemies of the secular and the Jews. The Palestinian question is invoked along with the rape of Iraq and the memory of colonial trauma, and packaged into a messianic discourse meant to seduce the masses. Such talk spreads in the social spaces below, while up above, political leaders send their condolences to France and denounce a crime against humanity. This totally schizophrenic situation parallels the West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia.
All of which leaves one skeptical of Western democracies’ thunderous declarations regarding the necessity of fighting terrorism. Their war can only be myopic, for it targets the effect rather than the cause. Since ISIS is first and foremost a culture, not a militia, how do you prevent future generations from turning to jihadism when the influence of Fatwa Valley and its clerics and its culture and its immense editorial industry remains intact?
Is curing the disease therefore a simple matter? Hardly. Saudi Arabia remains an ally of the West in the many chess games playing out in the Middle East. It is preferred to Iran, that gray Daesh. And there’s the trap. Denial creates the illusion of equilibrium. Jihadism is denounced as the scourge of the century but no consideration is given to what created it or supports it. This may allow saving face, but not saving lives.
Paris attack fugitive Salah Abdeslam ‘visited gay bar’ in Belgium
Ironic that this Chao Ah Gua was fighting for Sharia law so that he can have his dick chopped off.
MISSING Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam had a taste for gay sex, drugs and PlayStation.
As the international manhunt for the 26-year-old Belgian continues, patrons of a gay bar in Brussels have told Britain’s Sunday Times he was a regular there, and was known for boozing, smoking hash and flirting with other men.
“We had him down as a rent boy,” a bartender named Julien said of Abdeslam, who’s been on the run since the attacks in Paris on November 13.
Others said he was known for long days playing video games in the bar owned by his killed terrorist brother Brahim, in the poor Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.
The brothers’ tastes would appear to make them unlikely ISIS extremists. The terror group brutally punishes homosexuality, often hurling gay men off buildings or stoning them to death, along with alcohol or drug use.
Friends of Abdeslam say the fugitive has Skyped them in recent days. His brother, Mohammed, told reporters that he believes Salah “is not far away”, sparking suspicion he may be holed up in Belgium’s capital.
Brussels went into lockdown on Saturday, shuttering its metro system, cancelling concerts, postponing soccer games and telling locals to stay out of crowds amid fears of a “serious and imminent” terror attack.
“We are talking about the threat that several individuals with arms and explosives would launch an attack perhaps in several locations at the same time,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said.
nvestigators are still trying to untangle Abdeslam’s role in the carnage in Paris, where 130 people were killed and 350 injured. He and Brahim joined in the carefully planned assaults on restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium with at least six other extremists.
Abdeslam may have rented two of the three cars used in the attacks, French police say, but they don’t know if he acted as a driver or as a shooter. They believe he abandoned a car in a Paris suburb. He was picked up early the next morning and driven back to Brussels by two accomplices who are now in custody.
Officials stopped the car at the border and questioned the men, but let them go. Abdeslam disappeared once he reached Brussels.
The lawyer for one of the accomplices said Abdeslam was wearing “a big jacket, maybe a bomb belt” and behaved nervously, making authorities suspect he had backed out of his murderous assignment in Paris.
Meanwhile, a Moroccan-born Belgian who may have scouted the Paris targets was arrested in Turkey as he tried to flee to Syria, authorities said. Ahmad Dahmani, 26, was collared Saturday with two other suspects.
Investigators tracing the jihadist networks that inspired the terrorists said Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris ringleader who was killed in a police raid last week, is connected to the group Sharia4Belgium, known to have sent at least 50 Belgians to join ISIS forces in Syria.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-Muhammad.html
-Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed on Wednesday
-He and other Paris attackers, linked to extremist group Sharia4Belgium
-Radical preacher who founded group enlisted help of UK based fanatics
-They included an ISIS bomb maker and Osama Bin Laden sympathiser
The mastermind of the Paris terror attacks was linked to at least six radical preachers from the UK, including an ISIS bomb maker, it has been reported.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the Paris massacres, was said to have ties to banned Islamist group Sharia4Belgium which recruited young men from the deprived Molenbeek neighbourhood where he grew up.
He was riddled with bullets and blown apart by grenades in a special forces raid on his hideout in the run down Paris suburb of Saint Denis on Wednesday.
Fouad Belkacem, the radical preacher who founded Sharia4Belgium, recruited several UK based fanatics to help him promote sharia law on the streets of Belgium and help sneak members into Syria, it has been claimed.
Belkacem and 45 Sharia4Belgium members were convicted terrorism offences in February. The group sent its recruits to fight with extremist groups including ISIS in Syria, prosecutors said.
One of the men Belkacem approached was London based preacher Omar Bakri Muhammad, who was banned from the UK in 2005 and later jailed for terror related offences in Lebanon, Dipesh Gadher of the Sunday Times reported.
Known as the ‘Tottenham Ayatollah’, Muhammad was tasked with helping Sharia4Belgium transport its radicalised members to Syria, it was claimed.
Another preacher, who said Belkacem was a ‘dear friend’ of his, was asked to help ‘start something in Belgium’, it was reported.
Footage is said to show three other UK based terrorists travelling to Belgium to meet up with Sharia4Belgium members.
Sharia4Belgium was founded by Fouad Belkacem (pictured) who was jailed for terror related offences in February
One of those men is believed to be Abu Rahin Aziz, who learned bomb making skills in ISIS’s de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria. He is said to have travelled to Belgium to help Sharia4Belgium promote its fundamental views.
Aziz, a father of two from Luton, met Paris attacks ringleader Abaaoud in Syria and regularly threatened to attack the West on Twitter before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in July.
Another man seen in the footage obtained by the Sunday Times was Asfor Ali, 27, who once posted a YouTube video warning of a terror attack on the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
He was jailed for 31 months in August after being found guilty of three counts of possessing terrorist material.
The third man in the video is said to be Saiful Islam, who is said to have praised slain Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Feline surreal: Belgians tweet cat photos for #BrusselsLockdown
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...s/2284976.html
BRUSSELS: When Belgian police requested social media silence during a series of anti-terrorism raids on Sunday (Nov 22), they might have expected a catty response from the Internet.
In fact people politely complied but with a surreal twist, as thousands tweeted pictures of their feline friends when the hashtag #BrusselsLockdown went viral.
It began when Defence Minister Steven Vandeput tweeted: “Police are asking the public not to report their movements on social media, please support & rt #BrusselsLockdown.”
Frustrated and anxious after the city spent a second day on its top state of alert as authorities intensified their hunt for a key Paris attacks suspect, Belgian twitter users responded bizarrely.
Instead of taking pictures of what they could see or describing police operations, they posted pictures of cats.
“I think in one hour I’ve seen more #lolcats than I’ve seen in the rest of my life,” said social media specialist Mateusz Kukulka, or @Mateusz.
He said he believed the first to have the idea was a cameraman for the Dutch television channel NOS, Hugo Janssen, or @Hoguhugo, who tweeted: “Instead of tweets about police activity in Brussels, here’s a picture of our cat Mozart”.
As the theme caught on, some posted photos of cats looking suspicious, others of cats looking scared.
Others in the country of famed surrealist Rene Magritte took a truly surreal tack: user @jaycelight posted a picture of two Star Wars stormtroopers riding hover scooters shaped like cats.
As more and more users joined in, there was soon international support too:
“Absolutely loving the #BrusselsLockdown hashtag! Amazing. Belgium is awesome. <3,” tweeted @SvenjaLiv from Ireland.
Afterwards Belgian authorities thanked the Internet.
“The federal prosecutor and the police services must thank the press and social media users for taking into account the needs of the ongoing operation,” prosecutors’ office spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt told a press conference as he announced 16 arrests.
- AFP/pp
Arrests in Brussels raids but Paris suspect still on run
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...s/2284614.html
BRUSSELS: Belgian police arrested 16 people in a wave of anti-terrorism raids but key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam slipped the net, with Brussels set to remain under security lockdown on Monday (Nov 23).
Schools and the metro will be shut as Brussels stays at the highest possible alert level over what Prime Minister Charles Michel called a “serious and imminent” threat of attacks similar to those that killed 130 people in France.
Police on Sunday carried out 19 raids in Brussels and three in the industrial town of Charleroi, detaining 16 people, prosecutors said, while the driver of a car was injured after police fired two shots when the vehicle drove at officers.
“Salah Abdeslam was not caught during the raids,” federal prosecutor spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt told a press conference just after midnight, meaning Europe’s most wanted man remains at large. Abdeslam’s elder brother Brahim blew himself up outside a Paris bar in the Nov 13 attacks.
No arms or weapons were found in the raids, prosecutors added. Armed officers and troops have been patrolling the near deserted streets of the tense Belgian capital all weekend after the government raised the terror alert to the highest level of four in the city.
The European Union and NATO, which are based in Brussels, both said they would increase security and urged non-essential staff to work from home on Monday.
Michel said the Brussels metro system would remain shut and schools and universities would be closed over concerns that jihadists were planning a repeat of the Paris gun and suicide bombing attacks on Nov 13.
‘SERIOUS AND IMMINENT’
“What we fear are similar attacks, with several individuals in several places,” Michel told reporters. “The threat is considered serious and imminent,” he said, adding that the rest of the country, including Brussels airport, would remain on security alert level three, meaning an attack is considered possible and the threat credible.
Officials will review the situation again on Monday. The historic Grand Place square in central Brussels, usually bustling, was virtually empty at the weekend, with business badly hit in the run-up to Christmas as anxious residents heeded warnings to stay home.
With a massive manhunt on for several suspects linked to the carnage in Paris, Belgian police urged the media and social media not to show live footage of the police operations taking place Sunday evening.
Many Belgians responded in light-hearted fashion by tweeting pictures of cats under the hashtag #BrusselsLockdown.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon earlier said the authorities were looking for “several suspects” and not just for Abdeslam, who is thought to have slipped past French security forces after taking part in the Paris attacks, which were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
French police meanwhile released a photo of the third of three men who blew themselves up outside France’s national stadium during the rampage, which also targeted the Bataclan concert hall as well as a string of bars and restaurants.
The man in the picture passed through Greece with one of the other suicide bombers, carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Mohammad al-Mahmod, a source close to the investigation said.
OBAMA ‘NOT AFRAID’
With the world on edge over the jihadist threat, US President Barack Obama said the most powerful tool in the fight against IS was to say “that we’re not afraid”.
He added that he would go ahead with a December visit to Paris for UN climate talks and called on other countries to show similar resolve.
French President Francois Hollande will embark on a diplomatic offensive in the coming days in a bid to forge a broad anti-IS coalition.
He will host Britain’s David Cameron Monday before meeting Obama in Washington on Tuesday, holding talks with Germany’s Angela Merkel in Paris Wednesday and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.
The UN Security Council on Friday authorised “all necessary measures” to fight jihadist violence after a wave of deadly attacks, including the downing of a Russian aircraft in Egypt with the loss of 224 lives and the storming of a luxury hotel in Mali that left 19 dead.
Meanwhile, Eagles of Death Metal, the Californian band that was playing at the Bataclan where 89 people were massacred, spoke for the first time since the attacks, with singer Jesse Hughes saying that many fans died trying to protect their friends. “So many people put themselves in front of people,” he said in an excerpt of an interview with Vice.com.
The suspected ringleader of the Nov 13 attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, died in a massive police raid in Paris on Wednesday.
He was a notorious Belgian jihadist thought to be fighting in Syria, and his presence in Europe has raised troubling questions about a Europe-wide breakdown in intelligence and border security.
Questions remain too over the role played by Belgian-born Abdeslam - who used to run a bar with his brother Brahim in Brussels.
A third brother, Mohamed Abdeslam, told Belgian TV on Sunday he believed Salah had at the last moment decided not go through with the attack.
He said the family wanted him to give himself up. “That way he can give us the answers we seek, our family and the families of the victims,” he said.
- AFP/de/pp
German police arrest five in hunt for Paris suspects
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...e/2269660.html
Police special units in the western city of Aachen arrested one man and two women of foreign nationalities in the morning, and two more suspects later in the day, police said.
BERLIN: German police hunting for suspects in the Paris attacks on Tuesday (Nov 17) said they had arrested five people near the Belgian border, but cautioned they had established no links so far to the attacks.
Police special units in the western city of Aachen arrested one man and two women of foreign nationalities in the morning, and two more suspects later in the day, police said.
The suspects “could be connected with the Paris attacks”, Aachen police spokesman Werner Schneider told news channel NTV. He however cautioned that “either these indications will be confirmed or they could all go up into thin air”. He added that the identities of the first three were yet to be established.
A police statement said: “Following the terrorist attacks last Friday in Paris and the search for the perpetrators and masterminds, Aachen police received a report about suspicious persons in Alsdorf near Aachen.”
“In this context, there were three arrests this morning. Two women and a man were overwhelmed by special forces and taken into custody. Investigations are currently ongoing.” It added that police had conducted further operations in the area which it could not detail “for tactical reasons”, and that “two more people were arrested by special forces in Alsdorf”.
European police forces are searching for Salah Abdeslam, 26, who was named by French police as a key suspect in the Paris attacks in which 129 people were killed.
News site Spiegel Online reported that the German police alert was sparked by a supermarket employee who reported spotting a suspect who resembled Abdeslam.
Salah Abdeslam - the younger brother of Brahim Abdeslam, who blew himself up in Friday’s attacks – is being sought by French investigators who have issued a photograph of him, describing him as “dangerous”, while Belgium has issued an international arrest warrant.
Salah Abdeslam was in Austria in September, telling police after arriving from Germany with two men that he was “on holiday”, Austrian authorities said on Tuesday.
- AFP/ms
https://m.malaysiakini.com/news/321044
Kevin gave me info on probe on powerful individuals: brother
The brother of Anthony Kevin Morais has claimed to be in possession of a pen drive sent to him by the deputy public prosecutor just before he was murdered.
“It is in safe custody in the US with someone who has instructions to release it publicly should anything untoward happen to me for swearing this statutory declaration,” said Charles Suresh Morais.
“The contents of this pen drive clearly and unequivocally reveal the investigation Kevin had been tasked with just before his untimely death, which implicates certain personalities who currently walk the corridors of power in Malaysia,” he added in a statutory declaration today.
Charles said Kevin told him in August that he will send Charles something. The pendrive arrived in October.
Kevin was murderd in September.
[More to follow]
http://news.asiaone.com/news/sports/...ue-next-season
Football: LionsXII kicked out of Malaysian league from next season
PETALING JAYA - Singapore Lions XII will no longer play in the Malaysian League (M-League).
Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) executive committee had decided not to extend their Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Singapore FA which sees the participation of the Lions in the M-League, when the current season ends.
The Singapore side’s Super League slot will be taken by the winner of a play-off between Armed Forces and T-Team.
The Lions made their return to the M-League after a 17-year hiatus after the FAS and FAM signed the MoU in 2011.
Singapore had previously parted ways with Malaysian football in 1994 after winning both the Malaysia Cup and the league title.
The Lions’ return in 2012 saw them finish runners-up in the 12-team Super League behind champions Kelantan.
The following season they went on to win the Super League but they finished empty handed in 2014.
This year they won their first ever FA Cup in May and have qualified for the Malaysia Cup quarter-finals.
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/ma...ut-tahrir-says
Selangor fatwa inaccurate, we are not deviants, Hizbut Tahrir says
Hizbut Tahrir supporters pray while holding up placards against US President Barack Obama’s planned visit to Malaysia during a protest outside the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur in this file picture taken on April 18, 2014. HTM recently declared Malaysia’s welcome of Obama in November as ‘haram’. — Reuters pic
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 2 — Hardline Islamic movement Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia (HTM) today disagreed with the Selangor edict labelling it “deviant”, saying the state fatwa committee had unfairly and wrongly interpreted its teachings.
A spokesman for the group Abdul Hakim Othman told Malay Mail Online that HTM met with the Selangor religious authorities on at least two occasions previously to seek its explanation on the fatwa but failed to get it reversed.
“We initiated a meeting with the Selangor Mufti Department in September this year, but they ended the meeting before we could finish explaining how they have wrongly interpreted our stances,” he told Malay Mail Online when contacted.
In the fatwa in the Selangor government gazette on September 17 and published today as a notice in Malay-language daily Sinar Harian, Hizbut Tahrir was declared a “deviant” movement for several reasons, including its claim that MPs, rulers and Islamic scholars here are infidels for accepting and following a government system that it claims to be against God’s will.
Abdul Hakim, however, said this portrayal of the movement was untrue and not the formal position of HTM.
“Where, in any of our publications have we said this? They have made up their own conclusions,” he said.
“The fatwa also says that we have declared Islamic countries as infidels (kafir), which we have never said. Even in our publications, we only provide definitions to explain the differences between an Islamic country and one that is not,” he added.
Abdul Hakim also denied the fatwa’s claim that the movement rejects the term “al-Qadha’ wa al-Qadar” (the Divine Will and Decree) as well as hadiths sourced from the Quran, known as “hadith Ahad”.
He said that the only point that was close to the truth was HTM’s stand on prophets not being infallible in their lives before being made prophets, which he said even Islamic scholars here are debating.
“Yes, we have that stand, but it is an issue that is even debated among scholars. The way they have presented it in the fatwa will confuse the public,” he said.
Abdul Hakim said that no action has been taken against the group, although he has seen posters of the fatwa put up in mosques in Selangor.
He added that it was regrettable that HTM had not been given the opportunity to explain its beliefs and its agenda, adding that the group has yet to decide its next step.
HTM, which seeks to establish a global caliphate, has been vocal in its demands, most recently for declaring Malaysia’s welcoming of US president Barack Obama in November as “haram”.
It had also previously declared that Muslim men do not need their wives’ consent to have sex, and that it was not sinful even if it was by force.
- See more at:
